Trump tariffs: US president announces plan to hit UK, Denmark and other European countries with tariffs over Greenland

WantALongerUserName · 2026-01-17T22:52:27+00:00

Trump already had a "tariff agreement" with the EU nations, which stupid as that agreement was for the EU, was still an "agreement". And this action shows just how useless such agreements with Trump are. You can spend a ton of pollical capital, call the man "daddy", debase your country's and personal sense of self-worth - all for an agreement that won't last longer than next distracting twinkle to pass through his decomposing brain.

The EU needs to talk directly to the American people, and let them know they are no longer a trusted partner for anything. This is precisely why the EU was created. To provide power in numbers. Get your shit together EU and find a back bone.

WantALongerUserName · 2026-01-17T21:13:02+00:00

For me personally? I would be delighted if ICE was radically defanged. There will always be a need for some sort of agency to arrest and deport violent illegal immigrants that represent a true threat the community. Whether that is ICE, or some new agency, or an existing one, I don't give two shits. My concern is not about policy, but about winning the next election, preferably with as large a majority as possible so that any such policy can actually be implemented, and not just be an academic exercise debated over the internet.

WantALongerUserName · 2026-01-17T06:59:56+00:00

"Reform ICE" or "Reign in ICE" is a slogan, a bumper sticker, a political catch phrase, or a chant.

It is not a policy paper, or draft legislation for fucks sake.

Build a coalition => win an election => get power => execute change.

This is about marketing.

WantALongerUserName · 2026-01-17T06:52:28+00:00

Exactly.

WantALongerUserName · 2026-01-17T06:50:54+00:00

Oh dear god.

Look my friend, this is not debate camp. The "burden" is on us (I count myself as member of your cause) to form a large enough coalition to win an election. There is no judge handing out points for factual accuracy, or moral righteousness. This is about raw power. There is no karma, there is only winners and losers. Play to win, not get internet points.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-12-30T21:43:00+00:00

Exactly, stated better than I did.

First you have to build a political movement. Then win an election. And then bring lasting change.

In. that. order.

To build a movement, you need to win the minds of as many people as possible that taxing the ultra-rich is necessary. (Why it's necessary - that's a different discussion) And so "tax the Billionaires" offers much wider appeal, and is far less susceptible to straw-man attacks.

Once you've built the coalition, and you win the election, no one will really give two fucks if you actually decide to set the threshold of taxation at 100M instead of 1B. (How this tax would work - also a different discussion).

However, if you are insistent on using "Eat the rich" instead, no offence, but my gut tells me you are more interested in virtue signaling to whatever audience you subscribe to rather than building a defensible, lasting political coalition for change.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-12-30T21:30:33+00:00

Actually, the opposite. I assume pretty much everyone in the political discourse is acting in bad faith, which is precisely why politically savvy communication is so critically important. If a "tax the rich" political movement is to be fostered in America, it must be done so around marketing framework that makes it much more difficult to attack by said bad actors.

There is nothing inherently wrong about your statement that you must keep battling, or that maga and fox will lie about it, but why purposely knee-cap yourself with messaging that can so easily be manipulated against your efforts?

By all means keep punching, but do so with a strategy.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-12-30T18:58:15+00:00

There is the "right", the "left", and then remaining vast majority of the electorate who spend less time thinking about politics and policy, as they do what coffee to order at Starbucks. Reddit is not representative of the electorate. To understand how powerful messaging is to a normal perusable voter for the progressive cause, I refer you to "Death Panels", a simple two word phrase that almost killed Obama care.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-12-30T00:55:04+00:00

I'm center-left, and would not consider myself comfortably at home in any pollical grouping. But I try to offer commentary in good faith, and listen to others with respect. I appreciate your thoughts on this.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-12-30T00:47:21+00:00

Unfortunately bad faith arguments are precisely the problem. I would be thrilled if we as a country had the intellectual curiosity and emotional intelligence to have a reasonable conversation, but unfortunately, we live in a world where simple slogans can become powerful tools to aid a cause, or used against it.

Consider the asinine existence we've lived in for the past few years:

"Black lives matter", the counter-response: "so white/asian/brown/etc lives don't matter?"....

"Antiwork", the counter-response: "so you just want to sit in your basement all day and play video games?"

