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.

I live in a bit too cold of an area for growing figs, but actually having a fig tree sounds amazing. I love figs, but I only very rarely get any to use. Did you grow it yourself or was it already there?

Same where I am, we do not comply for any requests for footage or guest information (hospitality industry) unless we have a warrant. Even with one, we will explicitly only hand over what is specifically requested.

We also keep records of foreign guest passport details. In case you ever wondered what happens to that information when you stay at a hotel, it is stored on a secure server and I am literally the only person at the property with access to that data, and would never hand it over without a very explicit warrant.

Doesn’t stop the cops from asking, but we always refuse. You won’t stay in business long as a hotel that doesn’t at least try to protect guest privacy.

The number of people in general who consume dystopian fiction and go “This looks awesome” never fails to depress me.

I don’t think Maher has pinned a medal on a nazi as of yet, so there’s that difference.

Though I wouldn’t put it past him.

A “senior China correspondent” that cites Radio Free Asia for anything can probably be safely ignored, especially given her history of articles.

Better yet, find some article in the lease of the property they are hosting the parties out of that makes gatherings of that size illegal. Pretty good odds there is something they are doing that would be a violation.

Seems an appropriate turnaround.

To begin with I think breaking entertainment down into hours per dollar is a bad idea, I have had a fantastic time with one-two hour game “experiences”. Even if we accepted that I don’t think that’s being fair at all however.

Rimworld is my favourite game of all time (I am hovering around 2000 hours at the moment), and was made by a very small indie studio. Like, I am getting close to 100 hours of entertainment per dollar I spent on that, and the number keeps increasing. Stardew Valley is probably my third most played game and was made almost in its entirety by a single guy. Supergiant Games (Hades, Bastion, Transistor, Pyre) makes consistently some of the highest quality games on the market that will all last you a long time. Dyson Sphere Program is made by a tiny Chinese studio and they do phenomenal work. None of those games are “full” AAA priced games and can last you hundreds of hours if not more.

In all honesty I only play a couple of the big AAA studio games per year, and the ones I play have fairly “classic” business models. I don’t play anything that subsists on microtransactions or battle passes or anything like that, and I have no lack of things to play.

I wrote more in my other comment, but I don’t think we are at the end of gaming. I think we have simultaneously some of the best and some of the worst practices in gaming right now.

You can buy a game for $100 and spend $20 to buy a fucking pixel hat, but you can also spend $10 and get an amazing experience that a guy put together in his spare time over the past 12 years. There’s been multiple game releases this year alone that would probably make my top 10 of all time list, none of which are ridldles with microtransactions.

I wish I could say that the exploitative business practices would go away, but we know they won’t. I just hope the good practices don’t go away as well.

For me personally late Super Famicom to late PS1 was about my peak, but that is probably because I am really partial to JRPGs. Things like FFVI, Chrono Trigger, the PS1 FF games are all hard to top.

However, I think right now has its merits too. Yes we have some of the worst examples of exploitative business practices like in the OP, especially in the free to play realm. Microtransactions, premium currencies, time-limited battle passes with premium tracks, all that bullshit. It’s all tuned to prey on vulnerable tendancies of people.

However, there are titles that aren’t exploitative. Baldur’s Gate 3 is a phenomenal example of that. The big “prestige single player games” that Sony has kind of made their thing generally don’t bother me either, they give exactly what is advertised and don’t really nickle/dime you past that.

It has also never been a better time for indy development and publishing. One-two people studios have the tools to create and publish really impressive games. There’s a wider variety of games available now for every possible taste than ever before. I love factory games and there is a wealth of them coming out recently. Incidentally, I still recommend Dyson Sphere Program in that genre.

I regularly see people try to defend Finland using it because it predates nazism, but so what. Acknowledging it is forever tainted by association and that maybe they should distance themselves from it isn’t admitting some type of defeat.

People probably rocked Hitler moustaches before him too, but you don’t see people running around with them anymore (except one comedian in my country that I absolutely despise).

Don’t give them ideas.

My company just had a web conference for upper management where they talked about how sad workers were that they couldn’t see each other when remote working. They didn’t even try to frame it as a productivity thing, they just wanted to make it sound like an employee well being effort.

Of all the issues raised to me during the pandemic, not once did “I’m sad I can’t see my coworkers” come up.

Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

Unironically yes. While the US is particularly fond of bombs and drones, another favourite weapon of theirs is starving the countries of people who have the audacity to disagree with them. See: Cuba*, DPRK. As a bonus, they even get to blame the countries they are starving for the lack of food.

Not even only other countries, the US is happy to do it to their own people because the hungry are easier to exploit. The US has an absolute staggering amount of food waste, it is the largest component of most US landfills. They’d sooner throw away food before giving it to the needy. In many cases, they will punish you for giving it to the needy (see the charitable organizations repeatedly fined in Texas for feeding the homeless).

*Incidentally this exact same map can be used for countries voting to end the US sanctions of Cuba.

Japanese permanent resident here.

Epidurals are very rare. They exist but they are not popular at all. Some is the belief that a “natural” birth is better. In some cases it is just availability of an anesthiaologist that is equipped to do one. Some people just don’t even realise it is an option. The only people I know here who have had one were non-Japanese residents.

I don’t think people necessarily look down on a mother who has one, it’s rare enough that nobody would even ask probably, but it’s just not a common procedure.

Technically the work week is the same, not factoring in commutes. Folks who work in Tokyo often live in neighboring cities like Saitama and commute in.

There’s typically a lot of unpaid overtime though. There is the concept of “black companies” that force employees to work up to 100 hours a week. To some degree the government has been trying to crack down on it, and has met with some success, especially with the bigger international. My company is the Japanese branch of a US company, so we are a little better than most, but some of that still happens. I probably work about 45-50 hours a week on the clock on average, plus maybe 2-3 off the clock. I don’t live or work in Tokyo anymore, so my commute is fairly insignificant.

Thankfully the “you have to go out drinking with all of your coworkers after work” thing has mostly fallen by the wayside. Those events still happen, but it is way more acceptable to just…not go.

Source: I have worked in Japan my entire adult life

I stand corrected comrade. I admit I lack the technical expertise on doohickeys, I need to study more.

The fact you guys have The Blaster as an emoji is just

Yamagami has enough fans now he definitely could, they just need to let him out.