fugacity

An unfinished civil war in which the Republic of China lives on in a tiny island? Damn, must have been a real stalemate for the KMT and Communist Party.

For the record, I absolutely believe China would attack Taiwan, when they think they are ready. And you don’t have to take my word for it: what of all those missiles Taiwan posseses? Are they pointed towards or away from the strait?

As for being left alone, the only reason Taiwan can live in peace and prosperity is because of its strategic semiconductor fabs and the publicity it generates. Yes, the publicity it generates puts us the forefront of global conversations and keeps Taiwan safe.

Now, if you really are Taiwanese, if China and Taiwan are one, do you really think China would let TSMC do as they please and not immediately takeover the company for SMIC? Or do you not remember what happened to Jack Ma? You think Taiwan can vote how it wants while still being part of China? Taiwan is part of China just as much as Ukraine is part of Russia.

By the way, last I checked in December when I visited my parents, rubber ducks and Winnie the Pooh aren’t banned in Taiwan. I wonder about Hong Kong and its one country two systems ;)

Lmao no that’s not the status quo of Taiwan. Or maybe I should ask you what happened to Hong Kong?

Well, if you count the corporations as people and give them votes proportional to their income, income does seem to be exceeding inflation. I’m sure in no time trickle-down economics will allow us poor folk to see some of that wealth. I for one certainly already see the wealth that my lovely landlady possesses.

Happy they got the Taiwan part correct at least.

Having personally played Rocket League, (1800 hours), Valorant (500? hours), CSGO (2000 hours), League of Legends (2000? hours) and a variety of coop multiplayer games, I can tell you that the most toxic communities tend to be the competitive ones. Something about competitive games draws out the most hardcore crowd and that crowd tends to be a lot less friendly. Maybe it’s because people who play ranked games care about their ladder MMR, and the ones who are able to keep playing must have some kind of ego - you have to understand that a lot of people get fun out of winning, not from just participating in the game.

Regardless, the mechanism that rewards players is skill. And in these games, being polite, being nice to your teammates, none of it really matters if you aren’t skilled. Inherently there is a pecking order because higher ranked players are better than lower ranked players. Most games don’t reward direct toxicity of higher ranked players towards lower ranked players, but they don’t forbid it. Smurfing, for instance, allows a player to assert their superiority over lower skilled players. A carry on a team can be significantly more toxic towards their teammates since their teammates want the MMR from a win and will be willing to put up with being bullied or harassed. Just like another commenter mentioned, players compete against each other, and you will not really be friendly with your opponents in most ranked settings. But additionally, players also rely on their teammates. I think this is where a lot of the toxicity comes from.

When your friend dies to the enemy and gets t-bagged, your teammates aren’t pitying your friend for getting t-bagged. They’re mentally rolling their eyes that your friend was outplayed by their opponent and that’s why when you post on a forum the result is usually “git gud” and not “we should be more friendly”. I don’t think being toxic is positive to the health of a game. I could go into detail, but this post is already pretty long. But I want to point out, if the setting is a competitive game, merit is usually the driving factor regardless of toxicity or kindness. If you don’t gain that dopamine hit out of outsmarting or beating your opponents but rather simply from playing the game or socializing with other players, you probably should not bother touching these games - you aren’t the core audience for these games and you’ll find more enjoyment in other settings.

For the record, if you get t-bagged in a competitive game, the recourse is to either not look at the kill cam (CS:GO lets you turn it off), or try to improve so you don’t get t-bagged as often. Ragequitting, or going to complain that it should be turned off will get you nowhere. BMing your opponent is a popular thing in most competitive games, and it’s part of the reward for outplaying them. In many eyes, it’s not really all that different from a giant defeat screen when you lose. If you’re sensitive to this kind of stuff, I think you should find more friendly communities. Coop games generally tend to be better, as do more casual games, or FFXIV if you’re looking for an MMO. I would say most players (me included) consider the option to t-bag a feature and not a bug, because really the thing that upsets me the most is not getting t-bagged; it’s getting outplayed by my opponent so they’re able to do it in the first place.

Not that this comment is all that relevant to you, but here’s a wall of text for context:

The devil is probably in the details here. My assumption is that your denatured alcohol is referring to ethanol mixed with other toxic alcohols (such as methanol).

This can’t be 100% pure ethanol because it MUST contain denaturants to discourage drinking, otherwise it would not be denatured and would legally require an additional excise tax. In that case, you might find it as Everclear (190 proof or 95% or ethanol by volume at highest concentration). It can be close to 100% alcohol, of course, because methanol is an alcohol.

I HAVE seen (at least in the US) food grade USP purity ethanol for sale (with additional cost due to excise tax inclusion) that’s at least 99.5% pure. I have also seen 99% purity isopropyl alcohol (IPA). My point in the reply to the original content is that it’s not accurate. Distillation of binary mixtures results in azeotropes that prevent purity of more than 91% IPA (by volume) and ~95% ethanol. But there’s ways around it such as adding a third solvent for a ternary mixture, salting out (shown in some chemistry demonstrations), changing the pressure of distillation, or using molecular sieves to remove water content. Alternatively, you could use freeze distillation, or even zone melting if you chose to freeze the mixture instead of boiling it. In fact, once you PASS the azeotrope, you can actually distill at standard pressure albeit what you want and don’t want in the column would switch places.

Getting the last few percent of water out of it definitely costs more, but it’s not something so hard that you can’t find commercially available alcohol solvents at purities above the azeotropic point. I know this is the case since I’ve acquired them for home use and have used them in multiple lab settings before. The annoying part for those who REALLY don’t want much water in the solvents is that at that point your solvents are hygroscopic and unless sealed properly or kept in a desiccated environment they’re gonna tend to absorb water back toward the azeotropic point.

Ethanol is similar to IPA in solvent properties but they won’t be the same. I don’t have enough wet lab experience to give a good answer in this regard though. If you’re able to take things apart, I’ve cleaned PCBs the Louis Rossmann way, which is with Branson EC solution and sonication. Drying is really the most important step there ;)

That’s mostly correct but I don’t think it’s entirely accurate. Distillation is useless at the azeotropic point but ternary mixtures are used to break the azeotrope. Once you move past the azeotrope you can continue distillation to high purity. You could also do pressure swing distillation but my guess (even though I’m not exactly a chemical engineer doing unit operations for a living) is that it wouldn’t be economical. Of course, getting “100%” pure anything is really a different story…