Don’t think I saw these mentioned so here ya go:

• Little Kitty, Big City
• Any of the Atelier games if you don’t mind anime, though the upcoming one may not be as relaxing in terms of its story.
• Timberborn, though some might feel stressed about handling droughts. You can turn the difficulty down and it’ll just be a cute diorama where you build a city (or cities) with beavers.

And this is extra but grab your friends and family and play some couch co-op. It can help get your mind off things and just enjoy being in company of loved ones.

Aand if you want to eventually find something that will keep you hopeful in the face of despair, in a healthy way, I recommend the first part of Honkai Impact 3rd. It’s long, has lots of depressing moments, enough to make fans call it Depression Impact. The story touches on themes of existential horror, suicide, duty, death of loved ones, humans who have no morals and believe that all rights and wrongs as transient, cosmological threats, etc. Despite all that, I’d actually say that it’s a story about hope, and what can lay the foundations for hope. It’s definitely fan-service-y, and it’s a gacha game, but very much ignorable and playable without investing any money in it. It’s also made by a Chinese company, but maybe that can help with recalibrating perceptions on Chinese people, instead of what we’ve come to know through their government. Of course, if you’re susceptible to gambling addictions, please feel free to ignore this recommendation.

The article itself claims that 87% of news outlets are avoiding the phrase “ethnic cleansing”. There are those that are calling it for what it is.

If you want an example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/05/un-chief-warns-against-ethnic-cleansing-after-donald-trump-gaza-proposal

I wish there’s some kind of follow up to news like this.

Did the police report go anywhere? Or is it just sitting in some paper pile, or trashed? Follow it up, or call it out.

And lemme guess what we’ll hear in the next couple of weeks or months:

“I’ve made the best deals with Canada and Mexico. They’ve been rude and uncooperative in helping us secure the borders, but now look, they had to.”

And then there’d be the the suckers and ass-kissers:

“Fentanyl’s not a thing anymore in the USA because of Trump.” (says a person who lives in a neighbourhood never affected by fentanyl abuse)

“President Trump has made our country more secure than ever, preventing illegal immigrants and drugs coming in from Canada and Mexico, while making them pay for it.” (vixen news or something)

“Illegal immigration was at an all time low under President Trump.” (says a person who’s never looked at the stats)

Given what was actually realized, Trump did not have to play coy and use tariffs as threats, and it would’ve been a rather easy call to ask for what he wanted. He’s essentially sent US allies on a wild episode to essentially bully them to show off his regained powers.

Oh, and of course he only “pauses” the damn thing. He could re-use it after all. Classic bully behaviour.

I don’t think I’ve known of a “designated tourist area” in Japan. I lived there for a month in some town that I doubt there’d be any foreign tourist and nobody harassed me and my friends. We were even helped by the locals and police when one of my friends lost their wallet, and they were super patient about it too.

I’ve read (in Japanese, written by Japanese people) that those places will actually welcome you in if speak Japanese and is respectful of the place and other patrons, the latter 2 conditions just like any respectable human should. It could be that they’ve put those up due to xenophobia, but there are also those that just don’t want to deal with people who don’t respect their culture.

Fwiw mentioning, the level of fentanyl crossings is not even high, and is simply an enlarged wedge issue for the Trump administration to stave off dissuaders and forcibly push their way pass Congress to do whatever they want.

It’s the 21st century. Many of us are educated enough and have a strong enough image of what a country is. Any country may try to annex any land, but they’ll almost always face resistance. Even in the event of a full annexation, you can’t stop the people from revolting, essentially making your country look as miserable as possible to everyone. Heck, even the full cleansing of an entire population won’t guarantee you’ll reach long-lasting stability on annexed lands; people will hide, repopulate, teach their descendants about their past and forever torture your nation and its people, however horrifying of a worldview it may sound like.

I remember reading somewhere that some department in the US gov have a paper on their inability to annex or even control foreign lands and their people. Essentially, it doesn’t matter if the USA has the most powerful military in the history of humanity; it cannot conquer the minds of people today, and will suffer from instability for a very long time.

Didn’t something similar happen just a couple months ago?

Most of us can’t help but feel powerless while trying to change the world. That’s normal, because the reality is, no one can change the world as quickly as we can make a turn at the next junction. Not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, not Vladimir Putin, not Xi JinPing. They’ve spent decades getting to where they are today, but the best they can do is do big strokes to sway the world to some extent. And these people just look so lonely; nobody seems to really understand them, neither do they seem to truly understand people, aside from knowing enough to take advantage of them, and they put up some sort of distance between themselves and others, distance in various ways you can measure. Meanwhile, most of us spend our times to be close to those we love and care, trying to be a part of a larger society in a healthy and responsible way.

