China has course-corrected many times before. They’ll do it again.

I think the US should be more worried. Their govt makes it incredibly hard to course-correct (filibuster, gerrymandering, fptp, electoral college, supreme court etc)

https://data.worldhappiness.report/chart

Trends look better for China. Life expectancy already caught up.

I recall in the early or mid 2000s using some cheap earbuds plugged into the microphone port of my family computer as a pair of microphones in lieu of having a real microphone nor the money for one. Then I used Audacity to turn the terrible recording into a passable sound effect for the video games I was making.

Not knowing much about how soundcards work, I imagine it would be feasible to flash some soundcards with custom firmware to use the speaker port for input without the user knowing.

You can get exactly that experience with the current hardware. Just set the screen resolution to a 16:10 one.

Any advice on starting out in woodworking?

Hey Americans, does it work the same down there as it does up here where the McDonald’s menu is a colossal ripoff unless you bring coupons, which are ubiquitous, that bring prices down by about 50%?

Are they basically creating two price tags: for those who do and don’t really care enough? Ie. we’ll take your money if you’re fine paying a whole lot more for a meal. Otherwise here it is for half off.

I don't think you need to lead with your age. It's a cool project and you should be proud of it regardless of your age.