They are not a real dot-connecty group.

It is more in line with a puppet, that has zero understanding of anything, being told what to say as it is convenient.

Yeah, the super obvious political stunt was a political stunt. It only fools those that don’t pay any attention or don’t know how anything works. Biden said he would not enforce the order, that trump signed during his first term, to ban tiktok. Then tiktok chose to shut itself down for a day and chose to turn itself back on with its political pandering notice. It is all to manipulate it’s users while also paying fealty to the incoming president (because China knows that is how easy he is to control).

PRACTICE WITH YOUR GUN! Don’t just buy it and expect to be able to do anything with it in a crunch.

I always add, learn how to treat a bullet wound and have kit to do so.

This is important for when something unthinkable or even an accident happens. Carrying a flat-packed tourniquet with your weapon can save your life if it misfires through your leg, or a ricochet hits you. In my case it helped when I had to defend myself against a group of people acting hostile. I drew, they didn’t back off, one charged and took a shot through the arm and collapsed holding his arm. His friends ran away, likely thought he was dead. I stopped the bleeding until the ambulance got there. The cops met him at the hospital (GSWs get reported). I didn’t have any legal fallout or problems from the police. They said it was clearly self-defense and I put myself at risk helping the guy.

Boring anecdote, I know, but it matters. I am not gonna advocate for altruisticly saving a Nazi/MAGA that you defend yourself from, but it can benefit you in a system rigged against you. Or it can save YOUR life if you both get a shot off and your aim is true, while the other person hits you in a limb.

Also, it just doesn’t hurt having more people with critical casualty care skills and kit walking around.

Where did I see the “rule” of comic books where the main villain starts as a good guy and after a friend of the hero…

Right?! RIP Intel haha

I hear Mario bros music…

Don’t even act like the SCOTUS upholds the Constitution, they uphold the christian bible now. So unamerican.

China would have more of an investment in the information on people they DO care to get than the US would have on any information scraps it could collect from tiktok that it doesn’t already have from hundreds of other sources.

That is actually a really funny point I hadn’t thought of.

It can be a corporate move to out competition AND also improve security. These are not mutually exclusive.

It isn’t about you. China doesn’t care about you. If they have a computer tracking cell network info of groups of soldiers, they can glean actionable information about US military posture. They can do large-scale data analysis on the information they have and get a startling amount of information. They can also use it as a vector for injecting their favorite form of aggression against the US, soft power. They can’t defeat the US in a fight, but economic and cultural warfare is a vulnerability in the US where the battleground is far more level. The incoming administration has indicated it plans to further increase the US’s military strength, which is functionally untouchable as it stands and is more than ready for the fight nobody plans to bring against it, while weakening the actual fight we are seeing. The US is objectively safer, however little, against the machinations of the CCP with tiktok gone, but it is a band-aid on a firehose. Also, the CCP is clearly ready for that move given the move to Redbook, likely stoked by CCP operators under the guise of “haha let’s go to another Chinese app, that’ll show 'em!” because Americans are very easy to predict and manipulate…they are born and raised to be manipulated. It’s rough, but quite interesting to see play out.

We have a puppet coming into the presidency. China will have all the inroads to our government they care to pay for. Tencent and Co. will be a non-issue.

Quick article skim, but I didn’t see where it said he was ex-military. I see a lot of past tense that could be interpreted as that, or as “the guy is dead and entirely past tense now”. I may have missed it.

He was likely making a statement and wanted fire and noise more than demolition and death (granted he also probably didn’t care if some people around it got hurt). It’s pathetic.

Saying this as an ex-soldier: The highly trained special forces are just as susceptible to psyops as the people they use them on. Sometimes more so because “if it was used on them, they would know better from experience” as they drink two more scoops of hooah Kool Ade. Nationalism isn’t patriotism, and patriotism is earned and not irrevocable.

That soldier was lied to and manipulated, and fell for it.

If you watch far more right-winger media and insulate yourself from reality, you will see it everywhere.

EDIT: “He was stationed in Germany, but was back stateside on approved leave.” Ah, that tells me he was still active, or I am at least comfortable assuming that is the case. Still, a good call on the 19 years. That woulda been super sus.

Something about all being domestic terrorists…

So…go play them? yikes …

Something tells me the jury will find he is not a threat to society and doesn’t deserve death or being corrupted by prison.