CarbonIceDragon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown#China_syndrome

If it was a joke, I definitely missed it then, I didn't even have the slightest suspicion that it might be one.

Tbh my experience with chinese goods has been that the "garbage quality stuff that breaks easily" is usually the very cheap stuff made to compete on price and nothing else. In which case, an equivalent thing from anywhere would be the same way. Anything I've bought from a Chinese manufacturer at a typical price for it's product type and from a company with a proper brand that isn't a random string of letters has been decent enough quality. Granted that's been electronics and not guns, but still, it's not like the knowledge of how to make stuff doesn't exist there somehow.

I've been pretty happy with how the instance I use has been run thus far, but it is focused around furries, so it won't be something most people outside that subculture like I expect. Still, the fandom is big enough that someone in it looking for an instance might look at this thread, so I mention it anyway.

To be fair, potentially addictive or not, I wouldn't support a ban on social media either. The practical requirements needed to effectively restrict access to information in the modern age (both porn and social media being examples of information) are such that I generally view the cure as worse than the disease, so to speak, and view the least bad option as being to just give up on legal restrictions and just deal with the consequences instead. Addiction is harmful, but most consumers of such information aren't harmed by it, and restriction inherently requires monitoring and removing internet anonymity to a degree that I find unacceptable.

Does the rule in question even apply to end users? All I had heard of it was that it put some kind of requirement on the website itself to identify people, which a person seeking out a noncompliant or foreign website presumably wouldn't be the one violating?

Human psychology hasn't changed during that time, so the same kinds of tricks or weakness that can drive a population into that mode of thinking still work today, if the details around them are adapted for some modern culture. If anything, it might be slightly easier, given those trying to achieve it have historical examples of what is and isn't effective.

ornithopters arent exactly new

To be fair, while paradox games like Stellaris or the crusader kings games you mentioned, certainly have a lot of replayability (I don't really care much for CK myself but have over 1000 hours on both Stellaris and EU4), they're not great examples for where cheaper games by smaller companies offer more than expensive ones from bigger ones. Partly because paradox is fairly sizable and well known these days, but mostly because those games are quite expensive, just split into numerous expansions that come out over time. One can opt out of getting them, sure, but they're where a lot of the different options that bring the replayability come from.

To be fair, making text hard to read somewhat defeats the entire purpose of text.

Plenty of people suggest Israel should stop occupying Palestine. You wont see much of the others these days, because, well, its a bit late to be advocating the end of an invasion that has already ended.