"Booby trap" is a description of its concealedness. These are concealed, on purpose. That's the issue.
Moreover, they're not barbed wire, they're razor wire. There's a massive difference between barbed wire and razor wire.
133arc585
joined 1 year ago
"Democracy" in China is significantly more democratic than in places like the USA. In the USA, you're presented with a false dichotomy in the two-party system, where both parties are parties for wealthy interests. Neither party is a party of the people. In China, for example, elections are "non-politicized". Paraphrasing Richard Boer,
'Non-politicized' elections means that elections are not a manifestation of class conflict in antagonistic political parties, but are based on qualifications, expertise, and merit for positions.
When your vote is between candidates based on their qualifications and is not some charade of us-v-them where neither choice actually benefits the people, that is a more democratic system.
The USA is democratic in name only. People in the USA have little to no real political agency, but have been lead to believe their superficial interactions with the political system are real agency.
Common but disturbing behavior: investigating whether calling out fascism is a problem, but not invesgating whether fascism is a problem.
Punishing people for saying what they see.
Why would you reevaluate your position when you're getting exactly what you want though? If you think he's accidentally stumbled into fascist support, you're blind. He's specifically targeting fascist support. It does him good; I personally think he also truly believes in fascism, but either way, it does serve his goals.
People are sanctioned, people are unhappy, people protest their government that allowed it to happen. It’s how you put pressure on the leadership of a country.
This doesn't follow. First of all, no change happens internally in the USA despite its own citizens complaining of material conditions; so to say that people being unhappy and protesting necessarily leads to change is false. Second, every other sentence people say about Russia is calling it "authoritarian", "dictatorship", etc: you can't simultaneously pretend its an authoritarian dictatorship and also that the people protesting have any say in its trajectory.
You can’t force Russia’s hand in this, but you can make the situation for their people uncomfortable.
Which is just wrong. You're making the everyday civilian uncomfortable. You aren't doing anything against those who actually make decisions. Instead you're punishing someone for their nationality, or where they were born or choose to live. It's punishment for something they didn't do and it's not constructive.
The alternative would be to say “Russia pls open the grain corridor again” and I think you can imagine their response.
Sure, I understand that you're saying Russia isn't going to just cooperate with requests. But it's also not going to be any more likely to cooperate because you've made the lives of their citizens, or people of Russian ethnicity living on foreign soil, any harder.
In the end this just punishes innocent people and does nothing to achieve the stated goal.
Every nation should kick Russians out, block their accounts,
The Russian people are not making these decisions. Moreover, those who have left Russia are probably among the least likely to support Russia anyway.
What good comes from attacking the people of a country because you disagree with the leadership of the country? This is the same disgusting rhetoric used in the USA after 9/11 where there were widespread calls to kick out ALL Muslims and people from the middle east.
Yikes I had assumed it was just a transcription error from the poster here. But the actual Deutsche Welle article said "Acapulo" in the title. Mind you, the other 3 uses of the name in the article are all correct, just the (arguably most visible) one in the title is wrong.
Ok, two things are happening here.
they offer no reasonable basis for distrusting Signal, the tech that they attempt to vilify.
One, is that they did provide what they considered reasonable basis for distrusting Signal. Given that they thought Signal should not be trusted, the quote you posted is pretty obviously to be interpreted as: thankfully China hasn't naively adopted a compromised communications platform with a USA intelligence backdoor. Now, if you want to say their basis for distrust is not reasonable, or is false, that's completely fine. But in doing so it doesn't change the author's intent behind the quote which you posted.
Given said dev’s past comments, it is reasonable to infer that the reference to China presents them as an example to be followed here.
Two, is that it should be pretty clear they are saying China should be followed here in a very specific and explicit way: they aren't saying follow China in every way under the sun. It's very obvious from context and from what is explicitly said that they mean: China's distrust and refusal to adopt (what they consider) a platform with USA backdoors should be followed. And I think that's an entirely reasonable statement to make. No one should naively adopt compromised communications platforms.
There is no honest reading of the quote (especially given the rest of the context of the essay leading up to the quote) that could lead someone to conclude that this particular essay is (1) advocating for and supporting China spying on its citizens and (2) advocating for other countries following China in spying on citizens. It's pretty obvious the only honest reading of this is: "I believe Signal has USA backdoors. Given that, I'm glad China hasn't adopted its use heavily. I also think other countries should follow China in not naively accepting such technologies".
Again, you can disagree with the foundational reasons for distrust, and that could be very useful. But painting the essay and quote the way you (and others here) are is just intellectually dishonest. Disagree with what is actually said, not with what you imagine (or wish) was said.
But they serve ads. Do they say these ads are fully anonymized? The primary reason other vendors suck up all your data is precisely to serve ads. Why is Brave's serving ads different?
I personally don't find inserting affiliate referral codes acceptable either, but yes at the end of the day this is the user's preference whether or not this is all acceptable to them.
Not surprising unfortunately. There's no accountability or transparency; they can deny any application they want for any reason, and don't have to tell you why. As long as they don't come out and say it's due to being a member of a protected class (which they can act on indirectly, just can't say it out loud), they can get away with any reasoning.
Oh it's vile.
Lots of people list a property, take loads of applications, each with a nonrefundable application fee (often $100+), then close the listing and pretend it was leased out. They wait a bit and repeat the play. They can rake in thousands of dollars for literally making a posting on a website, and repeat this often. And it's often desperate people victimized too: not only are these people renting so they're already in a vulnerable situation, the people willing to pay high application fees typically are desperate to get a lease.
I've also seen places that make you pay an application fee, and as part of the screening process they run a credit check; if they aren't satisfied with your credit score, they'll deny you and of course keep the application fee. What's more nefarious about this though is that they don't give you a score cutoff; you don't know if your score meets their criteria until after you've paid a nonrefundable fee.
Using legality as a gauge for morality is not always the best thing to do, especially when these are law enforcement agencies operating entirely within the law.
So you're being wilfully obtuse. Nowhere was anyone implying the use of barbed wire is what makes it a booby trap. Every single time it was mentioned, it was clear: it is a booby trap because it is a purposefully hidden device meant to cause harm to those who stumble upon it by accident.
It also does matter the distinction between razor wire and barbed wire. Barbed wire you can hold in your hand. You can grip it, move your hand along it, and indeed are unlikely to be very harmed by encountering it; it is designed as an unpleasant deterrant, not a dangerous one. Razorwire, on the other hand, is designed to cause harm: every part of it is dangerous, and an encounter with it would result in deep lacerations.
But again, it could be barbed wire and my point would stand: the concealment of it is what makes it a booby trap, and what makes it a problem.