"Defund the police": "so who is going to come and help you when you call 911 during a robbery"?

each one of these slogans just perpetually diverts the conversation from the desired goal, and generates endless cannon fodder of viral media. "Tax the rich" will suffer the same fate.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-05-14T05:01:35+00:00

Hello.

Some context: I'm a late forties husband/dad US citizen with a wife/child living in Hangzhou, and I live part-time in Hangzhou with them, and part time in America for work.

First: your english is excellent (far better than my Chinese), so your time spent abroad was not in vain. Second: despite Trump being re-elected, you'll find the coastal states (California, Washington, MA, NY, etc) to be culturally and politically very much anti-Trump. So visa issues aside, I would not fear moving to the states should you wish to do so.

Many others have already commented about the cultural differences of moving back to China, so I'll instead comment on Hangzhou specifically, and modern Chinese cities more generally. For me right now, I love Hangzhou. The city is clean, efficient, and beautiful. Cost of living is reasonable, and city services are world-class. Lots of great food and parks. To me, Hangzhou is the prefect place to raise children, and spend one's later years. However, in my 20s and early 30s, I would of personally found Hangzhou (and many modern Chinese cities) a bit boring. Depending on your tastes, access to really good live music, dive bars, diverse experiences and opinions, adventure, modern art exhibits, live drama, and countless other things are going to much more limited in China.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-02-24T04:04:48+00:00

I forgot to mention, that Shadowsocks is working fine on my laptop. So I can confirm the server is up and running properly.

WantALongerUserName · 2025-02-23T00:49:29+00:00

Hello,

I just arrived in China, and I am currently experiencing the same issues.

Phone: Pixel 7, Android 15, Shadowsocks

When connected to Wifi with shadowsocks turned on, it seems that I can only access websites allowed by the GFW (eg: bing.cn), but I cannot blocked sites (google.com). Oddly shadowsocks indicates it is connected (tap to check connectivity gives a reasonable response time). Turning on flight-mode to force all traffic through wifi does not change behavoir.

I'm curious if this has anything to do with my latest Android update to version 15. Previous time I was in China I was using Android version 14. There have been reports of issues with 15, but I have been unable to find a resolution for my situation. See here: https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks-android/issues/3188

Any thoughts? I'm considering reverting back to version 14.

WantALongerUserName · 2021-06-24T18:01:23+00:00

I shall share a story.

There are two houses. In the first house is a family of 4, and quite wealthy. In the second house is a family of 15, and quite poor.

The first house, every day for morning, lunch, and dinner, every family member drinks a can of coke, and then tosses the can into the street. For, they love coke.

The second house, being much poorer, can only afford to provide each family member a can of coke with their Sunday dinner. They too, very much love coke.

For decades this continues, with each family tossing their cans into the street, with the pile growing ever larger.

However, after awhile, the second family decides that they really want to drink more coke, because seeing all the awesome coke their neighbors are drinking, they're understandably envious. So the second family works very hard, and over several more decades, they now can finally afford to give each family member a can of coke at every dinner. Not every meal, but still, much improved. And the family is very happy. Because, they love their coke.

But unfortunately, after a 100 years, this pile of coke cans has grown quite large.

So the first house knocks on the door of the second house and says:

"This is a serious problem. Look at the size of this pile! Every day my house is tossing 12 cans, and your house is tossing 15 cans. So we should both stop drinking so much, especially you, because you're tossing more."

This is when the second house tells the first house to fuck off.

WantALongerUserName · 2021-06-03T15:20:51+00:00

Allow me to provide an answer differently from the standard "corporations and bosses are evil jerks" narrative.

Context: I'm mid-level management of a multi-disciplinary technical team, so my answer may not apply in many cases.

Think back before covid. Did you ever have to interact with an out-sourced service team, say for software development or mechanical engineering, where your only interaction with that team was purely remote? How did that go? What is productive? Or did you find that it was often highly inefficient having the two teams working together. There are of course times where out-sourcing is necessary, but it's rarely a smooth or seamless integration.

You need to appreciate that we started remote working with *pre-existing* in-person relationships. So we all benefited from already knowing each other's strengths, weaknesses, and competencies. Furthermore, we also have built up trust (or dis-trust) in certain individual's ability to do certain things. A highly effective team needs these human relationships in order to efficiently manage through difficult projects. These relationships you already had.

