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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • You strawmanned about the BYD factory, which I never mentioned, clearly you’re engaging in bad faith. The use of ughur slave labour throughout the economy, or indentured workers at places like foxcon is better documented than the recent conviction of Donald Trump. I have no more reason to cite sources for this than a comment referencing the earth being round or Ukraine being at war.

    The only possible way to be ignorant of these facts is by choice. I don’t care if people who choose ignorance refute my claims, no evidence I could provide would change that anyway and again, it isn’t my responsibility to deprogram anyone.

    I am certainly not making scientific claims in an academic paper or publishing breaking news with an obligation to cite sources, I’m providing commentary on that which has already been well documented and in doing so, insinuating (very different from claiming, which you seem to have missed) that the Chinese state supports the use of what is, effectively, slave labour.


  • “Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

    Weird how tankies and anti-semites use the same tricks to push their agenda.



  • Yeah when you use literal slaves instead of union labour, costs are down. I’m not willing to trade my humanity to save a few dollars and a debatable improvement to the climate disaster (I doubt the manufacture and extraction practices in China are anything approaching clean).

    IMO this is a rare case of Washington doing the right thing.

    Edit For the benefit of anyone at risk of being fooled by authoritarian propaganda, there is a plethora of evidence of slave labour used throughout the Chinese economy, from uyghur muslims to foxcons indentured workers. It’s prevelent through the supply chain for many, many industries, and that alone warrants discentives on imports until such time as these practices end.

    To suggest that individual businesses, who are built within this system, may be somehow operating outside of it is clearly absurd, however it’s simply not possible for a layman to unpack and debate the supply chains and business practices hidden behind the bamboo curtain.

    The discourse below is an example of how bad faith arguments can create doubt, by employing strawman arguments and ignoring actual points raised to create the appearance of being reasonable by hiding behind “citation needed” type arguments. If you read through it, you’ll see that the propagandist doesn’t once engage in anything I’ve actually said - this is intentional, they do not want to be in a position where any claim they make can be contested, nor do they actually want to directly contest any claim I’ve made. Rather they only want to sow doubt in what I’m saying, which takes considerably more effort to discredit than any actual claim.






  • Well, by that established-powers created definition every single act of war meant to cower civilians or other states is terrorism unless in committed in one’s own homeland (this latter exception because governments can make sure it’s “lawful” where they are soverign, but their law does not extend outside their borders)

    There are international laws, however unenforced, that so called terrorist states regularly violate.

    Bombing of Dresden during WWII: terrorism

    I think the intent was to target factories which are considered part of the military establishment, but probably.

    What Israel is doing right now in Gaza and all pretty much every single action of Israel in Palestine, outside it’s UN approved borders: terrorism

    Is that even in question? Obviously indiscriminat bombing of a civilian population to drive them to migrate as refugees is terrorism.

    Almost every single United States military operation, cover and overt outside it’s own borders: terrorism

    When the USA invaded Iraq everyone around me was calling the US a terrorist state and there were mass protests in my country, Australia, at the our governments choice to be complicit in that. I would say that western countries tend to use more targeted attacks so they don’t usually meet their own definition of terrorist, but the USA nuclear bombs example as an example of terrorism is far from the only case.

    I guess when Australia. Soldier Ben Roberts-Smith was found to be guilty of specific war crimes in Afghanistan they didn’t use the blanket term “terrorism”, but the guy is clearly a terrorist despite being a white Westerner.

    By your very own statement (unproven, I might add) that an organization that commits acts of terrorism per that definition is a “terrorist movement”, then the US is a “terrorist movement”, as is Israel and for example just about every nation that invaded Iraq (as there was no UN mandate, hence it wasn’t lawful and a lot of actions done there were definitelly “use of violence and intimidation” for the most definitelly “political” aim of changing the government there).

    What do mean unproven? I’ve quoted the dictionary definition from Google. You’re welcome to define terrorism however you want, but the most widely used definition, per most English language dictionaries, is to the effect of the use of violence against civilians or other non combatants to further political or social change.

    Interestingly enough by your definition what Nazi Germany did to the Jews inside its own borders was not terrorism, because it was “lawful” in Germany at the time.

    What the Nazis did is why we now have the Geneva convention and international laws around human rights. While those laws may not have existed at the time, plenty of Germans were tried and found guilty of them afterwards.

    Most of what follows you seem to be arguing on what I consider to be the mistaken belief that there is no such thing as international law.

    Israel as it exists right now is a terrorist state. I’m not stating that meaning I, in any way, agree with those who are calling for the obliteration of the state of Israel, but prior to Oct 7 the authorities were clearly selectively enforcing laws that allowed for violence and other acts of terror against Palestinians, both by the state itself and by private citizens. They clearly have been acting in violation of international law for a long time.


  • By your definition there is no such thing as a “terrorist movement”. Outside of lone Wolf insane people, no terrorists objective is to create terror purely for terrorsnsake. Terrorism is the tool they use to pursue their objectives. It’s right there in the definition of terrorism.

    the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

    The IRA bombings of London were because they wanted the UK to leave northern Ireland, Al Quieda orchestrated September 11th to scare Americans out of supporting their agenda in the middle east. The US nukes in japan were to force Japan’s surrender in world war 2. Every major act of terrorism has a specific goal. Hamas is no different, their goal is to destroy the state of Israel. Israel being invaders, terrorists, thieves etc doesn’t change that Hamas is a terrorist organization.


  • I used to have a pebble back in the day, and then later a pebble steel. I’ve not found a modern smartwatch that is as good for my needs (partially because it doesn’t look like a smartwatch).

    I use a Samsung Galaxy wear, which also looks like a normal watch. I’m sure competing products are used a lot and you just don’t notice them because their styling is modelled off of dumb watches.


  • If people wanted them, they’d sell them here.

    Yeah depending on where “here” is different things are available. If people don’t buy them or if dealers make more money off SUVs, then they will be gone.

    Also seems they have bigger engines and clearly a larger physical footprint than my wife’s CUV, so that argument is gone as well.

    Size and fuel economy weren’t things I mentioned above, but yeah I agree with you. Usually station wagons, like SUVs, have different engine configurations which dictates fuel economy more than ride height. The fuel efficiency argument against SUVs is a little out of date, the smaller ones are shared chassis with passenger cars often with the same engine, so fuel economy is more or less unchanged (the aero is worse on an SUV, but the kind we are discussing it’s not really significant). By footprint I guess you mean length, which in the example I have is right, obviously height goes the other way. Smaller SUVs are more comparable to hatchbacks (eg Mazda 3 is the same as CX-30), I don’t think the mid sized car platform is as directly comparable to the mid sized CUV/SUV.





  • People always down vote when I point that out as well lol. Windows mobile was already moving towards icon based UIs pre iPhone, so while the UI was a definite improvement it wasn’t the revolution it’s made out to be. The iPhone 1 had no app store or 3g so was not good for emails and, back in 2007 when flash still mattered, couldn’t access most of the Internet where windows phone could. I’m pretty sure it was successful purely based on the iPods popularity, at least until the iPhone 3gs and app store came out and the iPhone became arguably a better smartphone than those that came before.