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You're reaching to suggest that lack of sales tax was a reason that customers used Amazon. Like the sibling comment mentions, every other e-commerce site or platform had the same advantage.

The reason customers used Amazon was because it was easy and fast, not because you didn't have to pay sales tax. I used it extensively even back then, and sales tax was literally never a factor.

His point was that Westerners aren't necessarily going to be fooled, with the example of the AP (Western) viewing his declaration of martial law unsympathetically.

Because you are lowering the discourse here.

I agree, although it is a "real" enemy in the sense that their ascension is a threat to US hegemony or the idea of the USA as the preeminent world superpower.

I don't see it as rational, but there is definitely an argument that the USA ought to remain positioned as number one, having the ability to dictate global politics. I don't think we deserve it, but it's certainly 'better' for us in the sense that it gives us an advantage and thus might improve our quality of life (cheaper imports, blah blah blah). I view that argument as entitled and promoting the status quo.

The Chinese people have worked hard. Actually, people all over the world work hard, although the Chinese have gone past industrialization and have a massive and capable population. The idea that they wouldn't have more power and would need to somehow remain under the US's thumb, where we get to say how they treat Taiwan or what currency they can trade in with other countries, just seems absurd. People come up with bullshit reasons for why the US ought to retain some control over their politics or how the rest of the world engages with the Chinese (and we don't just get to do that anyway), e.g., the Chinese are mean to the Uyghurs, as if anyone ever gave a fuck about the Uyghurs or whoever twenty years ago.

In all that sense, China is certainly a real threat. But the level of entitlement behind that argument is so blatant that I can't take it seriously.

Yes.

> "If you don't believe the lab leak theory, you're the enemy," he said. "It really is viewed as a truism, that it has been definitively established that the lab leak is the source and if you believe otherwise you're just simply wrong."

(He is saying this in the voice of someone he disagrees with... 'this is what they think.') What an insane load of horseshit. It was hammered over and over again that the lab leak theory was racist and bad, and it was "definitively established" many times over that the lab leak theory was simply too racist and bad to possibly be true.

Further, statements like this...

> He says the lab leak theory is being used to create distrust in scientific institutions more broadly.

are pure narcissism. The lab leak theory is there because it's an obvious one, and people (on 'both sides') prefer to believe the truth is on their side. Distrust of scientific institutions is a secondary consequence. The primary fight is over who is 'correct' or what the 'truth' is. But Caulfield prefers to insist that the entire reason someone would promote the lab leak theory is because they just heckin hate him and people like him so much, rather than it's simply the conclusion they find most obvious.

> Perhaps it should give us pause that nobody they are ostensibly calling Nazis can make a defamation case stick against them.

Lol, you know that isn't what's happening.

So I think we all understand that the headline is inaccurate, that the only thing that has been discredited is its diagnosis or use as evidence of child abuse.

It should bother people to read crappy arguments like the one contained directly in the first sentence of an article like this. As a staunch advocate against the death penalty, that sort of intentional deception weakens the case.

Then I find [the first sentence of] the title obnoxious.

Yeah but the language has the F word in it, teehee. It's so funny. :D

Le bacon narwhals at midnight my friend. Here's an updoot for your service.

EDIT: OH ME GOOSH DIDNT EXPECT SO MUCH LOVE THANK YOUU

EDIT 2: WOAH SILVER HOLY RHIS IS TAKING OFF THANK YOU

EDIT 3: GOLD!?!?!? YALLS TOO NICE

EDIT 4: THANK YOU KIND STRANGERS

EDIT 5: OMG RIP MY INBOX

Chess is a superficial pursuit, especially today, because it became a meme due to a Netflix television show.

Not that I care. People can pursue whatever they want superficially. And I have plenty of my own superficial pursuits.

I don't know that much about literacy rates and social competition in ancient Greece, but I suspect it may have been in Plato's personal interests that others remain illiterate.