In the workplace you hopefully had help from your union. Americans rarely have that luxury.
Also it’s only in USA that France might be considered communist, because that’s completely moronic extreme right propaganda, since France has a free market economy like the rest of EU.
At least in EU insurance is under better regulation than in USA, but it still sucks to have to make insurance claims, that the insurance company has every interest in rejecting.

No USA has hijacked that. What you are talking about is the Americas plural with an S, which include north, south and central America.

I absolutely agree with you that it is stupid and arrogant of USA to call itself America. But it is shorthand for United States of America.

In my own language Danish “Amerika” is indeed the 3 Americas combined, but in English “America” is used interchangeably with USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States

The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America,

https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika

Amerika er den samlede landmasse indeholdende Nordamerika (inklusive Mellemamerika) og Sydamerika

Translation: “Amerika” is the combined landmass containing North America (including Central America) and South America.

It depends on the language, and here we use English. And yes I agree with you it is stupid. But people from USA are called Americans, hence it is sometimes more logical to use America than USA.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American

American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the “United States” or “America”

I don’t know what your native language is, but you are probably transferring norms from your own language to English, that in this context makes you simply wrong.

I see the world news sub every day, and I have never seen that claim.

China is coming from extreme poverty and a feudal society until not that long ago, and is a different culture. USA is coming mostly from European culture, but is doing worse in this field than any European country, despite being far richer than most European countries.
China has made a lot of progress the past 50 years, conditions in China are now without comparison better now than they were 50 years ago. In USA conditions are in many ways worse for the average worker than they were 50 years ago.

honestly don’t know what the “free healthcare in China” stuff came from

I have no idea what you mean. AFAIK China does not have healthcare for all, or free healthcare. But apart from that IDK how healthcare actually works in China.

If you read the above headline without thinking it’s insane, chances are you are American.
No developed country is as insane as USA, not even close, not even remotely close.
If you are sick, you shouldn’t need to fight for treatment, only in a sick society is that necessary.

The limit of speed of light is a property of space-time, not a property of light.
Another way to understand it is that it is the maximum speed of causality. The limit doesn’t go only for light, but for instance also for gravity, which AFAIK is also proven by the measurement of gravitational waves.
The reason only light can achieve this speed is that it is massless. Because if light had mass, it would have infinite energy, and take infinite energy to achieve the speed of light.
There are numerous explanations for how 2 objects moving at the speed of light still only approach each other at the speed of light.
Take a look at Youtube, there are many good videos explaining relativity in general and speed of light in particular.

As Einstein said, time is relative. But that only means it is relative to different circumstances.
Moving at light speed time stands still, and the theory is that inside a black hole time also stands still.
So being at a stationary position in non gravity space is the fastest time will go.
But lets make it simple, and consider weather time is a constant on earth, at least within a margin we are not able to perceive.
And to that question the answer is that yes time is constants, because changes in the speed of time are universal and affect everything equally.
Meaning that the relative time we perceive is constant.

BUT on the other hand, time is different to a satellite that orbits the earth, because the faster movement slows down time, but the lower gravity accelerates it. Which makes it necessary for GPS satellites to compensate for that to make accurate positions possible.
Anecdotally the GPS system was originally financed and implemented by the US military. And the generals did not believe this, so they claimed the system to compensate was unnecessary, which of course it turned out the scientists were right, so they had implemented the system to compensate anyway, and could turn it on, when they had proved to the generals that it indeed was necessary.

https://www.gpsworld.com/inside-the-box-gps-and-relativity/

The net effect: A GPS satellite clock will gain about 38 microseconds per day over a clock at rest at mean sea level.

If time was faster or slower, you wouldn’t notice anything. Because time is an expression of causality, and if causality is either faster or slower, it would go for everything, including you, your phone, your watch and everything else.
If time was slower or faster, there would be no way to detect it.

But we do have an inner clock, and that clock slows down as we age, making things feel/seem faster.
Many animals have way more accurate inner clocks than humans, for instance cats can tell the time of day very accurately, and are known to have daily routines on the clock, also disregarding sunlight and owner behavior.
Most animals also have a way more accurate perception of speed of events, and will often seem to react only in the last second, but will very rarely fail. This can be seen with for instance pigeons in traffic. That will only move at the last moment when cars or scooters or bicycles approach.

So whatever number of seconds it takes a person to count Mississippis or run 100 meter, is purely subjective, and in no way a reliable measure of time.

