As far as I know, he has not made any blanket statements to the effect of “markets are your friends” or that “China has perfected Marxism”. He has talked about Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, which is specifically Marxism Leninism as it applies to the material conditions of China, and involves the controlled use of markets in order to develop China’s economy quickly enough to survive. Unless he has changed his tune significantly since I last watched him, he has not claimed that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics was applicable everywhere.

As for the other stuff, I honestly don’t know anything about that. Can you provide links to information on that so that I can properly understand the claims being made and the evidence provided?

I don’t think we’re all that close to brain chips, at least not in any practical sense. Aside from the technology not being very advanced yet and the side effects not being well-studied, it would be a lot harder for something like that to catch on, I think. It’s one thing to wear a pair of glasses, but something else entirely to undergo brain surgery.

Anyway, this is pretty interesting. The ability to translate things on the fly like that seems pretty useful. My biggest concern is, if there’s nothing in place to prevent people from using it while driving, it could cause drivers to be distracted. Since it wouldn’t require looking away from the road, it might seem like it’s safer than looking at a phone while driving, but focusing on the display still takes attention away from the road, which can be very dangerous.

I wonder if the “But at what cost?” line is sort of a way of prompting readers to imagine their own horrible scenario for what the cost might be, thus having the readers do some of the work of the propaganda themselves?

It’s not very easy to make sense of. Could you understand it?

What is this?

I used to play some MMOs a while back. They’re absolutely designed to keep players playing them, from rare drops that you have to spend hours grinding to get, to special short-term events that are designed to reel players in with the fear of missing out. It often gets to the point where you’re no longer really having fun, but are just playing because you feel like you have to. And even when you do have fun, you realize eventually that all of it was actually incredibly pointless. You spent all that time trying to get a fancy digital item in a game that one day will just vanish like smoke in the air. It’s not a pleasant feeling, and aside from being a social problem, it’s also a problem on a personal level, as well. So I think there’s nothing to gain by letting people play online games for hours upon hours a day, and people will actually be much happier with both the games, and themselves, if they’re limited to a shorter amount.

that’s a possibility, but why would someone ban an entire TLD?

If I had to guess, I’d say it’s because you can apparently register a .ml domain for free. I don’t have any statistics to back me up here, but it’s likely that spammers/scammers/other shady stuff commonly use .ml domains as a result, since it would allow them to create a large number of websites for free for use in things such as manipulating SEO, making websites with a similar url to a legitimate one for use in phishing, making websites that will only last a short time, etc.

I still think restricting instead of educating is indeed objectionable. if these platforms are harmful to citizens (and I do think facebook and twitter are harmful to everyone except their owners), then it should be possible to convince citizens to avoid them by educating them, there’s no need to restrict them.

The problem with just educating users, is that it likely wouldn’t be enough. I’m sure you’ve seen people who are well aware of how social media is manipulating them into continuing to use it, but they still can’t get themselves to stop, even when it’s making their mental health noticeable worse. It’s literally designed to make you feel like you’re in control and can stop at any time, while being designed in such a way as to make it feel very rewarding to continue using it (content fed to the user in small pieces, people “interacting” with your content as a form of validation, thus encouraging continued use), and very difficult to stop (fear of missing out). On top of that, many social media platforms sell advertising services that subtly change what a user sees, in a way that can be very difficult to notice (and thus consciously counteract) in order to make them more likely to buy a product or take a certain action.

The linked article on the Grayzone mentions that in an interview after the alleged poisoning, he stated that he has the same views as when he went into politics. So it’s not just something 10+ years ago, he’s admitted quite recently that his views haven’t changed.

Do you think I could call them instead? I’m not very good with emails, and I have no idea how to write a formal email.

I didn’t know printers did that. That’s kind of unsettling.

What do you mean by eclecticism? Could you elaborate?

I think after a certain point, it doesn’t matter a whole lot what her intentions are, when her actions are consistently in support of neoliberalism.

People can just say things, you know. Regardless of if they’re true. And sometimes, a bunch of people get paid to say the same thing, and when that happens, you have to be a bit skeptical of what they’re saying, especially when they have provided no evidence of what they’re claiming that wasn’t just them citing each other in an endless loop.

What makes you think that?

Seems like we lost a few posts/comments, too.

Wait, those thing can attack people? Aren’t they pretty slow?

And I’m not sure this should be too heavily relied upon as a method to disable them. It’s possible they might do something to cover it or otherwise prevent it from being used, especially if it starts to be used frequently. Plus, it requires getting very close to it, which doesn’t seem ideal.

If power is decentralized, then how do you enforce that?

Could something like this be useful for that last idea? You’d still need to go home afterwards and run the stuff you collected through a program to try to decrypt it, but with a coordinated effort you might be able to find something.

In addition to trapping it, it might also be possible to get something tangled in the wheels. Might make it fall over if it doesn’t have any way of sensing that?

I seem to recall that they were often hired for union-busting purposes? Don’t remember where I heard that though.