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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I hate the language around the federal budget. First, how budget figures are reporting in 10 year intervals, when everything else is reported in 1 year intervals. So everything sounds 10 times bigger. When like only 5% of the population ever looks at the federal budget, this creates a TON of confusion.

    Second, how reductions in tax (like to the rich) are reported as “giveaways”. Taxes go in, not out. That’s a reduction in revenue, not an expenditure or liability. You can say, “shift the tax burden even more onto the lower and middle classes”. Then it’s actually accurate. Getting fired from your job is not an expense, it’s a loss of income. Same thing.



  • Taking just the “solution” of reintroducing predators - it’s still not the same. Predation specifically targets old, weak, sick members of a herd. What do hunters do? It’s what, a tag limit and age limit, and that’s it.

    This whole conversation always seems so disingenuous. People doing hunting claim these altruistic motives, but have every adverse incentive that has nothing to do with those motives, from stocking their freezers to just bragging about what they hunted. Let’s be for real here, you’re not scientists or veterinarians carefully monitoring and managing a population, what you’re doing is taking the first justification you can find for what you already wanted to do.













  • Bytedance’s long-term hope is naturally to be able to continuing operating everywhere without violating any laws. Right? Therefore, their strategy is to stay as compliant as possible with various national laws (within reason), right? Therefore they have to take a conservative reading of the bill (PAFACA). So let’s look at the text of the bill:

    https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/7521/text

    (1) PROHIBITION OF FOREIGN ADVERSARY CONTROLLED APPLICATIONS.—It shall be unlawful for an entity to distribute, maintain, or update (or enable the distribution, maintenance, or updating of) a foreign adversary controlled application by carrying out, within the land or maritime borders of the United States, any of the following: […]

    Now, the actual distribution of TikTok is done by a U.S. corp, incorporated in California and Delaware. That corp has to stay compliant with these laws. Therefore, to maintain or update or enable the distribution of an app as defined in this bill, is legally punishable. Make sense? Particularly because the law mentions them by name, there is basically zero legal defense against it besides contesting its constitutionality. Which the horrifically corrupt Supreme Court upheld.

    So, probably the only way they felt comfortable resuming operations in the U.S. was with some kind of written agreement with the Trump admin - as of yet undisclosed.