There are two considerations.

For the American government and corporations, Chinese espionage is an obvious and real threat. NVidia doesn’t want China to steal their chip designs and the Pentagon doesn’t want China to steal military info.

For American private citizens, it isn’t really a threat. It’s actually preferable in a way, because you know they won’t disclose whatever they learn to the American government. You might even consider buying a fully “designed and made in China” device, which the NSA might not have a backdoor to.

This only makes it more concerning to the American government, because they lose control over their citizens.

Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.

If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.

And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.

If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.

Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.

But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.

Because they manage to attract investment.

As long as investors are willing to give cash in exchange for equity, a company can operate on that cash and run at a loss.

It’s also by design.

The flaws are designed to be exploited by the rich and powerful.

Correct.

But nobody is enforcing compliance.

So they can just keep it on American servers and sell it to OpenAI or share it with the US government.

Also, there are a lot of bots copying everything on reddit and other sites. Even if reddit would comply with GDPR, these bots cannot be traced and cannot be fined.

He should have said almost every.

But thanks for pointing out the mathematical truth ☝️

Yep, the fastest way to stability is to pull a (near) all-nighter and set an alarm clock for the next day.

A little bit of sleep deprivation helps to get regulated. And sleeping late in the weekends is also my way to restore.

No more billionaires, but everyone can be a millionaire.

The shortest path to equality is to greatly reduce taxes on the middle class and increase them on the wealthy.

It puzzles me why leftist parties don’t all embrace lower taxes for the middle class.

While I do agree with you, I also see twitch, TikTok and Patreon presenting models that are quite competitive with YouTube.

From a privacy perspective, free junk content like TikTok, YouTube and twitch will always be hard coupled with targeted advertising.

But Patreon (and onlyfans for that matter) do offer a model that can work without ads.

In fact, if Patreon also introduced an ad-supported tier and allowed you to more broadly see other content aside from the direct person you sponsor, it could probably grow quite a lot.

Indeed - and I really hope it passes.

I thought about mentioning it in my previous comment. But basically, it’s another example that States hold most of the power. The States actually have the power to effectively replace the current system with a national popular vote if they choose.

Other examples are the IRV in Alaska and the district system in Maine and Nebraska.

Both elections exactly prove my point.

The federal system is set up to favor State power, which is why the US presidential election isn’t decided by popular vote. By design, Wyoming and California are considered equals in many respects.

It’s a bad system, but it’s very much entrenched in the constitution.

And it also requires critical mass. It’s basically impossible to enact meaningful change with a 50-55% majority. You need 60% or more to get big changes. And a majority of states.

A somewhat less pessimistic take: the system is set up to be self-stable.

And it was also designed so that States would have most of the power, not the Federal government.

At various points in history the common people did get benefits. New Deal. Universal suffrage. Civil rights. Abolition.

But it always requires a critical mass of the population to support change.

John Stewart always finds the best way to express what I’m feeling.

Regardless of the outcome, this election will go down as a shit stain on history.

I just hope the outcome doesn’t turn it into explosive diarrhea.

Unfortunate reality, but headline placement is quite OK.

I know a lot of people don’t like the American First Past the Post system, but to be honest, even in a proportional system like here in the Netherlands, you end up with very similar dynamics.

Truth is, progressives are always a small minority, in every country. Because they are always ahead of the curve on change.

In the US, this means that you only get a handful of progressives in the most progressive districts and never a really progressive national government.

In the Netherlands, this means progressives are always represented, but need to compromise to form a government. And often, they even get skipped and the centrist and conservative parties form a coalition.

Truth be told, Biden is as progressive as you could hope to get in the USA.

And, while I do think it is important to criticize him - and even threaten to not vote for him - to enable him to move more towards the left, it is also important to vote for him.

Progressives always win, not through getting majorities, but because they have the right ideas and eventually the other parties catch up to them.

For recent examples, gay marriage in the USA or marihuana legalization are now law in the USA.

I am 100% confident that American policy on Israel will also shift thanks to progressive voices. And it will not require a progressive majority.

Americans still care about the price of oil, which is set in a global market and where Saudi-Arabia and Russia have more influence than the USA.

Obviously, the extremist Arabs that overthrew their own leaders are also to blame. Where did I deny that?

I don’t think you really have a lot of choices to be honest.

You’d first need to get new candidates to win a primary and then a general and the required majorities are lacking almost everywhere.

A more fruitful approach is to actually change public opinion.

It’s a long uphill battle, but it’s happening.

For decades, Israel and the US (and European countries) have pursued a policy to destabilize middle eastern regimes.

People don’t realize this, but there was a wave of Arab nationalism that was killed by sponsoring Islamic extremists. Had that not happened, the middle east would be much more secular today than it is.

Israel attacking and destabilizing Lebanon and Syria and the US maintaining a dictator in Egypt are part of this strategy.

In turn, this leads to hate towards the West and Israel by the Muslims affected.

It won’t stop as long as American voters care much more about gas prices than about human rights. American politicians are willing to sponsor genocide to have some control on oil prices in order to win elections.

Exactly.

If the USA tried to again be a White/European ethnostate and allow anyone with Caucasian heritage to immigrate and barred everyone else from immigrating, then no one today would accept that.

And if they went full on apartheid and started putting natives and minorities in locked down ever-shrinking reservations, people would really lose their shit.

When white nationalists try to advocate for such policies, they are rightfully criticized for being racist.

I can never understand why Israel gets special treatment in that regard.

The last natural, human, popular subreddit to arise on reddit was r/antiwork

After that, the site got swarmed by bots and censorship.

If you try and post something even remotely progressive in a popular subreddit, it will get deleted and you will probably get banned.