Historical blessings from the internet of yore.

Classic “the sweetness” era Ze Frank.

I spotted a documentary that addresses the language issue at a tangential level that I put in the trailers community earlier last week…

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/16657105

I’m curious about the speed variations of the spinning circular piece (positioned to act as the violins’ bow).

A video sponsored by a housing developer, suggesting that the real problem with the cost of housing is high taxes and the pesky nay-saying public.

They also never mention the high and increasing vacancy rate of newly built luxury housing. Just trust us! Rich people will move in soon!

Just across the border from Vancouver, the Seattle Housing Authority is rebuilding modern apartment complexes that are actually intended for low income, disabled and first-gen immigrant residents, not luxury condos that some theoretical rich person maybe might buy someday.

Asking the person you’re debating to look up your own citations is certainly one way to converse. But ok, let’s go for it.

In Aug 2023, Forbes published an article describing the proposal of “unfettered access” you referred to:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/08/21/draft-tiktok-cfius-agreement/

In June 2024, the Washington Post reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) turned down the proposal and includes some broad reporting as to why:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/tiktok-offered-an-extraordinary-deal-the-u-s-government-took-a-pass/ar-BB1nfAcE

The article isn’t very technical, but it mentions some interesting responsibility angles that the US wouldn’t want to back themselves into:

• throwing open some, but not all, doors to server operations and source code creates a mountain of work for the government to inspect, which would be a workload nightmare
• the US government’s deepest concerns seem to be about what data is going out (usage insights on the virtuous side and clipboard/mic/camera monitoring on the ultra shady side) and data coming in (bespoke content intended to influence US residents of China-aligned goals). Usage insights are relatively benign from national security perspective (especially when you can just mandate that people in important roles aren’t permitted to use it). Shady monitoring should be discoverable through app source code monitoring, which you can put the app platforms (Apple, Google, whoever else) on the hook for if they continue to insist on having walled app gardens (and if you trust them at all). The content shaping is harder to put your finger on though, since it’s super easy to abstract logic as far out as you need to avoid detection. “Here, look at these 50M lines of code that run stateside, and yeah, there are some API calls to stuff outside the sandbox. Is that such a big deal?” Spoiler: it is a big deal.
• the US can’t hold Byte Dance accountable so long as it remains in China. Let’s say the US agreed to all this, spent all the effort to uncover some hidden shady activity that they don’t like (after an untold amount of time has passed). What then? They can’t legally go after Byte Dance’s foreign entity. The US can prosecute the US employees, but it’s totally possible to organize in such a way that leaves those domestic employees free from misdeeds, leaving prosecutors unable to enforce misdeeds fairly. It’d be a mess.

The second article explains this somewhat, but I’m admittedly painting some conjecture on top regarding how a malicious actor could behave. I’ve got no evidence that Byte Dance is actually doing any of that.

But going back to the “influence the public” angle, I’m struggling to see how different TikTok is versus NHK America (Japan’s American broadcasts) or RT (American media from the Russian standpoint) aside from being wildly more successful and popular. But I guess that’s all there is to it.

I’d prefer our leaders also be transparent with us regarding their concerns about TikTok. The reductive “because China!!1!” argument is not compelling on its own.

Do you have any citation for that?

Does ByteDance publish TikTok’s transmission protocol to demonstrate transparency?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_Protocol

I’d recommend watching it on a phone or laptop with headphones with one of the ear pieces taken out.

I tried uploading the unedited clip on its own a few days ago, but it was removed for violating copyright. Compositing the videos together counts as new/unique content, and the muxed audio does help bolster this claim.

If you have a vpn, you might try opening a connection within one of the counties that is streaming the games for free and try to watch on one of their websites.

I really appreciate the added context here, pointing out the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership documents that were written for Regan’s first term as well as for Trump in 2016.

A common talking point seems to be that this is just a wishlist, not actual policy, though high percentages of the recommendations (2/3rds) DO end up as policy.

Some select quotes:

Respectability is a prison and the gates are open and people are desperate to be inside.

You can criticize ideas, but you cancel people. And I think the cancel culture thing… I think it’s the new book burning.

Another friend of mine went, “You need to just right-size this.” (…) She said, “What’s happened here? You told a joke and some people didn’t like it. That’s what happened.” It didn’t seem like that big a deal when you put it like that. And yet, in the moment, sometimes it feels catastrophic.

You can’t have an easy life and a great character.

