I can recommend TheoTown, available for all major platforms, even on Android and iOS, completely for free. It has a plug-in system, tons of decorative objects. Controls are good, too. Plus, it has some endgame content that makes it quite fun.
If there's a limited free mode and for a single fixed price you can unlock the full game, that would be the perfect price model for me. The description doesn't make it clear whether that's indeed the case and what that price would be, though.
At least on iOS, this "freemium" model is actively worse than a paid game for end users -- paid apps and subscriptions can be shared among family members, but in-app purchases cannot.
Do you have multiple user accounts on an iOS device these days?
As far as I know, Android apps can't be shared with other accounts, but all our tablets use my account, so they can all use my apps. Unlike with Steam, where they need their own account and their own purchase in order to play simultaneously.
Not multiple accounts on a single device, but you can group into a "family" that can share purchases, and can play simultaneously.
So my partner and I can each play Civilization VI on our own tablets at the same time, but if I were to purchase one of the add-on packs in the game, that could not be shared (as there is no store-level way to distinguish a consumable sale like a free-to-play game's fictional currency).
You can share purchased apps, games, movies, TV shows, and e-books and audiobooks from Google Play with up to 5 family members using Google Play Family Library.
it's optional, you can unlock everything without paying and without much grinding.
the "diamonds" are mainly used to install mods from the mod store, however, you can get the same mods from the official forum and drop them into the mods folder without any issues.
again, you comment without knowledge. this is not a freemium game. it can be played for free with no significant limitations.
1. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a lot of pain and suffering, especially during the crazy 90s. -> understandable, people who lived during the crazy 90s (me) can totally relate to that, my German friends have 0 view on that.
2. The West has colonized and is hence evil. Fully correct, the West did not take responsibility for that. There are only a few examples where countries paid proper reparations. Although not colonies, but Germany is doing a great job with dealing with its nazi past. UK, US, Japan, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, France, all of them should do that, too. Understandable argument.
3. The US never apologized for fire-bombing civilians during WW2 in Europe and never for nuking civilian targets twice. Fully understandable argument.
4. US still occupying Germany; Can confirm, here are so many US bases, air force bases, Americans, in those areas US police is driving on German soil, people pay with USD instead of the EUR. Although not mainstream, it is here. Where are the Chinese air force bases? Why are we not paying in CNY? Understandable argument.
Oh yeah, super good idea. We had fantastic experience with humiliated nations before. It worked so well for Germany after WW1 /s
FACT: the end of this war must be positive for the Russian people, no matter whether Russia loses or wins the military operation. Putin came to power because the West didnt help the former Soviet republics. If Russia is left alone humiliated again then we will have the next anti-western system in 10 years.
The worst that will happen to Russia is that they get pushed all the way out of the country they invaded, and maybe lose various assets they have in other foreign countries. Nobody's foolish enough to try to make Russia flat-out surrender, like Germany in WWI.
Caution is certainly warranted but it doesn't seem productive to reward Russia for invading another country.
Soviet Russia after its collapse had a chance to integrate itself to the west. Even if neoliberal policies were attrocious (and they weren't exclusive to Russia, but to the whole developing world) during the 90's, its integration to the global division of labor is what allowed them to re-emerge and have rising standards of living, much higher than during Soviet times.
But they still want revanchism and imperialism in the 21st c.?
They were not. The reality is that if you put all post-sovit countries on a graph and look at those that actually did neoliberal policies correctly, those are now the nations that are by far the most successful.
Its not the fault of the West that the Russian elites were totally an completely corrupt and had no interest in real reform. Russia actually resisted many reforms and the elites simply put themselves in a position to take advantage. To just blame all of that on the West is nonsense.
So you say that WWII did not humiliate Germany? Can we do same to Russia then?
What is your proposal to how not humiliate Russia? Russia already humiliated themselves by not wining this conflict for so long. In their book anything less than total conquest of Ukraine is humiliation.
Yes but the point the parent made was that after WW1 they were not restricted and it lead to WW2 and after WW2 it lead to the EU. So its pretty clear what strategy was better.
In fact, the Republicans under Henry Cabot Lodge wanted exactly that, Germany had to be defeated and invaded. It was the only way to get lasting peace in Europe. And of course many in France like Foch wanted the same thing.
So much the same old historical nonsense still being propagated by people.
