I am usually able to find a place faster on agoda.com than on airbnb fwiw.

It makes sense, hotels are almost always a better experience than an AirBnB, unless you have a special location like this one or an area without enough hotels.

Why stay at a sketchy house that makes you clean, when you can stay at a hotel that cleans for you?

This.

They aren't going to use the beam on illegal immigrants, they are talking about making a plan to potentially use it. Enough to get headlines, not enough to do anything.

Here is some footage of the device in action. It was originally thought to be lethal because of the water, but that was mistaken understanding.

It's not always harmless.

The thing that worries me isn't "new" weapons, those are a perpetual problem of humanity.

The thing that worries me is that now people/countries have an understandable incentive to intentionally induce Kessler syndrome.

Point taken, but it only takes one good ICBM to ruin your day. Russia doesn't like Golden Dome, but China is the one on the warpath towards America (in both the Philippines and Taiwan).

Golden Dome is an escalation.

Interesting. Makes me want to work at a chemical plant for a while to see how it goes.

It's not particularly insightful to say that political preferences don't fit in a single left/right dimension, or even two or three dimensions.

Also this https://f6ffb3fa-34ce-43c1-939d-77e64deb3c0c.atarimworker.io/comments....

They are lying when they claim that no one approved the torrenting.

My idea was that if lawyers are involved, then that is evidence higher-ups are definitely also aware of it (otherwise lawyers wouldn't be involved). Upon further inspection, I'm not sure if the timing matches correctly for that to be supportive evidence (ie, the lawyers might have come after the torrenting ended).

I think you have a point, but it's not clear what it is.

There's a reason in school they teach you about a topic sentence and supporting sentences.

The US is engaging in an arms race escalation, putting weapons in space. In particular, the US is trying to develop the ability to shoot down ICBMs in space, meaning Russia and China's nuclear arsenal is effectively useless (effectiveness of the defense shield is another matter, but it doesn't matter as long as the adversary believes it will be effective). Russia and China and North Korea are not happy about it.

There are too many satellites in the constellation for Russia to shoot them all down one by one. If they feel threatened enough, Russia (or China, or even N Korea) may induce Kessler syndrome as a way to deny the capability to anyone, thus re-leveling the war field. North Korea is worried enough that they are trying to respond by building a submarine fleet.

It may be worth noting here that N Korea could just end the Korean war and then they wouldn't have to worry, just focus on building their economy, but if evil dictators were rational they wouldn't be evil dictators.

If the worst thing Ilhan Omar did was mistake her birthday on her citizenship application then she's an amazing person. People need to focus on what matters.

The word formally is hiding a lot of lies here. The lawyers got involved because Facebook knew it was illegal.

What possible reason could Meta employees ever have for wanting to steal?