It really depends on whether it can be made to meet all the other criteria required for armor. I think that it’s too early to make any good predictions.

True enough.

The laws for incitement of violence are supposed to be pretty narrow; see Brandenburg v. Ohio, 395 U.S. 444 (1969). OTOH, prosecutors tend to overreach frequently, and fighting it in court is expensive, even if you would otherwise prevail and have charges dismissed.

This is a clear and obvious pump-and-dump. Anyone that falls for this deserves to be fleeced.

Crypto can be used at regular merchants as well. It’s very handy for avoiding interchange fees, and annoying bank rules. For instance, my own bank will not allow me to make any purchases with a vendor outside of the US, even if I call them and try to pre-authorize it; their excuse is that there’s too much fraud. That means that if i want to buy, for instance, military surplus apparel and equipment from Czechia that I have to find a company that uses a US payment processor, or find someone that’s importing the surplus that I want, rather than going directly to the source. If I want a surplus Czech OM-90 gas mask, it’s about $400 new through a US distributor, and about $50 or less (…plus shipping) if I buy one directly from Czechia. Even allowing for the relatively small mining fees with crypto, and the costs of shipping, buying direct with crypto ends up being much cheaper than using a US distributor, or trying to find a bank that doesn’t either prevent foreign transactions or charge usurious fees for them.

I don’t know if this will actually pan out the way that they imply in the title; armor needs to have a lot of different characteristics in order to be practical. As in, resistance to heat and cold, resistance to acids, alkalines, petroleum distillates, salts, UV, and oxygen, and also resist deformation. Multiple materials have displays significant promise for armor, but had a very short lifespan in real-word conditions. For instance, there was a material trademarked as Zylon that was supposed to be better than Kevlar, and it was used extensively by Second Chance (a body armor company); several cops were killed when their armor failed, and the armor failed because of exposure to sweat and ambient heat.

Yeah, this is a super cool development, but remember that everything that comes out at this stage is hype.

I’ve already deleted as much of my FB history as I can (I’m getting error messages at this point), but I keep it active solely because Craigslist is effectively dead.

So, they’re only going to make games with no narrative complexity going forward. Got it.

People on the left in the west have plenty of platforms; they just don’t see the kinds of engagement that other ideologies do. To paraphrase, the right looks for coverts, the left looks for traitors. People on the left in the west are honestly their own worst enemy; they do a bang-up job at gate-keeping and pushing people away over minor ideological differences, and that drives engagement down.

TikTok does not have to answer to the US

Correct. But it does answer to China. And that’s a problem. Independent social media isn’t a problem; social media under the direct authority of a hostile authoritarian gov’t is.

Not leftist; pro-China. There’s some pretty clear indications that TikTok suppresses posts critical of China and China’s interests–despite those topics generating high engagement–while not suppressing information, say, critical of the US. They’re clearly acting as an agent of the Chinese gov’t.

Neither was the SR-71. Both programs had a very limited mission, which is why neither was ever produced in quantity.

As far as I can tell, that is not correct.

You absolutely can. But you’ll have to buy them at the ticketing counter, and they will likely by 2-3x as expensive as they would have been otherwise.

Ticktmaster has gone to that kind of rolling QR code; a printed screenshot of your ticket no longer works, and you have to use a clean installation of Chrome/Edge with no VPN to buy tickets -or- their app (which won’t work if it’s sandboxed or routed through a VPN). Hence the reason that I drive the hour+ to get to the ticket box office to buy tickets with cash now.

Fuck, I’m so glad i’ve quit flying… If i ever go overseas, i’m going to hire a berth on a cargo ship.

I knew a guy–Ola Bini–that fled the US, and emigrated to Ecuador, because he was afraid that he was going to be targeted by the US gov’t. I think he made it less than two years in Ecuador before he was arrested for ‘hacking’ Ecuador gov’t computers; he was jailed during the entire judicial process, almost a decade, before all the charges were dropped, and he was released and deported to Sweden. Best guess is that despite not having a extradition treaty with the US, the US still put a ton of pressure on Ecuador to detain him. (Maybe he actually committed crimes? IDK, it’s possible, but all charges being dropped after all that time in jail without a trial seems iffy. )

Point is, there aren’t a lot of places you can go if the US wants to fuck your life. Russia and China are the best options, and both are not great.

Trains in the US are starting to have some of the same security measures as airlines… :(

I quit flying (domestically, at least) over the x-rays and TSA bullshit. I’m driving 13 hours today in order to avoid that particular security theater.

Agreed; Veilguard has pretty okay graphics. Not great, but acceptable - the high mark for me is BG3. But moving back to the earlier entries, they may have had stories that felt more ‘real’ (e.g., the setting felt more internally consistent) and gave more options, but the graphics and gameplay haven’t aged well.

Similarly, Fallout: New Vegas hasn’t aged so well. It was a great game, but it looks pretty rough now, unless you load it down with hi-res mods.

I don’t demand photorealism, but I’d like better visuals than PS3-level graphics.

I will personally vouch for Russell at KE Arms; he genuinely believes that the second amendment is for all people, regardless of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion. He’s a good dude, IMO.

But fundamentally, yeah, it’s nearly impossible to buy a firearm that is 100% ethical. I know that Karl Kasarda (InRangeTV) likes Desert Tech, because they’ve been good to IRTV and haven’t given him shit about politics, religion, or affiliation with marginalized groups. I don’t like Desert Tech, because they’re run by the Kingston Clan, which is a fundamentalist Mormon cult. I’m also unwilling to buy from Daniel Defense, because they actively market themselves as being a “Christian corporation”, and I oppose that kind of religious bullshittery.

Point is, you gotta pick and choose.