The flaps are interesting. If you notice during the test, they got pretty singed, almost as if they were about to fail. But they held up anyways. Designed to help get the ship home safely, even if other components failed. Sure, they won't be reused after such an event, but the ship and its potential cargo returned in one piece instead of several.

It's not that at all. Experimental craft doesn't mean not intended for flight. Recent testing has been intended to push it beyond its intended operational limits.

You might recall a different company who outright refused to do destructive testing in it's flagship vehicle at all. They tested it only within the intended operational parameters and declared it safe. There's one very implosive reason nobody else does that. Perhaps you share this philosophy, perhaps you're related to Mike Hughes, I don't know. But take after him and only take yourself.

It's meant for a lot more than that even. It's engineered for mass production, reusability, and low cost. This isn't like Apollo where they built just a few of them like money is no object and pulled the plug after. This is intended to be more like a commercial airliner, only for space.

Trolls need to eat too.

When you entered the conversation, you started with this:

However, I didn't see anyone really, let alone the guy you replied to, engaging in an actual culture war. Speculating that it was motivated by a culture warrior? Yeah, I'd say so. Spouting nonsense? Yeah, I'd say so. But at the same time, I didn't see any kind of call to action or active inaction (e.g. a boycott) or a claim to be actively doing anything like that, telling other people how they're supposed to think, or otherwise imposing morals on somebody else. In fact, I even thought he was being a culture warrior because I took your word for it, which was obviously a mistake, because after reading his post it doesn't look like he's imposing his morals, rather he's complaining about what he perceives as somebody else doing that. I'm not saying he's not a culture warrior, either, just that he didn't do that here. You're literally the only one here that I've ever seen do this in any capacity. I'm not saying for certain you're the only one, nor am I saying that you're particularly aggressive at it, however you are the only one I've personally seen do this, and then you go accuse somebody else of it.

I believe you also don't even know what it means, because you appear to be repeatedly misusing it. If you say to me "Elon is bad because he refused to fuck me because I'm a trans" that's you expressing an opinion, not engaging in a culture war, even if you believe Elon is engaging in a culture war by refusing to fuck any trans at all. You're telling me what you think, not telling me (or anybody) how I should think, or trying to coerce me to in some way endorse your morals. If you say "I'm going to spray-paint swastikas on Teslas because Elon refused to fuck me because I'm a trans" then yeah, you're a culture warrior, because you're trying to impose your morals on somebody else by vandalizing their property.

Remarkably, for all the times you've called out culture warriors, I haven't seen you try to call out those particular culture warriors even though they're pretty fucking aggressive about it and aren't even limiting themselves to just the brand or even symbols of the brand, but also personally attacking people they don't even fucking know a single thing about. Maybe you have, but not to my recollection. Admittedly, I don't dig far into threads where nearly everybody in it is anonymously trying to justify real-world harm, because they're not particularly entertaining or worth trolling (that is, as opposed to say pseudonymous Russians on reddit who are really insecure about being former communists while waging an actual war on Ukraine.) The main reason I remembered the pronoun thing is that this kind of thing always gets my attention, even if I'm not in the mood (or just don't have time) to say anything about it:

1. Person A accuses person B of exactly what person A is currently doing right at that moment
2. Person B isn't even doing what person A accuses person B of

If you even knew what you were talking about, I'd be calling this out a lie right now. But you're not lying, you're just stupid. You, a culture warrior, accused him of being a culture warrior. That's a projection. To wit:

https://slashdot.org/comments....

And if that's not bad enough, look what was there two days before you posted:

https://slashdot.org/comments....

But this is actually worse than I even remembered it. How the fuck did you miss that one when you were posting in that thread for a week? You already had direct context to go off of, but instead you went off about a piece of paper, for what reason I don't even know. And yeah, his description of himself is accurate from my own recollection. I have no reason to believe he's a conservative or any other shit you'd throw at anybody else you merely suspected of not sharing your morals.

Nevertheless, there you are, repeatedly telling people what to think, insisting this kind of thing is mild and making yourself an authority on what it means to be normal, all because of an opinion on an existing culture war. Then, just as now, accusing people of doing what you're doing, when they aren't even doing it. That's what projection is. And...who the fuck keeps requiring that you write pronouns on paper enough to tell you this is normal, let alone for you to declare what is normal? I'm 43, and I've only ever seen that in dating apps, and not only is it not paper, it's not even fucking required. I think that's yet another load of shit you harvested from your ass hairs.