I specifically remember counting chunks of time as long as 15 minutes and not being off by a minute.

I can almost guarantee that memory is not accurate. the human inner watch is simply not that accurate, even with tricks to aid it.
I personally have a somewhat similar memory, of being able to tell the clock very accurately by the position of the sun. But the truth is I probably tricked myself, and when I got it wrong I discarded it, and only remembered the accurate ones. Classic confirmation bias, that we should all be aware of that we are all victims to now and then.

How long could Huey, Dewey and Louie remain children in real life?

To bad smoking isn’t allowed, I could find good use for a cigarette there.

I believe there are some issues for people with mental health concerns due to the reward pathway fuckery,

It appears that people with mental health issues have way more problems to quit smoking than people on average.
The burning of tobacco makes the nicotine combine with other compounds in the tobacco to form MAO inhibitor effect. Which people with mental problems become way more dependent on than other people.

For these people e-cigs have been shown to help a lot, despite they don’t have the MAO effect, they help by limiting the abstinence of not smoking by providing nicotine, and probably by providing a reasonably strong placebo effect from “feeling” like smoking in many ways.

For some people with mental problems, smoking can often be seen as an attempt of self treatment.

Good point, motivation is of course always a major factor.

Congratulations, that’s a very difficult thing to do if you are a heavy smoker, and usually requires several attempts.

I have seen many studies that show e-cig has higher success rate than anything else, both short and long term.
One of the reasons is that smoking is not just an addiction it is also a habit.
With e-cig you can break the addiction, while still performing the habitual behavior, and that has been shown to help ease the cravings. No fiddling with your hands when the cravings come, and you even have the calming pleasure of the vapor cloud that mimic smoke visually.

The bases of e-cig like vegetable glycerine and propylene glycol, even have the advantage of helping to clean out the lungs from smoking, so your lungs recover faster, while still being considered extremely safe to inhale after more than 70 years of research.

Also using the e-cig as a 2 step solution has higher success rate than anything else, again because you can keep performing the habitual ritual, while stepping down the nicotine. So you are free of any dependency on either the e-cig or other nicotine products or medicine.

e-cig is one of the cheapest yet most effective options, and finally e-cig is the least stressful and among the safest options.

Champix may be among the better options, but it is a way more serious change of the brain chemistry than e-cigs, and may have mood altering effects and cause depression and/or aggression. These are symptoms can also occur when going cold turkey, problem is that Champix does not help against it as effectively as e-cigs do. Champix helps with the cravings, but not other side effects of quitting.

It is also curious how Champix is taken for 3 months, when that is one of the major crisis points for smokers to revert. This is a clear recipe for making people revert after having used Champix, which my tinfoil hat tells me is so they have higher chance of selling the same “cure” multiple times to the same person.

Disclaimer:
I am not a professional, but I have studied these issues very thoroughly, and learned how to read scientific papers to a reasonable degree, to investigate and better understand the issue at the scientific source and better understand criticism of some research papers, rather than just sensationalist journalistic interpretation. The above are all points I have learned through those studies. Except of course the suspicion of Champix treatment ending just a little bit to soon to sell the treatment multiple times.

Alcohol is bad, but smoking is worse.
Smoking is both way more addictive and it is a bigger health risk.
It’s rare to be a moderate smoker, generally you either don’t smoke at all, or if you do you are a smoker, with numerous health risks.
With alcohol moderate use is the norm, and only excessive use will make you an alcoholic, resulting in numerous health risks.

AFAIK it has only lately become known that even moderate alcohol use is still a health risk. AFAIK mostly causing intestine cancer.
So instead we have campaigns warning against drinking to much, which was also how it started with cigarettes.

Confirmation bias.

Not the same company, the Motorola Atrix 4G is from 2011, back when Motorola phones were an American owned company.
Lenovo bought Motorola smartphone division in 2014.

12 years with another company, and I think the difference will be quite significant.
You might as well compare to a completely different brand.

My gosh, it’s so rare I have a chance to use my printer, thanks for sharing. 🤣

OK I read it as Linux won’t cut it if we are forced to use Microsoft.
Microsoft will of course do everything possible to create that situation, as they’ve been doing very successfully since the 80’s.

How the fuck is Linux a trap compared to the shenanigans of Microsoft?
Microsoft and other proprietary vendors are the trap, and Linux is the way to avoid it.