Quip for quip. More housing -> more property owners -> more NIMBYs. Do you really want more NIMBYs?
Quiping aside, what you call NIMBY i see as opposition to "profits to the developers, externalities to the existing property owners". I'm all for more housing, i just think that the above mentioned profit/externalities distribution should be seriously adjusted, and then you'd see much more housing being built.
You don't get these folks - they don't want just any housing. They want central big house, very close to FAANG work, school, but around a lot of nature too, for peanuts of course because 'hey in 50s one man could finance whole family' or similar extreme case taken out of proportions.
That literally everybody else wants it and thus its priced accordingly since we have market economies (in communism it worked similarly too but it was more about apparatchiks) and such properties are very scarce is irrelevant. They just want that appreciating investment.
There is no point discussing this here, it had been done ad nausea and even otherwise rational people turn to very emotional reasoning when it comes to them and their perceived rights for their own wealth. Something about expecting the world to adjust to my expectations or desires instead of the other way.
Like money, food, water, and everything else, it's not just a supply problem a distribution one too. It doesn't matter if there are a bunch of vacancies on paper if those vacancies are too expensive and too far away from where the working poor (and that's most people these days) need to live.
(But even "friends" sometimes sling some shit at eachother every now and then when it benefits them. It just usually doesn't cost $1.6B when this happens.)
Why can't US and China just be competitors, as it was before Xi got on this conquer Taiwan kick? He's another one of those aging boomers who hung on too long.
It was all quite friendly under Deng Xiaoping when China was mostly about peaceful trade. Sadly under Xi it's moving more to building up its military and trying to take other people land.
That $1.6B isn't all going to fund anti-China propaganda but framing that way is a cheap way to get people to look at government spending as a waste of money.
Dam they didn't even put this under the pentagon/cia black budgets.
Its a shame the US already did this with covid in the Philippines creating more chaos, death and anti vaccine.
May god have mercy on 3rd world countries that aren't part of NATO or SCO/BRICS+, because they will have an wasted decade in the 2020s and early 2030s.
The US spent $916 billion on its military in 2023 [0]. Spending less than 1/5th of 1% of that on propaganda doesn’t seem to be a huge deal in comparison.
I don't think US needs to spend that amount of money, I think China is doing enough stupid things to spur anti-China sentiments overseas. Also, they could just remind people that China released COVID which killed millions and cost countries billions.
for example: US, EU raise alarm over China’s ‘very substantial’ support for Russia in Ukraine war. Beijing’s ‘significant’ exports said to be used on battlefield and given in exchange for Kremlin’s sensitive military technologies https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3278160/us...
Outside of very specific niches like trade deficits, job and industry losses (moved to China), and geopolitical saber rattling, I feel the sentiment of the average man is actually very pro-China thanks to how much sheer money China pours into soft power.
I recommend seeing what China has its monies in, because they are in fucking everything today.
As an example, China has their monies in like 80~90%+ of the global video game market through Tencent, and video games are one of the heralds of pop culture and thus influence today. More critically, China has a growing stranglehold on the next generation of global payment processors through Alipay and WeChat Pay among others.
Also, perhaps ironically: This entire thread with numerous pro-China/anti-US/anti-west sentiments.
To put this in Civilization terms, China is going for an Econo-Cultural Victory and I daresay it's working.
I would take surveys with a large serving of salt. By their own admission, the American survey only concerned a selection of 3,600 by phone call, and those who refused to answer are not counted in the results. That's not going to create a reasonable representation, because for starters most people these days fucking hate junk calls.
Also of note in that survey is that the anti-China sentiment is heavily biased towards older conservatives. That means the current and coming younger, more progressive generations are more pro-China, relatively speaking.
This is China's investment into soft power blossoming in spades.
As for the country survey, have a closer look at that breakdown: The west, to include Japan and South Korea, are anti-China as a collective. Most of the rest of the world is at worst neutral and at best pro-China; South and Central America is almost entirely pro-China including Mexico, the US's immediate neighbour to the south.
