Sort of the old medieval guild system to prevent competition and keep prices high.

I didn’t know a type of cheese could do business deals. I’m going to get sponsored by cheddar.

Maybe I want you to peek in…

I always price compare regardless of the search results. Mindlessly clicking isn’t a good idea.

People have to do due diligence to check that they are getting the best value. I don’t assume what is presented to me is automatically the best. This suit seems like they expect the seller to promote the best deal without them doing any price comparisons which is ridiculous.

They don’t produce anything except some numbers. A total waste of energy. I had to laugh when this guy I know who is very “progressive” and environmentally concerned got pissy when I pointed out how much energy was wasted on bitcoin mining just because he was into it.

He only has 6, he needs 1 more for Sundays

“Just park it next to the others.”

I’d hope you’d know what you were spending this much money on if it wasn’t just for online attention.

The situations that drive me nuts are the conspiracy idiots who zoom in super hard on some heavily compressed image they pulled off of the web. They then proceed to claim that compression artifacts, optical flares, noise, etc are evidence of whatever crap they are pushing.

Taking things out of context is another issue. It has become painfully common online. I would see it all the time when pushing the “all police are bad!” narrative. They will deliberately edit out the violence that triggered the arrest then make it look like the arrest was unwarranted and overly physical. People will do this with dashcam videos and show road rage but edit out the part where they triggered it with their own aggression.

IP gets more protection than human beings

Won’t someone please think about Nintendo!?

I wonder if they send a person out to make sure he is eating gruel.

Well a powerful economic base is the foundation of a superpower. The US leans on General Dynamics, Raytheon, countless contractors, etc. China has no base as extensive as that.

Well the Japanese took Taiwan from China and then the nationalists fled China and took it over during the handover. No one asked the Chinese natives originally there if they wanted to separate from China.

We fought a civil war to keep the nation together.

China is still mostly poor and rural. For all of their economic expansion things are still basic there for most people.

I can’t blame China for wanting Taiwan back. Imagine if we had a civil war and a foreign military invaded and occupied Alaska during a war just before it. Then at the end of the war one side fled to Alaska and declared it independant but we couldn’t retake it because we were so debilitated from the civil war and the war before it. Now a foreign government steps in and says you can’t retake your territory because they said so. I’d be pissed too.

The US wants a fight with China to justify our perpetual military buildup and foreign reach.

America always needs a boogeyman. Maybe having all infrastructure connected to the internet and letting security sloppy contractors open access isn’t a good idea either.

Meanwhile US citizens go without healthcare.

“Zillion G”

Yup, they are only as good as their programming