@hallam Isn't TikTok controlled by China though, which in the longer term is an enemy far more dangerous than Russia?
Russia had its vast stockpiles of Soviet weaponry (currently being expended in Ukraine) but China can out-manufacture the US and Europe combined.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-war-economy-sizing-up-the-new
@scott Aren't the main grievances behind the Trump resurgence though inflation (caused largely by the West's attempt to swear off Russian fossil fuels in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine) along with the hordes of asylum-seekers crossing the Mexican border?
I don't see how taxing billionaires would help either of those problems: indeed it would likely make inflation _worse_ by transferring wealth from those who won't spend it to those who will.
I continue to find @interfluidity's notion of "fascism as triage"* a good way to understand the rise of the far-right in the US and globally. Fascism finds fertile soil where people have given up on the idea there's enough for all of us to live well together. Insofar as you are in a scarcity mindset, that's when us-vs-them becomes appealing.
*https://drafts.interfluidity.com/2023/08/14/fascism-as-triage/index.html
@mmasnick sees Mastodon, Bluesky, and the rest of the open social web as an antidote to the AI-generated decline of the internet:
"decentralized social media could offer an alternative to the world in which all the information we consume is intermediated by a single centralized player, whether it’s a search engine like Google, or a social media service like Meta [...] one in which you get to build the experience you want, rather than the one a giant company wants."
Is Google signaling the end of the open web? That’s some of the concern raised by its new embrace of AI. While most of the fears about AI may be overblown, this one could be legit. But it doesn’t m…
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