• 0 Posts
  • 121 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 25th, 2023

help-circle

  • National security interests are the interests of the people though.

    The fundamental issue is that, assuming I’m not leaking national security information, I can say nearly anything I want on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (as long as I’m not in violation of their terms of service). The US largely does not censor people using the power of the gov’t. If I am an authoritarian communist, I’m more than welcome to spread these views on any American social network that I choose without gov’t interference. I can spread anti-vax and Q nonsense if I wish, and the worst-case scenario is that my neighbors will stop talking to me. I can attack the very foundation of the country if I want, as long as I’m not spreading military secrets.

    This is not the case in China. Spreading pro-capitalism and pro-democracy messages can quickly get you arrested. Trying to share accurate information about what really happened in Tianamen Square in 1989 can result in you disappearing. Words and phrases are actively censored by the gov’t on social media. The Chinese gov’t takes a direct role in shaping social media by what it promotes, and what it forbids. Anything that’s perceived as an attack on the political system of the country, the party, or any of the leaders (remember the internationally famous tennis player that abruptly disappeared when she accused a local party leader of sexual assault?) will put you at risk.

    This isn’t a case of, “oh, both sides are the same”.


  • The Constitution doesn’t only protect American citizens, it protects everyone

    Uh, no. It doesn’t protect everyone, not by a long shot. The US constitution doesn’t guarantee Chinese citizens, living in China, the right to freedom of the press.

    …And this isn’t about which speech they’re allowing. This is about who controls the platform, and how they respond to gov’t inquiries. If TikTok is divested from ByteDance, so that they’re no longer based in China and subject to China’s laws and interference, then there’s no problem. There are two fundamental issues; first, TikTok appears to be a tool of the Chinese gov’t (this is the best guess, considering that large parts of the intelligence about it are highly classified), and may be currently being used to amplify Chinese-state propaganda as well as increase political division, and second, what ByteDance is doing with the enormous amounts of data it’s collection, esp. from people that may be in sensitive or classified locations.

    As I stated, if TikTok is sold off so that they’re no longer connected to China, then they’re more than welcome to continue to operate. ByteDance is refusing to do that.













  • Yes, I fucking well know that, because I listen to Galen Druke on the FiveThirtyEight podcast every fucking week. I know exactly how long he’s been gone, because I’ve been listening to the podcast for that long. There is nothing in my statement that implied that Silver still worked for ABC News or FiveThirtyEight; my statement only says that FiveThirtyEight gives Harris a lead that’s barely outside the margin of error, and, as the pollsters that appear on the podcast frequently say, it’s simply not clear how well current polls are capturing what’s actually going to happen on election day.

    So make sure all your Republican friends get up bright and early on Wednesday, 6 November to vote for Trump!



  • That’s simply not correct. Every state is guaranteed at least one house rep, but aside from that it’s population based. That’s why the census is such a big deal; it reapportions representatives. The less-populated states that lean heavily to the right get very, very few representatives, while much more heavily populated states get many, many more representatives. California currently has 53 house representatives; South Dakota has one.

    A much bigger issue is partisan gerrymandering. Even after representatives are apportioned, the state creates the districts. If the state legislature is controlled by Republicans, they’ll create voting districts that limits the ability of Democratic–largely urban–voters to select representatives of their choice. The result is that a state like mine has very few Democratic representatives for the state, despite being very purple.

    And, BTW, this goes both ways. The rural parts of California skew very conservative, and yet Republicans get very few house seats (and are a superminority in the California legislature). In Texas, major metro areas like Austin, Dallas, and Ft. Worth all skew Democratic, and yet Texas has very, very few Democratic house seats. If redistricting was done by an expert system based solely on number of voters and compact, contiguous districts–with no other information given to the program so that it couldn’t account for demographics like race, wealth, partisan lean, etc.—you’d likely see very, very different results in the house of representatives.



  • Eh. It depends on the libertarian. I’m mostly anarchistic in regards to individuals–not at all in regards to institutions and corporations–so I can appreciate some libertarians. But most current libertarians aren’t really interested in personal liberty for all, just freedom from consequences and obligation for themselves. For instance, you aren’t going to see very many current libertarians that support trans rights, since many people that currently claim to be libertarian are actually extremely socially conservative, rather than allowing everyone the freedom to make choices for themselves.

    At any rate, what Dems claim to believe aligns far more closely with my own beliefs than what Republicans claim to believe–and what Libertarians actually do–so I tend to vote Democratic, even though the party as a whole is opposed to some of my core beliefs.


  • You’re just like yeah I know windows and Adobe will profit off of every button I click

    First - Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is not a consumer version. It’s about as locked down as you can get. It doesn’t even have drivers for the ethernet on your mobo out of the box; you better have already downloaded those. (Yes, I’m serious. It’s about Also, it’s pirated, since it’s not available to consumers at all; Microsoft doesn’t want to let consumers have the Enterprise versions of Windows because that’s no longer software-as-service. And the LTSC? That shit’s going to keep getting security updates–but no ‘feature’ updates, at all, ever–for at least 10 years.

    Second - I don’t pay for Adobe, but I have to use it in my job. I’ve limited as much of it as I can, and CC doesn’t start up by default, but yeah, if you work in the commercial arts fields, you simply don’t have any serious options that aren’t Adobe, and yeah, they’re going to bleed you dry. But, as i said, i’m not the one paying. My workplace has a license that allows two seats, and I’m literally the only person there that knows how to use any of it–or even has the password to the Adobe account–so I just use the work license to put it on my home PC.