All of these quotes are in reference to general ideas so far as I can tell – the overall concepts of respectability and “cancel culture”, not specific instances. And I think the interview missed a huge opportunity to dig deeper on these ideas by citing specific examples to start picking at those broad takes.

Cancel culture applies to people who make choices that hurt others and are unrepentant about it. It’s not about the choices; we all fuck up from time to time. It’s about the lack of remorse. That’s what speaks to a person’s true nature. And if a person’s true nature leads them to unapologetically hurt people, then they’re a piece of shit person and I’m justified in wanting nothing to do with them.

For your hypothetical scenario to make more sense, the US would have had to annex Baja California just a decade prior, then straight up have gone to forward invasion war with Mexico to annex more, bombing the shit out of the country including children’s hospitals.

In that scenario, fuck yes Mexico would be justified in finding allies to help them maintain sovereignty and protect themselves.

That’s what happens when nations invade one another.

The real take-away line here was this:

Do you understand the opportunity here? Do you have any idea how thirsty Americans are for any hint of inspiration or leadership and release from this choice of a megolomaniac and a suffocating gerentocricy? It is crushing our fucking spirit! Do you have any idea what could be ahead of you?

Andrew Callaghan really seems interested in these semi-maligned, culturally misunderstood do-gooder figures lately.

You’ve got this guy. A short while back there was Retro Bill in the DARE Conference video. And Kevin Morse in the Kia Boys film.

This looks to me like not-so-subtle virtue signaling to fans who want to look past his sexual misconduct allegations and just get back to guilt-free consumption of salacious, cool-real-shit Channel 5 content.

I freely admit that Callaghan is dynamite at this genre and he’s comfortably sliding into a huge void that Vice has left behind, so he gets credit where credit is due there. But this doesn’t count for “doing the work” when trying to reacquire the public’s good graces after being a creep. But, you know, he doesn’t have to if he doesn’t want to. There are still thousands upon thousands of people who don’t care about any of that and are happy to let his shit behavior slide if they get to keep seeing cool new videos.

Just a reminder: yesterday (June 4 2024) marked the 35 year anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre.

Some relevant links:

• Associated Press: Silence and heavy security in China and Hong Kong mark 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen crackdown
• Hong Kong Free Press: In Pictures: Hong Kong’s US, EU consulates mark Tiananmen crackdown anniversary with candles
• Al Jazeera: Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te says Tiananmen ‘will not disappear in torrent of history’

Look how they massacred my boy…

I’m genuinely disappointed that Asbestos Cafe is basically forbidden now. That’d be a solid name for a hardcore alcoholic vegan bar.

For a progressive, having a fascist opposition party is ultimately detrimental to the non-fascist party as well.

“The good guys” only need to hold the specter of fascism over their constituents’ heads and demand that their voters fall in line, rather than blazing trails for truly progressive ideals. It also ramps down incentives for party politicians to maintain good ethical hygiene (with no legitimate alternative for people to choose from in the event of bad behavior).

At what point do we get to stop holding our collective noses to vote for the lesser of two evils? If we’re talking about the complexity of holding multiple ideas in our heads at one time, why can’t the Biden administration publicly acknowledge that:

1. the Oct 7 2023 attack on Israel was an act of war,
2. Israel is committing a genocide in response,
3. these are both unacceptable, and
4. we’re going to fucking do something about it.

Is this really such an abominable idea? If so, why???

I like Bernie and AOC, and I’m thankful for their joy (despite their exhaustion) over growing the progressive caucus. But what’s the plan to grow the movement?

I’m trans and I’m ready to fight. When I volunteered for Biden in 2020 and they had me soft-phone cold-calling voters in swing states to make sure they’d go vote, it was the biggest waste of time I’d ever spent volunteering. Nobody wants a cold call, and even if they did, the latency of soft phones destroys the ability to communicate like a regular human person. Further, being trans, a) my voice is a perpetual betrayal, and b) I acknowledge that my identity is too marginal to be useful to reaching the centrist constituency that they so desperately seek.

So this year I’ll be volunteering in local elections, supporting local leaders who are more aligned to the causes that are important to me. I’m here to support the next Bernie and AOC.

The Biden camp is welcome to go canvas the dying malls and suburbs of the blue USA for help in their re-election army, and honestly I wish them the very best. Good luck with that.

If they want my help (and the help of so many more), I’ll be waiting for them to earn it.

These are legitimate challenges that activitypub faces. I’m glad that they’re popping up like this so they can be observed, mitigated and planned for in the future.

FYI, for folks interested in keeping up with the latest trailers for movies, games and tv, we’ve got a community for that. :)

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