Also, despite Indians' claimed anti-Chinese sentiment, India is also one of, if not the, China's biggest strategic ally if not necessarily a friend.
Again, China's investment into soft power blossoming in spades.
While the efficacy of American anti-Chinese propaganda is certainly debatable, it's clear the US and the west at large are losing the econo-cultural fight and need to respond somehow.
China can not achieve a cultural victory. They are exporting their form of government, but Chinese culture is still a mystery in the west to this day, unlike, say, Japan or Korea. Can you name one Chinese pop star or movie star? Other than the Hong Kong ones, I can’t.
I think you've missed the Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail craze, those two Chinese games took the global video game market by storm.
I'm not going to mention the smaller hits like Arknights and Azur Lane and many more.
Japanese and Korean pop culture are yesterday's news, Chinese pop culture is the current trend. And note, I say that very begrudgingly as a Japanese; even in Japan now the Chinese games are more popular than homegrown Japanese games.
Seriously though, the tendrils of Chinese money run deep and wide to extents I'm sure most people simply can't realize.
To demonstrate China's influence on video games around the world: Epic Games (USA), Ubisoft (USA), Riot Games (USA), Paradox Interactive (Sweden), Kadokawa (Japan), Marvelous (Japan), FromSoftware (Japan), Visual Arts Key (Japan), Netmarble (South Korea), Frontier Developments (UK), Digital Extremes (Canada), Roblox (USA), and Discord (USA) all have Chinese money in them through Tencent.[1]
And that is just Tencent in just video games (and Discord). I've not even gotten into all the other Chinese game development outfits yet, let alone other markets entirely like Tiktok and Temu as another commenter pointed out.
Also, that list of Tencent influence was absolutely depressing to type out.
That monkey god game (Wukong something) also just came out this month and it's become one of Steam's most played games ever.
And of course Tencent also owns part of Path of Exile, Epic Games, Discord, Roblox, etc.
China used to own AMC Theaters too, and still owns some Hollywood studios like Legendary (Batman, The Hangover, Pacific Rim, Interstellar, etc.) through the Wanda conglomerate.
While we're talking about pop culture, China is just quietly buying up America piece by piece...
Buying things isnt soft power. The discussion was about soft power. Owning things is not soft power. He is referring to cultural exports. And there are not any.
How are they exporting their form of government? I guess you meant talking to dictators and democracies alike, which also EU or US is doing.
Just look at extremely friendly unwavering long term support for say Saudi arabia, from where all 9/11 attackers and whole extreme wahhabism came from. Say Mohamed bin Salman is proven vicious psychotic murderer yet ie Trump admires him, and no western democracy refuses saudi oil.
I grew up in a very international diverse environment, but I cant name a single popular movie, song, or other media that I knew is from China, other than the meme where John Cena is eating icecream. I suspect this is the same for over 95% of Americans.
Excluding cultural icons, as I understand the definition, these are not examples of soft power. These are just power.
Nobody here is denying china has an economic strength but that has nothing to do with soft power. Soft power has to do with cultural export, and china has none. Zero. Nothing.
I am not in denial. Nobody outside of china gives a rats ass about chinese music or movies, or chinese blue jeans. They just know about the great wall, and about how horrible the government is.. Everyone thinks genshin is japanese, and loves japanese denim.
And you cant just flag comments that you disagree with to make them dissapear. That might fly in china but thats not how civilized nations operate. The reason I accused you of being a wumao is because of the way you behave. Not because I am in denial. I am a native born american citizen. Never met anybody who knows a damn thing about chinese cultural exports. that is because there arent any.
It is disingenuous to say that covid was naturally occuring. You should probably go look up the lab it came from, and who was funding it. (Canada and the US were involved.)
The scientific consensus is that the virus spilled over from wild animals sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan. There's strong evidence to back this up.
