It’s crazy that “lobbying budget” and “buying lobbyists” is a thing said in the openness and not illegal. Thanks for sharing this report, it’s a great (disgusting) read.

It’s a huge part of the business model. Social Media is valuable for its data on people, and for its ability to manipulate and influence people.

For good chinese Manhua, take a look at Ancient Sovereign of Eternity (aka Ultimate of All Ages), possibly the best ever Xianxia/Cultivation story in comic format. Magic (or Demon) Emperor is also great. And Martial Peak is good for the first 2000 or so chapters. Chinese comedy stuff tends to be fairly good as well, like Top Tier Providence.

Also, Solo Leveling is typical op MC done as cliched as possible, just the art style that’s quite good, although a bit overdone these days. Everybody is trying to copy Redice’s art right now. Koreans have crafted some amazing wuxia manhwas though: Gosu, Legend of the Northern Blade, and Red Storm are examples of amazing completed works in the martial arts murim genre.

It’s a great idea, sadly the EQ gameplay does not interest me at all, but I’m all in for the idea of fake players in a single player/small coop only “FMMORPG”. I’d love it if people tried to do this with every multiplayer game before sunsetting them.

Billionaires are a systematic risk*.

Hardly ever I come across a person more self centered and a bigger fan of virtue signaling as you. You ignored literally everything we said, and your alternative was just “sms”. Even to the point of saying that the other commenter should stop talking to their 47 friends and family members.

Lots of people. I need it because it’s how my clients at work prefer to communicate with me, also how all my family members and friends communicate.

Yes, there are. You just have to live in one of the many many countries in the world where the overwhelming majority of the population uses whatsapp as their communication app. Like my country. Where not only friends and family, but also businesses and government entities use WhatsApp as their messaging app. I have at least a couple hundred reasons to use WhatsApp, including all my friends, all my family members, and all my clients at work. Do I like it? Not really. Do I have a choice? No. Just like I don’t have a choice on not using gmail, because that’s the email provider that the company I work for decided to go with.

Right?! It’s literally just a messenger, honestly, all I expect from it is that it’s an easy and reliable way of sending messages to my contacts. Anything else is questionable.