the rum soaked fist: internal martial arts forum

I think Trump knows we are all @#$%ed so he's resorting to his snake oil sales tactics to try to get re-elected.

If he wanted to save the economy he and they would stop the virus first.

I guess the Norwegians won't be immigrating to the States any time soon.

Good to hear from you Steve.

It occurs to me that Trump blamed Puerto Rico for their handling of the disaster and now the states for their handing is up next.

Didn't the Republicans blame New Orleans for their handling of Hurricane Katrina?

So let's close another thread with 'hate Trump' posts.
I am so sick of the bile that comes from Trump obsessed people.

Trick - you nailed it, the crash came first - then the virus to validate it.
Whether engineered or natural - it is still being used as a tool.

Well, we didn't close the hate Bush, Clinton, or Obama threads. We talked about Benghazi for years. Betcha there are a few hate Biden posts in the political thread. Hey, he's the President. Criticism, sometimes unwarranted, is part of the job. But, like I said, the problem was that he thought the problem was being hyped to hurt him. Even if plausible, it didn't spread the virus. Otoh, him saying that it was under control, just like the flu, people who listened to him helped the virus spread.

He just tweeted this:

The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success. The real people want to get back to work ASAP. We will be stronger than ever before!

Iow, he still thinks it's all about his election. That's really not the most important thing right now to the people hospitalized with the virus. If Obama were in office, people would criticize him. The only reason I think any thread should be pulled is because people are only attacking each other, not a particular subject. Imo, you can't close a coronavirus thread because people hate Trump. Besides, the coronavirus is here, now. We can't stop talking about it because Trump is president, seeks reelection, or his name comes up. Otoh, opening a thread about HIllary and Benghazi or Bush in Iraq would be btdt, and deserve being sent there. I don't think we're quite there with this virus.

roger hao wrote:So let's close another thread with 'hate Trump' posts.
I am so sick of the bile that comes from Trump obsessed people.

Trick - you nailed it, the crash came first - then the virus to validate it.
Whether engineered or natural - it is still being used as a tool.

America great yet?

Why are you trying to take away my first ammendment right?

Poor little snowflakes. Don't like it then why read it?

I will say this much. I do agree that the crash was coming. Thanks to Trump and his usual Republican policies. They always crash the economy. Trickle down doesn't work.

Worker NYC hospital where staff wore TRASH BAGS dies at 48

This is really a warning that it may be coming to your town.

Here's a comparison of the flu v covid19. Purely science.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3w7r932zlU

To the powers that be.

If you want to open another thread
please use "moderator" or another name.

For those reading...

I am not the thread starter

But you sure keep the topic going.

everything wrote:I’m not sure we can say China is way more online.

You mean like all is Weibo?

Looking at my case, I now telework.

I think you meant WeChat. Weibo is micro-blogging and I was talking about the economy. Vastly more of the Chinese economy is online than in the US. I suspect it's the world leader in this regard, but I cannot speak from direct experience for anywhere but China and the US.

As you probably have heard, China is already a virtually cashless society. Nobody carries a wallet, just a phone. I don't even use and ATM card to make ATM deposits. You just scan a QR code on the ATM to access your account. O2O business is off the charts. You think Amazon.com is a big deal, but in China Taobao and JD.com represent larger slices of the economy than Amazon does in the US. You pay your phone bill from inside of WeChat. Restaurants just leave a QR code on the table for you to pay your bill. There's a local supermarket here where you actually can only buy stuff through and online app. It's honestly hard to think of any financial transaction that isn't done online by default. If you try to use cash these days, you are like the old lady at the supermarket pulling out an old fasioned checkbook. Cashier's often have no change. Self serve mini-mars are normal and while we joke about bad self-service checkout in Los Angeles, at the Wallmart near my home, it's like 80% self-checkout. You don't have to use the machines either. You can just scan stuff with your phone as you are shopping, pay for it with your phone with no special kiosk needed, and then you just slash the QR code your phone generates to prove you paid as you leave. The bike sharing is off the charts. The user volume in the US is a joke compared to in China where there are so many IoT powered shared bikes on the street, they are a traffic nuisance. It's orders of magnitude more widespread than in Los Angles, where's it's common but still a niche market. There's restaurants all over town that basically only do delivery through food apps.

It just goes on and on. As long as you are a local Chinese person who doesn't care about getting over the great firewall, average Internet speeds are much faster both at home and with your phone, and 5G coverage is significantly more widespead than in the US, and it's real 5G too, not this so called "5G+" which is basically just 4G on cocaine.

Basically the entire economy is being run on cell phones

Edit:
This probably only applies to the cities. I think rural areas bring the numbers down when I google overall cellphone penetration rates. Google gives numbers like 58% or so, but in Xi'an if you tried to tell someone you didn't have a smartphone, they look at you like you had a third arm growing out of your head or something.

yes, meant wechat. for the mobile payments, having contactless payment seems really helpful for this kind of situation.

I bet if you eliminated for villages with fewer than 10K people, and transactions under 10K RMB, then you'd see cell phone use and cashless use approaching 90%.

I did a lot in cash, tho. Tencent took a very unlucky 88 quai from me in December 2017 and I'll never let it go! lol

A couple of other foreigners I knew also thought some small amount was missing that month, but whatevs.

Don't like that part of cashless or Chinese society in general with no habit for monthly reconciliation of the bank statement.

The lack of monthly reconciliation has made it much harder for me to buy a home back in the states. Lenders tend to want to see bank statements.

WeChat has evolved so vastly beyond what it started out as, beyond mobile payments even. The big data, big brother tracking they are using the control the virus is integrated into WeChat. For the first few weeks of the shutdown, you had to record your name in ID in a notebook to get into a supermarket. Then they came out with a miniapp for WeChat so you just scan a QR and flash your "e-passport". Green means you can get in. Yellow means self quarantine your ass. Red mean you should get tested.

Most movie theaters don't even accept cash at all any more. You pay and pick your seats through your phone, and no physical ticket is issued until you arrive at the theatre where a machine scans your phone and then prints at ticket.

On the upside, there are no overdraft fees in China because if you are a single yuan short, you just can't pay...which I really like.

The lack of overdraft is proper and good.

Freaking electronic transactions in the USA still incur overdraft fees while my tax money bails their asses out, lol.