Welcome back to the Stove Top weekly newsletter. As usual, each edition has a few brief stories and finishes with a mix of interesting links, hot takes, and good reads.

Enjoy.

TikTok Spying Is Bad…Always

If you read Stove Top, then you know my position on TikTok. It is indisputably a piece of Chinese spyware. Whether you think that warrants a ban or not is up to you. Personally, I don’t want anybody spying on me, and thus, would favor a ban.

And most Americans agree with me.

But would this be the case if America was the one spying and not China?

I’m not entirely sure:

• TikTok users already support the app not being banned (54% oppose a ban), even though it is a piece of Chinese spyware.

• People aged 18-29 feel the same way (46% oppose a ban vs 29% who support a ban), despite, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, it being a piece of Chinese spyware.

• A concerning percentage (29%) of Americans aged 18-29 support government surveillance in their homes as long as it cuts down on illegal activity.

If the government spun TikTok off as an American-run app, where the authorities could do some surveillance in order to keep the children safe and whatnot, would there really be any grassroots pressure to ban the app?

Hell nah.

Well that is pretty much exactly what the Feds wanted in exchange for keeping the app off the chopping block:

It doesn’t matter who’s doing the spying, surveillance is wrong in any circumstance. America, China, France, the Aliens, whoever. It doesn’t matter.

And by trying to turn TikTok into a piece of American spyware, the authorities have made it clear that banning TikTok is not about keeping Americans safe, but just keeping Americans under “approved” control.

Stop The Witch Hunts

Donald Trump is no saint. On the scale of Hitler to Jesus, he is probably hanging out somewhere a bit ahead of Woodrow Wilson.

That doesn’t change the fact that the criminal charges against him are a huge mistake. Whether you want to admit it or not, everyone knows that it’s politically motivated. And more and more people are starting to admit it.

This is not to say the cases aren’t “legit”. They very well might be, and he very well could be convicted. But that’d still be a bad thing for the country. The only thing that accomplishes is to incite a tit-for-tat war between Democrats and Republicans.

You’re already seeing that happen with Presidential impeachments. The Democrats tried to impeach Trump on some bullshit, so now the Republicans are trying to do the same thing to Biden. The result is that we end up with a divided country, a Presidential office that isn’t revered, and a word in impeachment that loses all semblance of legitimacy.

The same exact thing is going to happen with criminal prosecutions if this Trump shit goes further. The next time Republicans are in power they will dig and dig and dig until they find a way to put Biden in the slammer. Shit, with Hunter being a thing, it probably won’t be that hard.

Is that the country we really want to be in?

If you really want Trump to not be a thing anymore, don’t cop out and try to throw the guy in jail. Just run someone who isn’t a corpse and beat him again.

Sports Gambling Is Bad News

I have no idea why weed is federally illegal but sports gambling isn’t.

Tens of millions of people now have an app on their phones that is extremely addicting and could lead to financial ruin in the span of a few minutes. And with the amount of gambling ads we are forced to watch these days, that number is only going to go up.

Seriously, why are the Mannings and Halle Berry doing ads for Caesars?

I usually lean Libertarian. I don’t want to tell people what to do, or to prevent them from doing something they want to do. But there’s a difference between not telling people what to do, and letting companies with malicious intentions hook a generation onto something extremely dangerous and harmful.

We don’t let the cartel run ads for cocaine, and nor should we. Why should we treat gambling, something damn near as harmful, any differently?

Extras

• France is fully in their censorship era.

• And the UK is fully in their 1984 era.

• A phone hacking company used by the cops is asking the cops to keep their partnership secret.

• Robots might be able to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

• The people behind Wikipedia are a bunch of snakes.

• Unfortunately for me, modernity absolutely breeds allergies.

• China is fucking fucked man.

• Your coffee shop is watching you.

• So is the DHS.

• RuneScapers, stand up.

• I don’t know if you need to disband the FBI, but you definitely need to rein them in.

• The Washington Post ran an article saying that the richest 10% of Americans account for 40% of the nation’s carbon emissions. The methodology? How much of their income was dependent on carbon emissions. Obviously a CEO of a Fortune 500 company is going to work in a company that emits more carbon than a waiter. In reality, all this shows is that the most valuable parts of the economy are very energy-dependent, and to cut energy would be to cut off our feet.

• I really hate the Washington Post bro.

• Credit Bureaus have to do something to prevent their customers’ data from being hacked.

• Defense tech is hot. Thank God.

• A growing share of Americans favor more nuclear power. Thank God.

• Meta is bringing end-to-end encryption to Messenger by the end of this year.

• The Netherlands is trying to effectively ban cash. Crypto fixes this.

• The warlord who gave Putin a hard time earlier this year has been deleted.

• Germany has found out that cutting your carbon emissions without tanking your economy and freezing people to death is difficult.

• Bring smart people here, not China.

• Huawei should not be allowed anywhere near America.

• American auto workers are going on strike.

• The Bay Area billionaires have had enough of San Fran’s bullshit.

• Is there nothing we can do about Lazarus, the North Korean hacking group?

• You should need a warrant to search somebody’s phone.

Until next time, ✌️

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