There's zero evidence that the virus has anything to do with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and in fact relatively strong evidence that they didn't have or even know about the virus before it spilled over.
This is the definitive study that shows the epicenter of the Wuhan outbreak was the Huanan Seafood Market: Worobey et al. (2022), in the journal Science [0]. This is a study that discusses the genetic evidence that there were multiple spillovers at the market: Pekar et al. (2022), also in the journal Science [1].
The above two findings are completely inconsistent with the idea of a lab leak. Why would a lab leak cause an outbreak at a market that sells wild animals, of all places? And how would it cause two different lineages of virus to emerge at that market?
If you know how the original SARS spilled over, in wild animal markets in a major Chinese city (Guangzhou, far away from where the bats that carry SARS live), the Wuhan Seafood Market spillover looks nearly identical - just 17 years later.
Meanwhile, no evidence at all has emerged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had anything to do with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Scientists at the WIV were regularly publishing and giving talks about exactly what they were working on, and they never mentioned anything closely related to SARS-CoV-2. They were working with viruses much closer to the original SARS, which is what most people back then were interested in. After SARS-CoV-2 emerged, you could actually go back and look into the WIV's publications to find the most closely related virus. It's called RaTG13, and it was published by scientists at the WIV all the way back in 2014. However, it's way too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to be the progenitor virus, and in fact, more closely related viruses have since been found by a French team in Laos. Basically, all the evidence about who knew what when, the genetics of more closely related viruses that have been discovered since the pandemic began argue positively that the WIV had nothing to do with the origins of the pandemic. This is in addition to the strong evidence that the initial outbreak was not at WIV, but rather at a wild animal market (which is exactly what you'd expect for a natural spillover).
None of this has made its way into the American public's consciousness, though.
Not merely the heroes: If the other nations of the world do not agree with us or trade with those we don't like, we will sanction you and/or encourage "regime change" via paid NGO's, misinformation, bald-faced lies and propaganda - but this is fine since we are the "good guys".
Oh - and don't copy our laws regarding foreign agents. That is bad! Do as we SAY not as we do!
It is more and more crucial that Europe, while remaining a stolid ally to the US, tries not to be fully involved in American (economic) wars, propaganda and protectionism. We have been fully dependent on them, now it is time to be good mates, but each with separate domestic and foreign policies. If Republicans win next year, this is not gonna get any better.
> Europe has plenty of its own propaganda to spread. Aren't you busy locking up indigenous people for years for saying mean facts on the internet?
Ignoring primitive racist aspects of the comments, no Europe as a whole (but lets say EU, Switzerland nor Norway don't care about this at all) doesn't have any force to speak of it can project, any clear plans for any military nor economical expansion of its influence outside its boundaries.
In contrary, we are currently weak (and eventually will get steamrolled by powerplayers from the east), undecisive, busy destroying some of the powerhouses of our economies like car industry. Germany is still terrified to the core for the sins of their grandfathers so would prefer half of Europe burning than do a nanometer aggressive move, and its the strongest voice on whole bloc - just look at how little they are actually helping Ukraine and how effectively they block any bigger attempts of other states. Heck they are trying to circumvent 2% GDP yearly NATO requirement to include highways maintenance costs in it, thus Wehrmacht is a joke - ie Polish army would steamroll them all any day, poles took a hard lesson from russian atrocities done on them in the past and finance army correspondingly.
Its sad to watch it, German population deserves much better leadership since competence is there. Not even digging into other big states like France with its own big issues, but at least they don't neglect military and are the only ones with nukes.
I think it’s about hate speech but the OP doesn’t know that UK!= EU.
For example in the UK you may get jail time if you say a transgender girl is actually boy or whatever.
See here one famous case:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna146065
That being said free speech is being eroded in the EU as well but the UK is “leading” that.
For example the EU tries for some time to mandate backdoors into encrypted chat applications.