> Oh yeah, super good idea. We had fantastic experience with humiliated nations before. It worked so well for Germany after WW1 /s
Germany was not humiliated. The terms imposed on Germany were not actually as bad, the idea that these were some horrible terms come from a few British intellectuals and German Foreign office.
Germany was treated with gloves of silk compared to how Germany treated France and Russia. But the fragile German ego couldn't handle it.
And of those terms imposed at Versailles Germany never even remotely payed any of it. I fact Germany took in more foreign loans then they ever paid back.
In the 20s Germany basically managed to negotiate all those debts away and before they even paid the little they had left, they stopped paying.
What was done to Germany after WW1 was NOT HARSH ENOUGH, and even what was agree on, was not enforced.
> Putin came to power because the West didnt help the former Soviet republics
Ask Estonia about how that.
> If Russia is left alone humiliated again then we will have the next anti-western system in 10 years.
They had an anti-western system for the waste majority of the last 300 years. If paying for their crimes with the London flats of of Russian oil millionaires then they will have to live with it.
> We had fantastic experience with humiliated nations before. It worked so well for Germany after WW1 /s
The mistake was corrected after WWII by splitting the country into occupation zones. That is the only way to deal with Russia too. Pushing out of Ukraine isn't enough. Russia has to be demilitarized, most importantly - denuclearized, it should lose its place in UN Security Council. It also should be denazified - the current fascist regime must be totally dismantled, and the country must be split to avoid such regime coming back again.
>Putin came to power because the West didnt help the former Soviet republics.
Putin came to power because the "system", ie. KGB in particular wasn't dismantled, and because the further splitting up of the country was prevented. Whole world, including US, was afraid of appearance of several new smaller states, instead of just one big Russia, possessing nukes. Now, one can expect everybody learnt from that mistake made 30 years ago - this time the nukes need to be taken away completely and the country split.
> the end of this war must be positive for the Russian people
No. Only crushing humiliating defeat with the split of the country can reach into Russian brain and cure it from the "Great Russia chauvinism". Without such a process of cure, the monster will soon be back.
racist? Are you seriously implying that the Allies were racist for them doing the same to Germany to cure it from Nazism?
>Reading this would have been funnier had it not been for the behaviour we’ve seen this year.
until this year i've never wrote nor even thought this way. Until Feb 24 i still believed in my Old Country having a chance at playing great positive role in the world - i still thought that the harsh authoritarianism of Putin regime is a phase that will pass with minimal damage say once he dies. I hadn't noticed how instead it became Russian Nazism, "Rashizm" as its known, though all the signs have clearly been there at least during recent few years. It became clear on the Feb 24 though, and the 7 months since then have been showing it more and more, that the Russian society deeply poisoned by Rashizm has lost its ability to even minimally responsibly manage the great power stemming from such a large country and nukes in particular, and thus they lost any right to such a power, and became a menace to the world that must be taken care about.
I see a lot of hate being thrown on Russian civilians in these forums. That’s clearly racist. And the allies (ie the US) never cared about fascists. They had business relations with each other for quite some time.
The denazification wasn’t a moral duty. But a smart thing to do, to defang your enemy when they were defeated. Americans thought they were de-baathifying Iraq. When that blew up in their face, they unanimously agreed that it was a mistake, even though the Baath party actions were quite evil.
Europeans have a cultural tendency to create moralistic almost religious justification for war and conquest. Whether it is the white man’s burden, or now denazification. It is used to squash internal dissent. And that’s fine. You need to whip up your peasants into joining your crusade, in one way or another. But the story crumbles when it’s exported across the world.
The rest of the world has no reason to sympathise with actions that might trigger a nuclear war in Europe. I used to think that European leaders understand that and it’s OK for Ukrainians to idly dream of wrecking great vengeance on Russia. But now, I’m not so sure.
>I see a lot of hate being thrown on Russian civilians in these forums. That’s clearly racist.
The hate isn't on Russians as the carriers of Russian ethnicity. Such hate would be racist, i agree. The hate you see is on the carriers of Russian Nazism who openly espouses and propagandizes it. For example, many prominent targets of such a hate like those especially rabid Rashists propagandists on Russian TV are visibly not of Russian ethnicity. As another example - i'm a Russian and hasn't experienced any such hate even from Ukrainians i met here in teh last few months. I'm pretty sure though that if i were a Rashist and put the Russian Nazism Z-swastika on my car i'd become a target of such hate without people even bothering to check whether i'm of Russian, Jewish or Chinese ethnicity.
