I just read that as well. Or there’s just no witnesses. Also read something that they stop attacking if the boat stops.

This Reuters article has a breakdown on the nine candidates:

ALEXANDER STUBB The 55-year-old, multilingual presidential front-runner Alexander Stubb of the National Coalition Party is known as a pro-European, who previously served as prime minister and foreign minister and as a member of the European Parliament. In 2017, Stubb left Finnish politics to become vice president of the European Investment Bank and later director at the European University Institute in Florence, before returning to contest the presidential election.

PEKKA HAAVISTO Liberal Pekka Haavisto, a Green League member and former United Nations diplomat, has run for president twice before, in 2012 and 2018, both times finishing second behind retiring President Sauli Niinisto. The 65-year-old centre-left front-runner Haavisto served as Finland’s foreign minister from 2019 to 2023 and held other ministerial positions before that. If elected, Haavisto would become Finland’s first openly gay president.

JUSSI HALLA-AHO Nationalist Jussi Halla-aho, former Finns Party leader and now parliament speaker, is a stern critic of the EU and immigration who was fined by the country’s Supreme Court for racist remarks in 2012. A divisive figure, Halla-aho is third in polls and rising, being particularly popular among young people.

OLLI REHN Bank of Finland Governor and ECB governing council member on leave of absence, Olli Rehn, 61, is a member of the Centre Party and former EU economy commissioner. The latest polls have placed him fourth with 12% support.

Other candidates include Social Democrat EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen, Christian Democrat party leader Sari Essayah, Left Alliance leader Li Andersson, academic Mika Aaltola and businessman Harry Harkimo.

Who can blame them. Amongst many other negative factors towards being pregnant, giving birth, and raising a child, China also has the Elderly Rights Law where you legally have to care for AND visit your elderly parents. Defying this law can result in fines or jail time.

Additionally, China has been flip-flopsy in this matter and not that long ago, too. The article mentioned a lady who was fined for having too many kids under their 1-child policy and who is now undrrstandably pissed at seeing govt requests to have more kids. I’d feel a certain way too.

Good point - and it’s an important distinction. Immigrants in the US usually have higher birth rates than native-born. Of course no one is allowed to emigrate from North Korea but that most likely contributes to their net decline.

To give some perspective, North Korea currently has about the same fertility rate as the US.

Per the article, North Korea’s fertility rate is 1.79 in 2022, down from 1.88 in 2014. Meanwhile, the US has been on a slow increase with its TFR over the last few years - 1.782 in 2022 and 1.784 in 2023. Interestingly, older women are contributing to the increase over younger women.

On the opposite end it seemed like there was an inflooding of low quality “FB-type” posts. Non-interesting wedding and new baby in /r/pics followed by hundreds of “congrats!” and a sprinkle of “who gives a shit go back to FB” response posts. Predictable dichotomies once reddit got too mainstream.

Yeah but I still think about them from time to time…when things were good

This is a good synopsis of the complexity of the problem with a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

To add to that, the US stance since 1972 has been to abide by the One China policy. As such, the US recognizes that Taiwan is legitimately owned by China. I am doubtful that this will change with this POTUS or the next. However there is also the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) which allows the US to treat Taiwan in some capacity as in independent state. The TRA does include the sale of arms for which Taiwan may use to defend itself from aggressors, and the US does sell heavily to Taiwan. The TRA also neither includes nor precludes US military intervention in the event of conflict.

What’s interesting is that in 2022 Biden said that Taiwan can define itself however the fk it wants to - not his exact words. This is a big departure from our One China policy which states no, absolutely no independence whatsoever of Taiwan. So I think things are evolving a bit, but agree with /u/Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever that there’s a lot more at stake to the US than with Ukraine.

Love the name btw.

As a second thought it’s also probably a convenient excuse to get a little bit of military rehearsal in…

This is typical behavior for China to show its displeasure when Taiwan gets involved in non-China, independence-affirming things. Its so routine, that at this point it’d be more significant if they DIDNT provide some type of military response.

Agree. The graduation photos are pretty funny - kind of uplifting to see their youth having a good sense of awareness and full on mocking their futures.

Christ this is depressing. Isn’t China facing some kind of imminent population crisis? This isn’t encouraging for that.

Holy ffff…what did he look like before he got homeless?? Seriously though I could see him going down the Jeremy Meeks (photogenic prisoner turned runway model) path with this kind of exposure. He looks ridiculously healthy despite his living situation which probably can’t be easy to maintain.