Here in the People's Republic of California, some cities explicitly don't use it, but the single-party politburo at the top adores it.

For now.

Even to this day, it's best to avoid breathing the air in Los Angeles. Especially near freeways. And it's getting worse. The air is a bit cleaner down here in the south bay, but the whole LA metro area is pretty toxic overall, and will deduct a few years off of your natural lifespan.

It's not just air pollution either -- cities have always been unhealthy to live in. It's actually only recently that cities have been growth centers, which is largely thanks to sanitation and flame resistant construction. But despite these, they're still measurably worse to live in, and this is just one data point. Air pollution itself isn't new either; even ancient Rome had some restrictions on burning for this very reason.

I had a feeling you'd go down this route, so I kept it brief and carefully worded, because there are actually a lot of nuances beyond even what you're bringing up here. But this will sufficiently address what you brought up:

First, we have to clarify what is meant by "search": They can send you through an x-ray machine and go through your belongings to check for contraband -- that kind of "search" is always allowed. However, they can't go through your papers or "personal effects", which is what your phone counts as, without a warrant.

To detain you for any amount of time at all, they first need reasonable suspicion. That can be, for example, the fact that you're on a watch list for something else you did a long time ago, or maybe you were behaving in an unusual way. But they can only detain you long enough to address whatever that reasonable suspicion is, i.e. long enough to question you, or long enough to obtain an actual search warrant. Without that search warrant, they can't impound your property indefinitely. However, if they do get a warrant, then yes, they can hold it indefinitely until one of two things happens: You contest that warrant and win, or you voluntarily unlock it and any related proceedings go to completion.

And even within all of this, there are even more stipulations and qualifiers, enough so that somebody could practically write a book about it. That's why, in a situation like this, it's always best to ask for a lawyer.

I'm not making any assumption about that, furthermore, it doesn't matter what the administration wants. This isn't Europe. We're not a top-down system. In order for anything to have the effect of law, the legislative, executive, and judicial all have to agree on it. If a cop doesn't bother to give you a ticket for doing 3mph over the speed limit, then the effect of law is that you're free to do that despite what the sign says. If the cop does give you a ticket, you contest it, and the judge dismisses it (which they can, and they do quite often for something like this) then the effect of law is still that you're free to do that despite what the sign says.

When cops overstep their authority, the judicial can have something to say about that. Right now they have a doctrine of qualified immunity, which there is no law for, it's just an administrative rule that the judiciary created for themselves with the intent being that cops aren't lawyers and cannot and do not have the time to understand every case law precedent out there. The legislature could codify this and add limits to it, but because they don't, the effect of law is that it exists however the judiciary says it does.

Having said that, cops will always have the capacity to overstep their authority, and inevitably will at some point in every country and every jurisdiction on the planet. But here, you do have a remedy: Contest it with the judiciary. Here's a fun fact that most people don't realize: If you can prove that a government entity is commonly overstepping its authority to the point that it is making it the effect of law despite other laws (including the constitution) don't permit it, you can sue that government entity and win damages under civil rights laws.

I've always found that if you want to see what's really happening in Ukraine without actually visiting it, twitter is basically the only clearnet place that has it. Here's why: Everywhere else censors it. Even the guys on youtube who hate twitter because Elon still post to twitter anyways, because that's where their sources always end up. Another kicker is that if it weren't for Elon, twitter would be no better than youtube in this regard: Chasing sponsors, chasing views, all at the expense of the raw, unedited truth of what's actually happening out there.

This is just a fact. Whether you like it or not is notwithstanding.

They can't detain you merely for refusing a search, nor can they impound your property indefinitely.

If everybody was sacked for making a bad prediction, nobody would ever have a job.

You have pretty low standards if you think apple has a good gpu.

Going into debt is stupid unless there is an emergency. It is not ever sustainable, as we are seeing now. One cannot spend their way out of it. Try it some time. The US has been able to keep going because the rest of the economy has grown fast enough to keep making the minimum payment, but that's a dead end.

Corrupt people and those they have fooled came up with this idea that money isn't real and can just be spent. One of the proponents of "Modern Monetary Theory" actually said that "it's just numbers on paper", as if they represented nothing. That is absurd. As is the idea that there are any competent people in the DSA. I've seen their conventions. Gutless fools waving their hands in the air lest someone be offended by clapping. It is not hard to see how the nascent Stalins among them would take over.

Which would be inevitable. Socialism is always a dictatorship. It cannot exist otherwise. Next time you're around Socialists, ask yourself which one is going to kill the rest. If they get power, that will be the second thing to happen.

And then take note of how they are all children of affluence. Know then that it is to preserve their own status that they want change, not for the benefit of anyone else. This is always the way. Pol Pot and the Khamer Rouge were wealthy enough to have been educated in France. Lenin was descended from nobility. Castro was from a wealthy family. Mao was from a wealthy family. Marx was from a wealthy family, as was Engles (who owned a textile factory).

If you're a citizen or permanent resident, you can't be denied entry. Full stop. You can be detained for a short time, they can make you miss your flights, they can maybe impound your possessions, etc. But you can't be denied entry.

Costs and wages are tied. It is unwise to put too much artificial pressure on either as things will spiral out of control.

Everything has a cost. Europe traded growth for comfort and is now a retirement home for a dying civilization. I'd rather that didn't happen, but they seem to have decided upon a comfortable decline (which will suddenly cease to be comfortable within, oh, 20 years or so). The only clear vigor that remains is with migrants who wish to supplant it. This has happened before. The US is facing a similar decline, but is not as far along. In both cases it can be reversed, but only if people don't give up. Canada is, as always, somewhere between Europe and the US.

This decline is bad for everyone. The only powers in a position to replace the West detest democracy and the notion of individual rights.

I get where you're going and it's a fair (well, agreeably snarky) point, but you might be surprised. Especially the newer members. Most of them would feel the loss of that paycheck, even if they can get by without it.

The downside is that if they get desperate for money, there are plenty of crooked people out there to help. I'd be tempted to sequester them, but their constituents need to be able to get in touch to voice their opinions.

Ideally, we'd lock them in the Capitol with food, water, and a new lion every day they don't pass a balanced budget. I think there are enough zoos in the surrounding area to provide sufficient lions, but we can always switch to tigers if they run out.

Yup, Claude just helped me diagnose some backend stuff for it that wasn't working right, and since I have very little Docker experience, how to update the container at fault. I could take any error message, google it, read through some forum threads, and eventually figure it out, or Claude can sit there for a few seconds and tell me. That's one of the most time-consuming things I do.

I do worry about it making me lazy (I have time to type this after all), and I may miss some useful but unrelated info you turn up doing that sort of thing, but on the whole it's a great tool.