There's at least a couple of tiers of demonetization, and most of them just mean the creator doesn't receive any money from ads, but they often still play.

If this becomes a thing here, I'll make it a habit to prop open the door with some handy box of frozen food, until it goes away. One anti-social turn deserves another.

On the contrary, design wise it makes perfect sense. Millennials grew up watching reading and playing games about those 80's near future dystopias. Millennials now make up the bulk of the work force designing, manufacturing and buying vehicles. We're actively on the slide into a near future-dystopia, why not have a vehicle that's fitting for the setting?

One need only look to Marx's personal life to see that his philosophy applied to a macro scale is doomed to fail, as it doesn't much matter what people say so much as what they do. Marx lived his philosophy honestly during his lifetime: he waxed forever about the needs of the worker, but was far removed from any understanding of work. He was a professional moocher born to minor nobility / merchant class family. The only reason he kept fed during adulthood was he mooched off of Engles, after his own family tired of his mooching. Then he mooched off his students and his other cult members after Engles tired of him, and then he mooched off his wife's family, as he bid his time to implement his economic philosophy on a grand scale where ultimately he planned to mooch off of everyone. Fortunately he died too soon to see that phase of his plan.

More to the point, China themselves do not allow TikTok, because they know exactly what kind of a cancer upon the people it is. The version they have in China is much, much less toxic--staggeringly so--and much more... Cultivated. Perhaps even a bit in the Taoist meaning of the word.

Secondly, if China has enough power over TikTok to block a sale, they have enough power to exfiltrate any data from the company to the party, or have the party control the company. This would be obvious to people who understand how companies in China are made to operate, no matter what the CEO says in front of Congress; as once a company reaches a large enough size they're basically forced to take on Party bureaucrats in as employees / observers / spies for the party, to have board positions occupied by state agents, and to literally have the state be stake owners in the company.

It could work if it was set in the office of the think tank / focus group division of Warner Bros. Studios. go full on Animaniacs / mockumentary with it, except with elves, dwarves, men, ents, wraiths, orcs, wizards and all of the rest running the show--you know, instead of poly-amorous two-spirit / trans-queeroids whose personalities identify as neglected ficus trees.

For the last 15 years or so the M61 combat loadout has been 100% semi armor piercing high explosive incendiary. A balloon skin is not going to create near enough resistance to cause the zirconium component to ignite the explosive / incendiary compound, so you're just punching (kinda big) holes.

The main problem with using that kind of ammo over the continental US is it does not have a self destruct function, as do some 20mm rounds, and so you're going to spray potentially dozens of bullets which if fired from 60k feet will ultimately fall to the ground and explode after traveling a VERY long distance, potentially injuring people / property and starting wild fires. The risk of most of that is next to zero over the ocean, naturally.
An AIM 9 makes better sense over terrain, as not much is going to make it to the ground, and what does is going to be quite inert / spread over a very wide area by the time it reaches earth.

It would be possible to swap in some of the self-destructing ammo like is used in the Phalanx, but it's not going to be ballistically matched to the targeting computer, possibly making the predicted lead and drop be quite a ways off. All that being said, you are overstating the size of the bullet hole in a balloon. 20mm is roughly 3/4 inch. Dozens of holes of that size in a balloon the size of several school buses just doesn't amount to much. As compared to a high explosive missile warhead projecting a radial fragmentation pattern that's designed to cut through airframes at hypersonic velocity? The bullets holes are tiny in comparison.

There will however be much more balloon material left over after whacking it with an autocannon, creating a drogue / streamer effect, greatly reducing the terminal velocity of the unit, increasing the odds of recovering it in one piece dramatically.

Pelosi didn't kowtow because your newly elected radical leftists didn't push their position. They had the opportunity to effect whatever changes they had in mind by hamstringing the speaker nomination and they just sat there with their thumbs up their collective asses.

At any rate, it's the silent moderate majority of both parties that are being suppressed, the louder minority drowns them out.

Well, it's not like every major government in the world forked over a ton of money to help in the development and production of the vaccines. I'm sure these poor altruists really lost a ton of money, as they invested all of their money into the development of this safe and effective therapy. We should be grateful as these these paupers practically took the shirts off their backs and put them on humanity collectively, giving us a big hug and a pat on the head, telling us it was going to be OK.

That all sounds rather implausible, as even with zero interest, at $25/month a $30,000 debt would take exactly 100 years to pay off. And among the numerous flaws with your story, this is the least embarrassing.