It is a trick that Russian propaganda actively using now - present legitimate hate against Russian Nazism as a racist hate against Russians. Don't fall for it :)
>Europeans have a cultural tendency to create moralistic almost religious justification for war and conquest. Whether it is the white man’s burden, or now denazification.
The main point of denazification isn't moralistic. It is a matter of survival. A nazism is "more" than just a fascism. The key foundation of nazist state is the "master-race/nation" ideology, and as a result one of the key characteristic of nazism is Lebensraum - "living space" for the "master-race/nation". While a plain fascist state, like Franco's Spain, can peacefully co-exist with its neighbors, it isn't an option in case of a nazist state like Germany back then or Russia today. Without denazification of Russia there is going to be no peace in the region, and with Russia being nuclear state it means that without denazification Russian presents a real nuclear threat to the world.
>The rest of the world has no reason to sympathise with actions that might trigger a nuclear war in Europe.
Of course nobody in the world is expected to sympathize with the Russian actions, and in particular with their intentional dragging of the world toward nuclear war. To avoid nuclear war Russia has to be stopped and the force is the only option for now.
> I used to think that European leaders understand that and it’s OK for Ukrainians to idly dream of wrecking great vengeance on Russia.
As far as i see, Ukrainians dream not about vengeance, they dream about Russia leaving them alone, something like having a kilometer high wall on the border with Russia. Unfortunately, without demilitarization, denuclearization and denazification of Russia the peace in the region isn't possible. In particular Russia wouldn't leave Ukrainians alone, and thus Ukrainians and the rest of the world have actually no choice wrt. what to do with Russia.
Having this split happen through occupation would be a disaster. The west does not have anywhere near the manpower necessary to make this happen. The rule of thumb is that the occupying force needs to be 5% of the population, which means 9 million for Russia.
However, it could happen naturally. If the Putin regime collapses it is quite likely that a clear successor widely seen as legitimate doesn't materialize. If so, the many autonomous regions of Russia with regional identity could declare independence and make it stick.
Of course it can't be done through sheer brute force. One has to use an opportunity of Russia [almost] falling apart on its own like the one 30 years ago or the one that seems to come about right now. This time it comes at a huge cost to Ukrainians, and whether/when another such opportunity would come about and at what cost we don't know, so better to not lose the opportunity this time.
>The west does not have anywhere near the manpower necessary to make this happen.
One of the biggest occupying/controlling power for the biggest piece of territory - Far East and East Siberia - is China. And there is no need to actually occupy whole Russia. Only in Moscow and a bit of force (more like credible threat of it), and that is work for the West and Turkey, to make sure that nobody would prevent those autonomous regions going their own independent way (which in many cases would be just naturally falling into orbit of a near by big country like Turkey, Kazakhstan, China, Ukraine or a block like EU)
It's kind of a moot question. If the US won't put boots on the ground in Ukraine, it will never do so in Moscow.
Unless they're invited there as peacekeepers by a new government. But even a pro-US government is unlikely to invite US peacekeepers. Maybe Canadian ones.
> the end of this war must be positive for the Russian people, no matter whether Russia loses or wins the military operation.
I can see a plausible end that avoids ridicule on either side:
- West will maintain that Putin meant to destroy Ukraine. So, limiting him to the new status-quo for Luhansk and Donetsk (whatever that would be) is a success.
- Putin will claim that the target of the "military operation" was to make Luhansk and Donetsk safe for the Russian-speaking population there. The new status-quo provides for that. So the operation was a success.
More that sanctions or any other punishments must be focussed on the Putin regime and not the Russian population in general. And should end quickly if the regime changes.
It looks great. So far I have been using Numi and I can see a few advantages and disadvantages in both apps.
Numi:
+ lightweight
+ very fast start
- tabs are a paid feature
Figr:
+ variables
+ tabs
- slow start compared to Numi
- cannot customize the icon bar
What both apps dont have and what I am looking for: A super lightweight excel-like tables app to do basic calculations with formulas behind the cells. Do you know anything like that, guys?
It was a political decision back than. German stopped being great long time ago and the Transrapid cancellation was just the beginning of German downturn. The energy crisis will be the last episode of Germany's long depression.
So you would rather have built completely new tracks, stations and other infrastrusture, which can only be used with in-system trainsets and will most likely be completely incompatible with anything running on other european rails for decades? No possibility of dual-use with older sleeper trains, regional trains or freight trains?
