So wait, you honestly think there's a difference? It's a one-party dictatorship. Ask your grandpa how that works in practice.

Oh, can you tell me what the explanations are? All I see is, "we don't know so we shouldn't learn". Can you at least tell me how that makes sense? I mean, you said it, so you should be able to tell me how researching something we don't know enough about is bad.

USA has a democratically elected fascist regime, you can't discuss around that.

To have a huge part of your infrastructure owned and operated and capable of being remotely disabled by a rather brutal dictatorship?

I mean I get it, electric car go vroom! But I feel like I shouldn't have to explain why allowing this is a bad idea.

Realistically I understand that the ruling elite of Europe gets along just fine with the ruling elite of China just like America gets along just fine with the ruling elite of Saudi Arabia despite them being a brutal dictatorship and America ostensibly being a free democracy, voter suppression not withstanding.

Honestly it's just another example of how we as a species aren't really built for or capable of navigating a global geopolitical landscape. We are not built for social structures this large and complex we're supposed to be in a group of about maybe a hundred people chasing down antelope until they're too tired to fight back...

Rhey did this 90-ish years ago and learned their lesson.

After having witnessed that, and having access to the same learning material... USA, the home of Google, is reimplementing this same bullshit. TODAY.

What's the excuse here?

Because if we go far enough back, everyone was an animal.

But Humanity arguably evolved, and many things considered Ok once are not anymore.

So let's compare the US to the gist of modern-age civilization, essentially enlightenment-level headspace.

And no Saudi Arabia isn't modern age enlightenment-level civilization, and was never considered as such.

Are all going to poor rural communities. The kind that are about to lose all their hospitals because the last round of billionaire tax cuts into big beautiful bill cut Medicaid funding.

The communities will push back but the state governments will override them and because of voter suppression and culture War panic bullshit you've got right wing corporate asshats in charge of everything at the state level. It's especially funny because the people getting screwed over often voted for those asshats specifically and explicitly because they were promised control of their communities and small government.

Government small enough to drown in a bathtub. That's the goal of the modern right wing. You want a government that's in control of the kind of people who show up in the files. If the government's too big like a nice big national government it's tough to control that because it's so large. But if it's too small like your county level that can be tough too because there's so much to oversee and control. So they prefer to have everything done at about the state level which is big enough that they can exert power but small enough that they can drown it in a bathtub as needed.

I have said it before and I'll say it again I don't think we can stop this at this point. We let shit get too bad. I used to think the baby boomers were at least going to escape but except for the older ones I think the shit is going to hit the fan so fast because of so many years of voting for right-wing pro corporate assholes that even they aren't going to get away from it.

The crap I am seeing in the stock market right now where it's being structured to loot 401K savings and what's left of the pension system is just insane.

Well, when you learn how to present a coherent argument, I won't have to seek clarification.

What's incoherent? Well, you say we don't know enough about the brain to accomplish the end goal, but at the same time denounce the research endeavor that would provide the knowledge you say we don't have. You're just spinning your wheels in the muck, hosing everyone with shit but never getting anywhere.

Do you think learning more about how the brain works is worthwhile or not? If you do think it worthwhile, why condemn people for doing the research? If you don't, why not just say so?

Stop spinning your damn wheels and drive to an f-ing point!

I'm talking about the consequences of hiring more people to do the admin work as opposed to automating it, or even better, eliminating it. More staff means more admin. That's unavoidable.

Are you not aware that the PRC is a one-party state and that the CCP is indistinguishable from the government? Did you not know that BYD's founder and CEO is a Party member? Or that the government owns "golden" shares in the company? 11% of CATL is owned by the state. I don't have time right now to look through the board, but there will be several CCP members on it. There always are. It's mandatory.

You do understand you're still tracked right? eBay knows who bought the SIM and they know who sold the SIM. It's child's Play to track that person down.

So is an American I am very close to becoming a fascist nation. We are One More term of trump away from that. JD Vance would do it too but I think he would probably lose unless the Democrats fuck up again and run another unlikable woman because they insist on it in which case even JD Vance could be president...

So I'm at the point where I am seriously considering the need to be untraceable like somebody in China or Russia would want to be untraceable by their government. That's a consideration I need to start having. Whether or not the ministry of Truth is going to knock on my door and take me away.

The problem is that that is so far into the territory of science fiction in people's minds that when it's actually happening you just can't fathom it

I'm saying that the majority trade it there privacy and their ability to organize without oversight from the ruling elite for bullshit like woke and transgendered girls in sports and the drug war panic and a whole bunch of other nonsense.

I'm saying that you make decisions about who you're going to vote for and for the majority of Americans maybe you maybe not you those decisions are made based on incredibly stupid things that have no impact on their daily lives and that often make their daily lives worse when implemented.

I'm trying to get you to think about when you vote what you're trading and what you're getting for that trade. Because in any modern complex political system you are going to have to make trade offs and statistically if you're an American one of those trade-offs is going to be some little pet moral panic or culture War issue that you prioritize over privacy and economic security.

You know you can just turn off your gps? I got in the habit of doing it because it saves a lot of battery life. Same with Wi-Fi I turn it off when I go out to save battery life.

If you want more privacy you can use Firefox. If you want even more there are alternative versions of Android you can run.

Americans especially seem to have a really really hard time with nuance.

There is a difference between having my movement tracked in a way that requires multiple layers of protections to get a warrant versus how easy it is to connect my cell phone data to my person when my carrier can know every single thing I'm doing instantly.

Just right at the moment I can live with the fact that my carrier can do that. In a few years maybe halfway through Trump's third term that might not be true anymore. Again nuance.

You need to get away from black and white thinking but unfortunately the human brain likes doing that because we like to take mental shortcuts to save on energy so we can focus on the big scary tiger that's going to jump out of the grass and eat us. Evolution did not prepare you or me for the modern world.

There is a massive amount of difference between a company that works with a government and one that is directly controlled by a government. When a company's board is comprised of Party members and the Chinese government owns "golden shares" of it, it is an organ of the government. That is quite different from having to obey domestic laws.

NSLs are limited in scope and can be challenged in court. The CCP will not challenge itself in court nor refuse to comply with itself, nor deny itself any information it possesses.

Here's the poll - https://news.gallup.com/poll/6...