queermunist

queermunist , 2 months ago

Banning TikTok in an election year is proof Democrats don’t want to win.

queermunist , 2 months ago

The age range skews younger, so probably not huge. It’s definitely there though - lots of “tradwife” thinly disguised fetish content. 😒

There’s a reason Trump came out against this ban, he knows it’s going to be unpopular and he loses nothing by flip-flopping on it.

This is just a free W for Trump and an L for Democrats with literally zero upsides. It accomplishes nothing besides pissing people off!

queermunist , 2 months ago

So what? This only pisses off the Democrat’s base and it will make them stay home.

queermunist , 2 months ago

They’re just going to stay home.

queermunist , 2 months ago

Please don’t tell me you actually believe them when they cry about national security. It’s almost always a lie.

queermunist , 2 months ago

The CPC can just buy data from a different broker. You think Alphabet or Meta are loyal to American interests?

Also, TikTok won’t be banned for months, so it won’t change the campus protests at all. In fact it’ll probably piss the protesters off even more, it’s very obvious government censorship.

Also also, there’s zero proof TikTok is promoting pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content. That’s just what is naturally popular, the reality is that all the other social media companies are suppressing pro-Palestine/anti-Israel content. That’s it.

queermunist , 3 months ago

They didn’t “reveal” anything, they just confirmed what we already knew since December.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Intermittent power sources could be good enough if people were willing to accept intermittency i.e. get used to not having air conditioning at night, get used to only cooking when the Sun is up, get used to nightshifts no longer being possible, etc. It’s not fun, but it’s doable.

queermunist , 3 months ago

What can ByteDance access that China couldn’t just buy from Alphabet or Meta or some other tech company?

queermunist , 3 months ago

The US doesn’t ban selling data, though. China can buy whatever it wants just as easily as harvesting it from ByteDance.

And I’d hardly call running an entire social media enterprise “free”. If it’s a torjan horse, it’s an entirely unnecessary one.

queermunist , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

Uh huh, and do you think Alphabet and Meta don’t do that? Do you think if China offered to buy that data they wouldn’t be able to get it? Grow up.

My point is that we should be taking internet privacy seriously, not just going after foreign companies.

It’s not okay when the spies are American. Until I see serious action taken against the worst offenders I’ll know this is all theater.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Running a company isn’t free lol

queermunist , 3 months ago

China has a massive stake in the company. It’s a huge investment for them. Hardly “free”

queermunist , 3 months ago

The executive order is specifically targeting data brokerage, a practice that is shockingly unregulated. There is no federal law that oversees the collection of and sale of the most intimate details of our lives. And when data is sold to countries of concern, it can become a national security issue.

It’s good the bare minimum is being implemented… though it’s weird how two months have passed without updates.

I must point out that this only concerns data being sold to Russia or China, ie, it’s just security theater. I would like to see some restrictions on data being sold to anyone, including so-called US allies. Israel, in particular, collects data on American Palestinians who contact family back in Palestine and uses this to feed its AI that generates kill lists.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Assuming China doesn’t have to spend literally any other money, even though countries are constantly investing in infrastructure and security and material to assist the business.

But also, literally not free. My point stands.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Not yet. There was an executive order to ban selling data to “enemies” that would include China but it hasn’t been implemented.

Also I’m highly skeptical it’ll work. China can just work through proxies and not buy directly.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Now the military budget can just be given directly to the oil industry instead of needing to occupy hostile foreign countries.

queermunist , 3 months ago

There are Israelis in prison right now because they refuse to participate in the genocide.

That implies something about their ideology.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Did you know that the prisoner-per-capita ratio in the US is higher than both Russia and China? In fact, the total number of incarcerated people (ie people in prisons and jails) in the US is 2.25 million. In Russia that number is 433,006 and in China it’s estimated at 1.7 million.

Combined that’s 2.13 million.

Those two “worse” countries combined don’t have as many people incarcerated people as the US.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Additionally worth remembering that the normalization process was nearing its conclusion by October, Israel was well on the path to buying off all of its neighbors and achieving total regional cooperation in the next Nakba.

queermunist , 3 months ago

You mean IDF veterans and reservists?

It’s sad that some children died, but collateral damage is inevitable in war and there’s no proof that Hamas deliberately killed children (unlike Israel, which has murdered over 12,300 children - higher than the last 4 years of wars combined!)

queermunist , 3 months ago

Israel was not established through direct negotiations between Israel and Palestine. Why the double standard?

queermunist , 3 months ago

Israel gets to be recognized as a state despite not negotiating with Palestine.

Palestine isn’t allowed to be a state without negotiating with Israel.

It’s a double standard.

queermunist , 3 months ago

This isn’t about appeasing existing members, it’s just the US blocking everything. Also, asking the colonized to negotiate with their own colonizers is absurd - just wolves and deer negotiating on what’s for dinner.

queermunist , 3 months ago

The double standard is “Israel gets to be a state without negotiating with the people it’s stealing the land from, Palestine doesn’t get to be a state without negotiating with the people who stole their land.” It’s a double standard enforced by the US, but it’s definitely a double standard and the rest of the world can see it.

All the US is doing is destroying its own credibility and the legitimacy of the UN. This shit is going the way of the League of Nations.

queermunist , 3 months ago

And yet compare life expectancies and you find a very different story. Why is that?

queermunist , 3 months ago

Interesting! I just assumed because communist states like Cuba and China have higher life expectancies than the US that the USSR would too, I guess I didn’t consider how much less developed they were than modern communist states.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Iran has constantly proved itself the more rational and mature actor in the Middle East compared to Israel.

