Interesting, learnt something new. Thanks.

To be clear, Australia is not perfect by a long stretch, but our politicians are much more discrete in their desire for enrichment, we also have a lot more guard rails in place to prevent it, while they are in office.

While there is obviously big business trying to influence government decisions, that will always happen regardless of who we vote in. My point is, if the person you vote for isn’t clearly concerned with improving the lives of their constituents you should absolutely fuck them off and not continually vote for them for decades.

As an Australian I am constantly amazed that no matter how racist, homophobic, greedy, stupid, selfish and blatantly self-serving America’s government representatives are, you continue to vote for them.

We arent so committed to the red vs blue ideology. If I vote for blue one term and they don’t perform I’ll vote red or green or independent next term.

Unfortunately, the way things are going, your vote might not make a difference for much longer.

The woman in the red dress, isn’t she the Alaskan senator that voted yes then told everyone else to vote no?

Stick it to the man! Stop learning! /s

Xi has just been handed Taiwan on a platter. As long as he doesn’t endanger the semiconductor factories the US rely on, Trump isn’t going to lift a finger to help them… unless they sign over control of said semiconductor factories, in a “joint” partnership.

While what you say is likely, if Iran was to do that, Israel would turn Tehran into a giant night light.

Escalating to nuclear weapons in any form would be madness for either side.

Why aren’t the UN airdropping supplies?

The UN really is a useless institution, if it can’t pull countries into line or at the very least aid the innocent, what’s the fucken point of it?

Hypocrites. What about returning Tibet to Tibetans?

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck…

Dah, comrade

“Never again… to us.”

Toyota has the largest stake in Subaru, so your down to Honda.

He’s old, he probably doesn’t remember what he had for lunch and is likely easily influenced by his staff to say or sign whatever they tell him. The problem is, by the time we get to the election his geriatric presidency will end with Trump winning, which will be bad for everyone.

While I’m an atheist, Trump’s potential second presidency has book of revelations vibes to it.

Sure, I went for the economic impact option, but causing chaos is certainly another way they could go.

While I’m sure there are financial motives behind this that are backed by the US car industry, it also makes sense if you anticipate a war with China sometime in the future. You don’t really want a large proportion of your population driving cars manufactured by the enemy that can be switched off remotely.

I’ve got an iPhone 13.

I used to upgrade about every 2 years because that’s how long my contract was and there was usually some killer feature I wanted. Now, new releases only have incremental improvements so I’m not in any hurry to buy a new phone.

I’ll probably keep this phone for another year or 2 as there is nothing wrong with it, even the battery life is still great.

So I’d say iPhone sales are “collapsing” because of a lack of innovation in the market, cost of living pressures, and handset durability, they just last longer.

…and America used to be the good guy.

They probably don’t meet US safety requirements?

Who is unsuspecting? I choose to use a iPhone because:

It is a closed ecosystem, a billion apps is enough for me. I wanted to be able to update the phone for many years I didn’t want to have preinstalled 3rd party bloatware I wanted a device that was less prone to malware

Android is a great OS, and it is better in some areas than iOS, but nothing particularly important to me.

Only Americans are concerned about green and blue bubbles. If it’s so upsetting to you, use WhatsApp. Don’t blame Apple because Google couldn’t standardise on a single messaging app for more than 5 minutes.

Using Google devices and pointing at Apple and saying “they’re evil, don’t use them” is laughable. They’re all bad companies, no organisation should be worth trillions.