But China isn’t going to sell my data to Uncle Sam to help deport my family (who are legal citizens). So there’s that.

Yeah, I straight up don’t respond until they’ve asked/said the thing that they’re contacting me for.

Usually they finish their thought without me ever needing to respond. I did have one coworker who just… never said anything else. That’s also a win.

9th amendment.

It’s the best amendment, despite being, legally, the most useless.

I would argue that it was meant to cover the kind of situation where a private company is given government permission to gather surveillance data from the citizenry, in exchange for access to said data.

You probably live in a blue area. (Most people live in a blue area.) The actual situation is that we’ve polarized. People around you, in the blue area, have moved left. People elsewhere, in the red areas, have moved right.

Pew Research for some graphics.

In certain ways, this has been a victory for civil liberties. Gay people from small towns can move to a place where they might have entire neighborhoods of likeminded people. Trans people from small towns can move to a place where they won’t be shot on sight. Hell, someone in NYC who suddenly finds Jesus can go to a smaller town where no one will make fun of them for proselytizing AND they can hang out with likeminded people AND they get cheaper rent.

But it’s also more dangerous than it has ever been to be an immigrant. Wealth inequality has been rising. Increases in wages has been vastly outpaced by increases in the cost of housing and healthcare, and combined with inflation, we’re making more units of USD, sure, but we aren’t able to sustain any better a quality of life. Corporate Taxes were increased for small companies, and cut for large companies.

Depending on whether you’re more focused on the kinds of people living around you, or on the wide-reaching systemic changes that have been taking place, you’re going to notice different things. The really really important stuff that has shifted to the right is kind of boring, so you wouldn’t have seen much reporting on it.