Indeed the "locking up indigenous people for years for saying mean facts on the internet" in the UK seems basically fictional. Have there been real any cases of that? Whenever you read Americans say the awful brits locked someone up for saying nasty things you find it's actually something like saying things plus assaulting a police officer or similar.
[2] Yet another thing to thank Thatcher for. Who, ironically, is probably a hero of the kind of people who go around saying things like "the left will lock you up for saying mean things."
After stating that she was “completely sure that he knew racial hatred would be stirred up” as a result of his “utterly repulsive, racist and shocking posts that have no place in civilised society, including on social media”, HH Judge Lucking sentenced Kay to three years and two months in prison.
Detective Chief Superintendent Rich Tompkins said: “I hope this case sends a very clear message to people who think they can hide behind a screen and publish hateful, racially prejudiced posts without consequence.
Right…and 3 years prison for that. The gap got pretty narrower. I think half of the gaming communities should be put in jail under this law.
Saying a trans women is a boy is also gender hatred with possible catastrophic harm (as we know the suicide rate is pretty high on trans people). To be honest I would not be surprised at all to see people in jail for what JK Rowling said.
> To be honest I would not be surprised at all to see people in jail for what JK Rowling said.
Ok but she wasn't even charged which suggests that people aren't going to be going to jail for saying what she said. I don't get how you take "she said some horrible stuff and wasn't charged" to "people will go to jail for saying the same thing" because there's no evidence or logical connection between the two stances.
You're right, I've always misinterpreted the word, it's more neutral than I thought!
It comes from the Latin stolidus: “inert, dull, stupid”. So it's a strange case of a word with initially negative connotations that becomes somewhat neutral. Although Oxford Languages (Google's source) lists also "bovine", "lethargic", "torpid" and "stupid" as similar words, after "impassive", "unemotional" and "calm".
Classic "with us or against us" mentality. I will remind you that nowhere in my comment I suggested to get in bed with Putin or Jinping. I am just saying we should probably not get too deeply involved with US either, though still being close friends with them.
You presume too much about which “us” I represent here.
But the posted piece is a (deeply polemic) piece about a policy intending to warn the international community about CCP influence ops. And your take is “woah, let’s look out for America though”
Sorry, but that points in a silly direction for Europe. But time will tell. Yet again.
Europe's past foreign policy, which relied on Russia and China, is what got them into trouble now. They should be more aligned with US, which they finally realized.
I partly agree with you because Europe is not a monolith. The countries that decided to depend on Russia most weren't its direct neighbors. Basically all countries that share the border with Russia warned the rest that Putin can't be trusted. But all in, he managed to somehow deceive everybody, including the USA, into thinking that although it's an authoritarian state, it's somewhat civilized and we can do business with them.
So with Russia, we're past that rude awakening moment. With China, it hasn't happened yet.
He didn't even fool Trump who introduced sanctions against Russian gas counter to German politicians wishes. What does it say about European politicians who did nothing of the sort?
It's like two people: when one person's status and position are much higher than the other's, they won't even think about tarnishing the other person's reputation. They may even offer some help to satisfy their own vanity. However, when the two are of similar status and position, and one doesn't have a mindset of openness and mutual benefit, they may feel their position is threatened. When trying civilized methods doesn't suppress the competitor, they begin to resort to any means necessary.
Human rights abuses don't stop us from allying with Saudi Arabia, Israel, Armenia, Egypt, Pakistan, the UAE... and of course we have plenty of abuses within our own borders.
But China is a threat in a way those others aren't. Not just an economic competitor but potentially the next superpower after ours fades, and maybe next century's dominant culture. We're scared of them because they challenge everything we believe about our own model's superiority...
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 261 ms ] threadQuip for quip. More housing -> more property owners -> more NIMBYs. Do you really want more NIMBYs?
Quiping aside, what you call NIMBY i see as opposition to "profits to the developers, externalities to the existing property owners". I'm all for more housing, i just think that the above mentioned profit/externalities distribution should be seriously adjusted, and then you'd see much more housing being built.
