In the future, will we need VPNs that also change their DNS depending on which country the exit node is located in?

The screenshots of the game don’t look bad.
Certainly worth a try!

But that free international market argument applies to all (well, most of all…) countries, which is exactly my point. Modern China is as exploitative as any other highly developed modern country, independent of economic system.

Looking at the top 3 exports of China (by a wide margin before anything else):

Electrical, electronic equipment $1016.58B
Machinery, nuclear reactors, boilers $603.82B
Vehicles other than railway, tramway $248.31B

That’s all high price stuff.

Combined with its huge trade surplus, this is a classical “Buy cheap resources - sell expensive highly processed commodities back” scheme, the same as e.g. the uprising European industrializing nations employed as a strategy during their colony exploiting times (and to some degree still do in a similar fashion as China).

No, there is nothing equal here.

Der Schatz im Silbersee

Why didn’t I know that there exists a Karl May computer game?
And it even seems to be still available as some grey-area abandanware download… :-D

China isn’t exploiting anyone.

Total Imports 2025 EU / China:

Mineral fuels, oils, distillation products $467.75B / $442.95B
Plastics $68.38B / $56.48B
Pearls, precious stones, metals, coins $56.12B / $118.02B
Articles of apparel, knit or crocheted $53.13B / $3.74B
Articles of apparel, not knit or crocheted $48.56B / $5.79B
Iron and steel $44.08B / $30.86B
Edible fruits, nuts, peel of citrus fruit, melons $31.17B / $20.69B
Fish, crustaceans, molluscs, aquatics invertebrates $29.23B / $19.93B
Rubbers $26.46B / $20.57B
Footwear, gaiters and the like $26.30B / $5.70B
Copper $18.63B / $74.63B
Oil seed, oleagic fruits, grain, seed, fruits $18.63B / $57.02B
Pulp of wood, fibrous cellulosic material, waste $11.87B / $21.98B

So, looking at the absolute numbers, China is eploiting the world’s resources in a similar fashion as the old style European Union, so I have to disagree.

I won’t comment on the content of your provided reports and youtube videos (of which at least two look a little… juicy… at first glance), as me just providing you with a bunch of counter-reports and videos, whose reliability you would question in a similar way as I am questioning yours, won’t change anything.

That’s why I wrote “if done right”.
A truly social market economy also has to make sure that workers along the whole supply chain have to get similar rights and treatment as local workers.

Besides that, centrally planned economies (being the opposite to plain free market capitalism), also don’t really shy away from exploiting the resources of poorer countries.
(Looking e.g. at imperialistic China here).

Even more benefit from a social market economy, which might be an optimal sweet spot if done right.

… yes, since about a week.
If you just noticed now, beer delirium must have hit you really hard this year!

I don’t know… But I am not visiting Reddit much any more.

Today I did, though, and the only F1 meme was a clearly hand-crafted one about the health state of Michael Schuhmacher in contrast to the (presumable?) state of the F1 fanbase.

Looked like the exact opposite of astroturfing to me…

The moment that Amazon not only blocked my account from ordering after some payment hiccups, but also that of my girlfriend, who was living at a different place at the time, was the moment I disabled my Amazon account completely.

I at the time also had a look into what I could find in the settings about what they still stored about me:
They still had my detailed order history dating back to 1996, when I first used the service to buy books, giving a nice, very personal overview about what topics I had been interested in over the decades.

This has been in 2011 already, so unfortunately nothing new.

I never said I could “prove” anything, only that I wonder if it might be a likely product of the Mandela Effect given the circumstances.

I find the whole idea intriguing, and entirely not a bad thing in any way!

On the contrary:
Instead of something impressed on you from outside, it might be an entity-establishing tale a whole generation developed in a collective, subconscious way on their own, a strong joint image to mark their distinctiveness from the previous generation.

If anything, I am jealous because I am not sharing that common experience!

But, hey, at least I still have the “Fruit of the Loom” false memory. Not quite as cool and meaningful as your potential one, but fascinating nonetheless!

Well, tbf, the fact that they even knew the name “Nelson Mandela” indicates that they paid more attention to it than to basically everything else happening in Africa…

Nevertheless, it happened.

