My hot take: people aren’t hard enough on Proton

It’s like running with a bucket of water to a burning man and saying “I’ll douse you, but it’ll cost you 100 bucks”

I wonder if it will cost them more trying to defeat the tax, than if they just paid the tax.

They’d probably be okay with that anyway. They probably enjoy paying more just to watch poor people squirm.

I’ve noticed that irony too. For example, in 2024:

Donald Trump’s campaign has filed a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint against the UK’s Labour Party, accusing it of “blatant foreign interference” in the US election

And then, in 2026:

JD Vance backs Orbán’s re-election bid in Budapest visit

It’s funny that conservatives are all about “law and order” and then they’ll happily break the law (fleeing Brazil illegally) when it serves them

Oppressive authoritarianism? But tankies told me that China is a place of unbridled liberty. A land of milk and honey. Unlike the evil West which is always horrible and terrible.

Him seeming like a “weirdo” makes more sense when you look at his background. He was influenced by the hippie culture of the 60s and 70s. He travelled to India when he was a young adult and he got into Buddhism. I think all of that stuff inspired him to try things which are unconventional in western countries.

As for what you mentioned about jumping to the front of a transplant queue, yes that’s obviously selfish and wrong, if he did indeed do that.

Rich people pump money into politics in order to amplify their personal whims. Then they wonder why self-described socialist politicians are becoming more popular.

I’m trying out Piefed. Lemmy looks like relatively good software, but I don’t like the political views of the developers behind Lemmy. Their whole shtick seems to be “non-western countries good, western countries bad”.

Of course, western countries have done many bad things. But I think plenty of non-western countries have also done bad things. I just don’t buy into a narrative which always tries to paint western countries as “the bad guys” and non-western countries as “the good guys”.