I would argue the decision was not as bad as you make it out to be.
That argument is the root cause why we stopped investing in innovation and infrastructure.
The same
could have been said about airports, highways, trains, electricity, the internet.
Current train travel is a joke in germany, the infrastructure is failing, the prices and shedules are an international meme.
One of the main reason it sucks so much is having shared cargo and passenger rail. The successfull high speed trains are using their tracks exclusively.
If we had started investing 40 years ago we would all be cruising silently at 460kmh with tickets half the price, because of the maintenance free solid state tech.
Transrapid is also more wheelchair accessible because it is level with the platform and the cabin is much wider.
Also remember that stupid solar roadways idea? Guess where that actually works, in between the transrapid rails.
By covering the center of the pylons in solar a route from bremen to hamburg would produce enough energy to replace 1 1/2 coal power plants.
I agree with you that there is too little investment in infrastructure in germany. But maglev was researched extensively and then we decided against it.
> the prices and shedules are an international meme.
Regarding prices: those are actually very reasonable prices for High-speed-trains. Look up tickets on TGV or Shinkansen. ICE tickets are starting at 20 euros. Regional rail is indeed worse but we're arguing about high-speed rail vs maglev. And Maglev is so much more expensive to build, I simply can't see how that would lead to better prices (or schedules/being on time for that matter, which mostly depend on the bad infrastructure and are "just" made worse by the fact that other trains run there)
> Transrapid is also more wheelchair accessible because it is level with the platform and the cabin is much wider.
Sure, ICE trains are bad for accessibility. But that is not due to the tracks they run on but rather due to accessibility not being a priority when designing the trains. Regional trains show that it can be done without bigger problems
> Also remember that stupid solar roadways idea?
The one that failed everywhere they tried?
> Guess where that actually works, in between the transrapid rails. By covering the center of the pylons in solar a route from bremen to hamburg would produce enough energy to replace 1 1/2 coal power plants.
Or you could place them literally anywhere else, there is no shortage of space to put solar panels in.
But to end on a more friendly note: Maglevs are indeed a bit cheaper to service and the fast accelleration is really helpful for those relatively short distances between city centers in some regions. But as was stated in another comment: try building a new line which actually goes from main station to main station. You're going to need space (or tunnels) in city centers and the space between and this will be expensive and tedious. 40 years ago this might have been easier but even then we wouldn't have had a network from the start.
> But maglev was researched extensively and then we decided against it.
The people against it were the Boomer-Greens, the same generation that got us Harz-IV and favoured Coal over Nuclear. Their anti-transrapid standpoint was just a political counter point to the policy of the CDU, which is absolutely insane, considering that todays greens would be super happy if the CDU started to propose better faster trains.
The BUND (Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz) made some wild claims about bird sanctuaries, ignoring the fact that the reduced noise level and lower ground area requirements would have been a huge improvement for bird sanctuaries, compared to ICE.
The same BUND that has a working group against cell towers and community wifi because of RaDIAtioN.
> Regarding prices: those are actually very reasonable prices for High-speed-trains.
That's only if you book months in advance, and even then it's often cheaper to take the plane, which is absolutely insane.
> Maglev is so much more expensive to build
At 17Mio/Euro per double KM, it's EXACLY the same as high-speed ICE tracks.
The more costly linear accelerator tech is set of by the cheaper pylons. Turns out preparing the ground and piling up a 5m pile of Gravel is really really expensive.
> I simply can't see how that would lead to better prices
The main ticket price contributor is not the tracks, it's energy and maintenance.
Both are significantly reduced for a contact free system with no moving parts and no vibrations.
> The one that failed everywhere they tried?
Because solar panels don't like being driven on.
But the Transrapid would just float over the solar panels embedded into the center of the track.
You might argue that one could also put solar panels in between regular train track, but the vibration and material dust would quickly render them useless.
> Or you could place them literally anywhere else, there is no shortage of space to put solar panels in.
NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY. With solar transrapid pylons kill two birds with one stone, the track even provides the infrastructure to transport the electricity.
You also forget that the self contained shuttle design of the Transrapid would allow for completely new routing schemes. Instead of a fixed timetable you could use much more flexible "package" based routing, where trains are scheduled on demand. You'd also be able to save a lot of energy lost in regenerative breaking at ever stop by booking a single train from say, Hamburg to Rome, without any stops.
