"The chances of someone being born with excellent skills is equal everywhere"

This is a nice rhetorical assertion, and one I'd like to agree with, but it's (unfortunately, for both the skilled and those in less advanced areas) provably false.

Skill directly correlates to IQ at a population level. The IQ of European-native peoples, Chinese, Japanese, and Jewish peoples is in the 100-105 range average. Africa, India, and the Middle East (to a lesser degree)? Not true at all. A full SD or more different. You've got a huge problem with inbreeding throughout India and the Middle East, for instance. This means that your average person is not going to have the same chance of being "born with excellent skills".

Of course, this is also not without discounting things like upbringing and environment, and it undoubtedly has some play in the matter.

As for this policy, it has absolutely nothing to do with letting the best and brightest immigrate. It's clearly reactionary due to unfettered refugees and other unskilled immigrants who can't speak the language, don't want to speak the language, and bring obscene levels of crime to what would otherwise be an idyllic socialist utopia.

In what ways do you find it superior?

For me, Grok has been pretty consistent at making some pretty wild code recommendations and not following specifications.

It's not like Gemini, which will get stuck implementing things and then get into a histrionic panic loop, but it's not nearly as good as gpt5.1 in implementing correct, complete code per specification.

With one important difference, this reminds me of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which established a national speed limit of 55 MPH. States had to either adopt a state speed limit of 55 MPH, or else lose out on funding, i.e. get punished.

Of course, that was a law enacted by Congress, not an Executive order. I guess, traditionally, they say that for first quarter millennium of America, Congress held the purse strings because some inky piece of paper said they were supposed to, as if Congress could ever handle that much responsibility! Can you imagine?! Anyway, we've decided Fuck That Tradition, let's try something new and put a thieving tool in charge of the purse.

I'm not MAGA. (Far from it.) And Trump is nobody's king. He just has diplomatic immunity while he's in office.

I did not assert that a foreign diplomat can "just come" to the UN without permission. I said they have diplomatic immunity when they come to the UN.

Putin has an arrest warrant for war crimes from the ICC over his head. War crimes are grave international crimes, and could be "just cause" for a country to arrest him. The foreign minister of Brazil has warned Putin he would be arrested if he went there.

Nothing you said contradicts what I said.

No. As a head of state, he has diplomatic immunity when he travels to a foreign country. If he were arrested, it would violate customary international law, and perhaps also treaties. The immunity is not absolute, but damn near.

I suppose a foreign country could try to do it, but without just cause (e.g., for grave international crimes) the consequences could be significant. They could include at least commensurate retaliatory action (expelling diplomats, etc.)

This principle applies, for example, when foreign diplomats come to the USA to address the UN, even from countries the USA is not all that fond of.

But once he's out of office, he no longer has immunity.

You don't need more than one guy to have a corporation. I have one. But that's really a modern legal and tax thing. Corporations were invented to make it easier for groups of people to act together.

I suspect the "replace the corporation" thing is just dumbassery, but it does potentially have a real meaning as above. You're also correct, other technology has also had that effect. There are lots of one-person operations, incorporated or not, that previously would have required the pooled resources of a group. Automation of all kinds does that. We also have a tendency to just dream bigger, which I'm sure will happen this time around too. And we also have a tendency to invent more bullshit jobs to fill in too.

In a democracy, we all agree to accept the outcome whether we vote or we don't, and no matter who we voted for if we did.

Look, I get that people don't vote for many reasons:

- didn't have time;
- couldn't get babysitters;
- unable to reach the polls before closing after waiting in a long line;
- wrongly removed from the list of registered voters;
- wanting to make a statement by not voting;
- and so on.

But it still comes down to this: not voting is not voting. It is not some different kind of vote. I think we agree on that.

The only case I can think of where voting and not voting might be blurred is when someone spoils their ballot. If it's intentional, then it's the same as not voting, but with the added statement of counting among the spoiled ballots -- kind of a "none of the above" vote, but not really. And if it's unintentional, then it's a vote, but cast carelessly and not counted.

Well ... you can't. You simply assert what you know to be the truth, and if USCIS believes you, then you're fine. Presumably they'd check to see whether anyone with your name has an Instagram account, and if they find a match, question you about it.

If they don't believe you, then they may refuse you entry. They can do that. They can refuse you entry for pretty much any tenable reason, if you don't have status.

On the other hand, if you lie, and USCIS finds out, then you can be banned entry to the USA for up to 5 years.

There is such a thing as voting.
There is such a thing as not voting.
The two are not the same.

Equating opposites is lethal to epistemology.

Thanks for the improvement.

President Donald Trump has immunity from that kind of inspection.

While he's in office.

If you get diverted to secondary inspection at a US border crossing, USCIS can, and just might, scan your electronic devices. They may demand to know your passwords -- to your devices and your online accounts. If you refuse to give them, then they may refuse you entry, or confiscate the device for more detailed inspection, and (eventually) return it to you.

This can even happen to citizens, except that they cannot be denied entry. Green-card holders cannot be denied entry either, unless they have committed a crime or have overstayed outside the USA before returning.

Wrong. Trump/Vance obtained a plurality of the popular vote, but not over 50% of it.

It follows therefore that they did not get 50% of the voting public either. The voting public being the citizenry who are eligible to vote, but may or may not have done so.

This. Trump has his head up his ass regarding many things, but regarding this statement about tourism in particular.

Tourism has in fact dropped off significantly from the rest of the world since he took office, especially from Canada. And it's not the tariffs or the currency exchange-rate, or even the unwelcome (and unwelcoming) fees and secondary-inspections at the border for some visitors. It's the "51st-state" rhetoric and the disrespect for Canada's sovereignty.

And it's not just tourism. There are widespread boycotts in Canada against goods made in the USA. Some clever US companies have, with limited success, engaged in "maple-washing" -- labeling their products to make them appear to be sourced in Canada. US liquor is absent form stores in many provinces, and sells poorly where it is available.

Trump is reaping what he has sown, but as usual, he's engaging in denial.