Regardless, you're the only (to use your own words) "idiot culture warr(ior)" here, and you're trying to project it on to somebody else, and not for the first time either.

Wasting the time of a culture warrior is a good thing, wouldn't you say? I believe you would, if only the culture warrior wasn't you, dingleberry.

A brief look at your posting history reveals that you eat a lot of butt.

And do you think that's right? Particularly, given by only dealing in cash, they're far riper for being burglarized or otherwise targeted by organized crime. I'm not sure if you're aware, but the origin of banking began with goldsmiths, who generally had the means of storing and securing precious metals, creating vaults for this purpose, having armed guards on retainer, which most people did not have. When a goldsmith stored your valuables, they'd give you a voucher that was redeemable for whatever you gave them, though it may not be the same one that you gave them, but it'll be the same value. Lending said metals became profitable, so to encourage more people to deposit, they'd appreciate the value of their vouchers. But nowadays, we've got central banks who are the only entities allowed to issue banknotes at all, which does have some major advantages, and I'm not advocating its complete removal, just as I don't advocate for anarchy. What I do advocate for is neutrality.

But beyond that, how do they do business online? If they can't do it at all, do you think that's right?

Keep in mind, by the way, I don't even use marijuana. I've literally never set foot in a dispensary, though that isn't for a lack of trying (I was curious about it once when medicinal marijuana first became legal, but they were all "no card? no entry!" and I haven't tried since.) There's literally no practical need for me to have them around, but that doesn't stop me from advocating for their existence.

You mean like money laundering?

I didn't say that. There are workarounds. Cryptocurrency is one such method, however everything else generally isn't legal. What's hilarious is progressives generally want that to be illegal too, and they say they're not authoritarians.

Now, this is a tricky one: Define hate speech.

This is true, however, in my mind this actually is less a first amendment issue and more of an antitrust issue. Antitrust laws, by the way, and contrary to what fascists and socialists commonly claim, (and I'm not accusing you of being either) are specifically intended to facilitate free markets. And remember, two posts ago you were appealing to the idea of a free market, which I suspect is because you intuited correctly that free markets are something I value.

That doesn't always constitute fraud. If it did, then you just gave Trump the only legal justification he ever needed for persecuting transexuals. For something to be fraudulent, there generally has to be a quantifiable loss. Losses that are only qualifiable (e.g. time) are almost never actionable. If they always were, then you'd open a gigantic can of worms.

If that's the case, then the way they're going about this is all wrong, particularly given some things they're asking for (e.g. a 90-day limit) would make it harder for companies like mine to hire people, namely because a ton of people apply (literally in the tens of thousands weekly -- I don't know if this is true or not, but the media commonly claims it's harder to get a job with us than it is to get admitted into Harvard, and did I mention we don't necessarily care if you don't even have a college degree, let alone one from Harvard?) and not only do very few meet our standards, but even responding to a fraction of the ones who don't even make it to the screening call would create a really hefty burden that the only realistic way we could handle it would be to send chatgpt.

Point 1 is asking for different regulations around the Fair Trade Act, which is the basis for Do Not Call. There are a lot of reasons why I think DNC is in need of expansion to more clearly define what a business relationship is beyond just "I contacted you."

Point 2 -- I'm not sure if this is even a realistic scenario, because there are plenty of firms they can reach out to (e.g. glassdoor) that would sell this information at a fraction of what it would cost (not to mention time) to accept applications just to look at this one data point. And some states, including California, already require that job listings also list the salary, so I'm sure they can just harvest it that way. Some unions publicly brag about the shit pay they collectively bargain for their members, so there's another data source. But if you really want to fight this, then just mandate what California is doing at the federal level.

Point 3 -- How does this help them? Like...making it look like they're growing if they're not by saying they're hiring? I can't say I've ever heard an investor actually care about that, they're far more focused on the books, and they're way more focused on things like customer turnover than employee turnover. If anything, telling investors that you have a bunch of open job positions that you can't fill just hints that you're unable to grow your business, and might lead to some uncomfortable questions in the board room, namely who in management and/or HR is failing at their job, and why isn't the senior leadership team doing anything about it? Besides, anything they do to misrepresent the financial health of their company is already covered under one if not multiple securities laws, so I'm not seeing how this proposed law is going to do you any favors on that point.

