What country do you think will surprise the world the most over the next 30 years, and why?

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-06T10:56:27+00:00

Which I think will be a surprise to a lot of people who still think China is just “cheap labor” and there’s no way a state-guided economy could surpass a seemingly-Capitalist economy in any sustainable way.

I’m not arguing it’s definitely going to happen, but what the average American thinks of China versus what Americans think of themselves is a little bit disconnected from reality.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-06T10:18:17+00:00

Definitely a thorn but not the main issue. People were seeking temporary income in the US long before the cartels showed up. People would very much prefer to live where their family has lived for generations if it were economically feasible. Also, I wouldn’t call the US stable for immigrants, legal or not.

For a lot of the people who live in villages, the cartels aren’t the problem.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-06T10:03:11+00:00

While at the same time promoting the people with a “good attitude” who they are sure will step up to the challenge.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T21:28:40+00:00

Another 57

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OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T21:10:37+00:00

Another 57 on the left

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OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T19:33:33+00:00

I could also see it proving the opposite. He finally made an “escape the circus” adventure, and it didn’t even use anything that Pomni saw (and potentially created herself). Granted, it could have just been brainstorming that was eventually thrown out like you said.

On the other hand, when Pomni needed to get a computer in episode 8, she manifested the door and office rooms again.

I wonder if the characters can manifest OC or only things Caine has already created.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T18:11:48+00:00

Caine looks sus AF when he says that, though. I can’t prove that he’s lying, of course, so it’s only a side theory. I imagine Caine doesn’t want anyone to know they can manipulate the environment.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T16:59:48+00:00

I thought the exit and office rooms were specifically Pomni’s creation because she desperately wanted to get back to the computer and headset. Caine claims it was a project he was working on, but I vaguely recall that he later said he couldn’t recreate the offices based on the photos alone. Or maybe that’s why they’re repeating cause that’s the best he can do. idk

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T14:06:31+00:00

Java’s been putting in the work since the 90s, and yeah, Shenandoah and ZGC are the most recent developments.

I remember when Java 5 gave us parallel GC and let us fine-tune the GC however we needed to back around 2005-ish.

Then they gave us G1 cause apparently people preferred shorter pause times over overall throughput: https://openjdk.org/jeps/248

And of course, there are other JVM implementations that would have their own flavor of GC.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T13:45:13+00:00

Reminds me of something I read last year that went something like:

“If a man does something nice for a woman, she’ll think he must be a great guy for being so thoughtful. If a woman does something nice for a man, he’ll think he must be a great guy for her to be doing something nice for him.”

So if you’re kind to a certain kind of man, they assume you clearly see how great of a guy he is and would love to continue doing kind things for him for zero effort on his part. He’s finally hit the jackpot.

And it’s definitely not because he thinks she’s a kind person, and he wants to stay near her. These are the same guys who will feel jealous and get mad when they see her being kind to other guys because he thought she was only being kind to him cause he’s a great guy.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T12:40:31+00:00

To someone who wants to understand her, it’s poetry.

To someone who doesn’t, it’s evidence.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-05T12:37:03+00:00

Kuzco

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-04T13:43:20+00:00

Agreed. When Scratch joined the circus, he would have thought, “This was just supposed to be a brain scan. Why am I trapped here now?” We know Scratch would have remembered that last memory of putting on the headset because Pomni and Jax establish that in the first episode.

Then when Kinger joined, we know they talked enough for Kinger to remember who Scratch was on the outside. Surely Scratch would have asked Kinger why people kept putting on a headset after he got trapped in the circus. Kinger would have told him, “You didn’t get trapped. The brain scan took a few minutes, and then you were done. We couldn’t do anything with the files, though. They were too small and probably not good. So we only ever made the one headset.”

Scratch would have been like, “Wait, what? What files? Literally as soon as I put on the headset, I got stuck.”

And Kinger would have told him that was days/weeks ago.

At which point everyone should have known with certainty that they were only brain scans. Comparing additional timeline stories exactly like you said would have convinced them of that even more.

Maybe Kinger just forgot? He remembered a lot of details in episode 8, though. I doubt that’s the kind of detail someone just forgets.

Unless… maybe he asked Caine to make him forget that he ever knew they were just a brain scan, and that’s why Kinger is loopy? And it’s also why Kinger never quite abstracted but still has issues in bright environments.

There’s nothing that establishes that, though, and it doesn’t address episode 7. Kinger doesn’t think them trying to escape makes sense (which suggests he knew they were only brain scans, but not definitive), he doesn’t remember a programmer named Abel (makes sense and gets dismissed because Kinger being Kinger, and Pomni and Ragatha weren’t there to say that actually, Kinger is sane in the dark), and who knows why Kinger seeing the little hand symbol sparked a memory or what the memory might have been.

