I've browsed it a bit, but there's nothing worthwhile on it. The only good thing about it is that it doesn't ask you to log in every time you do just about fucking anything, which that alone would put it well above Twitter for the simple fact that I don't persist cookies for most sites (banking is the only major exception, which I keep in its own container tab) nor do I ever care to log into them to begin with.

But that's what nitter is for. So why would I ever want to visit an intellectual desert like bluesky, again?

Right out the gate, he says he has no reason to travel to the US. Ever. Meaning it doesn't even matter whether the whole country is made of gold and unicorn farts, he's still not going either way.

So tell me, exactly, how my post is even remotely relevant to him? Particularly considering he obviously doesn't have any fucking idea what the point of global entry is. He may as well have just said "fuck 'murica hurr durr" and his post would have been just as meaningful.

Here, let me quote myself:

That categorically excludes you. Have fun.

First, I wasn't talking to you.
Second, there is no line for global entry. You literally just walk in like you own the place. I've been saying a lot of shit about Trump for years, well before I even got a passport for the first time, let alone global entry. Obviously nobody gave enough of a shit to deny my application for it.
Third, as you said, you have no interest in coming here to begin with, meaning this has all of zero relevance to you. So just don't come here as it would obviously be a disservice to both of us. Problem solved. You don't see me going out of my way to tell Russians I never want to visit their country -- I can insult them and their wasteland just fine from right here.

If you're talking about mads, then no, the vice president had nothing to do with it.

I have global entry, so I've never had to deal with them. You literally just walk in while the guy sitting next to his computer glares at you. No documents, no search, no anything, just facial recognition. If you regularly travel to the US, you should probably do the same. You don't have to have a US passport to get that, though I think it goes under a different name for non-US passports.

Yet, curiously, they haven't refuted the claims about Los Alamos, rather they just keep repeating claims about freedom of expression. So why won't they expressly deny that?

Even more curiously, they falsely claim a moral high ground, considering they themselves even have laws against exactly this, where the US does not:

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.politico.eu%2Farticl...

If the situation were reversed, they'd probably have fined him in addition to expulsion. And that's not whataboutism, it's a simple refutation of their own claims. I think Baptiste would stand behind it primarily because he's been trying to attract foreign talent, and in this case, he seems to be doing it based on a lie. And when I say lie, it's not based on the incident with this scientist, rather, it's based on the laws of his own government.

That would be kind of embarrassing, don't you think?

What's fiction about it? He claimed he was denied entry due to a JD Vance meme, but it turns out it had something to do with drug paraphernalia, which they even told him at the time.

Just like the French researcher you called attention to who claimed he was being denied entry for anti-Trump speech, even though they told him at the time that it was because he stole research materials from Los Alamos.

There's two sides to every story dude. Customs generally won't tell their side due to privacy laws, which were called out even in the bit you linked. But these guys shouldn't be surprised if, when pressed hard enough, the other side eventually speaks out, and what they were counting on not being said, is eventually said.

Just as you shouldn't be surprised when free speech works both ways.

The only 'cide he appears to have committed is career suicide. If the NYT is correct, it went a bit like this: First he stole research materials from Los Alamos, then he tried to hide it, and then he lied to his employer about why he was denied entry into the US.

Maybe the French government will stand by his story even if it weren't true in order to save face, I don't know, but I wouldn't put it past them. What I do know is that the aerospace industry has zero tolerance for that kind of thing, no matter where in the world it is. It's in his interest to clear that up, whatever the case may be, because being denied entry at a US port of entry is probably the least of his problems right now, assuming he still has a job.

Regardless, knowing you and how much you love to engage in conspiracy theories and shit play, I already know you're telling yourself that the US government made this all up. All I can say to that is: I'm operating based only on what is available to me, and he himself could get this cleared up real fast by calling LANL. If he had, I tend to think that would have come to light by now given this was over a year ago.

That piece was suspiciously devoid of context, and about ten minutes of digging yielded'

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2025%2F0...

You might recall how not long ago, the US expelled a Russian cosmonaut for doing something similar. Nothing about that seemed controversial. So why is this?

Do tell

Customs has always had discretion for who it will allow into the country at ports of entry. Common sense should tell you that if you express sympathy towards Osama Bin Laden on, of all things, American social media platforms, then you just might be denied entry to the US if you try to come. Moreover, the speech wasn't abridged.

The constitution isn't a suicide bomb pact. Besides, the most viral stories people hear about this often have nothing to do with speech.

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ftime.com%2F7297472%2Fjd-va...

I don't believe it's about who they ban so much as who creates an account there to begin with, and even then, actively participates, and even still, what they actually talk about.

Of the major social media platforms, I tend to abserve the following:
- Twitter: anything and everything, even though the vast majority of it is completely useless
- YouTube: anything and everything, even if most of it is demonetized
- Reddit: anything and everything, if it weren't for the fact that the vast majority of it is automatically blocked and/or shadowbanned by AIs of infinite wisdom
- TikTok: Endless scroll of content that isn't given the time of day to be meaningful, but also an endless dopamine hit for stupid people. Effectively a poor man's heroine
- Fecebook: Endless scroll of cat memes and people reacting to stupid shit their neighbor did last night
- Bluesky: Endless scroll of outrage and doom about something in the current news cycle, especially if some other unknown person must surely find it offensive because of their identity

Only three of these occasionally have something worthwhile. The rest do not.

Regardless, while I understand that you desire to ad-hominem everybody you don't like by labeling them a nazi, and require that all nazis be banned, all this does is firmly ensnare you into an echo chamber. While echo chambers might make you feel good, they aren't intellectually stimulating.

Bluesky may as well just be "TikTok for assholes" because being in the right echo chamber yields dopamine. Sure, other sites have their share of assholes, big ones at that, but in their defense, at least they have other stuff too.

It seems to me that the complaint is the specific material, namely plastics, not necessarily the fact that they wear at all. I think people would complain less if, for example, the particles that came from tire wear were sawdust rather than plastic dust. That's not to suggest that tires be made of wood, rather, they could be made of perhaps some other material that is less hazardous.

You have wilding land confused with the Northwest Territory, which had already been ceded by Quebec to the US 30 years prior in the Treaty of Paris. Britain had an alliance with native tribes, who they were funding, and they in turn were conducting raids against those states. So yeah, it makes sense that they'd want war too.

Besides, how would we annex land that was already internationally recognized as ours, including by the actual king of the wildlings?

The problem with credit cards is fraud and chargebacks. They'd be stupid not to retain that for three months at the very least but ideally at least a year. That's a total no-go for people paying monthly.

So how do they bill customers?

I mean there's cash, but good luck with that, and it's no guarantee of anything. Crypto could work if they didn't keep records of which transactions went to which account. Especially if it's a hard to trace crypto like monero.

But still, none of this is any guarantee. If you insist on email, your best bet here is using a free email service with a non-logging VPN, and you'd need to treat each email in your mailbox as if just anybody can read it.