India has major corruption problems and Modi is a pretty terrible guy.

China controls zoom and their recent laws in HK are written so as to apply to people outside China/HK. Don't use zoom if you ever intend to visit China.

Maybe google meet? Google is evil but they already have all our information and they don't arrest people with trumped up charges yet.

The primary system has done a pretty good job of spitting out the candidates most acceptable to the 0.1%. Obama was an error (for the primary system, too competent, too honest) but Bush II was a bizarre choice in all ways except family and corruption in favor of really rich people, same with Trump. Same with both Clintons.

Haven't paid enough attention to Biden to know if he is completely corrupt but he is way more acceptable to corrupt plutocrats than Bernie. Bernie might not have been able to change much but he would have called a lot of attention to a lot of systemic problems that a bunch of really rich people do not want pointed out or solved.

The conservatism on the republican side is a sop, sort of like how Saudi Arabian royalty obey Islamic principles in their own country. Like the police the candidates are chosen for how they obey the very rich. Give government money, give beatings...

Problem is the money is for the propaganda so you get Fox News (fair and balanced, but in court our argument is "it's opinion and no one would really believe it") and OAN targeting the gullible who are helpfully catalogued by facebook and google as the whales who click on ads. You need to translate:

AGW: Using an acronym and a long word (anthropomorphic) to make it look like there is complexity and debate about the fact that we are shitting where we eat. Some creatures will likely benefit but it won't be us, we are making parts of the planet to hot for humans.

What trump said: most of his tweets are nutjobbery but he tweets both sides of most issues so you can either mock his inconsistency or seize on the minority of stuff he got right. Guess what Fox/OAN do.

Virtue signaling: not making the world burn. If you do anything good you're not being a greedy horrible person so you must be a hypocrite. Only a valid argument for the 0.1% or the very gullible.

Snowflake: a term used in context to mock conservatives that they are using against their opponents using the Rove/Goebbels principle that you accuse others of what you are.

Triggered: we can't win the argument logically so if we can piss off our opponents by obtuseness we still win by default.

Cuck: We have totally lost the argument but we can resort to random name calling.

Fair and balanced: if you take us to court it is "for entertainment purposes only"

Fox news: no longer a news channel. Reclassified in 2018.

Inequality: to quote Russell Brand "when I was poor and I criticized inequality they said I was jealous. Once I was rich and said the same thing they said I was a hypocrite." They just don't like the message. Them and the 0.1%.

Government regulation: Fox news hates it. The most powerful force for positive action that we have, and they hate it. Acid rain is gone because of regulation, lead in gasoline likewise. The American government has been neutered by conservatism for the last 4 decades but there are still positive effects.

Clubs and movies pretty much exist as date destinations where talking is not possible. You show off looks, clothes, swagger, while hiding your conversational disabilities. In both locations you can seduce without letting anyone's brain get in the way. Only works for pretty and shallow people looking for same.

Seems to be what they do... Small cinemas, big screens, 3-D, high prices.

I suspect that he is referring to knocking over governments in the Middle East, South and Central America to get dictators. It works out well for the US companies that get contracts, not so well for the people in the countries. The whole embargo of Cuba was due to pissed off senators who had invested in United Foods and expected the US military to ensure their investment. It would be hard to count the deaths but the combination of deaths and human misery is pretty significant.

The last few wars, including Bush II's ventures and Trump's departure from Syria didn't do much good.

There is more food globally but US companies have done a pretty good job of flooding markets with cheap food to get local farmers to give up and then raising prices.

Most of these policies are not for the US or for any of the people, they were attempts by congressmen, senators, and presidents to make money for themselves and their friends.

When someone says government is bad and you should shrink it and drown it you should probably realize they are justifying their own thefts. People who don't believe governments can be good should not be elected. Free democracies actually benefit from being good and encouraging other countries (citation needed, I know) so current behavior is not helpful.

It would be much easier to disprove Chinese propaganda if US media were in a better state. No one believes Trump or Fox, and their supporters don't believe anyone else. Who is going to shed light on China's claims? One big lie against another big lie does not provide truth.

Clinton was a kleptocrat, Obama pretty much did ACA and then sat by watching as congress burned. Clinton seriously damaged the country, Obama didn't do much harm and tried to help.

