They are almost certainly a Russian troll. See their comment history.

I understand your point, but I think the logic you are presenting is what is enabling these people. Ask yourself - what is the nuance in the Ukraine war? Fence sitting, and talking out both sides of your mouth about how we should condemn Putin yet also accept there is nuance to these issues is dangerous. It’s not complicated. If you don’t condemn Putin’s actions, you are implicitly accepting/agreeing that Ukraine should be wiped out.

Putin relies on the populace accepting that there is “nuance” to the Ukraine war. Russia has conditioned (or at least is trying to condition) the population (in the west) into adopting this logic but the reality is that there is no nuance to this issue. What nuance could there be to an aggressor invading someone’s land?

They don’t condemn Russia or the US leaders that push Putin’s agenda here - that’s how it’s support. How could it be anything else?

Israel (at least in large part) is why they’re pushing the tiktok ban now. It is a little hard to connect the dots on this because the China-reasoning seems strong on the surface. I agree that China is bad, but there has not been any stellar evidence to show that China censors or otherwise manipulates users on the platform. You can easily go to tiktok and find videos discussing how awful the Chinese government is, information about tiananmen square, Winnie the Pooh jokes, etc. In comparison, the data that came out of the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica scandal was far more concrete, and Congress did nothing. Certainly there were not 81% of house members coming together to force Facebook to sell. Tiktok has even offered to make major concessions about data privacy.

Israel’s war in Gaza is deeply unpopular and the fascists in Israel and here in the US are concerned that they are losing popularity. Tiktok has 100+ million active users in the US and the heaviest anti-Israel sentiment (the government and the US’s relationship with the Israeli government, not the Israeli/Jewish people) is heaviest on Tiktok, which is dominated by young millennials and gen Z. This is leaked audio of the director of the anti-defamation league (a very pro-Israel organization) speaking about this. He basically tells his audience that they have a “major major major… problem” and specifically says that they have a “tiktok problem and a gen Z problem.” Listen to the audio- you can agree or not with his reasoning, but he’s essentially saying that the spread of ideas on tiktok is causing their polling issues.

People like this want to stop the spread of ideas on tiktok because young people are organizing, boycotting, and putting dents in the system. They do not like that young voters are having a larger and larger influence. These young people are also boycotting major companies like McDonalds and Starbucks who have taken pro-Israel stances, and these companies have lost profits from this. All this to say - I don’t think there is any lack of motivation by people with lots of money to destroy the platform where these people are organizing.

It is incredible how much money Israel pumps into our politicians, both Democrats and Republicans. Joe Biden himself is the largest recipient of this money. There are anti-BDS laws (specifically for Israel) in 37 states. I don’t think many people are aware of just how much influence Israel has in the US. It is surprising and disturbing, but I am equally surprised/disturbed at how little attention these topics have received on Lemmy of all places. I don’t think it takes a genius to start making these connections and to start asking questions - maybe this isn’t the full picture but there is a lot of stuff here to be skeptical about. That said, I absolutely do think this kind of information is suppressed on other platforms, and they want to suppress all of tiktok because it’s dangerous to them.

It is entirely job dependent. I have been in jobs where it was just a grind and going the extra mile simply put a smile on my boss’s face. In jobs like these the best thing you can do is carve out as many hours as possible during the work week to build new skills or apply to other jobs. I’ve also been in jobs where going the extra mile directly contributed meaningful skills to my resume/portfolio and helped me get a new job with way better pay.

I see this argument a lot, and I am absolutely a hardliner on genocide. That said, I am also aware that a second Trump presidency will be the end of our nation as we know it. It used to be so simple when voting for candidates - it was “evil” vs “more of the same”, but now it’s “evil” vs “genocide as a foreign policy.”

What is the exit strategy for us as a nation? How many times can we stave off a Republican presidency? Even voting blue we are slipping right - how many times can we vote for the Democrats until we’ve made so many concessions that the blue guy is just exactly equivalent to the current red guy?

I’m really trying to argue in good faith. If someone has a decent answer to this, I’d love to hear their side. Otherwise it seems to me like we are headed for some kind of civil war in this country.

I left out a crockpot of mostly eaten mac and cheese on the counter. I was on the couch half-asleep when I heard my keys (which were next to this crockpot) jingle. I didn’t say anything, I just turned my head and saw my cat running for cover as if it had just tripped the alarms during a heist gone wrong. How do I interpret this in any way other than my cat knowing what it was doing was naughty?

But doctors are required to report anything that they identify as an immediate physical threat (e.g., to the patient or because of the patient). I found out recently that this is entirely subjective - different doctors have different ideas about what constitutes a threat. So, in a lot of ways, no, medical secrecy may not protect you if you tell the wrong doctor.

It’s because we like the challenge. Also how salty people get when they lose to my f-tier character.

There’s a restaurant in my hometown of Lexington, KY called "“Frank and Dino’s.” It’s owned by Carlo Baccarezza who has ties John Gotti, who was Italian mafia. He’s a horrible person and has been sued by former employees of the restaurant for discrimination.

He opened this place just before the pandemic. It’s supposed to be a fine-ish dining establishment with authentic Italian. The prices are high, but the food is terrible. It might be passable for someone who doesn’t know authentic Italian. In any case, the restaurant sits empty most of the day, and it doesn’t make sense to me why you would open a place like this and just allow it to have a terrible reputation that’s mostly empty day in and day out.