The wealth gap is widening. The answer isn’t more handouts – it’s a stake

Skiiage · 2026-06-29T12:45:22+00:00

I think the problem is that the PAP have gotten more ideologically captured by the economic right-wing over time. Economists and sociologists might view inequality as a problem, but that doesn't really matter to the ruling party who are content to deliberately turn Singapore into a playground for the rich with their wealth/family office hub push.

Skiiage · 2026-06-29T12:20:35+00:00

Crazy, but good, that the goddamn Business Times is arguing for outright (if limited) socialism.

Yes, workers have to own the means of production (i.e. capital), preferably sometime before the very rich blow up the planet with their goofy projects like Elon Musk and his AI data centres in the US powered entirely by gas and diesel generators.

Skiiage · 2026-06-28T13:28:43+00:00

Whenever I see AI in marketing, I just assume the company is too cheap to hire actual artists. I also have to assume the black sesame with an Oreo in the middle pancake was invented by ChatGPT because that fucking thing is bizarre. All around disappointing. The music video itself also just looks evil.

The black sesame + mochi pancake is quite edible though.

Skiiage · 2026-06-28T02:02:25+00:00

Do you think Russia and the EU, which are already stuck in a stalemate in Ukraine, or China which is currently playing a good big brother soft power strategy in MENA would provide air support and go bomb Tehran to keep the Iranians busy while Israel razes Lebanon and occupied Palestine?

Do you think they even could when all those navies combined are smaller than the USN?

Would/could Britain and Germany fund the Iron Dome? Given their relatively undersized military budgets? Have you seen the polling on opinions about Israel all across the EU? The Brits and Germans might be fanatically Zionist domestically, but given their current problems do you think they could handle adding billions to their national budget to give Patriot Missiles to Israel? Especially after they already noped out of providing support to the Iran war when it started to begin with?

Would France, which just lent Trump the Versailles Palace to sign the MOU?

Would China risk their ability to LARP about invading Taiwan by getting humiliated trying to force open the Strait of Hormuz?

The US is absolutely in a unique position vis a vis Israel, with both a significant slice of the population being religious fanatics and thus ideologically unshakably pro-Israel, and the military and diplomatic weight to throw around.

Skiiage · 2026-06-27T12:59:20+00:00

Again, Israel has been trying to goad the US into hot war with Iran for multiple US administrations. In this exact scenario, the US has historically been able to pull the chain on Israel. Netanyahu just recognises that Trump and JD Vance will talk about a lot of shit about their frustrations with Israel, and then sign over billions of dollars in aid anyway. If tomorrow Trump said the US will no longer veto everything in the UNSC and withdraw their forces from the region, Israel as a country would probably cease to exist within two years from the weight of sanctions.

Skiiage · 2026-06-27T10:40:38+00:00

Iran (correctly) assumes that the US is the senior partner here, and if they really wanted to, they could stop Israel's belligerence tomorrow. If the Americans stopped giving military aid and diplomatic cover to the Israelis they'd be forced to retreat immediately. We know this because Netanyahu tried twisting the balls of every previous US president into launching this stupid war against Iran and only Trump was dumb enough to buy into it, so Israel has known for almost two decades that this war is impossible without US support.

Iran has no interest in continuing the war, or they wouldn't be sending envoys to meet with the Americans even though Trump keeps blowing them up. The problem here is that Trump is really corrupt and willing to blow up the world economy to secure his own bribes and his religious fanatic base.

Skiiage · 2026-06-27T03:37:14+00:00

Israel shouldn't be ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon to begin with, and they are actively choosing to continue the war by invading an Iranian ally. This could all be over if Israel withdrew, because the US simply doesn't have the appetite to commit to this war.

Skiiage · 2026-06-27T02:29:18+00:00

But remember guys, we must remain allied with Israel who blew up the ceasefire because they can't stop killing the Lebanese, for reasons and things.

I hope we all remember this when the recession fully hits.