Bush II and Clinton? Those two go together pretty well, corrupt dishonest people enriching their cronies. Obama and Clinton don't have much in common.

I suppose neither of them is an immediately identifiable imbecile but Clinton is not that far from Trump while Obama was miles away. Clinton was lucky Bush I left him with stuff in good shape...

This is an area where the government can make useful contributions. Individuals don't make rational decisions on these things. Antibiotics for farm animals don't help the animals, cause significant changes in intestinal bacteria for humans, and cause bacteria to become resistant, but all farms use them. Antibacterial cleaners and dish soap have no measurable advantage to people using them but also cause antibiotic resistance once they get dumped down the sewer. Companies were pushed to make less of them but consumers want them. People poison themselves and their kids.

Individuals don't make good decisions. Regulation can help. Banning phosphates was a good thing.

It does, just the browsers use the anonymous user. I suppose it amounts to the same thing but ftp servers can and used to authenticate. There is no obligation for servers to allow anonymous access.

Transit and cars are not always for the same thing. I don't want to sit in traffic with all the other people going to work so I take the subway. I don't want to drag my groceries onto a bus, and I want to shop in places that are not easily reached by transit so I drive at times when there are less people on the road and I don't have to sit in traffic.

In spite of US politics this is not an us against them issue, it's a matter of doing what works. Cars and transit are for different things. Guns are for different things inside and outside cities. Anyone who things government is bad should not be governing.

The US has particular problems, at least in the south. Some of the problems are weird. I took the subway to the airport in Atlanta and saw only one other person, a homeless black man, in the whole train. After a weekend at a convention with free meals and shows it made for a sort of weird experience. The subway was nice, clean, safe, and empty. All the temporarily embarrassed millionaires can't be seen on public transit. In most other countries transit is just another option, bike, drive, commute, walk, don't hate your neighbors because some horrible politician tells you to...

Neither party can propose someone good. Both parties propose people who will wallow in the swamp while producing sound bites about draining the swamp. The people getting the tax cuts want more tax cuts and more gap between themselves and everyone else so that they can hire more service staff and treat them worse. Good politicians don't help anyone in power. Bush I was dumped because he had some shame and cared for his country. Obama was an error. The corrupt incompetents are intentional, both Clintons, Bush II, Trump...

Knocking the government, accusing people of their own failures, obvious corruption... It's a strategy. It is making many bad people rich worldwide. The people messing with the US are doing the same thing in all other western democracies and 99.9% of people are worse off for it. Propaganda works, though it is easier when you only have two lizards to choose from.

And every version got worse and now it really sucks. But probably not as badly as what it will be replaced by. Music is depressingly free now. You can go to youtube music free and browse pretty much anything on itunes as long as you are willing to listen to obnoxiously bad ads.

They provide free music to force you to listen to ads that will ensure you shun the advertised products. The business model is perfectly awful. And the artists get pretty much nothing, well, except for the ones pushed in ads and those wouldn't have to be pushed in ads if anyone wanted to listen to them.

please, please upgrade. We're begging you. Give us money for a worse version of windows because we won't provide patches for the version that you run.

We've obfuscated stuff, we've hidden all the features another level down, we've damaged usability, but give us money anyway...

I no longer feel like an idiot for sticking with firefox.

A number of people, notable Karl Rove, have found democracy easy to manipulate. It is similar where I live, random apolitical people hear their local newscaster get worked up about something they don't know about and they get worked up about it. Then they end up voting for some random politician who started the whole thing. Brexit was well campaigned so that a few rich people and nasty politicians got what they wanted in spite of democracy. It is very easy to get people to: -mock others instead of arguing -denegrate minorities -kick people when they are down -believe that some tiny group has huge influence -dislike other groups, racial, cultural, urban/rural -fake outrage about things the outraged person is blatantly doing -move the goalposts It is much easier to manipulate people and vote based on that than to provide good government. Politicians around the world, with the help of trolls and propaganda, are abandoning work for the people and just taking what they can grab. It's not a conspiracy, it's easy self interest. Same thing in the US, there is no secret conspiracy, just a lot of rich people openly schmoozing to stay that way. No problems as long as the people doing it have no shame, as soon as they see themselves in the mirror it's over.