The absolute GOAT: The Sword of Goujian.

I live a subway ride away from the greatest sword in history.

And this, indeed, is a little grater.

You know what the Republicans are reminding me of with these kinds of decisions taken everywhere across the USA in the large and the small?

The Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution did extreme damage to thousands upon thousands of years of Chinese culture, very nearly resulting in its loss for all practical purposes. Only the actions of scholars literally risking their lives to conceal works targeted for destruction allowed China to still have its intellectual past, but unfortunately a lot of famed works of physical art and culture were obliterated by the red book waving whack jobs.

Kind of like what’s happening to the USA’s natural beauty and what little history it has.

The reflex is understandable, but the blowback potential is, yes, REALLY serious and needs to be thought through carefully.

Just throw the fucker in jail.

Better wording would have been “hey, does that thing talk?”

It was back when Elon wasn’t totally mocked and hated.

So back as far as yesterday?

Because that’s how far back Kaptain Ketamine wasn’t mocked (at large, I mean) in Japan.

Not disagreeing but … here’s an entirely irrelevant point to the thread because I want to make my voice heard even if it’s nonsense.

And this is relevant to a JAPANESE game developer how? Because it is here in EAST ASIA that I’m talking about. You know, the part of the world that this JAPANESE game developer is living in. You think Japanese people who don’t follow every news item from the USA do so for Europe?

I hope I don’t come across as defending Kaptain Ketamine here, because I’m not. I’m explaining a phenomenon while neither justifying it nor agreeing with it.

People here¹ still don’t hate Kaptain Ketamine. A lot of people still think of him as that slightly nerdy, goofy tech guy he used to portray himself as. In tech companies, you’ll see motivational posters with some slogan or other underneath his face. This is because, get this, they don’t follow American politics.

It’s very easy to think the politics you’re steeped in, the culture you’re inundated with, is the default that “everybody should know.” But it isn’t. People here (in broader East Asia) know about as much about American politics as Americans know about the nutcake war. It is very likely that Ikumi Nakamura, a Japanese game developer focused on making, you know, cool games, is not tracking every piece (or even any piece) of American culture wars. (She also probably has no idea what the nutcake war is.)

I’m not saying you shouldn’t feel disappointed. I’m not saying you should support her studio or this Kemuri game if this news breaks your heart or enrages you. I’m just saying you might want to withhold judgment on her as a person just a bit. After all, she is just as ignorant of your daily outrage cycle as you are (and she probably is) of the nutcake war. (Do you actually know what the nutcake war is, or what impact it had on Chinese social dynamics?)

¹ I’m in China, but I routinely travel to other destinations ranging from Cambodia to Korea.

Maybe you could mix this in somehow?

We just have to make our elected officials fear us more than they fear doing nothing. […] That’s starting to happen.

No it isn’t. You’re still making the mistake of assuming your elections matter when the damage has been done long before you went to the ballot box.

Wake me up with the USA’s populace wakes up again and actually overthrows its blatant, obvious tyranny like it did 250 years ago. I mean you can go through the Declaration of Independence line by line right now and see each entry reflected in the world around you; 250 years ago this was cause for revolution.

But unfortunately revolution interferes with getting the latest gadget, watching the antics of dumbasses on reality TV or whatever the Hell else is going on that’s making all y’all miss the enormous problems that are growing ceaselessly in your nation.

I’d like you to think for just a few minutes. See if you can’t come up with some kind of government spending that should be kept secret. Take your time and really think.

Indeed.

… and to shut down the very government departments that were in a position to regulate his companies.

The goal was to remove rules and regulations that would limit the power of companies …

Is there an echo in here?

Others have covered the most obvious flaw: it was 100% ineffective, causing chaos in government without any meaningful spending decrease.

But here’s the real reason, and it comes together with the other real reason: DOGE was never intended to be about “government efficiency”. It was intended to give Elon Musk access to all the information he could get his grubby little hands on for private enrichment and to shut down the very government departments that were in a position to regulate his companies.

Spotted the Redcap.

Anybody who was shocked by the AfD win in the east has not been paying attention to the east of Germany since 1989.