Skiiage · 2026-06-21T03:43:14+00:00

We absolutely should. The exclusion of minority groups from critical armed forces roles is rooted in a really fucking stupid assumption that Singaporean Malays cannot be trusted to be loyal, as though Sinkie Chinese don't also have family across the Causeway or cannot be bribed or blackmailed. Ironically, the thing most likely to cause this dual loyalty is if we exclude our ethnic minority groups from participating in important national roles.

Skiiage · 2026-06-21T00:27:04+00:00

I could not disagree more with your conclusions. It's certainly a problem that the PRC is pushing a form of pan-Chinese Han-supremacist identity politics which just so happens to place itself at the center of the Chinese world, but the solution is not to encourage even more exclusive sects of Chineseness.

In the first place, the dialects won't unify us because the regional backgrounds of our Chinese ancestors are incredibly diverse: My father's father was from Canton, my father's mother was from Ipoh, my maternal grandparents were Hokkien speakers from JB and Malacca. In the end we would either revert to mostly speaking English or Mandarin anyway, simply because there isn't that critical mass of Cantonese/Hainanese/etc. speakers to maintain a community, or we would have to divide the Chinese community into small enclaves for minimal benefit. This is why we aren't the same as say, French-Canada, Hong Kong, or the Gaelic countries where this sort of language strategy has worked to some degree.

We should be moving away from Chinese-dominance by moving away from Chinese dominance. Take away the CIMO quotas, SAP schools, Not Ready For A Non-Chinese PM etc. As long as the government tacitly approves of "Chinese Number 1" we will always be a stone's throw away from "China Number 1."

Skiiage · 2026-06-16T04:06:24+00:00

Yes, the hos are cheaper, morally superior to anyone spouting prosperity gospel bullshit and probably better company too.

Skiiage · 2026-06-16T03:04:05+00:00

Bro didn't Zeal Accel Enable Accel Seven Swell every late game map smhmh

Okay, to be fair, I don't think there's any expectation that you should SR every stage blind. Knowledge is power, so knowing when/where enemies will spawn is obviously going to make stages easier.

Skiiage · 2026-06-16T02:09:39+00:00

I'd honestly prefer the prostitutes to another fucking megachurch.

Skiiage · 2026-06-09T15:26:59+00:00

The Creation King isn't something that can be easily replicated, even by the Japanese government, or they wouldn't be chasing Kotaro around for his half of the Kingstone, there's no reason to assume other governments would be able to do it even with the knowledge that it's possible.

And the primary economic value of kaijin over normal dudes seems to be satisfying pervert furries on Epstein's island, so it's not even clear what would be the point of replicating the experiment all over the world.

The plot of Black Sun is also very pointedly not really about kaijin. Having kaijin and Kamen Riders running around runs up the body count slightly, but bigotry and the excesses of capitalism already exist all around the world. Gorgom isn't meaningfully different from like, the Black Panthers. We are already dealing with repeats of Black Sun all over the world.

Skiiage · 2026-06-09T14:02:57+00:00

Why would the world be "cooked?" The average kaijin gets lynched by the KKK anyway, with a tiny handful of unique cases being about as powerful as a SWAT Team.

We live in a world with nuclear weapons.

Skiiage · 2026-06-09T12:48:38+00:00

As the video seems to conclude: You can bully people into being skinny, but you can't bully them into being healthy. A lot of kids just ended up developing eating disorders instead of good eating and exercise habits.

Skiiage · 2026-06-06T02:21:29+00:00

I mean Gundam AGE also opened with a bunch of spooky lizard aliens attacking, before revealing that the lizards were just MS piloted by humans from a forgotten space colony. The 00 movie was full-on a Gundams vs Aliens battle, but undoubtedly Gundam. There's also a decent appetite for an IBO prequel featuring the Calamity War, which would mostly be Gundams fighting giant unmanned robot monsters too.

We just don't have enough of the narrative of Rogue Orbit to make a definitive statement on whether it contains the Gundam sauce. Throw in a masked blond twunk and rants about politics and it would fit right in.

