Yup. Wet-bulb conditions are no joke and can kill, making functioning A/C a life-saving technology if not an outright requirement for survival.

Make no mistake. The Arab Spring also taught governments around the world that “shut off the internet” is a crucial element in crushing mass dissent.

It’s also worth mentioning that the bandwidth requirements of actual, honest, information and news, are appallingly low. The level of slop and waste in our current social media landscape is in no way representative of what it takes to communicate effectively.

100 years ago we used to get the word out to broadcasters at 100 baud over teletype.

So, imagine a network that uses less than 1% of the bandwidth we currently use. It’s a pocket-sized situation that almost disappears into the noise of everything else, yet is free, accessible, and effective. Radio and mesh networks are absolutely up to the task, even if they have to be covert and/or mobile.

We also have bluetooth meshes for the masses now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitchat

How do these people get promoted into decision making roles???

Never forget the VW emissions scandal. These cats are all about the bottom line; re-packaging nostalgia in only the most marketable way is exactly how and why.

By itself no, but employment absolutely is compatible with infiltration. In fact, it doesn’t even have to be a foreign-state actor, or even a witting party (e.g. clicking on stuff in spam mail). See: insider threat, and data exfiltration.

Fack.

I want off Mr. Bones’ Wild Ride already.

Parents of children affected by the ban shared a spectrum of views on the policy. One parent told the Guardian their 15-year-old daughter was “very distressed” because “all her 14 to 15-year-old friends have been age verified as 18 by Snapchat”. Since she had been identified as under 16, they feared “her friends will keep using Snapchat to talk and organise social events and she will be left out”.

Okay, that’s really bad. On the one hand, this is like “they don’t even card me at the bar”, which is opening up a whole can of worms. Either they’re passing for older, or they’re faking it. As for the kids left behind, it’s also “you look too much like a kid to hang” or they simply get left out for not breaking the rules. All this kind of shit used to happen before, only now it’s technologically accelerated.

And here I was naively thinking this was going to make everyone stampede back to SMS instead.

I’m almost certain Musk has 120mil in loose change, hiding in his couch.

Given the level of unchecked malice we’re facing at the hands of said government, I expect more edible magnets to suddenly become available.

The part that absolutely kills me about this is that there were anti-maskers during the 1918 “spanish flu” pandemic. This suggest that with two valid examples that this is a bad idea, people still chose to not do it. It also suggests that we’re still the same society that we were 100 years ago.

https://www.history.com/articles/1918-spanish-flu-mask-wearing-resistance

While it’s tragic that the mountain is going to add to its death toll on this, the idea of people queued up on the world’s tallest peak just for limited-time virtual merch, made me chuckle a bit.

After that Pokemon Go stampede in Central Park all those years ago, I’m feel like stunts like that are far more plausible than ever.

Edit: I also keep forgetting about the stuff RedBull does these days…

Exactly. Prompt the other party to exercise the smallest amount of critical thought and you can watch it all unravel. It’s fucking exhausting, but that’s what it takes.

I once heard someone drop some nonsense in a conversation about how “San Francisco is a dirty place.” Not only is “city = dirty” a common right-wing trope, but it had zero place in our conversation. It was just kinda parroted nonsense ham-fisted into our dialogue. I simply replied: “I’ve been to silicon valley and the touristy parts of downtown, and what I saw was a nice clean place; I can’t speak for the rest of it.” The guy stopped for a sec and said “well, I haven’t been there myself so I guess I can’t either.”

But it’s all saltwater. In the middle of a desert.

I know that’s sarcasm, but your comment made me think. I strongly disagree with those kinds of remarks. :)

This war isn’t like a game of Poker, where everyone is dealt from the same deck. It’s more like MTG, where the real game is about who can make better strategic use of their card-buying budget.

According to a Kyiv Independent SBU source, first-person-view (FPV) drones were covertly transported deep into Russian territory and hidden inside trucks before being launched against four major airfields.

Holy shit that’s embarrassing. I mean, those operatives are going to have to flee to Japan to in order to get home, but wow. That’s incredible.

Emphasis on “rich” here. History has shown that genocide is always followed by claiming and then divvying up the resources once held by the displaced/dead. That’s always a rich-man’s game.

This is the right answer. Life has already shown him that operating on a level playing field and being honest, really doesn’t get a guy like him very far. So the genius workaround is to lie your pants off instead, and build an alternative environment around yourself where you can’t lose.

No, he just looks horrifying. That’s it. Terrifyingly ugly man-spider thing. That’s his superpower.

Even an arrest record can be a problem. Which is itself, a problem.