spit_evil_olive_tips
It’s like they made their stores as hostile as possible to shop in.
I saw a tweet that called it a “weird deodorant museum” and that phrase is now permanently etched into my brain. it’s such a perfect description, similar to “private taxi for your burrito” for Doordash etc.
the only place that consistently has my medication
is there a Costco near where you live? if so, you might give their pharmacy a try (you don’t need to pay for a Costco membership if all you’re doing is getting a prescription)
I had similar challenges finding a pharmacy that consistently has my ADHD medication in stock. a few months ago I tried Costco based on a recommendation from my doctor, so far they’ve been able to fill my prescription every month no problem.
me sowing (signing a bill into law and bragging about its bipartisan support): haha fuck yeah!
me reaping (hearing that the Supreme Court has ruled 9-0 to uphold the law that I signed): well this fucking sucks. what the fuck.
there’s always fierce competition in the category of Dumbest Own-Goal by a Democrat…but here comes President “only mostly dead…still slightly alive” Biden with a last-minute buzzerbeater and…MUH GAWD HE’S DONE IT!
tapping the “there are no good billionaires” sign
remember when Jeff Bezos bought the Washington Post, slapped “Democracy dies in darkness” on the masthead, and a bunch of MSNBC-brained liberals thought it was going to be the newspaper that led the resistance against Trump?
I just woke up from a years-long coma. could someone tell me how that worked out?
I’ve been very cynical about the TikTok ban, and assumed people would work around it by sideloading the APK on Android phones, after it was removed from the app stores (which, as I detailed in this comment, could theoretically get random users who share the APK with friends prosecuted by the federal government and charged with a $5000 per user fine)
but this is exceeding my wildest expectations
“oh, but it’s full of Chinese propaganda!!!” people will whine. cool. don’t care. Twitter and Facebook are full of American propaganda, no one seems to be falling over themselves to ban those apps from app stores.
if propaganda is the concern, have schools teach critical thinking and how to recognize propaganda techniques. they won’t do that, of course, because they want people to be susceptible to American propaganda.
haha class solidarity go brrr. the average American worker has more in common with the average Chinese worker than they do with an American oligarch. all of the American propaganda about how Chinese people are inherently untrustworthy and nefarious is gonna fall apart as people interact with actual Chinese people and realize “oh they’re pretty much just like me, other than the language barrier”.
and TikTok-style shortform video is very nearly the ideal medium for surmounting that language barrier. it was already commonplace to have captions in TikTok videos. start captioning videos on RedNote in both English and Chinese and bang, language differences don’t matter nearly as much anymore.
pretty strong “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes” vibes:
vs
meanwhile Israel will continue to illegally occupy & annex land, and take Palestinian hostages (except, when Israel does it, they’re not called hostages, they’re in “administrative detention”)
tapping the sign: Omar El Akkad, October 25th 2023
One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.
Apple announcing a new product would be news.
speculation that Apple might announce a new product…is not news.
“tiktok” does not appear to me to be a viewpoint
seriously? have you not paid attention to any of the arguments in favor of the ban that boil down to “it’s pushing evil Chinese Communist propaganda into the minds of our precious children”?
here’s the original bill - H.R.7521 - Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
it was introduced by Mike Gallagher (R-Wisconsin).
here’s a tweet of his from March:
“This is my message to TikTok: break up with the Chinese Communist Party or lose access to your American users. America’s foremost adversary has no business controlling a dominant media platform in the United States.” - Rep. Gallagher
and from November 2023, in a Fox News appearance:
Rep. Gallagher on why it’s critical to ban or force a sale of TikTok:
“It would be national self-suicide to allow the dominant media platform in America to be controlled, or at least be influenced by, the Chinese Communist Party.”
the advocates for the ban have been very clear, from the start, that they believe TikTok has a viewpoint - specifically that it’s controlled or influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. and they want to discriminate against that viewpoint.
id say you have a stronger argument than viewpoint discrimination by saying it violates the first ammendment of the users of tiktok, personally, though the courts might disagree.
have you read the bill? the actual law, not news articles or summaries of it?
I linked it in this comment. go read it, it’s short, and not terrible as far as legalese goes.
the gist of it is that the law makes it illegal to run an app store (or anything that looks like an app store) that offers downloads of the TikTok app.
so the two big obvious targets of the law are Apple and Google…but it applies equally to everyone. F-Droid could violate it, in theory, by hosting the APK for download through their servers.
or for example, say the ban took effect, and TikTok gets removed from app stores. some tech-savvy high school kid knows how to copy the APK from their Android phone before it gets deleted, and shows their friends how to sideload it onto their phones.
then a bunch of other people ask for it too, so this kid uploads it to some filesharing service, passes around the link, and eventually it gets around to 100 other classmates.
that high school kid has violated the TikTok ban. the federal government can levy a fine against them of half a million dollars ($5,000 per user who downloaded it)
does that satisfy your desire to have the ban infringe on the free speech of “real” people, and not just Apple and Google?