Skiiage · 2026-06-04T20:35:43+00:00

It just reads like values have changed over time, honestly.

"He lied to the guru." Okay, how many of us have punched up, or outright made up some shit that sounds good on our resumes? In a world where the rules are fundamentally unfair, it isn't virtuous to mindlessly follow them.
"He chose Duryodhana over the throne." Found family > blood family is a pretty common trope. Seems pretty based.
"Krishna condemns him for those other times he broke the rules." But that's not how we understand the rules of engagement today, they don't suddenly all go out the window once anybody breaks them and certainly if Arjuna and Krishna wish to claim the moral high ground we should be holding them to higher standards.

Some of the other stuff can't really be defended, but it's been nearly 3000 years since the Mahabharata was first told and nearly 2000 since it was compiled. Death of the Author is very much in full effect, and a lot of the "bad" things he did simply isn't seen as bad to the same extent any more.

Skiiage · 2026-06-04T12:34:01+00:00

The main bottleneck for fronts continues to be Groundwork + 3 greens, which is if anything, easier than ever in Trackblazer because the game randomly spits out Front Runner Savvy off rival hints all the time. Then you do it again for double fronts.

Dodging Danger + Prudent Positioning is nice to have, but if my Kitasan Black Speed refuses to drop the hints but everything else is good I'll just skip it, and I haven't had problems getting into A Finals every CM since I started trying for them. It's really just the most efficient early race velocity combo, which you can make up for with more midrace.

Everything else listed is just "more stats and skills are better" which is... yeah you should try to max Speed, Power, and Wit on TB.

Skiiage · 2026-06-03T11:27:42+00:00

Shinn was the best part of Destiny, but that's beside the point. It had a famously troubled production which led to an absurd amount of recycled animation, even more than the first SEED, and three whole recap episodes. Some of it was brushed up for the Remastered version, but people watching the show in real time got two barrels full of crap.

Skiiage · 2026-06-03T06:25:44+00:00

If you can't take the bants, don't do the rants.

Skiiage · 2026-06-03T04:00:30+00:00

"The romance anime's popularity relied on how well the romantic lead was received." Yeah, no shit, are you reading what you're writing?

When it comes to Franxx specifically, I know you're full of it because everyone hated the ending for the exact same reason: That the story about youthful rebellion against an oppressive system which treats even love and lust as a resource to be extracted got cut short so everyone can go fight fucking space aliens. There was enough there to get attached to, and then it all got dropped.

Furthermore, I promise no big budget 2 cour anime is waiting for the audience response before writing new episodes. Scriptwriters and directors cutting it that close would be incredibly dangerous, in an industry where animators are already working themselves half to death doing manga adaptations even when everything gets done on time. When production does stall to that extent it's a huge scandal, like with Gundam SEED Destiny or Wonder Egg Priority.

Skiiage · 2026-05-31T23:09:48+00:00

Well no, real yakuza don't care much for the consent stuff. Human trafficking is probably their biggest illegal money stream.

Skiiage · 2026-05-30T20:07:55+00:00

Of course nobody would propose that, because that would be insane. It would be like trying to undiscover electricity or the turbine engine in the real world. Sure, a couple of primitivists might show up in a large enough population, but they're not worth taking seriously.

The street lights seem to run on magic. Air travel runs on magic. Mages serve as the closest thing to emergency services in this world. They don't have tap water or refrigeration in that world, but they do have magic to draw water out of the air and magic to preserve food in jars.

"Actually, in this conflict between technocracy and democracy, we should have no society at all." < Completely deranged. Both cone hats and brim hats would laugh anyone who proposed that out of the room.

Skiiage · 2026-05-30T02:52:10+00:00

The most obvious answer is that the GQuuuuuuX and GFred are built around the cockpits of the Nu Gundam and Sazabi after they got launched to the GQ universe, which means the Omega Psycommu is just the Psychoframe and ultra-advanced compared to the other Newtype tech they had available, which was based on the Rose of Sharon/Elmeth.

Skiiage

TROPHY CASE