https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nyPeWSLbdjw

I think this video is very telling. It looks all very ceremonial, but presidents of other nations are dropped off and have to hoof it along the empty red carpet by themselves surrounded by Chinese soldiers.

2 ways to get superglue out of a lock, acetone or heating it up with a torch and make it melt. So make sure not to put some solder inside the lock before you put the superglue in. The solder would melt and get stuck inside everywhere and be impossible to remove.

China is looking to replace the Pax Americana with the Pax Sinica. But where the US and Europe at least had cultural and ideological overlaps. This doesn't exist between China and Europe.

Just make a list of allies of the US or the EU, it's massive. A list of China's allies... North Korea maybe? China doesn't want equal partnerships, it wants to lead and the others to follow.

From their website:

"We will only be working with factories that pass a series of internationally-recognized certifications and audits."

"We produce items in the US as well as abroad"

Why would a US factory need internationally recognized certifications? That kind of thing is meant to prevent unsafe sweatshop conditions in South-East Asia. Also they're not specifying how much of their products are made in the US. If I went through the trouble to make 90% of the products domestically I would like to share that. So the balance is most likely leaning towards the other direction.

Oddly enough very product I checked said it was handmade in the US. So which products are made abroad?

I don't want to be a A-hole over this. It's cool they're doing this, and seem to have their hearts in the right place. But I've seen too much shit in this space to believe things at face value.

Having to pay tariffs. Sending money to a country with an adversarial government. And it's not even made in the US.

I don't think they meant it that way.

My experience with the toys has been that's it's usually single parents with not much money wanting to get something for their kid(s). But your option is also a great idea.

Even if you intend to give it away for free, still price it. Once it's free it will attract a lot of... shady characters. In my experience at least. Even asking a very cheap price will almost eliminate all the weirdos and odd requests. It's like they only search for stuff that's free. When it came to my kid's old toys I ended giving it away for free when they came to pick it up with cash in hand.

"In the case of microplastics, many researchers are drawing closer to the possibility that there are no humans left in the developed world who have not been exposed to them." https://medshadow.org/the-impact-of-microplastics-cant-be-studied-because-there-is-no-control-group/

"... it is often used for modern particle detectors because more modern steel is contaminated with traces of nuclear fallout." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

We'll be dealing with the after effects of the early Anthropocene for eons.

Every country is free to make it's own agreements internationally. But it doesn't make a lot of sense. Bargaining as the EU instead of an individual country gives you so much more bargaining power.

China for sure. Taiwan only on paper, in practice it's fine with the territory it has and has no ambitions of ousting the CPP and regaining it's former territories. But if Taiwan breaks this "stalemate" than China will consider it a declaration of independence. Which is also weird, since Taiwan (formally the Republic of China) has been an independent nation since 1912 and is a direct continuation of 250 years of Qing Dynasty rule. Whilst China (formally the People's Republic of China) was split of from the ROC in 1949.

Which even weirder is that the British obtained Hong Kong from the Qing Dynasty. And since the ROC is the continuation of the Qing Dynasty, Hong Kong should be returned to Taiwan. But for obvious practical reasons that was not what happened.