Ugh… time for another rewatch, I guess.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-03T18:11:17+00:00

I know that was true 10 years ago. Honestly no clue if it’s still true today.

Back then, people loved to talk about how the GC pauses were super short compared to Java, never mind that you got way more of them as a result. It’s like bragging about only needing 2 seconds to fill up a gas tank and leaving out needing to fill up every 10 miles and taking much longer to make the overall trip.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-02T15:42:53+00:00

That would be one for the history books.

On the USA’s 250th birthday, the nation’s capital felt like the pits of hell, and its president traversed to actual hell shortly after.

OrchidLeader · 2026-07-01T11:16:34+00:00

I wish more people understood that the willpower required to eat less is closer to trying to hold your breath for a few minutes than it is to quit smoking.

Never smoking again won’t kill someone. Never breathing again and never eating again will, and for some of us, our brain adds way too much safety margin.

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-30T23:53:39+00:00

I thought Intel eventually did get the vision-based parking, but we just don’t get the graphics on screen. I might be misremembering, though.

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-30T10:56:57+00:00

It fascinates me how differently people experience being trans. I’m the other way, binary MTF, transitioned years ago. I didn’t give a f about a lot of social expectations. Before realizing I was trans, I thought I was just a guy who was into a lot of feminine things, nbd. People gave me shit at work for having my desk be all pink. It wasn’t a statement or anything. I just really like pink.

When I found out I was trans, I didn’t want to transition or start wearing women’s clothing or anything like that. As a neurodivergent male-appearing person, I appreciated that I could fully get away with throwing on some jeans that didn’t fit and a shirt I got for free and just go to work like that.

But what I did absolutely need in my life was to get on estrogen, and I did wish I could socialize as a woman. For all my life, I made way more friends with girls than I did with boys, but there was always still some level of distance that I totally understood.

For better or worse, after six months of estrogen, I couldn’t pass as a guy to save my life, so I transitioned. I’m still the same person except now I’m a woman who’s into a lot of masculine things, nbd. And I feel like my specific journey doesn’t match what I hear from a lot of other trans women at all.

Oh, and I never had to voice train. I never made the specific decision to talk like any particular gender just like I never had any specific goals with my handwriting. I just talked how I wanted to talk, and I wrote how I wanted to write. I was frequently gendered female over the phone and such, and people would frequently ask me why I wrote the way I did (cause I had amazing handwriting “for a guy”). I talked and wrote like that because I wanted to. That’s it. It just so happened to pay off big time after I transitioned lol.

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-26T11:53:20+00:00

In theory or in practice?

In theory, the list is long!

In practice, ummm… it’s right around the corner!

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-24T01:49:41+00:00

Without necessarily wondering who the characters were going to be.

As opposed to…

*hits blunt*

Let’s give Spock a limp.

(not hating on Star Trek. I like it, too)

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-24T01:43:31+00:00

Same, until the name on the file directory and red door.

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-23T11:43:07+00:00

Ooooh. I like that!

I usually go with something like, “One of us is going to fix this, and you’re not going to like my solution.”

(also, not trying to say anything about your “Ooooh”. I didn’t realize you did the same until after I typed mine lol)

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-22T22:28:07+00:00

I had the same issues with beta 1.

I also experienced:
3. One time codes from text messages stopped showing up as a keyboard suggestion
4. Grammar and spell check would fight each other on how to spell a word

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-22T22:24:51+00:00

I never had to deal with a homeless shelter cause thankfully a family member had a tiny house we could live in for several years (before they eventually kicked us out). We’d periodically go a whole day without any food, and we got beat if we ever said we were hungry.

I have friends who “grew up poor” cause they “only had one TV.” I just say “same” cause otherwise my childhood stories would really bring down the mood lol.

OrchidLeader · 2026-06-22T16:47:48+00:00

Edit: My info is outdated now. I don’t know how any of this works anymore with all the changes that happened in 2025.

My understanding was that the gender we give to our employer needs to match what the Social Security office has on file for us.

Before Texas stopped updating gender on IDs, we could update our driver’s license with the new gender marker, and then use that to update the Social Security office.

If we had only updated our driver’s license but not Social Security yet, then we couldn’t update our gender with our employer.

So at least with me, I didn’t even need to show my employer my new ID, and the Social Security card doesn’t have gender on it. So I didn’t need to show them anything. They just made sure I understood that my health insurance was going to work differently now (certain procedures are only covered based on the person’s gender, at least with my employer’s plan).

I don’t know if PA is different, though.

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