So what you’re saying is, the complaint about China spying on people boils down to piracy?

There’s always the worst possible option: they’re true believers. They genuinely believe the rest of the world is freeloading on the US, and that (atlas) shrugging them off will make everyone else collapse.

Nah, it’s because they can change you for the battery, but you could sue them for drinking the juice.

Another reminder that France, Spain, and Italy forced the Bolivian president’s plane to land in Austria because they thought Snowden was on it.

It’s by design very verbose and “English”-like, like instead of x=y*z it would go “MULTIPLY y BY z GIVING x”, the idea was that it would read almost like natural language, so that non-tech staff could understand it.

People thought COBOL would let managers write code.

Reminds me of Reagan, actually. That was more or less the response he and Bush gave back when a US ship shot down an Iranian airliner.

Bait used to be believable.

They think they’re Aragorn and we’re orcs.

No big surprise. Remember back when they extract- I mean, evacuated the “white helmets”?

Username checks out, at least.

You got it backwards - just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

I’m actually shocked

I’m not. Ever since the war, every single closet xenophobe of the west has been taking full advantage of finally having an acceptable group of subhumans to hate. If any of this surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention.

Frankly that sounds like “OK, I did install a camera in your bedroom, but it’s not like it’s on or anything!”

We cannot allow a mineshaft gap!

If it did, the heater wouldn’t look like this.

The concern is legitimate, but it falls into the same “never again - to us” pit Israel fell into. Another potential framing one could take of the issue - one I feel is more helpful - would go something like: 80 years ago, the world got together to help save Germany from itself, and it’s time to return the favor, hopefully before it gets completely out of hand like last time.

And they do. My Philips TV didn’t even ask for DNS until hardcoded IPs for Netflix et al. timed out. And when it did, it asked Google, not my router.

Palestine is actually an interesting A/B test: you have Gaza, that is resisting, and West Bank, that is collaborating, and you can compare the results:

• Gaza is being subjected to periodical flare-ups of genocide, causing much consternation in the world media, and despite the world governments largely continuing to back Israel, the sheer mask-off nature of the violence seems to have caused the public opinion to shift.

• West Bank is being subjected to constant low level ethnic cleansing, disposession, and removal. There are occasional pogroms, but overall it’s been quiet and ignorable. Consequently, most people forget they even exist, and those that do can get away with “hoping for peace”, thoughts-and-prayers style, as the removal continues.

You be the judge.