The US bombed oil producing countries when they tried to drop the petro dollar and the US was and is very depending on imports. Should we do the US model and bomb Russia ... or Should the US follow your suggestions and put US presidents into prison?
The solution to this crisis is for the remaining free people of the world to start demanding war criminals be prosecuted for their actions - whether American or Russian, it doesn't matter.
Until we start jailing the war criminals and undoing the actions they've taken, we're headed into the abyss.
The only two countries that even come credibly close to this proposition are Libya and Iraq, and even there the evidence is paltry (in particular for Libya, Qaddafi had spouted rhetoric about abandoning pricing in dollars off and on for decades prior to the Libyan Civil War, and no one has produced any evidence that Libya was even close to actually doing anything about it).
It also fails to take into account all the countries who have tried selling oil not priced in USD and received no blowback from the US for it, such as Venezuela, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. (This is not an exhaustive list, I believe.)
That's not to say that oil doesn't play a role in US foreign policy--US-Middle Eastern policy for much of the 20th century can be pretty fairly summarized as "keep the oil flowing"--but the idea that pricing energy in USD is a central plank of US foreign policy is one without identifiable foundation.
> countries who [...] received no blowback from the US [...], such as Venezuela, Iran[...], and Russia
Lol...
There's been sanctions (and coups, for the first two) against those.
Sure, the parent was strictly talking about "bombing", but just because an US bomber didn't physically drop bombs on their land, it doesn't mean that there was no blowback
> There's been sanctions (and coups, for the first two) against those.
Not for moving away from USD, or merely talking about it.
Indeed, of those examples you cited, trying to move oil sales away from USD happened after the US imposed sanctions (and, it can be reasonably referred, in part because of the sanctions).
Sure, Mossadegh didn't try to move away from USD, he just tried to nationalize their oil industry.
In both cases, those are acts contrary to US interests, and trying to argue that we shouldn't consider the US reactions as part of the same pattern is sophistry
Its mostly not true. Some people assume that all US policy is actually oil policy and that the $ is valuable because of petrol. Neither is really true.
Sure in the last 70 years oil was important to US in foreign policy but its far from the only or dominate factor in most of it.
Yeah, most people don't understand that the USD is granted value by the fact we'll come in with the world's most expensive army to kick down your doors and occupy your nation for a decade if you so much as consider stepping out of line. And one of those lines conveniently is oil exchange with that USD; which also happens to be the modern worlds biggest shared dependency.
Yeah but funny enough some countries that don't do what the US wants like Cuba, Venezuela Iran, North Korea are not invaded and some of those have oil. During the oil crisis the US didn't invade countries that didn't sell oil.
At the same time the US invaded Vietnam, Iraq, Lybia, Syria and helped fight wars in places like Yemen. Some that don't have oil.
Are you seriously suggesting if France and Saudi Arabia traded in $ the US would invade either country?
At the same time the US is heavily involved with Israel/Palestine neither have oil.
So the idea that its all about oil is incredibly reductionist and a totally false understanding of US policy making.
In fact if you go threw most of the supposed 'its all about oil' foreign policy issues in more details and you look at the decision makes, oil usually isn't actually the driving force.
Of course they're not invaded, we Banana Republic or Contra their asses, conversely we squeeze the everloving shit out of them through finance. There's also simply the concept of a persistent credible threat: look at a map of US bases. Note also I did indicate that it wasn't the exclusive determinant by using the phrase "one of those lines."
We've also fucked with Cuba, Iran, Venezuela.
Iraq did have oil and the Saudis were using directional drilling to tap it, which initiated the first Gulf War. Palestine is a proxy war.
Until the US is critically weakened, France will not trade in Francs or Rubles or etc... And Europe is dependent on the US for continued geopolitical stability.
Banana Republics were about Fruit not oil. Lots things like Contra and other things the US does are for lots of reasons.
The US$ is the reserve currency and has been for quite a while and this is for a number of reasons but the idea that its all because of oil is simple not the case.
The US fucked with countries for lots of reasons, oil is an issue but not the dominant one.
Some people simply overestimate the impact of oil on policy choices.
Its is incredibly short sited and wrong when people attempt to make everything about oil when there are lots and lots of other reason that actually influence policy makers.
What does it have to do with the US? This is about the EU only. The EU only put all focus on "green" energy and then tried to solve the problems it created with fossil fuels while forgetting about or even actively working against nuclear. What the US did has nothing to do with that.
