The point isn't whether a ban on Tiktok would have positive or negative consequences, or the severity. it's whether allowing the federal government to ignore the constitution is acceptable.

Sorry, Sweden took that crown decades ago and still holds it.

There has been a lot of talk about Chinese science being stolen, derivative, and outright made up but you can't fake these kind of results. It takes expertise in many areas, innovation, and a whole lot of hard work. I, for one, would like to congratulate China and the people involved for this outstanding achievement.

I've said it before. Whatever group or country puts a base on the moon and defends it as territory will own the moon. If they can maintain a monopoly on military force over the entire moon's surface they will own the entire moon. Whether it's for bragging rights, research. exotic isotopes, helium, or solar panel space. Treaties be damned. You own what you protect.

The anti-sex feminists don't like men fapping to women. The anti-sex conservatives don't like men fapping at all. So they get together to ban anything fappable. Replace fap with having sex with, staring at, trying to pick up, taking pictures of, etc etc. It's been happening for decades. It will keep happening until the conservatives lose their puritan roots.

how much is the cheapest TV today compared to the 90s

You can't eat your TV. You can't drive your TV to the grocery store. You can't take your TV into the bank and get a home loan, nor can you take your TV to a home seller and get a reasonable price. You can't hand it to the university and be handed back an education. You can't give your doctor your TV and receive surgical or even preventive care or the meds you need.

Your problem (other than the root one of spewing disingenuous nonsense) is that you're looking at the pricing in the electronics sector and pretending it's representative of the extremely high basic living costs I called out (which of course it is not) — nowhere did I say anything about either the pricing of electronics or the need for a TV to achieve a reasonable cost of living. Nor should you have. But here we are.

Allow me. He said, 'Wealthy industrialists control this technology, but don't worry: when the unemployment causes too much misery the miserable will revolt. After the torches and pitchforks we shall have heads on pikes"

"Women over 40 have the lowest birth rate" shouldn't come as a shock to anyone

Older does tend to mean wiser, after all. Well... okay, for some people.

Destroying middle class has predictable consequence of tanking birth rate. News at 11.

"We must have constant inflation or people might, you know, save!"

Then... basics cost (a lot) more and mid- to low-tier wages don't even come close to keeping up

Brutal housing, education, medical, food, vehicle, and fuel costs, crushing taxes on the lower tier workers... gee, sounds like a great circumstance to bring some ever-more-expensive rug rats into.

The "American Dream" is deader than Trump's diaper contents for a large swath of those of an age to be pumping out crotch goblins. But hey: The stock market is doing Great!

Or perhaps it's just that no one wants to hump someone with their pants falling off their butt — or otherwise dressing like a refugee.

Obligatory: get off my lawn.

I agree with you but don't underestimate DeBeers.

They have enough diamond reserves that they can steeply discount natural ones for long enough to put synthetic diamond makers out of business.

LK

sp: Embrace

I spend half my reading time on sites which offer free books of reasonable quality and more than novel length, for example First Contact at reddit/r/hfy. Publishers can't compete with that

It doesn't sound too bad to me. After facing the need to bypass this California will end up with millions of kids with at least some awareness of information security, DNS, VPNs, and so on.

Maybe it's a vicious circle of higher prices leads to lower volume? I like to buy a book at a nearby bookstore, but they have a limited selection of my kind of books and also charge the suggested retail price. If they offered better selection and reasonable prices I would buy four times as much from them. And it's the only book store within 25 or 30 kilometers.