Obvious possibilities:

• he was suspected of espionage and arrested (we don’t know whether he did anything), for some reason it hasn’t been disclosed (it should be disclosed)
• he disappeared on his own, officials are trying to understand what he knew or accomplished

The university de-listing him seems particularly interesting. Clearly they were told something that the public wasn’t told.

Yes. Anyone who’s barred from running for president, is also automatically barred from running for vice president.

It wouldn’t help. The thing that gives you lift is the mass of displaced air. Difference from the (lack of) mass of the lifting gas is minimal.

My bet would be that it’s glass etchant.

Typically not an acid, but a fluoride salt, since acids containing the fluoride ion are very dangerous (I’ve got a reminder of it on my leg, splashed some stainless weld cleaner on my trousers without noticing at first. Goes bad extremely fast, heals extremely slow. Affected areas should be immediately flushed with water, and possibly followed up with soda water.)

I would guess it’s potassium bifluoride or ammonium bifluoride. Or if really acid, then hexafluorosilicic acid.

I wonder if there’s a point. Dropping gravel from a drone would likely achieve the same effect, and gravel is literally dirt cheap - one can collect it from a roadside.

Speaking of drones, my bet would be that it’s a DIY drone, if the vandals intend to play safe - factory made drones contain privacy risks inherent to their WiFi connections (a WiFi scanner could record a unique MAC address that can be linked to something). WiFi allows for anonymity only if you have a card that can enter monitor / inject mode and software equips packets with deliberately spoofed 802.11 headers.

A self made drone using the simplest possible guidance protocol might cut it. If it transmits analog video, the droner would have to avoid recording themselves - if countermeasures are set up, a radio scanner might catch a copy of their video feed. But if they transmit encrypted video, then it wouldn’t betray them.

So, there’s a reasonable chance that if the vandals are competent, they will indeed be extremely hard to catch (unless they crash their machine).

As for vandalizing in public parking lots, I disagree with that - if one has decided to vandalize, one should know better where to vandalize.

Ah, nice to remember. :) I’m used to speaking and writing UK English - I learnt it that way and it became a habit. (In the UK, they write colour intead of color, labour instead of labor, tyre instead of tire, grey instead of gray, etc.)

Prediction: what EU and China will be doing shortly - not out of good will, but because they were wronged and they know the problem is Trump, not the United States in general - will be carefully targeted tariffs designed to hurt Trump’s main support bases. It’s been done before.

Summary of what I understood:

• Florida work force: 27% born in foreign countries
• Florida farm workers: 60% born in foreign countries
• Florida state: eager to persecute immigrants

Proposal:

• allow child labour for unlimited hours, if home schooled or distance learning
• allow 30 hours per week during study sessions
• allow 6 days of consecutive work
• allow work during school hours
• allow early and late work, even if school next day
• allow more than 8 hours per day, even if school next day

That seems 19th century stuff. Back then, in the bad old times, anarchists shot politcians and workers had street battles with cops over this kind of minor issues.

A note about dating apps: most of them aren’t better than this. Their interest is keeping the user clicking, paying for services and coming back. If you find the right person for yourself, you will do none of that. So they:

• build awful card stack systems with no search function
• build superficial profile systems with no metadata about personality, habits or world views

…and of course, with such systems, people fail to find suitable partners. They come back and pay, but society suffers, because someone needs to make money.

I would vote for a politician who would promise that the ministry of health and social security will order a publicly funded dating site that’s built by scientists, with data privacy managed by the leading university in the country.

Summary:

• a journalist was invited
• half an hour before the first takeoff, the takeoff times of planes, drones and cruise missiles were shared
• it was mentioned that an individual terrorist is on sight and his location known

Sadly, none of them will be jailed, like a lay person would be for disclosing military secrets.

However, I would advocate for punishing them with having a mandatory nanny appointed to oversee them for 4 years.

Server-wide censorship cannot be allowed. / This eliminates every platform I know of.

Within the I2P anonymous mix network there was an attempt, at some point around 2015, to build a system named Syndie where everyone would have to be their own censor, and servers would host content without the server operator really knowing or caring about what they host.

It failed to take off, but I’m not convinced if the reason was architecture or the main developer leaving.

It was the lights test.

In the fog test, it plowed through the mannequin kid (and in real life, they’ve been observed plowing through deer).

Indeed, forums are almost gone. In particular, I miss one forum about science fiction, one about aeromodelism, one about electric vehicles (another still exists) and one about anarchism. An interesting hold-out in the country where I live, is a military forum, where rules say that respectful discussion is the only kind of discussion accepted - ironically, the military forum has a peaceful atmosphere. But it could come crashing down much easier than a social media company.

As for why forums disappeared - I think that people became too convenient. They wanted zero expense (hosting a forum incurs some expenses and needs a bit of time and attention), and wanted all their discussion in one place. Advertisers wanted a place where masses could be manipulated. Social media companies wanted people to interact more (read: pick more heated arguments) and see more ads - and built their environments accordingly. Not for the public good.

I think the most urgent job is getting rid of algorithmically steered social media - sites where one can’t know why something appears on one’s feed.

It would be great if the number was 30%, but 20% is enough to wedge a company out of its position on the market. If they persist, this will work.