Objection

So true bestie.

Unrelated, but the other day, someone cornered me in an alley with a gun and demanded I hand over my wallet - but I didn't lose to them! I simply put my hands up and abandoned my wallet, very different.

It's a staging area for the US that's very close to China, so there's that reason strategically. But really, there's not a lot of reason to which is why they haven't done so already. China is, as far as I'm aware, perfectly happy with the traditional US approach towards Taiwan, a policy of "strategic ambiguity" that doesn't officially recognize Taiwan as independent (while informally supporting them) and which has kept the peace for many decades. China does not gain much from provoking a military confrontation with the US, as things stand, China is winning the peace through economic development while the US is going all in on the military. By maintaining the status quo, China can leave the issue open and kick the can down the road, maintaining the possibility that someday in the future they may be in a strong enough position to press the issue.

Even still, China now has its own academia and engineering, and is larger than Taiwan. Hence, even without the corporate espionage mainland China is known for, wouldn’t investing in their burgeoning semiconductor industry make more sense, rather than spending that money on war?

That's exactly what they've been doing. That article mentions that they've actually recruited 3000 engineers from Taiwan's chip industry to help develop their own chips.

Yet while taking Taiwan would mean access to deep-water ports, it’s not as though Taiwan would ever pose a threat to Chinese power projection—their stance is wholly defensive. If China decided to pull an “America” and send a carrier to the Middle East or something, no one would stop them and risk a war.

Taiwan's stance is defensive, but the same isn't necessarily true of the US, which operates in Taiwan. The US has recently started throwing around rhetoric and shifting spending focuses towards treating a hot war with China as a serious possibility, insane as it may be. This is (hopefully) just bluster to justify defense spending, but I'm not at all convinced that if China sent a carrier to the Middle East, the US would not retaliate. If anything, they're looking for a reason.

So a handful of people grew consciences and decided that they didn't like the Nazis, but what was actually done to them while they remained loyal, or to others who never turned against them? "Some people grew disillusioned" isn't the same thing as the Nazis actively turning on them personally.

When the Nazis seized property, it was generally the property of minorities which was then often redistributed upwards to the rich. Many bourgeoisie made out like bandits, so long as they were white and didn't have a conscience.

Like, just google what happens to most oligarchs when they support any kind of authoritarianism. Whether it’s Mussolini, Hitler, or Putin, they always get shafted in the end.

What on earth are you talking about? The oligarchs who supported Hitler made a bunch of money, saw organized labor crushed, and then did fine after the war. Nazi war criminal Fritz ter Meer, who was a senior board member of IG Farben, manufacturing Zyklon B for the gas chambers, got a couple years in prison and then became chairman of Bayer.

The question you asked me before, multiple times, was "Do you believe all men are violent?" Which I answered. I will now promptly answer every single question you asked.

Do you think vaccines cause Autism?

No, obviously. Irrelevant nonsense.

Do you also have thought terminating memes about vaccines in that vein too?

No, and that logic is complete nonsense. Vaccines do not make people more prone to autism. Do you think they do?

Do you think everyone who got the COVID vaccine is also prone to death too?

No, of course not. This is all coming out of nowhere.

What is the difference between men who are violent and men who are not?

There isn't a singular difference. Some men are more violent than others because of the conditions they're born into, or the way they were raised, or different reactions and ways of handling testosterone (as you suggested). This question is largely unconnected from the point I've disputed, which is your claim that men are generally less prone to violence than women.

What is the difference between those who are vaccinated, and those who are vaccinated and have autism?

The ones who are vaccinated and have autism happen to have autism. What even is this question?

There you go. I'm not interested in responding to the rest of your rambling. I asked what question I haven't answered and then answered every question you asked, if you have another question you forgot, I'll answer that too. What did I have for breakfast this morning? Do I condemn Hamas? Go for it. You can say whatever you like about me, but I'm not afraid from answering questions or engaging with hard concepts, that's just false.

Strange that Biden won in 2020 despite 2/3 of the country "effectively voting for Trump" by not voting for Biden🤔

I won't feel bad about not voting for Kamala even if I were sent to El Salvador, or marched into a gas chamber. I made peace with that before I voted PSL.

Y'all fundamentally misunderstand us. You think we're simply misinformed, that we don't appreciate the threat, that if only we saw the facts of what the Republicans are like, we'd immediately see things your way. What you don't understand is that we do see the facts, we're just operating under a different ethical and political framework from you. The point of disagreement is not about the facts on the ground, it's about the best way to respond to them. So merely pointing to the awful shit the Republicans do has no chance of swaying, well, I can't speak for everyone, but certainly me, and anyone who thinks like me.

There are definitely similarities, but China has its own fascinating history there, with a lot of traditional beliefs resurfacing as weird, sanctioned versions of themselves after the cultural revolution had mostly suppressed them.

I think you've got it backwards. One of the lesser known, positive parts of the Cultural Revolution (which was primarily a horrible clusterfuck) was the Barefoot Doctors program, in which medical students were fast-tracked in education and sent out to the rural regions of China, which had never before had access to modern medicine. It was a very basic level of care, but it increased the number of doctors per person tenfold in the span of five years, and access to vaccines had a significant impact, increasing life-expectancy and reducing child mortality. However, because medical supplies in those regions were limited (and the scale of the program), the doctors were instructed to supplement care with traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). This allowed the program to be rolled out more quickly, and the partial reliance on TCM may have helped with public acceptance (since it was what they already believed in), but it had an unfortunate side effect that it legitimized TCM.

This program was phased out in the 80's with China's broader economic shift, towards privatization, while also moving away from TCM. The new policies made care less accessible and focused more on curing serious ailments rather than preventative care. China has made some efforts to address these issues, though I'm not well informed enough about their current system to weigh in.

A lot of the modern popularity of TCM likely comes from the time of the Barefoot Doctors program, because people remember their quality of life improving during that time and then declining later when the focus was shifted away from TCM, incorrectly attributing it to TCM's effectiveness rather than the accessibility of care and focus on prevention. Which is to say, many of the people who believe in TCM may actually be nostalgic for the healthcare system implemented during the Cultural Revolution.

I hate the term. I think what you described is a perfectly valid way to approach conversations, but be prepared to have the term thrown at you and to be accused of bad faith, because a decent part of the internet decided it was because a webcomic said so.

What "hard questions" have I avoided? I responded to everything you asked me.

It's a clear, objective fact that men are, statistically, more prone to violence than women. That means that you are, objectively, wrong. There's no reason for me to "admit that I'm wrong" when the facts and evidence are clearly on my side, lol.

What an idiotic, rambling comment. You ignore basically everything I said and latched on to a couple random pedantic points, while accusing me of being pedantic.

Quite literally, you are trying to argue that distress and anger are different emotions, despite both of them coming from the same place.

You are basically saying that Pepsi isn’t cola flavored because the can it comes in doesn’t look like Coke.

Except the distinction does matter, because testesterone is connected specifically to anger and not to general "distress." Women are just as likely to experience feelings of distress as men, that means that there's a significant difference in the context of this discussion between the two.

Not ALL men are violent. OBJECTIVELY. Do you agree?

Of course. At NO point did I ever claim otherwise. What I have claimed is that, generally, statistically men are more prone to violence, which is just as objectively true as the fact that not all men are violent, despite your claims to the contrary.

they ALL have TESTOSTERONE. They would ALL be violent.

This is complete nonsense. Testosterone only makes people more prone to violence, generally, statistically, it doesn't make every single person violent.

This is a ridiculous strawman that you've constructed to divert the course of the conversation into utter nonsense. It has nothing to do with anything I said.

That's about what I expected lmao.