That literally everybody else wants it and thus its priced accordingly since we have market economies (in communism it worked similarly too but it was more about apparatchiks) and such properties are very scarce is irrelevant. They just want that appreciating investment.
There is no point discussing this here, it had been done ad nausea and even otherwise rational people turn to very emotional reasoning when it comes to them and their perceived rights for their own wealth. Something about expecting the world to adjust to my expectations or desires instead of the other way.
(But even "friends" sometimes sling some shit at eachother every now and then when it benefits them. It just usually doesn't cost $1.6B when this happens.)
How very disappointing, Mr. Nagle.
Shocking.
May god have mercy on 3rd world countries that aren't part of NATO or SCO/BRICS+, because they will have an wasted decade in the 2020s and early 2030s.
[0]: https://www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2024-04/2404_fs_mi...
for example: US, EU raise alarm over China’s ‘very substantial’ support for Russia in Ukraine war. Beijing’s ‘significant’ exports said to be used on battlefield and given in exchange for Kremlin’s sensitive military technologies https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3278160/us...
or: Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannons and blocked and rammed a Philippine fisheries vessel https://apnews.com/article/china-philippines-disputes-spratl...
or: Japan claims Chinese military plane violated its territorial airspace for the first time https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/27/asia/japan-china-military-pla...
I recommend seeing what China has its monies in, because they are in fucking everything today.
As an example, China has their monies in like 80~90%+ of the global video game market through Tencent, and video games are one of the heralds of pop culture and thus influence today. More critically, China has a growing stranglehold on the next generation of global payment processors through Alipay and WeChat Pay among others.
Also, perhaps ironically: This entire thread with numerous pro-China/anti-US/anti-west sentiments.
To put this in Civilization terms, China is going for an Econo-Cultural Victory and I daresay it's working.
survey would say otherwise: For the fifth year in a row, about eight-in-ten Americans report an unfavorable view of China https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/01/americans-rema...
In the 18 high-income countries we polled, views of China are, on balance, negative. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/07/09/views-of-china...
Also of note in that survey is that the anti-China sentiment is heavily biased towards older conservatives. That means the current and coming younger, more progressive generations are more pro-China, relatively speaking.
This is China's investment into soft power blossoming in spades.
As for the country survey, have a closer look at that breakdown: The west, to include Japan and South Korea, are anti-China as a collective. Most of the rest of the world is at worst neutral and at best pro-China; South and Central America is almost entirely pro-China including Mexico, the US's immediate neighbour to the south.
Also, despite Indians' claimed anti-Chinese sentiment, India is also one of, if not the, China's biggest strategic ally if not necessarily a friend.
Again, China's investment into soft power blossoming in spades.
While the efficacy of American anti-Chinese propaganda is certainly debatable, it's clear the US and the west at large are losing the econo-cultural fight and need to respond somehow.
I'm not going to mention the smaller hits like Arknights and Azur Lane and many more.
Japanese and Korean pop culture are yesterday's news, Chinese pop culture is the current trend. And note, I say that very begrudgingly as a Japanese; even in Japan now the Chinese games are more popular than homegrown Japanese games.
Seriously though, the tendrils of Chinese money run deep and wide to extents I'm sure most people simply can't realize.
To demonstrate China's influence on video games around the world: Epic Games (USA), Ubisoft (USA), Riot Games (USA), Paradox Interactive (Sweden), Kadokawa (Japan), Marvelous (Japan), FromSoftware (Japan), Visual Arts Key (Japan), Netmarble (South Korea), Frontier Developments (UK), Digital Extremes (Canada), Roblox (USA), and Discord (USA) all have Chinese money in them through Tencent.[1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Foreign_studio_assets
And that is just Tencent in just video games (and Discord). I've not even gotten into all the other Chinese game development outfits yet, let alone other markets entirely like Tiktok and Temu as another commenter pointed out.
Also, that list of Tencent influence was absolutely depressing to type out.
