You seem to be in a weird state where every hostile act that both China and the US carry out is a reason to stop doing business with the US but not with China - unless you want to reassess the starting point where you said the Netherlands needs to leave itself open to pressure from China in this instance, every though that won’t cause dependence on the US, only a shift in balance.

Even with the hostile trump regime, China is still more hostile towards EU states than the US is.

New cold war

Litmus test: who bears responsibility for the war in Ukraine?

I dunno about that, but I do know Reeses cups taste bad. Too much sweet and salty.

Europeans don’t eat peanuts? Or chocolate?

Do you think they will completely stop doing business with someone that steals* their shit

*as much as this can be called theft, something which took place in specific non-arbitrary circumstances, rather than the Dutch government just thinking “I quite fancy that”

The UK undertook a similar action earlier this year when British Steel was threatened with going defunct by its Chinese owners. Business between the UK and China did not collapse as a result.

By realistic: China is continually carrying out low-level hostile actions against other nations - cyberattacks, IP theft, currency manipulation, and also this kind of attempt at industrial subordination. It’s realpolitik, which means that if it gets detected and a credible negative response, their reaction won’t be to cut off all trade; it will be to stop doing deals which they only wanted to do as a way of carrying out this kind of manipulation. If it were to cut off all trade, what you’re saying is that Western countries should roll over and accept abusive practices by China so as to avoid being dependent on the abusive USA. It makes no sense.

If you think that China is not actually doing anything that even deserves a response, then feel free to say so, of course.

It’s not really an SUV premium; it’s a heavy vehicle premium. This makes some sense, as heavier vehicles tend to be bigger and therefore require more space to park. But it would make more sense to have vehicle weight feature as part of car tax and actual vehicle size feature as part of parking permits, since that’s the variable that affects how much parking they require. Using either of these as a proxy for pollution (as is alluded to) is an awful idea, as electric vehicles tend to be larger and heavier than equivalent petrol ones.

No idea, but having read the Bible is not a requirement to be a Christian either, and whether it’s horrendous and insane is certainly neither here nor there.

Yeah, the situation where people don’t oppose horrific policies because it doesn’t affect them personally is unsustainable. A better collective conversation about them, and a fostering of empathy from a young age, are needed.

I’m not sure he was thrilled about peanut butter choice, he basically had a breakdown

Cool, that’s not what a Christian is. But that’s ok! You learnt something today!

What is causing “complete dependence on the US” here? Taking over one single Chinese company doesn’t do that.

And chipmaking is dominated by the US, China and Taiwan (which is not immune to influence from the other two parties, lol) so how exactly can one avoid dependency on or the other, except by balancing dependency between the two?

If you really think this means “complete dependence” then explain how.

Sure but it’s arrogant to claim that all of these thinkers from ages past were actually doing that. I don’t agree with any of them because I’m not religious but they had serious reasons for the views they held, and there were serious disagreements on matters of religion that caused serious debates with serious arguments put forward.

any counter-arguments that clearly show a contradiction and make “the christian faith is true” impossible to be a true statement

We’re talking about the content of the Bible and its interpretation, not “counter-arguments that clearly show a contradiction.” (And: modern religions are far to flexible to be subject to “clear contradictions”. I’m sure you’ve heard the responses from religious people to your criticisms already - you find those response unsatisfactory, as do I, but they expose a way in which you misunderstood the fundamental character of the religion you were criticising. I can expand if necessary)

So when it comes to scripture like “I didn’t come to change the law” and so on, there are any number of ways of interpreting the language non-literally in a way consistent with modern Christian practice. I’m not going to play devil’s (God’s?) advocate with you but dismissing such things completely and out of hand is ignorant. People with better understanding of Biblical languages than you or I have studied more of the Bible than you or I have and have had long-running arguments it. If you don’t believe the fundamental principles then… just let them have it? Dispute them when they come up against obvious moral or scientific principles, or on their other statements, but claiming with zero argumentation that they don’t do any real thinking is silly.

It is far from clear that dependency on the us is worse than dependency on China. A couple of years ago even suggesting it would be lunacy - it’s only even remotely credible just now.

I remember farming Halloween masks in TF2. My inventory’s still full of them, and I can hear the spooky noise the server played when they dropped.

I don’t care for Halloween though. In contrast, even though I hate LoL, I love Christmas, and I remember the Christmas music and the silly Christmas modes very fondly.

What defines “true Christian” for you? Can he put sugar on his porridge?

That sounds like something of a thought terminating cliche. I think it’s at once simpler and more complicated.

Simpler because most Christians don’t think overly much about their beliefs and believe their church’s doctrine. More complicated because many do, and those that do think way beyond what’s “comfortable”. Scholarship going back millennia had dispelled - for scholars - any notion of biblical inerrancy, never mind literalism. For those who don’t believe the Bible’s plain reading is all true, there is no discomfort here - it would be a supreme arrogance to accuse minds such as Anselm, Augustine and Aquinas of merely believing whatever feels comfortable.

That doesn’t mean they’re right obviously, but you can do better than such dismissal.

In practice, Christians don’t think this means all old testament laws remain in force literally. That’s a contradiction when they want to use literalism elsewhere, but that’s not most Christians.

Thanks for the conversation!

But it isn’t, and no it probably couldn’t.

It sounds like you’ve just got AI on the brain and wanted to moan about it.

Ooh, edgy!

Wut

This is a joke, not ai