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Cake day: June 30th, 2023

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  • Trump fails logistics once again. Mandatory military service makes sense in smaller countries because you need a minimum number of people to make a military function. In larger countries like America, we wouldn’t even know what to do with that many soldiers. On average 4 million Americans turn 18 each year. Let’s assume we’re only taking men, and that generously half of them find a way out of service. That’s still 1 million new recruits each year. America has the third largest military in terms of manpower in the world and we have 1.4 million active duty troops. In one year we’d double the number of active troops. Now you need to pay, feed, house, arm, and train them, which all takes… more personnel!

    After seeing his absolutely bungled exit from Afghanistan, I have full faith in that administration to handle that transition










  • Every single time we infringe on personal freedoms, we need to do this calculation.

    What freedom do you have that you think this is infringing on?

    Stop Chinese data collection. I think this is just misdirection. You say it’s conspiracy, but just like the PATRIOT Act had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children and the Iraqi war had nothing to do with WMD… the government often misleads or outright lies.

    Correct, it had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children. It had to do with war profiteering. That’s the simple answer to basically every question that starts with “why did the American government do…” It made wealthy Americans richer. That’s the default US policy

    Much of our data is for sale to anyone who wants to buy it. In fact, our law enforcement loves buying data instead of going through the process for a warrant.

    There are so many apps out there with less than scrupulous devs who are more than willing to scrape for as much data as possible and sell that off. China can easily acquire massive amounts of data regardless.

    Yup, and that’s fine in the way that it’s fine for us to ship oil, soybeans, and semiconductors to China. As long as America gets the first bite of the pie, what happens after that is mostly fine

    Chinese influence on Americans. I think this one makes more sense than the first one. China is able to quietly suppress or encourage certain points of views - subtly pushing the 170 million Americans into directions that are beneficial for China’s interests. For example, perhaps media discouraging support for Taiwan.

    I think this is ancillary benefit that is mostly being pushed by our military. I know it’s the “reason” they’re giving but I agree this is not the primary purpose

    I believe this because we are a free society.

    We are not. By basically every measurable metric of “freedom” the US doesn’t even crack the top 10 in the world and on a lot of lists we don’t make the top 20. I don’t know what Americans think “freedom” means but whenever I hear people talk about it I often wonder if we live in the same country

    You are right that we don’t always live up to that term, and never really have. But we get a hell of a lot closer than China or Russia. We shouldn’t be moving towards them in ideological terms, but away from them.

    It’s pretty hyperbolic to say that banning the Chinese pipeline of disinformation and spyware makes America ideologically similar to Russia

    As for the young people, there are 170 million people on the app and it skews younger. A large portion of these people use Tiktok as their primary social media. A lot of these will be pushed towards anti-establishment and radical ideologies. Tiktok already leans leftist (and not neoliberal left).

    That’s just conjecture. Do you know how many social media sites we’ve seen come and go? You assert people will become anti-establishment, I assert they’ll just move on to other social media. Both of our assertions are equally valid without evidence


  • What happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of association? Free market capitalism?

    America has none of those things. We have clear limits on what is and isn’t acceptable speech. We routinely see protest groups beaten, jailed, and killed for protesting things the police like. Finally, you have to live in a bunker if you think we have a free market

    If an American citizen wants to use a Chinese platform, why don’t they have the right to?

    Because part of the government’s job is protecting its people. If China gave away a blowjob and cocaine robot and all you had to do was walk it around and give it detailed tours of civilian infrastructure that’d be banned too despite being hugely popular. If the government desides it’s in the best interest of the people to not do something then they have the authority to prevent people to doing it

    I think the data collection stuff is a red herring. Real reason is that war is coming and they’re preparing the online information space so they can more easily manipulate it. Sort of how they did a test run with covid. Banning misinformation and such.

    This is just pure conspiracy talk. Occam’s razor says the simplest solution is usually correct. What’s the simple answer here? Data is becoming one of the most valuable “natural” resources. You don’t hand valuable resources for free to rival governments. You charge them, or you prevent them from taking it. It’s all about money

    If the sale doesn’t go through, I don’t see how this will eliminate whatever little bit of credibility the federal government has among the younger generations. 18~25 or so

    Call me naive but I like to think young people care about more than just the apps on their phone and are capable of holding a more nuanced view of our government than you clearly are



  • I mean come on, Biden didn’t win the democratic nomination. It was handed to him on super-Tuesday. Bloomberg was just vomiting money to get easy media attention and then just dropped out. Elizabeth Warren was polling well then suddenly backed out, and all the super-delegates (something that shouldn’t exist) had pledged their votes well before the actual convention. Then all that was left was Bernie who got smoked because there was no time to recover

    Sure you could argue that’s savvy political maneuvering which is what you want in a president but my point is that Biden didn’t successfully campaign as much as he let other people do it and then got their support. Something he can’t repeat as an incumbent

    Before anyone says anything, I’m voting for him, I’m just trying to avoid revisionist history





  • No, because it’s super disingenuous to criticize Biden on it like Trump wouldn’t be way worse. We know Trump will yank all the funding from Ukraine and hand it over to Isreal. Sure Biden sucks, but like every other conversation on the subject, he’s better than the other option so we have to begrudgingly support him. The last time we tried to disagree with someone morally was Hillary and we spent 4 years dealing with Trump. If my options are 1 guy who opposes 1 genocide and 1 guy who supports 2 then I guess I’ll pick the guy opposing one. I’d rather have no genocides, but here we are



  • Why don’t their liberal counterparts get it?

    Because they don’t exist. I do not believe it is possible to be truly progressive, have left leaning morals, and be a billionaire. The only way to aquire enough money to control the media narrative of a country the size of America is to be a massive piece of shit. Even the “good” billionaires got there by stepping on as many fingers as possible while they climbed the ladder. Our system inherently rewards people with bad morals, and then enables them to control the conversation for everyone else. Which they obviously use to further their shitty ideas