And of course Tencent also owns part of Path of Exile, Epic Games, Discord, Roblox, etc.
China used to own AMC Theaters too, and still owns some Hollywood studios like Legendary (Batman, The Hangover, Pacific Rim, Interstellar, etc.) through the Wanda conglomerate.
While we're talking about pop culture, China is just quietly buying up America piece by piece...
Just look at extremely friendly unwavering long term support for say Saudi arabia, from where all 9/11 attackers and whole extreme wahhabism came from. Say Mohamed bin Salman is proven vicious psychotic murderer yet ie Trump admires him, and no western democracy refuses saudi oil.
What soft power are you referring to exactly?
The soft power that catapulted Genshin Impact to the top of sales rankings across the entire world.[1]
The soft power that led to China's incomprehensibly deep and wide spider web of financial influence.[2]
The soft power that has us wearing Chinese blue jeans, to use Civilization lingo.
If the west thinks this is a problem (and it probably is, at least I think it is) then we need to respond. Being in denial won't address anything.
[1]: https://sensortower.com/blog/genshin-impact-three-billion-re...
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tencent#Foreign_studio_assets
Nobody here is denying china has an economic strength but that has nothing to do with soft power. Soft power has to do with cultural export, and china has none. Zero. Nothing.
I am not in denial. Nobody outside of china gives a rats ass about chinese music or movies, or chinese blue jeans. They just know about the great wall, and about how horrible the government is.. Everyone thinks genshin is japanese, and loves japanese denim.
And you cant just flag comments that you disagree with to make them dissapear. That might fly in china but thats not how civilized nations operate. The reason I accused you of being a wumao is because of the way you behave. Not because I am in denial. I am a native born american citizen. Never met anybody who knows a damn thing about chinese cultural exports. that is because there arent any.
Unfortunately for that narrative a lot of the research funding and ideas originated in the US.
That's like saying, "The US released the Great Influenza of 1918." It's a naturally occurring pathogen. Nobody released it.
There's zero evidence that the virus has anything to do with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and in fact relatively strong evidence that they didn't have or even know about the virus before it spilled over.
The above two findings are completely inconsistent with the idea of a lab leak. Why would a lab leak cause an outbreak at a market that sells wild animals, of all places? And how would it cause two different lineages of virus to emerge at that market?
If you know how the original SARS spilled over, in wild animal markets in a major Chinese city (Guangzhou, far away from where the bats that carry SARS live), the Wuhan Seafood Market spillover looks nearly identical - just 17 years later.
Meanwhile, no evidence at all has emerged that the Wuhan Institute of Virology had anything to do with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2. Scientists at the WIV were regularly publishing and giving talks about exactly what they were working on, and they never mentioned anything closely related to SARS-CoV-2. They were working with viruses much closer to the original SARS, which is what most people back then were interested in. After SARS-CoV-2 emerged, you could actually go back and look into the WIV's publications to find the most closely related virus. It's called RaTG13, and it was published by scientists at the WIV all the way back in 2014. However, it's way too distantly related to SARS-CoV-2 to be the progenitor virus, and in fact, more closely related viruses have since been found by a French team in Laos. Basically, all the evidence about who knew what when, the genetics of more closely related viruses that have been discovered since the pandemic began argue positively that the WIV had nothing to do with the origins of the pandemic. This is in addition to the strong evidence that the initial outbreak was not at WIV, but rather at a wild animal market (which is exactly what you'd expect for a natural spillover).
None of this has made its way into the American public's consciousness, though.
0. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8715 1. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abp8337
This just sounds like "Somehow it's bad when enemy soldiers shoot at us, but we also shoot at them! What a hypocrisy!"
The problem is, there's a beginning, sure, but no end to such circular reasoning; seeding perpetual conflict.
So it would be "The enemies soldiers are evil and just want us all dead, but we're the heros protecting our country".
Sometime the world is indeed black and white. Other time, it's greyer if not outright muddy. In other words, it all depends.
