Derf, I challenge your next comment to be the opposite of which what you want to respond.

The best is yet to come!

The examples in the article are pretty poor:

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thought-terminating_clich%C3%A...

Most of them are like "So what? What effect does my action have?" and "It is what it is" which may be "thought-terminating" but seem to be able to serve a positive function of directing attention towards more productive avenues. Similarly, "let's agree to disagree" is a arguably a recognition that thought has already stopped (heels have been dug in) and it's better to move on.

It's not reasonable to expect someone to always engage fully with every topic every time. It's socially necessary to be able to terminate such interactions when one party doesn't want to continue.

There are better examples in this thread like "a rising tide lifts all boats" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46945482), which are specific slogans designed to terminate specific thoughts (i.e. critique of specific ideologies).

Edit: Also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/There_is_no_alternative is probably an prime example of a thought-terminating cliche, and a pretty potent one at that. It's explicitly meant to naturalize specific neo-liberal policy choices (by naturalize I mean make like natural law, make it a non-debatable fact), eliminating any opportunity to crique or debate them.

Ironic that the article is paywalled

By the same ticket, you really also don't want elemental sodium in your ear. Don't let the fact it's commonly found in sodium chloride alongside chlorine (something else you don't want in your pocket!) lull you into a false sense of security.

Sodium is actually more reactive than lithium and explodes on contact with water. There's a few things that make the battery chemistry less likely to undergo thermal runaway, but sodium is not a safe metal...

In my humble opinion, China taking Taiwan, if done under Trump, will be the market buying event of the century.

It will tank the markets because people will assume a depression-level event and WW3. But Trump isn't like other presidents. He'll make a deal with China. And finally, the China/Taiwan cloud over the markets will go away for good and countries can start trading freely with China again. Markets will severely over react initially.

I can see TSMC benefiting hugely from this long term, as long as the reunification is peaceful no damage to any TSMC fabs or people. The reason is because TSMC will most likely be forced to open up to both Chinese and US customers. Right now, they can't serve the world's second largest market. Nearly half of their customers can't use them.

I'm making these assumptions:

1. China won't use force (or very very little) to take Taiwan.

2. There won't be WW3 that will come out of this. You'd have to be an idiot to think that Americans will die defending Taiwan or that Europe will send troops when China is quickly becoming their biggest trading partners and US has shown they're susceptible to annexing Greenland.

3. China will operate 1 country 2 system long term with Taiwan.

Case-in-point of why we shouldn't have approached China like we did over the last few decades. It normalized totalitarianism in some segments of Western society.

I experience "having something in the copy/paste buffer" as a distinct sensation in my Ctrl-V hand.

Yes. I think the concept you’re describing is proprioception:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception