Sounds an awful lot like a shakedown

So what happens if you’re a litigator for the DOJ and you straight up say “fuck you. That’s insane. I won’t do it”?

-eel-on-musk, probably

No they won’t - not for the inventory that’s already in-country. Apple sells things as DDP - Delivered Duty Paid. Look up what that means. It’s pretty clear.

I honestly never thought I’d be rooting for the PRC over the USA… but here we are.

These are very fucking weird times, fellow meatbags.

I’ve been doing that for years (my ex was Korean, and she got me to make a habit of it)

They were not close to a deal. Putin’s desired endgame is “I own Ukraine”. Ukraine’s desired endgame is “Ukraine continues to exist and isn’t constantly hammered by Russian missiles and bombs”. There’s not really much room for negotiation there. Moreover, Putin has negotiated in demonstrably bad faith multiple times over the course of the war (and I mean since 2014, when they used unmarked soldiers to annex parts of Ukraine and “held a referendum”). I’m not claiming Ukraine is a flawless paragon of virtue, but at the same time, there are VERY clear good guys and bad guys in the Ukrainian government war. Russia is the bad guys.

I’m completely baffled that so few people (and particularly, so few people who held real geopolitical power in the last decade) seem to understand this. I’ve been saying this since 2014, and saying it A LOT since 2022.

Nuclear nonproliferation is dead. It died when the Budapest Memorandum was revealed to be worth less than the paper it was written on. Nuclear weapons are now - and will be for the foreseeable future - the absolute final word in guaranteeing sovereignty and territorial integrity, full stop.

Agreed on Israel, but you are WILDLY misrepresenting the context and tenor of the Ukrainian war.

I’m going to be unsurprised when they raid some commune and the commune residents decide “fuck you” and start shooting. Also, I think that’s the point. I think they’re doing this so they can provoke a violent reaction and then say “omg it’s a war!” on OANN et al, and then invoke the insurrection act.

Lmao I’m moving most of my assets to international. Fuck this place. We’re headed for the cumulogranite.

Yeah, can’t say that I disagree

It’s satire. Check the post history.

They’re very obviously not, though. This is some newspeak bullshit.

And that, friends, is why it’s important to understand that when you travel to other countries, you’re a guest, and you need to fucking act like it.

Edit: my point is that not all countries have freedom of speech, and the consequences for violating it in some places are quite severe. I’m not saying freedom of speech and expression is bad, or not worth defending. Im saying you need to understand where protesting and civil disobedience will make a difference, and which countries will treat you as grist for the mill. You wouldn’t want to do something like this in the PRC or Russia, for instance, either.

…that nobody will buy because of retaliatory tariffs

I’m gonna cough on them