>Entrant: I don't have any "social media", but it doesn't matter because I applied for a regular visa like most of the world instead of using the ESTA program.
>Border Guard: Enjoy your visit.
Expect applicants for a regular visa to face similar requirements if they don't already.
>that makes you particularly suspicious!
That, or a 15-year-old Australian.
The challenge is this: If someone presents themselves at a nation's border and declares themselves a refugee from persecution that nation has two options -
1) Let them in, evaluate their situation and then based on that allow them to stay or tell them they have to go back - Which may lead thousands and thousands of economic migrants to declare themselves as "refugees" leading to years-long waits for a review.
2) Say "I don't care what's going to happen to you, go away" - Which may lead to legitimate refugees and their families being tortured and killed.
The third option can be about as bad, possibly worse:
Imprison them for months or years while you process their applications.
You can do this with "humane POW-style" imprisonment where they are comfortable but not free to leave, "typical relatively-humane criminal-prison style" accommodations that re decidedly uncomfortable but decidedly better than back home if they are truly non-economic refugees, or "you think it's bad at home, try this on for size and when you get sick of it, beg us to send you back home" inhumane accommodations where about the only thing they are (mostly) guaranteed is that they won't be killed or die of malnutrition or poor medical treatment.
I'm sure there are a number of hostile-to-immigrant people in the USA that will look at that last one and say "great idea!" It's not, it's a horrible idea.
The "green in my wallet" demands tender care
>I would cooperate with law enforcement if they're investigating serious (violent) crime.
The choice to cooperate or not should be yours, not the camera vendor's.
Everyone starving equally might be worse.
Things like firewood banks rely on donated goods and donated labor. They are less likely to need a GoFundMe fundraiser.
... that has chat features.
because I'm old and not cool. All the cool kids are using VisiCalc.
My most charitable guess is that they had the foresight to see this market segment as valuable and have been developing a service like this in-house, but something went wrong and they realized their in-house service couldn't be made competitive in an acceptable time-frame without spending more than $11B. It wouldn't be the first time that IBM tried to create something in-house and wisely decided to cut bait (there is wisdom - and profit - in knowing when to cut bait).
My less charitable guess is that they did not see this market segment as being worth investing in until recently, and realized that their only hope was to buy an existing company.
... Kafka-esque?
... this demand is politically stupid.
Read the letter.
It should be obvious from the last few election cycles that America is nowhere close to accepting such a demand. Making it will just inflame those on the right and make you look stupid or overly-demanding to those in the middle. This hurts your credibility and makes it that much harder when you need to ask the government for something else in the future.
A better/more-politically-savvy approach would be to issue a softer, open-to-negotiation request/suggestion/demand that new large-scale electricity-consuming sites only be approved if they provide for the production and delivery of electricity without causing significant additional harm to the environment. This approach might ultimately fail to get what you are asking, but at least it wouldn't come across as a whiney demand from someone who thinks they are entitled to getting their way.
For what its worth, this weaker, more reasonable demand would still shut down some planned projects and anger some investors, but it would allow it if the planned project could either
* Build an on-site environmentally-sustainable power plant,
* Buy electricity from an existing source, but only if it wouldn't strain the grid's production or delivery capacity (this option is likely the most feasible as long as the project is powered down during peak hours)
* Buy electricity from an existing source and pay to have additional transmission lines run so it doesn't hurt the existing transmission network,
* Pay to build a new environmentally-sustainable power plant, but only if the transmission grid can handle the load,
* Or some combination of the above.
As for water consumption, it's reasonable to ask that new facilities use either air cooling or closed-loop cooling, so there is no wasted water.
> one of the core principles of Western Civilization â" the right of free speech.
Another principle: The right of a sovereign nation to control what goes on in its own borders.
When speech crosses borders, preserving both completely may not be possible.
The biggest draw I can see for me to use any cryptocurrency is to be used as a short-term method of exchange where fiat currency is not practical or too expensive. For example, if I want to send a $1000 graduation gift to my nephew who lives overseas, it's unsafe to send him a stack of $100 bills by mail, international money orders are no longer sold by the US Post Office, and bank-based and Venmo-like services charge tens of dollars on that amount, which is a fee I would like to avoid. So I'll buy him $100 of crypto if I can get it a lot cheaper than the Venmo-like-services charge. He can cash it out at the local crypto ATM.
A sine curve goes off to infinity, or at least the end of the blackboard. -- Prof. Steiner