Oh - and don't copy our laws regarding foreign agents. That is bad! Do as we SAY not as we do!
Ignoring primitive racist aspects of the comments, no Europe as a whole (but lets say EU, Switzerland nor Norway don't care about this at all) doesn't have any force to speak of it can project, any clear plans for any military nor economical expansion of its influence outside its boundaries.
In contrary, we are currently weak (and eventually will get steamrolled by powerplayers from the east), undecisive, busy destroying some of the powerhouses of our economies like car industry. Germany is still terrified to the core for the sins of their grandfathers so would prefer half of Europe burning than do a nanometer aggressive move, and its the strongest voice on whole bloc - just look at how little they are actually helping Ukraine and how effectively they block any bigger attempts of other states. Heck they are trying to circumvent 2% GDP yearly NATO requirement to include highways maintenance costs in it, thus Wehrmacht is a joke - ie Polish army would steamroll them all any day, poles took a hard lesson from russian atrocities done on them in the past and finance army correspondingly.
Its sad to watch it, German population deserves much better leadership since competence is there. Not even digging into other big states like France with its own big issues, but at least they don't neglect military and are the only ones with nukes.
As an European, I have problems understanding what you mean - could you clarify?
For example in the UK you may get jail time if you say a transgender girl is actually boy or whatever. See here one famous case: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna146065
That being said free speech is being eroded in the EU as well but the UK is “leading” that.
For example the EU tries for some time to mandate backdoors into encrypted chat applications.
"J.K. Rowling will not be arrested for comments about transgender women"
That's a famous (non-)case which completely disproves your assertion though.
I don't think there has. There's definitely been people locked up for tweeting[1] but that was less "mean" and more "overt racism".
(Before the Public Order Act 1986[2], Section 5 was amended in 2013, people were able to be charged for "insults" which was clearly ludicrous.)
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/mar/27/student-jailed-fa...
[2] Yet another thing to thank Thatcher for. Who, ironically, is probably a hero of the kind of people who go around saying things like "the left will lock you up for saying mean things."
"inflammatory posts on social media calling for hotels housing asylum seekers to be set alight"
I dunno, I think there's a bit of a gap between "mean stuff" and "racial hatred with an incitement to murder".
Saying a trans women is a boy is also gender hatred with possible catastrophic harm (as we know the suicide rate is pretty high on trans people). To be honest I would not be surprised at all to see people in jail for what JK Rowling said.
Ok but she wasn't even charged which suggests that people aren't going to be going to jail for saying what she said. I don't get how you take "she said some horrible stuff and wasn't charged" to "people will go to jail for saying the same thing" because there's no evidence or logical connection between the two stances.
nice typo
> calm and not emotional
It comes from the Latin stolidus: “inert, dull, stupid”. So it's a strange case of a word with initially negative connotations that becomes somewhat neutral. Although Oxford Languages (Google's source) lists also "bovine", "lethargic", "torpid" and "stupid" as similar words, after "impassive", "unemotional" and "calm".
But the posted piece is a (deeply polemic) piece about a policy intending to warn the international community about CCP influence ops. And your take is “woah, let’s look out for America though”
Sorry, but that points in a silly direction for Europe. But time will tell. Yet again.
NATO chief urges China to stop supporting Russia's war in Ukraine https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/nato-chief-urges-china-...
How China helps keep Russia's economy afloat https://www.dw.com/en/how-china-is-helping-keep-the-russian-...
Keeping America close, Russia down, and China far away: How Europeans navigate a competitive world https://ecfr.eu/publication/keeping-america-close-russia-dow...
So with Russia, we're past that rude awakening moment. With China, it hasn't happened yet.
We all thought they were lying!
But China is a threat in a way those others aren't. Not just an economic competitor but potentially the next superpower after ours fades, and maybe next century's dominant culture. We're scared of them because they challenge everything we believe about our own model's superiority...