Being honest, there’s still a long way to go here. Next year’s elections will be very important for Brazil. But, 4 years of Trump, then 4 years of Bolsonaro, then Trump again now, that’s a lot of damage, and some people that I don’t see leaving the cult. Access to bias confirming “news” channels (mostly through social networks, there are plenty propaganda groups in WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and lately TikTok, and also YouTube Channels) makes some people seem to be living in a different universe.

With tech companies profiting lots of political “controversy”, US big tech companies having a big predominance in Brazil, and also tech companies being used as a state political discourse dominance weapon we are pretty much at their mercy. META can definetly skew elections to a candidate of their own, or to the “least damaging” candidate to their interests, and there’s no way for the Brazilian governement, be it executive body, justice system, or congress to do anything about it. So the tendency is to everytime more and more legislators to be sided with the tech companies objectives, which ARE ALL FOREIGN companies, and that IS definetly very detrimental for any kind of actual democracy.

And, of course, the current tech companies aligned legislators, and most proeminent “right wing” prospects for presidential run next year, are all sided with Bolsonaro (that, for me, makes all of them extreme right wing candidates) because that guarantees them only chance to having an actual significant amount of votes, since hardcore Bolsonaro supporters makes at least 20-30% of the population. All those candidates basically have pledged to give Bolsonaro an amnesty, and current Bolsonaro supporters in the congress are trying eveyday to passando new laws to favor him too (and remembering that most supreme court judges have already declared that an amnesty for the coup attempt would be unconstitutional), however the next president will also be able to appoint 3 other judges for the supreme court, and Bolsonaro has currently appointed two of the 11 judges, that could give Bolsonaro a chance of having an amnesty either by the president or the congress.

TL;DR: There’s still a lot of shit to be done here, and the right wing extremist wave is definetly not going away easily.

Not sure you are aware, but Trump did already pratically start his war against “foreign enemies” both internally (ICE funding boosts, increase in deportation efforts) and externally (currently against Venezuela).

Just as a referenced for “second brain” local apps I suggest to look at dendron. Dendron is no longer being maintained but it still works and I use it for my notes since I adopted it a few year ago, it’s pretty great for programmers since it works on top of VS Code.

Your source is not credible.

It’s not clear wheter Mao os ar all serious

Yeah, the original transcript is really not clear whether Mao joking or not with that sentence…

Dr. Kissinger: We think they will give it to us. It will be a difficult battle, but we are quite certain we will win. We are proposing it also in such general language that we can remove discrimination that still exists towards the People’s Republic.

Chairman Mao: The trade between our two countries at present is very pitiful. It is gradually increasing. You know China is a very poor country. We don’t have much. What we have in excess is women. (Laughter)

Dr. Kissinger: There are no quotas for those or tariffs.

Chairman Mao: So if you want them we can give a few of those to you, some tens of thousands. (Laughter)

Prime Minister Chou: Of course, on a voluntary basis.

Chairmain Mao: Let them go to your place. They will create disasters. That way you can lessen our burdens. (Laughter)

[Page 131]

Dr. Kissinger: Our interest in trade with China is not commercial. It is to establish a relationship that is necessary for the political relations we both have.

Chairman Mao: Yes.

Dr. Kissinger: That is the spirit with which we are conducting our discussions.

…

Chairman Mao: (Laughing) Those are honest words.

Dr. Kissinger: This is our position.

Chairman Mao: Do you want our Chinese women? We can give you ten million. (Laughter, particularly among the women.)

Dr. Kissinger: The Chairman is improving his offer.

Chairman Mao: By doing so we can let them flood your country with disaster and therefore impair your interests. In our country we have too many women, and they have a way of doing things. They give birth to children and our children are too many. (Laughter) [Page 132]

Dr. Kissinger: It is such a novel proposition, we will have to study it.

Chairman Mao: You can set up a committee to study the issue. That is how your visit to China is settling the population question. (Laughter)

Complete source: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v18/d12

Ahh, actually the transcript said there was laugther all along that exchange about China being poor and having an excess of woman population, how could this Foreign Policy writer have guessed if Mao was being serious ir not?!

Edit: And I just read a little bit more of the transcript of this conversation, futher down:

Chairman Mao: (Looking toward Miss Shen.) The Chinese have a good command of English. (To Prime Minister Chou.) Who is she?

Prime Minister Chou: Miss Shen Jo-yun.

Chairman Mao: Girls. (Prime Minister Chou laughs.) Today I have been uttering some nonsense for which I will have to beg the pardon of the women of China.

Dr. Kissinger: It sounded very attractive to the Americans present.(Chairman Mao and the girls laugh.)

Mao apologises for his jokes about women in China that were made Just a few moments before… Damn, but who would expect a Foreign Policy article writer to just have read the full transcript of this conversation he was quoting before wondering If Mao was really offering 10 million chinese women as a serious deal… We will really never know If that was a real offer by this Crazy Mao guy to the Saint Dr. Kissing gentleman… 🙄

There are many tiers of private information.

You can definetly collect a lot of useful telemetry data without collecting any of the, lets say, “most sensitive” private information.

Just to exemplify:

• you can collect telemetry on the most acessed features of a software and associate it with their location: whilst collecting their location you can definetly choose between having the person’s specific location (GPS coordinates with a few meters of accuracy) or their broad location (i.e.: their city, state, or country).

  • with the broad location you can have insights on how users of your software behave per region and plan accordinly actions or those regions.

Collecting someones specific location is definetly way more sensitive than their broad location…

And the full content of all textual documents a person generates has a very high chance of containing of their most sensitive private information…