Categories? I don’t use categories. Just a single giant list! Also, I never clear out my email inbox and let it pile up into the thousands! And no one can stop me. MWHAHAHAA!

Because it’s clearly being banned, not because of privacy violations, not because of the nefarious impact of a foreign government, but because of the content that is shared on it. It is the only major social media platform with a strong pro-Palestinian viewpoint on it. And the people in Congress have been caught on camera explicitly stating this is why they want to ban it.

I hate Tiktok. I don’t use it. Never have. But I still don’t want to see the US turn its internet into the Great Firewall of China 2.0.

The leaders in Congress cannot stand the idea of there being a social media platform that is popular in the US that isn’t hosted in the US. Why? The answer is simple - control. All the US social media platforms are heavily influenced by the US government. Hell, most of them openly contract with the NSA. Facebook is an NSA contractor. These platforms get a ton of money from the US government. And despite what conservatives bitch at in regards to “being censored,” the real censorship is against anything that doesn’t advance US power and influence. Outside of Tiktok, the major platforms heavily censor pro-Palestinian messages and stories. Go to r/worldnews and post anything other than “Palestinians deserve to be vaporized,” and you’ll be banned within 5 minutes. It’s literally that bad. Even when outright bans aren’t in place, the platforms will severely down shift any pro-Palestinian content and keep it out of peoples’ feeds.

“Beware of he would would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master.”

Death is rather difficult to define precisely. If you define it as “the cessation of consciousness,” then you die every night. Every sleep cycle has some portions of minimal brain activity. There’s nobody home for these periods.

It really wouldn’t be the end of NATO. Greece and Turkey have had numerous spats while both NATO countries. An Article 5 resolution can be vetoed by any other NATO member. The US would assuredly do this.

A much more worrying possibility would be Denmark specifically withdrawing from or reducing cooperation with NATO. Forget Greenland, Denmark itself is in a very strategic location, considering its place in the Baltic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motonormativity

Depends on the fine print of the contract I imagine. “Spread” for instance could be interpreted to only meaning naturally spread. I would argue that if a fire spreads by arson, it isn’t the same fire spreading to a new area, but an entirely new fire being formed.

Aww, I was hoping his name was Luigi, just to make things even stranger.

No, it’s about having the infrastructure for it. And even car infrastructure is a huge luxury compared to bike infrastructure. It costs cities 10x to support one car commute as it does to support 1 bike commute.

Most people just live in areas that demand that luxury transportation be the only form of transportation. That doesn’t mean cars suddenly are no longer luxuries, simply because your area chose to make practical transportation options impossible. You can pass a law making stretch limos the only road legal vehicle. That won’t change the fact that stretch limos are ridiculous luxury vehicles.

That sounds like an infrastructure problem. If you built roads that were only accessible by literal monster trucks, would you try to pretend that monster trucks are suddenly practical necessities instead of ridiculous extravagances? Your aunt just lives in an area where they decided that it’s OK to require people to make a big luxury purchase just in order to get around. It may be necessary to buy a big luxury in some areas, but that doesn’t mean cars suddenly become the transportation of the working class.

You have to have to be suffering from a severe case of motornormativity to believe the clown math that a $2k purchase is a luxury while a $40k purchase is a necessity.

I’m talking the machines themselves. A car costs 10x what an e-bike does. Yes, infrastructure sucks in many places. That doesn’t change the fact that a car is objectively a luxury compared to a bicycle. You live in an area that has made getting around in a luxury vehicle the only practical option. That doesn’t mean cars aren’t luxury vehicles. People who live in areas that mandate that the all homes must be at least 10,000 ft^2 don’t automatically become poor.

Cars are a luxury, while bicycles are utility. We just build our cities with classism in mind. We build our cities to require expensive luxury travel modes, all in some misguided attempt to keep the poors out.

I’m just talking basic economics. A car costs 10x what an e-bike does. A car is, by any logical definition of the word, a luxury purchase compared to an e-bike. You just live in an area where you’ve decided that everyone needs to get around in luxury vehicles, and you’ve built that into your infrastructure. This would be like building all of our infrastructure to only accommodate stretch limos, and then trying to argue that limos are a necessity. It’s comically absurd. It’s a clown world.

Why are you talking about infrastructure? You’re changing the subject. Obviously the infrastructure needs to support them, just as cars are pretty damn useless without good road infrastructure. But cars are objectively an order of magnitude more complex and expensive than e-bikes. Cars are a luxury, bicycles are a utility. The key problem is that many cities are built to require you to use the luxury means of travel instead of the affordable utilitarian ones.

If you can afford a car, you can afford an e-bike, even a cargo e-bike. Cars are luxuries compared to bicycles. Never forget that.

Behold…the future of green power. No steam or water needed at all!

Yes, you recognize the fact, but you haven’t internalized its implications. You can only have a universal present in a universe of shared time. Ultimately, “the present” is something applicable to and that exists within the mind of a single observer.

One of the hallmarks of science is that different people can independently measure something and confirm its existence. If no two observers can ever agree on what constitutes “the present,” then how can “the present” be said to exist at all? It’s a fundamentally unscientific concept.

You’re still imagining that there is some fixed universe playing out at constant time, and that we all just experience the echoes of this present in different orders. This isn’t what relativity says. Clocks traveling near the speed of light don’t just appear to slow down, they actually slow down.

Different regions of the universe don’t even experience the same flow rate of time. Someone living on a mountaintop experiences time faster than someone at sea level. And yet you cling to this fantasy of their being some universal “present.” You cannot have a universal present in a universe composed of different flow rates of time!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relativity_of_simultaneity

The present does not exist. From the previous link:

It can be argued that special relativity eliminates the concept of absolute simultaneity and a universal present: according to the relativity of simultaneity, observers in different frames of reference can have different measurements of whether a given pair of events happened at the same time or at different times, with there being no physical basis for preferring one frame’s judgments over those of another. However, there are events that may be non-simultaneous in all frames of reference: when one event is within the light cone of another—its causal past or causal future—then observers in all frames of reference show that one event preceded the other. The causal past and causal future are consistent within all frames of reference, but any other time is “elsewhere”, and within it there is no present, past, or future. There is no physical basis for a set of events that represents the present.

Many philosophers have argued that relativity implies eternalism.[6] Philosopher of science Dean Rickles says that, "the consensus among philosophers seems to be that special and general relativity are incompatible with presentism.

If two observers will disagree on which events happened in “the present,” then “the present” cannot exist as a real universal entity. “The present” only makes any physical sense in classical, pre-20th century Newtonian mechanics.

This is why the block universe or eternalism makes more sense.

And yet, you’ve concocted this fantasy that you call “the present,” as if such a thing could exist in a relativistic universe…

You assume the past and present no longer exist. You have no proof of this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time)

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