Knowing the US, they probably assume as long as they can protect all the CEOs and politicians in bunkers that they will have no problem weathering the fallout and rebuilding. Those are the most important "workers", right?

They will be very confused when actual workers don't magically appear on command.

America, Land of the Free¹ and Staunch Defenders of the Free Market²!

¹ Except for TikTok

² Except for Chinese Goods

In a variety of ways, yes.

Yes, unhealthy food is made to be addictive and convenient.

There are other factors that go into it too though. People work far too long hours with far too long commutes and either don't have the time or energy to do any cooking and/or grocery shopping. Even if you live in an area where you have good markets to buy food from, you may not always be able to.

I love to cook, it's one of my main hobbies and I still find I don't really have much time to cook during the week after work. My office provides lunch that is reasonably well balanced, luckily for me. If I could spend less time going to/from/at the office I would happily go to the market to buy fresh produce every day. But that simply isn't feasible.

Gaming is a weird one because AAA development is an unsustainable shitshow with goals that can only be achieved with some of the worst exploitation that exists in any industry anywhere, but at the same time it has become easier than ever for a small indy developer/team to make and publish their own stuff and not have to deal with any of the big companies at all. Not that indy development doesn't have its own host of problems, but for different reasons.

Russia doesn't need to make some weird symbolic gesture to punish Japan. Joining the sanctions was enough of a self-own for us, our economy is the worst it has ever been in my lifetime, we are in the midst of a huge energy issue and the currency is absolute trash. More and more imports are becoming non-feasible, we can't even get orange juice anymore.

I am thoroughly envious that you have managed to avoid that meme this long. You aren't missing anything.

Nope, they are pretty much as bad as the rest of them. I think like 96-97% of their salespeople make basically no money. That was their whole shtick back in the 50s of recruiting housewives as salespeople, you see it in a lot of period dramas and the like.

I know a few countries they operate normal stores because local laws prevent them from doing their whole tupperware party thing, like China. I have heard they are moving more away from that model in other countries too, but I have no idea how true that actually is.

I don't think the actual product is necessarily bad as far as I am aware, but they still have scummy sales practices.

My partner will probably never financially recover from her time involved in a MLM. She was involved in one from well before we got together, and she has since escaped thankfully. I am extremely lucky to be in a position while I can reasonably support both of us so she can focus on the debt, but it's not going to be something she ever really pays off.

MLMs make me extremely pissed off, becaues they absolutely ruin lives. They should be illegal everywhere, but only very few countries actually have a blanket ban on them. China and Saudi Arabia are the only countries I know of offhand.

We just gonna go full circle on original recipe Coca-Cola again soon?

Obviously the US invented freedom, it did not exist historically.

Therefore it is an obvious requirement that you be American to be a free-thinker, so only American news outlets can be free. If they say something wrong, then they have obviously been subverted by China/Russia and are no longer free.

Clothes I couldn't help you much, my entire wardrobe has subsisted on gifts (and the fact my job has a uniform anyway) for like the past 20 years. I am honestly not sure how I would go about buying my own clothes.

Technological product/gadgets. I also like things that last a long time, but I am generally okay with paying a premium for that. So a lot of the brands I use here are on the expensive side, but also they last.

Phones/Tables/Watches. I try to stick to Chinese manufacturers. Generally a decent lifespan and pretty durable at a way more reasonable prices than a lot of the competition. Nothing too shocking here, the major brands like Huawei are solid products that can last a long time if you take care of them.

Chargers/power banks and the like I swear by Anker. They are pretty expensive but they do last a very long time and work very well. I haven'T had an anker device fail on me yet, even if the products I attach to them have.

Vaping devices (it's how I quit smoking) I tend to buy from the Philippines, VIcious Ant are kind of expensive luxury items but they last close to forever. My friend dropped one five stories at a construction site and it was fine. Coils I make myself.

Framework is cool, I haven't had a lot of time to play around with them but I would love to tinker with one a bit more.

I will edit some more in when I can think of them.

I have seen that take in other places a lot recently with the US budget passing. "Well yes, he approved a budget that paid for genocide, but what can you expect him to do, shut down an entire budget just because of one teensy little genocide? He needs to be realistic about budgetry concerns"

Why yes, yes I can. The mass genocide of the palestinian people trumps "budgetry concerns".

I appreciate the sentiment, but it is honestly a pretty broad subject.

Maybe narrow it down to a few more specific areas first so people can share ones they know and go from there? Added benefit of making it easier for other coming to this thread to find the kind of information they are looking for too.

How about overalls? Are those required or optional?

I didn't realise how strict the dress code was, so I need to take notes.

"Fatigue"

Not compassion or trauma from murdering civilians. Not from a sense of moral outrage over the unjust orders that they were given. Not from a sense of justice or even from guilt. Just fatigued of having to do it so much. I get fatigued from too much overtime.

Fucking fatigue.

Yup, all countries supporting them are lumped in as "bad/evil". Honestly they don't count any countries that aren't predominantly white western powers to begin with. Anyone else is "misguided"/"taken advantage of", like they aren't capable of making their own decisions about those countries.

When your understanding of geopolitics is less nuanced than GI Joe, it doesn't take a whole lot to persuade you. Which is exactly what they've been conditioned for. Critical thinking is the worst thing that could happen.

It always impresses me how hard the concept of countries acting in their own self-interest is for people to grasp. Instead they need "good guys" and "bad guys" in any kind conflict.

but they haven’t at all explained aside from “well Putin will attack NATO” despite them publicly saying numerous times that they have no intention or interest in attacking NATO.

The argument that they would make is that because Putin is a saturday morning cartoon villain, that obviously he is lying and will be staging an invasion of the rest of the world as soon as the Last Bastion of Freedom, Ukraine, falls.

I have talked to people like this. Their understanding of the background of the war is so poor that they see it as nothing besides a land grab. Which would already make no sense. It's impossible to have any kind of real discourse because they believe the only motivation is either more land (for the largest country in the world) or just that "Putin is Evil".

Somewhere between "balkanization of the entire country" and "elimination of every human being with any russian ancestry".

EDIT: Sorry I also forgot. A huge vacuum in Ukraine that USian forces can drain the last remaining resources from as they make it a vassal state that only exists to house US military.

Only the most premium screws are accepted for consideration by the great US. How else can you be expected to shoot down weather balloons...eventually?

Seriously though, I had friends who worked for military contractors (they've escaped) who told me stories about how much they overcharged the military on every single line item because it would never get reviewed.