There are two considerations.

For the American government and corporations, Chinese espionage is an obvious and real threat. NVidia doesn’t want China to steal their chip designs and the Pentagon doesn’t want China to steal military info.

For American private citizens, it isn’t really a threat. It’s actually preferable in a way, because you know they won’t disclose whatever they learn to the American government. You might even consider buying a fully “designed and made in China” device, which the NSA might not have a backdoor to.

This only makes it more concerning to the American government, because they lose control over their citizens.

Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.

If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.

And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.

If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.

Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.

But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.

Yep, all the electrical engineers who have chimed in say it looks more like explosives.

A battery would get hot and start a fire. It wouldn’t instantly explode like this.

The eggs we buy in supermarkets come from hens who have never seen a cock.

It’s basically bird menstruation in a shell.

Look, I wouldn’t trust the GOP with my shit stained underwear.

Of course they don’t have a better plan.

But voters who vote for them are still voters.

And falling for a false narrative doesn’t make them hypocrites.

In their mind, they are voting for the party that will fix it.

You may disagree, as do I, but that’s what they think.

To be fair, it’s a flawed argument.

You can be against Google and Apple and still use a smartphone.

You can be against a genocide being sponsored with your tax dollars and still work and pay tax.

And yes, you can use the healthcare system that exists today and still want a different one tomorrow.

Or do you think that advocates of universal healthcare are also hypocrites for using Obamacare?

It’s also by design.

The flaws are designed to be exploited by the rich and powerful.

He should have said almost every.

But thanks for pointing out the mathematical truth ☝️

For one, you can’t transfer a 401K to your kids.

You have to first cash it out, pay income tax and then you can transfer what remains.

Yep, but nowadays they are losing popularity. I don’t even know if you can still find them.

Then you’ll need to educate yourself beyond what the government tells you.

Look up the ProPublica leaks. Someone is serving a very long jail time for leaking that out. It clearly shows how billionaires have very low taxable income, probably lower than yours.

To then say that you are upper class and Jeff Bezos is middle class is… Absurd.

The top 10% of income is not upper class. The error that people make, including you, is to focus on income.

People like Elon Musk have incomes smaller than $100K.

Upper class are the people who do not need to work and who live off of capital.

We need to shift our focus on wealth equality.

Look, the economy needs capital. If we want to be less dependent on the capital of rich people, then middle class people need to take over that role.

The people making $100-300K per year are key, because they can provide an alternative source of capital if their tax burden is lowered.

The people making $50K will not be able to provide large amounts of capital.

Yes, I fully agree.

So we need to find the right messaging.

I don’t know about Germany, but here in the Netherlands most people identify as middle class.

So “stop taxing the middle class” and “let the billionaires pay more” is a message that should resonate.

I’m optimistic and I believe we will get there. The level of equality we have today would be unfathomable for somebody living before 1945.

Which is why the tax system needs to be reformed.

The political right actually has one good point that we on the left don’t always appreciate: taxes on middle class people should be lower.

Specifically, very liberal tax exemptions on things like 401Ks, including the ability to transfer wealth across generations.

Combine that with higher taxes on the wealthy, and it will be possible to shift power to the middle class.

Consider the total market cap of the S&P 500, rounded up it’s about 50 trillion. Divide that among 130 million households and each household should own about $400K in stock on average.

Full equality is neither achievable nor desired by most people, so a good scheme would be to let every household hold up to $1M in wealth, tax exempt.

And then progressively tax everything above that.

The humiliation of losing to a black woman.

The past months the mood in America has been: not these two old geezers again.

I am honestly optimistic that it’s going to be a landslide for the Democrats without Biden. Americans are just sick of Trump and they didn’t want Biden to run again.

So the Democrats are giving the people what they want, while the Republicans are trying to force feed them something they don’t want.

Let’s see how this plays out.

I have read a lot of reports on how Texas doesn’t provide polling places in poorer, minority neighbourhoods, forcing them to travel far to vote.

And I have also heard reports of people who had to stand in line for hours to vote in Texas. Again, in poorer, minority neighbourhoods.

Are you saying those reports are not true?

Agreed. And to your point, competitive states without voter suppression like Wisconsin and Michigan had turnout of around 75%, while Texas (which is most known for suppressing voters) only achieved 60% turnout.

The problem is, the people who are swayed by this argument were already going to vote Blue no matter who.

To win the election, you need to convince voters who are still doubting between Trump and Biden. And they have definitely heard this argument before, so a different argument is needed.

Unfortunate reality, but headline placement is quite OK.