Yes! And my Fruit of the Loom sweatshirts did have a cornucopia on it!

;-)

I have specific memories of multiple math teachers telling me this from elementary school through high school

…and I have specific memories of the Fruit of the Loom stuff we were wearing at school featuring a cornucopia…

Memories are not static and unswayable.

And with some cognitive social feedback the memory transformation from “You will not be able to use calculators in every situation” to the common-identity-establishing “You will not have calculators in your pockets all the time” is a minor one.

That’s exactly the point I am trying to make.
It is a classical candidate for Mandela Effect in action, but other than the sweatshirt logo probably not possible to prove one or the other way, although I have the feeling evidence points somewhat in the direction of a likely “false” memory.

Commenter was referring to its youth in the early 00s, and by that time mobile phones were ubiquitous and thanks to carrier subsidizing also pretty affordable.

The mentioned (preinstalled) app functions already came up during the switch away from simple text based displays in the second half of the 90s (as well as the texting you mentioned).

You are partly right, though, before that time items where more of a “single purpose” type.
But even then, miniaturization and mass-production had already rendered the exact “You won’t have a calculator in your pocket all the time” phrase nonsensical, with everybody typically having lying around several of the free tiny giveaway solar-powered calculators in bags and drawers.

I would guess that the original phrases the potential collective false memory is based upon, were something more like “you won’t be able to use a calculator in every situation”, which then got transmogrified over time by social reinforcement to the plausible sounding and much more exciting “You won’t have a calculator in your pocket all the time” trope.

I have brought it up with a few friends and most have heard the same!

Well, that is not a indication that it is not a false memory, as the thing you describe is core part of how these kind of collective false memories are probably formed, by “social and cognitive reinforcement”:

Scientists suggest that these are examples of false memories shaped by similar cognitive factors’ affecting multiple people and families, such as social and cognitive reinforcement of incorrect memories

I have been e.g. affected by the (known) Mandela Effect false memory of the Fruit-of-the-Loom logo having had a cornucopia.
I have seen the clear evidence that it has not, but I still have the memory, which feels absolutely real.
It is a really strange feeling… No wonder it sparked the idea by some that these kind of false memories are spill-overs from alternate timelines or parallel universes :-)

I totally believe you that you have this memory!

But now take a step back and consider that each of those teachers you vividly remember saying the calculator phrase to you, must have had a mobile phone in their pockets, which at the time had exactly three apps presented prominently on the main screen: a calendar, an alarm clock and a calculator.
So why would they have said such a thing to you?

And still, you have that totally realistic and believable memory of it.

Like I also have the vivid, colourful, and absolutely undeniable realistic memory of the “Fruit of the Loom” logo having featured a cornucopia when we were wearing this brand in school.

I think the calculator remark memory being a Mandela-Effect artifact is not a totally unreasonable thing to suspect…

I have always been wondering if the memory of this phrase is another example of the “Mandela Effect”, like the Monopoly guy’s monocle.

It just sounds so plausible, as it is stylistically the kind of stuff that teachers often say and it fits so well as we all have first hand experience on how fast technology has progressed especially during the 00s.

But on closer scrutiny it just doesn’t make sense.

And it was already pretty obvious to anyone really early that this wouldn’t make sense.

During my middle-school years in the 80s, things like calculator watches already were the hype (had one myself) and widespread enough for school to have to establish rules to cover those.
Shortly after that, I remember credit-card-sized calculators that where intended to be put into your wallet to be common giveaways by banks.
And compact GSM mobile phones started to become increasingly widespread from the mid 90s.

I see only a tiny timespan that the phrase would have perhaps been plausible, maybe just ten or so years spanning from the early 70s to the early 80s.

And I myself am pretty sure that I first heard the claim and the phrase itself in some relatively recent (last 10-15 years) online posts, but never before.

this phrase was really only plausibly used for about 33 years - the time between the first fully electronic calculator and the first smartphone.

Not even that long.

I went to middle school during the 80s, when calculator watches were a major hype (had one myself at some point).

Even back then, 40 years ago, none of my teachers would have used that phrase.
It was just too clear already, that technology was already overtaking the assumptions made by that phrase.