I don’t have to respect people for their beliefs.

Some people believe vaccines cause autism. Their beliefs are stupid and actively dangerous to society, and I will call them on that shit.

At some point we’re going to admit that Reform Ltd. is just a hate group, right?

I don’t support murder, but when people who do call for it like checks notes Charlie Kirk get murdered, I’ll enjoy the irony.

There are some people who the world would be better off without. Can anyone honestly say the US would be a worse place now if Trump had been killed instead of “wounded” at his own shooting?

But clearly Discovery was the one with “wrong” Klingons… 🙄

Counterpoint - Tuvok and Neelix were lost in an industrial accident.

Tragic, but this is Starfleet. Risk, as they say, is their business.

Counterpoint - greedy bastard CEOs killing your relatives by denying healthcare they’ve been paying premiums for for years is inspiring violence.

It’s easy to do that and then say “whoops, mistake!” if Taylor Swift isn’t going to use her billionaire status to crush them with lawsuits.

She didn’t do it with Twitter when it was generating nudes of “her”, so I doubt she’ll do it with chatbots.

So they’ll keep doing it.

Rich bastards would still fuck it up.

The guy who invented insulin made it free for all rather then patenting it because it’s literally a life saving medication.

How’s that going in the US?

I think it was Frankie Boyle that said at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral, the 21-gun salute was pointed into the grave…

Sure, but due to us having the same problems with First Past The Post that the Americans do, we still end up voting against a party rather than for the one we want.

If I’d voted Green in the last election, it wouldn’t have been a vote for Labour, which (at the time) were the only party that had a chance of getting rid of the “safe” Tory in my constituency.

Now that Labour have destroyed any reputation of being “for the people” that they may have had in order to try and sway the Nazis that will vote Reform, they (hopefully) won’t be getting any votes from the left next time.

Hopefully the Greens and the new Corbyn/Sultana party will be sensible in where they field candidates so as not to split that voter base.

We’re too far out for me to guess if a Tory/Reform coalition might be possible next time, but it’s a terrifying thought…

Of course we want a revolution.

We voted out the Conservatives after fifteen years, only to replace them with a Labour government who are indistinguishable from the previous regime.

All Starmer is doing is pandering to the even-more-right-wing Reform voters, further alienating the Left.

He’s a genocide denying, Israel and Trump supporting fascist who’s cracking down on peaceful protests and arresting 80 year old former magistrates for holding signs.

But the trouble with a revolution is you need to ensure that what you get afterwards isn’t even more authoritarian than what you got rid of.

That’s why you can’t just put the politicians and the billionaires up against the wall and let God sort them out. You need a Plan.

For context, Sean Lock was a comedian. He was one of those where the humour wasn’t just in the joke, but in the delivery.

So I have no doubt he said that, and I have no doubt most of the room was in stitches while he did.

Well I don’t want stock android, do I? I can hope Apple aren’t selling my personal data. I know that Google would. I’ve de-googled my life, I’m not going back.

It would be amazingly risky for Apple to hide backdoors in their products. One of their big selling points is their reputation for taking user data privacy seriously. If it ever came out that they’d helped a government by violating that, their credibility would be shot and they’d lose a noticeable percentage of customers overnight.

That’s not good business, so I don’t think they’d risk it.

I’ve not read anything suggesting they are. I’d imagine this would be quite a big story if anyone has any evidence of it, and the Trump regime is incapable of keeping its mouth shut.

Plus someone from Apple would leak it. Even if you genuinely believe Tim Apple is sucking trump’s dick, you can’t believe the entire company supports that.

I knew someone would say that.

What are my other options?

I’ve gotten away from Microsoft and Android.

I need a phone that can run modern banking apps, so I can’t run some janky Linux OS just for hyper privacy.

I also need something my parents can use, since they’re all in on Apple at the moment too. I don’t live close enough to regularly visit to do on site tech support, and honestly, not my idea of fun anyway.

For better or worse, Apple is it at the moment.

I’m not saying that appeasement is always the way, but I’d rather Apple stayed off Trump’s vindictive side by giving him a little shiny toy then by giving them (for example) user data or backdoors into their platform.

Yes, in an ideal world, they’d tell the whole administration to go fuck itself, but they also don’t want to be destroyed by the government (however illegal that may be, do you really think they’d survive long enough for all the legal challenges to go through the system if Trump decided Apple had to go?)

I don’t disagree with anything you said, but how trustworthy is Queasyjet’s image anyway?

I’d rather he did it in the bar then in the plane…

He’s not exactly a major character in it.

While I do rate it, it was written by Neil Gaiman, who’s since been revealed to be a real shitbag, so maybe pirate it?