It worked so well for Vietnam so why not

Considering going after Cuba has been floated as recently as last week, it doesn’t

Well, yes and no. A large part of the design of the system is conformity and preparing the population to be part of the workforce. No matter if that’s blue collar/unskilled labor for the poors or white/gold collar for the rich.

But, a key part of the overall educational system is supposed to also create an educated population which would increase the entire country’s economic strength.

Both of these things can be true at the same time. Things that degrade the quality of education will likewise depress the economic strength but make for a more subservient population.

The degradation I was referring to was the focus on making the numbers look good instead of making sure the students actually learned. They are made to regurgitate facts/figures instead of think about the implications or ramifications of any part of what they are being tested on. Things that incentivise school systems fudging numbers or making tests excessively easy do nothing to help the students learn. They do both the kids and the country as a whole a disservice.

My point is, that doesn’t have to be the way things are. The education system is wholly focused on the wrong metrics and reacting to them in the predictably wrong ways.

Anyone who’s met ceos

The infuriating thing is that it doesn’t have to be. It’s been gutted, filleted, and various other words of a similar effect over the decades to the detriment of the entire populous

A fun game to play is following a train of events backwards to the origination point. Things can get pretty weird pretty quickly.

Such as: the writing of My Immortal can be blamed on the French colonizing Vietnam if you want to stop there but you can take it farther back in time.

For me, it was realizing that while I was smart, the shit level of schooling was more an impediment to me gaining the skills needed to continue excelling and I continue to be surrounded by absolute dipshits wherever I go.

In school, I didn’t have to study to pass and there was no real incentive to learn how to. This bit me when it came to university because the lectures didn’t cover everything that was to be tested on. Turns out, trying is a skill I never needed until then.

Then, in the workforce, I’m constantly exhausted dealing with people who are at best functionally literate and I have to cater to their understanding of literally everything. No desire to either understand the problem or fix the root cause, just make the thing do what they want right then.

What’s amazing to me is that he has a consistent habit of this behavior.

The tariffs would have been almost a good idea if there was a commiserate option for the items being taxed locally. But, since the corporations offloaded all major manufacturing to these places now affected by said tariffs, there is no locally sourced alternative. You can’t punish an external org by artificially pricing their products higher than local options when there aren’t any local options. We import both finished products and raw materials for the few things we make locally so there’s no way we wouldn’t have been caught at a net loss on product pricing.

Starting a war against a major energy provider while also reducing all possible alternatives to that energy source that would alleviate the reliance on said energy source was obviously going to backfire.

Starting trade wars and pissing off every possible ally who traditionally would have helped without question at every step has started to show exactly the expected outcomes. If you don’t keep your end of a deal, you can’t reasonably expect the other members to just go along with it.

Unless, of course, you are a narcissistic asswipe who genuinely believes you are the most important person and everyone will just do what you want.

My metric for a good game is “if there is a pet like animal in it (that isn’t the centerpiece of the game), can I pet said animal or otherwise interact with it in a way that would make it want to be my friend”

The number of games that fail this simple metric are worryingly high.

If you put an animal in your game to flesh it out, let me pet the damn thing. I am willing to die on this hill.

A child cannot consent so…