Taiwan will never join in, even if they wanted to. It would stir the pot too much with China.
But Japan's presence also means it hopes to gain aid for when China invades Japan. That may sound silly, but China claims a lot of Japanese islands as theirs. Some of which are very close to Taiwan.
Long long time ago someone wrote on Reddit that the best post-apocalyptic place to stay would just be a small town. With a dentist, a doctor, farmers and builders. Where everybody knows each other. The interdependence of skill and need for cooperation would keep the peace.
https://www.hetregentbijnanooit.nl/site/totaaloverzicht-van-10-meetjaren-het-is-volbracht/
Though it seems I've got my numbers mixed. Must've read 7% before instead of 7 times.
Why? All the reviews I've seen so far are bad. It's barely scoring 5/10.
None of the countries is going to back down. Because the all know the minute they do, the more shit Trump is going to pull. At this point it's basically extortion.
But it only rains about 7 times a year during normal commuting hours. Most rain the Netherlands falls at night.
English is too engrained. Even if the US falls down to some impoverished dictatorship. English will remain. The cost of switching now is just too great.
Other examples are drone deliveries. Was supposed to be the next big thing, but even more than 15 years later most companies are gone. And mainstream drone delivery is not a thing.
Or take AR/VR glasses. Supposed to revolutionize how we work. But in practice it's mostly used to play games. First Google Glass and then the Apple Vision Pro gathered quite some attention but is already mostly forgotten. The VR space is still thriving, it's just not the paradigm shifting technology the early investors wanted it to be. Facebook's Metaverse cost 36 billion dollars and was a complete flop.
My feeling is that it's an AI bubble right now. The value seems apparent and money is being trucked in. But the uptake is lagging. Humans don't need a piece of software that can write an essay for them. I want an AI that can find this obscure comic I read 10 years ago. That can order tickets for me. Find me the cheapest flights/connections to get from A to B. Summarize a text for me. My feeling is that it's generative features are the least important.
It's very telling that smart speakers are also in a very different place now. They were supposed to make shopping easier. That was how they were going to make money. But people just used them for music, asking for the weather and setting timers.
Wait, isn't this just extortion? Smashing in a shop's windows and telling the owner if he wants to put in new ones he needs to pay the guy with the bat first.
The most fascinating thing I heard a while ago was that like 60% of readers will stop reading a text if they suspect or discover it's written by AI.
They have these values tied to their identity, their ego. It's hard to change that. Hard to admit you were wrong if being wrong means having to become someone else.
This is also a problem on the left though.