These aren't quantifiable. Sure, you can claim your time is worth X for any given activity you can name, but actually proving that is a whole other thing.

I don't believe there is either, and I don't believe they do either. Or maybe they do but don't talk about it; I don't know, but it's not relevant.

Indeed. However -- and this is the big kicker -- what if people want to buy from them anyway, but the banks say "not happening"? I don't believe that is a problem if just one or even a thousand banks want to do that. But, what if there's effectively a cartel of them that dominate the most commonly used means of payment, and if one of them says no, then they all are obligated to say no? This is what we have today in the form of Visa, Mastercard and Amex, all of whom seem to act in lock-step on these issues.

If no alternative outside the cartel has any realistic means of existing at all, then it stops being a free market, and starts being what's called a regulated market. People often don't understand what that means either. A free market doesn't mean a market free of all regulation -- anybody who tells you otherwise has no idea what they're talking about. Regulations are needed to ensure that, for example, if you enter into a contract, you have some kind of assurance that it can be enforced if the other side reneges on the obligations that they previously agreed to. Without that, it's not a market at all, it's just anarchy. Free means that anybody may enter or exit the market at will, and buyers and sellers may trade any particular good at any price they determine appropriate.

A regulated market, on the other hand, is when some entity is exerting direct control over the market, whether they're a participant or not. They determine who may sell in said market, and/or who may buy in said market. And/or they may determine what price any given thing will be. The extreme example of this is socialism, aka a command economy, where the government not only decides all of that, but also asserts itself not only as a monopoly, but also as the only legal seller.

For another example of a cartel, see OPEC (drug cartels are a bit of a misnomer, especially given they're plural.) For a long time, the international oil market was a regulated market until OPEC lost much of its market power after the US emerged as producing 1/5th of the world's oil (making it the top oil producer,) and North America combined producing 1/3rd, but it still can and does manipulate the market to a degree.

I hope they keep going. Do I agree with them politically? Nope. But, what's interesting is they're able to continue on despite intense pressure on the part of big infrastructure providers and financial institutions. In other words, they've been able to keep going despite the centralized internet providers and basically everything else actively working against them, and the media repeatedly claiming that they've been taken offline for good only for them to be back up within hours if not minutes. They even came up with their own anti-ddos mechanism that appears to hold up against large scale attacks using relatively little infrastructure, basically by use of a decentralized server cluster along with a crypto interstitial going under the moniker "ddos retarding services".

It's nuts how not too long ago, progressives complained about centralized internet services, lack of net neutrality, the copyright cartel and the centralized financial system, but all of a sudden they love all of that once they realized they can use all of that to shit on the civil rights of people they don't like, because pesky things like the bill of rights gets in the way of them having the government do it.

How is it fraud?

Disclaimer: I've never actually encountered this, nor have I ever applied for a career-job without being at least somewhat familiar with the employer first.

If I did that, I'd already know exactly where it is so I could simply link to it.

You're the jackoff who started projecting culture wars, meaning you already took the conversation here. All I'm doing (actually already did) was point out the fact that you are projecting this mindset on to others, and worse, you don't even tolerate people declining to participate in your stupid little culture wars.

How so?

I mean sure, they're the modern bogeymen, the arch villain of every cheesy Hollywood movie and all that, but that's just fiction. How do they do that in the real world?

Or vice-versa. It is increasingly hard to figure out which way the partisanship will go. IMHO this started with masks for COVID, which initially were a right-wing thing (there were plenty of posts saying you don't have to shut stores if everybody wore masks) and at least to me seemed to be a right-wing thing while "free to live my own life" is more left-wing. Yet it came out exactly reversed, probably because some idiot expressed their own opinion rather than the party line.

I agree that if either party makes any kind of statement on this, the other party will be forced to say the exact opposite, and both will come up with convoluted explanations as to why they are right and why it matches their general logic.

Not a straw man, if anything an ad-hominem, but the topic was already about you, so it is not a logical error. That was an allusion to one of your prior cultural warfare battles, which is totally relevant to the point I made.