State of the Discussion

My baseline assumption is that it's related to Mahmoud Khalil... which strikes me as a bad comp for tourists; are there other instances I should be looking at?

When you say there _is_ no real or imagined risk, you mean before 2025, right?

Or are you completely disconnected from what is happening?

Also, to point out: You would not get arrested in England for being critical of the government either. That law doesn't result in that.

It's not a good law, it's incredibly vague, but it's not used to stop disparagement of the government. It could be, but is not. It's also an outdated law that was intended for private texting and email and has ended up being applied to social media, and they'd going to revise it pretty soon.

(But Americans do not get to judge other countries by what their laws _could_ be used for, considering what that Trump is sending people without trial to overseas imprisonment using a 1798 law.)

There is an old joke. "Republicans vote on Tuesday, Democrats vote on Wednesday!" is one formulation (but I have seen the vice-versa before).

Doug Mackey went to prison for making a variant of the joke by creating a meme that said Republicans have to vote in person but Democrats can vote by text.

Seven months in prison.

Strikes me as odd because *in England* you can be arrested for what is posted on Facebook; but while visiting America there is no real or imagined risk of being 'deported' while on vacation for something you might have posted on Facebook that wouldn't get you arrested in England in the first place.

Specifically:
Communications Act (2003)
Online Safety Act (2023)

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127

It does if you think there is a "first speaker" privilege. Having grown up in a place where my views were not popular, I learned early on that free speech is a two-way street, and that its exercise takes a certain genital endowment. Spare me the lament of bubble-wrapped sophomores who claim to feel inhibited in expressing thoughts they think they think and might even believe they stand for.
What's going on now is a different thing, though it has been done before, during WWI and its aftermath, and during the height of the Cold War. Because, all too often, it works.

Eh, this strikes me as likely to turn into a "find the rock" game where I provide a story and you explain how the person in question is particularly bad and so doesn't count and then I'll bring up the government pushing for censorship and bannings on social media and that'll turn into how that doesn't count and then you'll again say that you can't imagine how an American would think lèse-majesté is okay and I'll say that you can do it if you imagine one being on the wrong side of one and we'll be right back here.

It is easy for me to imagine an American thinking lèse-majesté is okay.

I imagine an American being on the wrong side of lèse-majesté for a while and then returning to power.

Not much new here. Still playing P5 Strikers, and I suspect I will wrap up the main game this week. Then I will decide if I want to do the post-game stuff. My wife and I also started replaying the last of the old-style Monster Hunters, Generations Ultimate. We didn't get a whole lot of time in it, though.

Yes. That. Good summation.

One of my friends lost her job from this sort of thing inside the US and most of her department will also go so it's unclear if anyone will pick it up.

She's working on repairing reefs. Florida might pick up the project, it might not.

it is not a ‘government emergency’. This is a _research_ emergency.

The headline, for some reason, didn't mention that the University Presidents were calling for an emergency meeting but the Prime Minister was calling for one.

The story was written by Patrick Staveley. That's his Twitter account, if you want to write him and tell him that his editor messed up with headline choices.

They very clearly _are_ trying to erase all records of Black achievement, they're just willing to back off very specific examples that people get outraged by and call attention to.

Honestly, learning that we were funding them to the point where ceasing to fund them caused a government emergency was confusing.

Jaybird, it is not a 'government emergency'. This is a _research_ emergency.

There are research projects, some of which the American government has funded that need to operate continually. In fact, a LOT of research projects need to operate continually over the time they exist.

If you have live samples, you can't just stop funding and pick it up a week later, because things die. If you're measuring the natural world, you cannot just stop because then you have a hole in the data. Etc, etc. Honestly, it might be easier to list projects that can just be randomly paused and put on a shelf than those that can't.

And the calls for an emergency meeting (Which has not actually been decided to happen yet, these are calls by the colleges to have such a meeting) would be so Australian researchers can actually talk about those thing with the government.

This discussion would probably include some triage to figure out what can be paused, what has barely started and can be stopped without much loss, and what needs to done to salvage projects that are important. And there's likely some additional funding passed. But this is not going to break Australia's budget at all.

But Australia, unlike the US, doesn't want to moronically throw away millions of dollars and months of research because the Trump administration decided they didn't like climate research and 'transgenderism'.

Or we could have just not given the government such power to fuck with your life,

...and the point that you think the left gave the government this power is when, exactly?

Because I don't remember the government doing this before.

It sure is amazing how a bunch of people cannot tell generalized criticism by the population from government power.

*shrug* this is the world that a lot of people wanted. "if you have the Wrong Politics you should be punished", that's what we heard was Good, that's what we heard Ought To Happen.

I guess it sucks that the Wrong Politics turned out to be different from what everyone expected but, well, maybe next time it'll be your turn to call the tune.

Or we could have just not given the government such power to fuck with your life, but I guess that's just the sadistic racist transphobic conservative in me talking.

From an English fried on Facebook:

"We're visiting the States in July. Just going through Facebook deleting posts about your political situation, just to be on the safe side..."

WTF have we become?

Some dramallama among the right-wingers of Twitter. There was a somewhat organic movement to get soder off of SNAP. I'm sure you're all familiar with the argument that sweets and snacks should be bought with your own money, SNAP is for children and that means *HEALTHY* food and vegetables.

Well, what made this interesting is that a bunch of influencers started posting stuff about how Trump has a Diet Coke button and freedom means the freedom to enjoy a Diet Coke without the government saying that you can't. We want *LESS* government interference! Not more!

And a bunch of folks said something to the effect of "wait, that's fishy..." and Nick Sortor pointed out some of the big prominent accounts that tweeted pro-soda stuff. Clown World. Eric Daugherty, Ian Miles Cheong, Not Jerome Powell.

And, get this, a bunch of those guys showed up to say stuff like "I deleted it less than an hour later." Here's Clown World. Here's Eric Daugherty. The others just deleted without acknowledging.

Riley Gaines said that they offered her money to post about it too but she turned it down.

Anyway, there's a handful of influencers who got caught with their pants down and they're getting yelled at.

https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/gaza-fatality-data-has-become-completely-unreliable

The difference in who and how many die between various sources is a thing.

Yet another issue is the "natural" death rate. If we assume Gaza has the USA's death rate, then we should expect about 17k people to die every year from normal causes (so roughly 25k over the course of the war).

Four hours ago, they hit 64,825 and now they're down to 59,860.

64k is higher than Assassin's Creed: Odyssey (62k) so that can be considered a win.

The night before was 'The Incredibles' and was packed when we drove by (in our golf cart... which is something people do now -- in my day you took open sided Trams and liked it).

'Ways to be Wicked' is the opening to the Descendants 2 movie that cleared the room. Long Live Evil is more of a slogan, I guess.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX6g_cm2rM4