If the alternative is to give up and watch this beautiful world burn and die, watch wonderful people suffer and I turn a blind eye to their pain, I would rather continue trying, and one day die knowing that I tried, instead of regretting alone.

The world? Or just many world governments that have the power to do so? There are many people out there doing what they can to dissuade governments from supporting the genocide, and they make up a fair size of “society”. Do you no longer care about them then?

You care. You’re just tired of seeing that nothing’s changed despite people’s efforts. But that’s totally okay. Great powers don’t and won’t immediately change to what we desire it to be, and there is a vested interest for some to keep the status quo, so it’s hard. We get it, and so do you.

Go take a rest.

Knowing how these people behave, it’s “rules for thee, not for me”, and “yes that’s true but every woman should follow, but I’ll continue to say whatever the fuck I want anyways”. Cognitive dissonance on the surface level does not stop them. It’s always been a “I will say whatever the fuck I want and hide behind some pretty words, and all I have to do is to ignore your criticisms. You can’t touch me.”

Or things that remind you of some event, which may not be a pleasant one.

Let’s see here.

Near unlimited power for ten years?

You have no idea how our politics work here.

Imported 2 million people we didn’t need

You have no idea what Canada faces with a declining population.

acted like a fuckling child over a fucking cold

Alright, we know who you are now. We’re done here.

You have no idea what this country is, what problems it faces, have no regards to the well-being of its residents.

Note: the linked video was from 9 years ago

Take that info with what you will

I wasn’t saying that my reasonings are exactly it, and hence the “plausible”. But fair.

Sorry, I just didn’t really understand what your point was, at least not from reading your reply.

I believe I’m confused by where your understanding is.

Apart from Xi beginning this shit before Covid and the economic slowdown, I agree completely.

This replied led me to believe that you don’t think the CCP has been ramping up their military pre-COVID, and hence my reply.

But you’re now telling me that what I said was exactly your point? I’m confused.

My point about the economy slowing down was that it has led to Xi / CCP being unable to further stomach the current situation, and thus they’ve gotten much more aggressive post-COVID. That, of course, I should preface, is just one plausible reason. Others may include general weakness in alliances across the globe, especially amongst NATO members, especially with Trump going back into the WH, and for the years where Trump will be in office, China is expected by many to reach peak population growth and start seeing a collapse at the level of that of Japan.

To clarify, the economic slowdown is not dissuading the CCP from becoming more aggressive; it’s doing the opposite.

You don’t believe Xi’s been sharpening his claws even before Covid? I find that misinformed or under-informed. The Taiwan Problem has been ongoing for decades at this point, and the drills didn’t just start recently. There were drills from at least 2016 from a preliminary search, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find more earlier than that.

China has been known to have invested heavily in their military capabilities over many years at this point, growing at near linear pace from 2005 and only slowing down last year or so (likely due to economic pressures), at least according to World Bank, which is likely taken from official figures, and many countries have estimates that the actual spending is far higher than reported (though take those with consideration of their relationship with China). You can certainly chalk it up to their somewhat unfriendly relationship with many of their neighbours: they have territorial disputes with Japan, India, Russia, and almost all of the South East Asian countries, but a figure triple that of Russia against Russia and India (who’s also increased spending to currently at around 80Bn) just for territorial disputes is too much of an overkill.

China’s patience isn’t based just on personal virtues. Their at-the-moment economic standing and population trend plays into them being able to tell themselves that a conflict is better played out at a later time. However, signs are now showing that the waiting time is almost over. Their economy has slowed down for various reasons (both external and at home), domestic economy has been stagnant at low levels without signs of growth despite government intervention, and their population growth is showing signs of decline, if not already declining.

I’ve not seen other more practical reasons for wanting to take Taiwan other than to show off their potential for imperialism. The TSMC may be valuable to the world, which, if taken, would further enrich the Chinese elites, but both the Taiwanese government and TSMC have signalled that they will willingly destroy their fabs to render the Chinese takeover meaningless economically and financially.

If the Chinese government has no intention to play as an imperial force, or to just show off their ability to be a superpower, more peaceful options definitely seem like the wiser choices: build those relationships and it’ll be stable, if not stabler than you taking full control of that supply chain, and will possibly outlive the lives whatever power there can be controlling it. But that is not the option they chose. The short-term benefits for a few people wins over the long term ones for literally everyone here.