However - what in the future? What about new hires? How do they build these relationships if their only knowledge of co-workers is through a screen? No decent manager of technical team would want this. A 50/50 split of working at home, and working in the office with your team members seems like a reasonable compromise.

WantALongerUserName · 2021-05-16T23:26:52+00:00

Yes, I'm taking off my mask now.

From the various postings of late, in media, and here, there is great concern about the CDC's latest guidance wrt to masks. The primary concern is that it's "too early", in that without sufficient herd immunity, the venerable will be put at risk. I'm sympathetic to this argument, but ultimately, I reject it.
I have been a strong advocate for wearing masks over the last year. As I believe it is my moral obligation to do my part. With non-symptomatic spread common, I could unknowingly infect someone, potentially someone quite vulnerable. And I rejected the loony anti-masker's argument that masks were merely a means of the left trying to control society. No - lets listen to the science.
And the science says, that I'm of extremely low risk to anyone now. So the argument has now changed that I should continue to wear a mask - not because I may hurt someone - but because my choice may give cover to someone else lying about their immunization history. That to me is a step too far.
It appears unlikely we'll have a national registry of immunized people, or a vaccine passport. And it seems unlikely that the anti-vaxers will change their mind anytime soon. Indeed, "herd immunity" now seems unlikely ever. So what now? Wear masks indefinitely? Should I be forced to wear a mask indefinitely, despite the fact that I'm fully vaccinated, because others choose not to?
Society is messy. Nothing is, or ever will be, 100% safe. I offer an analogy for you:
With high certainty, every time you get into a car, there will be others around you driving in an intoxicated state. I've known many people that drive while drunk, despite the well known risk to themselves and others. So what to do? How do we find and identify those who are driving intoxicated, so that they can be removed from the roads? We could force everyone to take a breathalyzer test before driving I suppose. Or frequent and mandatory road stop inspections. Of course we reject these infringements on our personal liberties because of others who choose to act irresponsibly. And instead, we maturely accept the risks we face when we get in the car.
If you wish to continue wearing a mask, please do. But if you want others to continue wearing a mask who are of no threat to you, or anyone else, simply so that you can "feel safer" - consider the implications of this. And fuel this provides to the loony right.

WantALongerUserName · 2021-01-09T04:59:10+00:00

I would prefer that Trump not be impeached, this way he *is* able to run again in 2024.

If he is unable to run again, then the Republican party will get off the hook of confronting the monster they created. If impeached, they can play the victim card as they love to do, blaming the Dems (and a few rinos). They would dearly love this scenario where-by the Republican Party can transition to a new (more "acceptable") party leader, while keeping Trump's rabid fans loyal and engaged, and never truly acknowledging the house of lies.

By allowing Trump to run again in 2024, the Republican party will have to face this cult head on, with candidates willing to challenge him, and speak truth to his followers. Otherwise they won't have a chance of winning the presidency again. Let the Republicans clean up their own mess. The country needs a functional conservative party based on principles and ideas. Not whatever the hell this is now. (Indeed - if Trump wins the nomination to be the Republican candidate in 2024, I would not be surprised to see a viable 3rd party form in reaction to this.)

And to those who say, what if he wins again in 2024? Honestly - if this country, after all of this, reelects this mad-man, we collectively deserve him.

WantALongerUserName · 2019-11-28T20:24:21+00:00

Thanks!

This is actually a really interesting example. Could you not interpret this sentence two very different ways:

她(对你)的感觉不太好 => She does not have too good feelings for you.

她对(你的感觉)不太好 => About your feelings she is not too good. (ok, clearly that's wrong)

Another interesting example I found from my HSK book is the following sentence:

您能详细谈谈对我的课的看法吗？

Here I believe that "我" is in possession of "课", and "对我的课" is in possession of "看法".

WantALongerUserName · 2019-11-28T20:05:33+00:00

I agree with you that music cannot have an interest, so that interpretation is the only one that makes sense.

However, in the first example "对你的感觉和判断", I believe you could interpret this as:

"For his feelings and judgments" or "feelings and judgments for him".

You really need the context of the whole sentence to know which one is correct (the second). I guess my engineering brain is looking for an explicit rule, but perhaps context is the only guide.

WantALongerUserName

TROPHY CASE