Because of how the medical system works in the US, it's a practical impossibility to get one bill from "the hospital". Just about every individual doctor you might see, especially if they're specialists like surgeons, the radiologist, the anesthetist, the lab that checked out your blood and other lab work, often even the pharmacy which lives in the hospital all work as subcontractors to the hospital. Meaning, each one gives you a bill. A two day hospital stay easily could net you a half dozen or more bills, which of course, all come due at once. It's enough of a spaghetti chase that it's often impossible to determine if a particular doctor bill is legitimate--it's not uncommon for some offices to bill you for a visit or a service that was never rendered.

Furthermore, no creditor is going to lend you $30k rent free for long periods of time while you make payments well below the rate of inflation. Just not going to happen; not sustainable. Thirdly, even if you are making payments, debts like those (especially the main hospital bill) are counted on your credit, just as any other debt. It is factored into your credit rating, and will influence creditors when applying for credit.

If he was in a position to make sketchy business deals, it was on the sole basis that he is the Big Guy's...Little Guy. Why else would these companies / countries have any relation to a cracked out, dropped on his head attorney who would have rightly been dishonorably (had his name been anything other than Biden) discharged from the Navy (guess who commissioned him nine months prior) from Delaware, with absolutely no history or experience in the field of these businesses, or regions in which those companies operated? They wouldn't. The only reasonable answer is, at a minimum, these companies and countries wanted back door access to The Big Guy's office and influence, and they wanted to use Biden Jr to facilitate that end. The most probable explanation is he was tantamount to be installed on those boards by Big Guy himself, just like how papa got son his Navy job.

Go and get concrete information, for crying out loud. You can mostly look this stuff up and do some back of the hand calculations, but I'll spare you if you'll listen: to replace a typical whole home forced air heater with an air source heat pump / air handler setup is usually WELL above $5000, which might buy just the equipment. I mean, 5k dosent go far these days, and is just a little more than a qality single room mini-split setup installed by the homeowner, if they need to bring an electrician in to run another circuit but competently do everything else on their own. And that situation is a rarity. Factor in the good chance that an older home will need to have its whole service upgraded to put a whole home heat pump in, by the time you buy your permits and inspections and pay your trades you might well be into it for 20k+ for a modest house. Source? BTDT.

Regarding apartments: do you think an A/C fairy just up and descends from the heavens and bestows comfortable living conditions to the poor unwashed masses because you pile a few bodies under the same roof? Who do you think pays for that shit? The tenants pay for it one way or the next, pal. That's who. I suspect, like so many others, you also think the government just covers the tab for all of the entitlements your kind votes in, while simultaneously wondering WTF happened to make their property taxes so goddamned high.

Ugh. I can practically see your purple hair and smell your patchouli/hemp enhanced B.O. from here. I've always found 'UX' design people insufferable, and no wonder; the professional lexicon might as well have been lifted from an anthology of L. Ron Hubbard's later works.
Furthermore, those who noun verbs suffer from excremencephalawhisy* and should be dragged into the street and stoned, both for their own good and everyone elses'.

*excremencephalawhisy is the state of readily being able to fit one's head into their own anus, either through having an exceptionally small cranial cavity, or an exceptionally large anus.

Apple actually values privacy
They like to have that image, but I'm not much convinced about it. I think most likely, they simply abhor others vacuuming data off their cash cows.

I'm sorry but WTF. Is that normal in the USA? I have 2 credit cards, one is a work card for corporate expenses and the other is my bank's which gets used on booking.com and ... no I think just booking.com. Actually the only reason I got it is because you can't hire a car without a credit card.

For better or worse, yes. Certain stores have certain perks, cash back, etc. when you use the store card in that store. It's also impossible to get a sizable loan without extensive positive credit history (having a card that you never use counts as history), even if you always pay your bills. Some millionaires use credit so little that they're just as invisible to credit agencies as much poorer folk.

On time payments are a huge factor in your credit score, of course, but so is utilization, and average age of credit (how long you've kept accounts open). People who have many credit cards, (even if they don't use them) are hit significantly less for opening a new line of credit than those who have only one or two cards, ditto if they have a significant unexpected expense (more cards that you never use means lower utilization in such an event). Credit coaches will encourage people to periodically open new accounts for that reason. People with more cards also often pay less for insurance, as they use credit as part of their secret sauce in determining your rates.

Consider it part of the game. Successful people tend to have many open accounts, of which one or two which get used frequently and are paid off quickly. You want to look like one of them to algorithms / bankers.