Yet we allow Israel to have nukes while we sanction the fuck out of Iran.

Hmm 🤔

queermunist , 3 months ago

It’s strange how you’re ignoring the fact that Israel attacked first. Iran retaliated, and did so after warning Israel of exactly what it was going to do so it could prepare. It did this even though Israel attacked Iran without a similar warning and assassinated an Iranian general.

Iran’s response has been tepid and measured because it doesn’t want to start WW3. Israel, on the other hand, very clearly does.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Why did they attack?

To draw the US deeper into the conflict.

In any case, the cold war between Israel and Iran didn’t start with Israel bombing an Iranian embassy. Honeslty don’t know who started it, but it wasn’t the first attack, not the first attack on an embassy either.

Fair. Netanyahu has been provoking Iran for decades, this is just the latest escalation. But the fact remains that Iran was retaliating to an attack that came from Israel, Iran wasn’t just attacking out of nowhere.

Iran claims they warned Israel. The US says they didn’t.

And yet the US and Israel were able to perfectly defend against the attack and prevent any serious damage. 🤔

I guess we’re just supposed to believe that those defensive capabilities are god-like and can respond to any attack with zero warning!

I mean, your user name suggests you’re queer and a communist. How utterly bizarre that you’re defending an Islamic theocracy.

Y’all keep telling me to choose the lesser evil in the elections but you won’t do the same thing in a geopolitical context. 🤨

queermunist , 3 months ago

I recently had an interesting discussion where someone interpreted the pessimistic ending as a result of successful in-universe propaganda from the Party, and that all the shit they said was just gaslighting and lies to make themselves seem omnipresent and make resistance seem hopeless.

I don’t think this was the intended message but the author is dead, we can make up our own head canons and no one can stop us!

queermunist , 3 months ago

This latest move is just another nail in the UN’s coffin. A modern day League of Nations 🙄

queermunist , 3 months ago

Not what I said.

It’s a nail in the UN’s coffin because it destroys its legitimacy as an institution. The UN isn’t really an international body it’s just a US puppet and unable to do anything the US opposes.

No nation can have veto power, it destroys the whole system. So, like the League of Nations, it is going to fail and be replaced.

queermunist , 3 months ago

The UN actually does have the power to do stuff when everyone agrees, but the problem is the veto nations keep the UN from ever exercising power. It’s a busted system and it’s going to collapse.

queermunist , 3 months ago

What do you think the League of Nations was? The problem the UN faces now is legitimacy - the world has to treat the UN like it’s important and not just an arm of a few powerful countries. International law ceases to have meaning if the UN is revealed as a group chat.

Without that legitimacy we’re going to see a breakdown of the post-WW2 era of limited conflict and enter another world war.

queermunist , 3 months ago

If the UN imposes something on one of those member states that they disagree with while refusing to impose something on a US ally that everyone else agrees with. You know, like how the UN has voted to denounce Russian aggression in Ukraine and penalized them for it, but is unable to do the same for Israel’s aggression in Palestine (and Lebanon and Iran etc). Consequences for thee, not for me!

So if the African countries rebelling against ECOWAS and the countries involved in China’s belt-and-road and the countries in Russia’s envelope and all the so-called “pariah states” like Venezuela and Cuba decide they will not respect UN resolutions anymore…

queermunist , 3 months ago

Because otherwise… Russia will invade Argentina? 🤨

queermunist , 3 months ago

You mean the thing that didn’t happen?

Looks like NATO wasn’t necessary to me!

queermunist , 3 months ago

Unfortunately Israel shitting all over the ICJ has delegitimized the court’s ability to weigh in on the matter, but they’re working it out through the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States. This is distinctly different from the situation in Ukraine because there wasn’t an equivalent organization that could handle disputes.

queermunist , 3 months ago

They’d have to cross Chile too, though. Or I guess go around them Southern cape. Either way, kind of impractical!

queermunist , 3 months ago

If Dems want to actually start flipping state legislatures they should probably distance the down ballot from Biden. He’s a millstone around their necks.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Yeah the votes just do not exist.

We should try something else.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Imagine those sick fucks high fiving each other after making that shot.

Death, and I can’t stress to enough, to Israel.

queermunist , 3 months ago

Actually having the government shut these leeches up is good and cool

queermunist , 3 months ago (edited 3 months ago)

I’m trans in a red state. If Trump wins I might die.

I’m still not voting for Biden.

Not like it fucking matters, if my state passes a “kill all the trans people” law Biden wouldn’t stop them.

queermunist , 3 months ago

They’re very clearly pushing Democrats and especially Biden on this issue.

If it weren’t for the uncommitted movement I have no doubt that the US would have responded to Iran striking back at Israel.

queermunist , 3 months ago

No. I’m arguing that both sides are bad in different ways.

I voted for Biden in 2020 and Democrats in 2022 because I believed they were the lesser of two evils.

Then the genocide in Gaza accelerated and I’m realizing there are no lesser evils in this country. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good? My dude, America is the enemy of the good! And as those protesters in Michigan said, Death to America

queermunist , 3 months ago

It depends on how much sugar is in it. Shelf stable soy milk lasts a long time in my experience. ‘Silk’ goes off in a couple weeks tho