disseminator of discontent

Goofy memes about voluntarily “becoming Chinese” have lately multiplied on Anglophone social media (one of them shows a toggle switch labeled CHINESE turned on, and below it another switch, labeled FEELINGS, turned off). Professional influencers and ordinary tourists alike peddle Sinofuturist travelogues full of glassy high-rises, gliding robotaxis, and svelte bullet trains.

Envious enchantment with Chinese life offers a tonic to weary disenchantment with American life. People feel, in a word, cooked. According to a Gallup poll from November 2025, Americans’ “satisfaction with the way things are going in the US” stands at 23 percent. Corporate con men walk free while day laborers are terrorized; stock valuations soar while wages stagnate; private jets spew carbon high above a country of crumbling bridges, shuttered hospitals, and unaffordable homes. The symptoms are morbid; the mood is futureless. If the imagined terms of competition with China have begun to soften, this must be due in part to the sense that in the United States, we have few tools left with which to compete. Fear of American decline has shadowed our politics for half a century, but never before has our slow fall been so mirrored and mocked by another’s rapid rise.

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hi its me Alaz im urgently trying 2 raise money to buy a new (2nd hand probably) laptop ... mine has been dying for a long time it was cheap and shitty even in 2019 when i purchased it . and now it's like mostly useless, been thru many repairs, fucked in every way and just today it decided to stop connecting to the internet in any way . ive been needing to buy a laptop forever but it's rly urgent at this time .

i checked the prices and 2nd hand starts from around 450 usd in this country and new ones start from 550 usd (its probably pricier than abroad due to how everything is taxed like crazy here and the three digit inflation situation lmao idk). and im already at minus 800 usd in my bank account and have expenses coming up and practically no work in July and i use this laptop to 1) teach online classes to make money and 2) translate to make money so like im even more fucked without one

im going 2 have 2 use my friends acct again to fundraise ([email protected] on p*yp*l) but i can make a gofundme if needed ? just trying 2 do it asap so can get a laptop this month so i can work and not die and not double the amount of debt i am in that i am paying interest on .

Waitress taking my order: Such arrogance! Not only do you presume to boast under the guise of being humble, but your order employs the most decadent of linguistic excesses - the tautology!

My date, who until recently thought "tautology" referred to the study of tensile strengths and upon learning her mistake compensated by reading through its Wikipedia article: That would be more correctly identified as a "pleonasm".

The editor I hired to curate my posts who styles himself as a sort of scheming court advisor: My liege, this one is getting away from us. The punchline loses much of its impact when the rest of the joke is derailed by this increasingly self-indulgent meta humour. Were it up to me, your Grace, which of course it is not, I would cut the others and leave myself as the only supporting character. You need noone else, Your Majesty...

Dorothy L. Sayers: Are Women Human (1938)