The EU put focus on replacing coal with natural gas, as that was the cheapest way of reaching their emission goals. Similar reductions would have been far more expensive with renewables or nuclear. Economics beat geopolitics, because the dominant ideology in the EU is using regulated markets to achieve policy goals.
This year geopolitics struck back and made the rational economic choice a poor one in retrospect.
It was never a rational economic choice, everybody in the eastern EU knew this is coming. While we were sounding the alarms and pointing to Georgia in 2008, Westerners were busy mashing "reset buttons" with uncle Putin. Not even 2014 invasion to Ukraine changed their minds and now they act surprised?
You could've simply read the official Russian doctrine. "oil is for profits, gas is for political control" - they even published it on the web FFS.
"Rational" does not mean "smart", "good", or "beneficial to the society".
It was the choice businesses made, because they believed it was the best way to make profit in the energy market. The EU agreed on emission quotas and set up the emission trade system, in order to let the market choose how to reduce emissions. The market chose natural gas, and the politicians allowed that, because they believed in the wisdom of the market.
I don't believe that for a minute - since now the market is choosing nuclear the moment the EU allowed it to be considered green. We were waiting for it for a decade with projects in hand and now there are entire new reactors being built, all so suddenly. Experts from my country were lobbying for that at least since 2008. The EU commission has chosen feels instead of evidence and nobody will ever pay for that - except Ukrainians with their lives and poorer Europeans with their savings.
And BTW this isn't just about the market - our state wanted to support nuclear but the EU sued it for unfair competition. Oh no, the German electricity producers might make less profit from their Russian gas, what would we do?!?!?
> The EU only put all focus on "green" energy and then tried to solve the problems it created with fossil fuels while forgetting about or even actively working against nuclear.
I'm not sure that's true. The EU (25%) as a whole has more nuclear energy than the US (19%). About half of EU countries use nuclear power, keeping in mind almost half of EU countries have less people than Massachusetts.
Remember, the EU doesn't generally run energy policy. The individual countries do. If anything, it was a lack of commitment to green energy that led to this.
The EU assigns money it takes from the states - money the pro-nuclear states would've used for their nuclear energy, but since it was appropriated by the EU and then assigned by its own rules that were constructed to rule out nuclear energy, they couldn't. So our pro-nuclear state has huge fields of solar arrays that everybody here hates because it replaced natural parks and makes us more reliant on gas powerplants, and the our/EU money was taken by gangsters, we call them the "solar barons" - great, thanks EU.
For France (and I imagine it's similar for other countries), EU contributions are a smidgen under 1% of GDP. I can't imagine that makes the decisive difference here. And in any case, since the EU still gets more of its energy from nuclear than the US does they'd be doing a piss-poor job of it.
In fact, looking at the figures, the only countries worldwide that get more energy from nuclear than the EU _and_ aren't part of the EU are Ukraine (55%), South Korea (28%), Switzerland (29%), and Armenia (25%). And both Switzerland and Ukraine are synchronised with the greater European grid!
Most Oil from the Middle East goes to Asia and Europe, US produces enough energy itself. Yes US tries to stabilize the region, I think Asia and Europe gives not enough thanks.
I dont think that has anything to do with oil. Kinda similar though, should the USA help democratic small countries from authoritarian bullies next door? Maybe USA should just let the world burn like the Europeans do.
What has happened with the US life expectancy suddenly? If it is the expectancy "at birth" then there is no Covid effect, isnt it?
I dont get why it drops.
Nevertheless, good job China. Lifting a country from absolute poverty, poorer than any African country during the 1980s, growing to a top global economy, having world-class infrastructure, developing its society, becoming cleaner and modern. This all deserves huge respect - instead of a racist anti-China war.. just because one is afraid that their system MAY work better and outcompete our system.
Life expectancy is calculated from the mortality statistics of the recent past: the share of newborns that made it to one year old, one-year olds that made it to two years, etc. etc. accumulated to get the probability of a newborn making it to age X and then dying, assuming conditions stay the same (which they never do).
"At birth" just specifies the starting age. You could also look at life expectancy at 5 to exclude infant mortality, or even life expectancy at 69, though that won't tell you about the future survival of any particular 69-year-olds any more than life expectancy at birth tells you about the future survival of babies born today.
So the drop in life expectancy in countries with many covid deaths is likely to be followed by a jump back up as the number of covid deaths decreases, while China might experience something similar depending on how the current trend of increasing case counts develops.
https://hi.theotown.com/