https://hyperallergic.com/1038623/us-agencies-say-they-have-no-records-of-tourist-flagged-for-jd-vance-meme/

The public records request filed by Mikkelsen and his lawyer also alleged that Mikkelsen was detained for 18 hours, during which his repeated requests to contact the Norwegian consulate were denied in violation of diplomatic conventions. Mikkelsen also claimed he was threatened with imprisonment and fines if he did not turn over passwords to his device or sign certain documents.

Mikkelsen had planned a months-long trip to the US to visit friends and tour national parks with his mother, he told Hyperallergic in an interview after he returned to Norway in June. However, while passing through passport control at Newark, he was summoned into a room where he said ICE agents asked him if he planned to commit terrorism, belonged to any extremist groups, or was smuggling narcotics.

CBP officers then inspected Mikkelsen’s phone, according to his account of the events, where they found the viral meme of a bald JD Vance and photos of a pipe he said he made in trade school. Publicly, the DHS has stated that Mikkelsen was denied entry because he admitted to using marijuana, which he acknowledges having done twice in places where the substance is legal.

However, DHS’s public narrative does not match what Mikkelsen claims officers told him in the interrogation room, nor does it match documents from CBP reviewed by Hyperallergic.

Officers handed Mikkelsen a document known as an I-877, which is an official sworn report provided by DHS in instances where an individual is denied entry into the US. Mikkelsen’s I-877 states that he was denied entry because he appeared to be seeking illegal employment, which he denies.

Mikkelsen told Hyperallergic that during his interview, however, he remembers that he was told the JD Vance meme was “illegal” and “dangerous.”

Mikkelsen requested a copy of his I-877 in his FOIA request, which the agency claimed it had no record of.

“I’m disappointed in CBP and ICE for not being able to give me the documents that I have a copy of,” Mikkelsen told Hyperallergic. “If anything, it just looks like they are trying to hide something.”

I agree. I’m just so frustrated with the poor options that we’re given that I couldn’t help but say something. Especially with the whole sarcastic transphobia remarks I see about the Dems when they are indeed transphobic, or at least more than willing to let trans people die for no reason.

If you want to piss off a Republican, make sure to correct them that it’s Romney-care, a Republican healthcare system, anytime they call it Obamacare!

On the one hand I agree, on the other I’m so angry and tired of either hearing that my issues aren’t important enough to do something about (the line told to Millennials during pretty much every election - presidential and otherwise - from Bush onward outside of Biden and Obama on things like housing prices and student loan debt/price of college) or that as a transgender person, we need to let the Republicans do a little genocide and removal of our rights and freedoms as a treat or else the “moderate Republicans” won’t vote for the Democratic candidate (are the “moderate Republicans” in the room with us right now?). And then we get blamed for the Dems losing one way or another regardless. Either the Millennials didn’t vote hard enough, or our demands of things like affordable housing and protection of minorities’ rights were “too radical and lost the Dems the moderate vote.”

I still voted for Harris because it was either the Dems rein in the fascists to some extent at the federal level or the only safe places being Democrat run states, but the Dems absolutely threw us under the bus as a “worthy sacrifice” to court a mythological voting base that hasn’t existed in decades - if it ever did at all - and I can’t really blame people for being sick and tired of it.

Because it takes time to get a vehicle in the air to go after them, time in which the drones might be gone and all you have to go by is their last heading when they could’ve changed direction, split up, and traveled a hundred kilometers in different directions before heading for where they actually came from. All while you can’t follow them into somebody else’s air space because drones are too small to be picked up on standard radar but a helicopter or plane certainly aren’t, which means that it could look like you’re invading their air space. This also means that the drones could potentially have traveled through multiple countries undetected before arriving at their destination, so you can’t even assume that they came from those countries even if you do manage to track them to their air space.

Why would you smear Charlie like this? He died protecting our 2nd amendment rights, a noble sacrifice just like he said we need, and by showing any empathy, you’re doing a lot of damage.

Jim Jones, of the Jonestown Massacre. The cult leader who we got the phrase “drinking the Kool-Aid” from (though they actually were too poor to get Kool-Aid and they laced Flavor-Aid, the off brand version, with cyanide instead). When he started out, he was actually a very influential Civil Rights activist who is responsible for the policies that would later become the foundation of the civil rights laws in his home city. But he later became a crazy cult leader and by the time of the cult’s mass suicide, he ranted like Trump does today.

As for how anybody could believe that Trump’s a good businessman, many people only know him as that guy from The Apprentice, not the businessman who has bankrupted multiple casinos, an airline company (and beauty pageant for young girls who he flew around the country with in his private plane - just him, the girls, and a man by the name of Epstein), and who couldn’t even sell steaks to Americans.

2016 Trump ran on the idea of being the good businessman who was going to clean up the swamp and get this company’s country’s act together. Just like any other CEO selling to investors. I have friends who, halfway into his campaign, were like, “I kinda like this Trump guy, he tells it like it is,” and by the time of the election they had completely 180’d on him because of the details of what he was promising.

One of these friends is super into cults and true crime, and he says that listening to Trump is eerie because he sounds exactly like Jim Jones. Then, and now. Back then he sounded like Jim Jones in his prime (and read Hitler’s speeches as bedtime stories according to an ex-wife, which would explain why all his campaign promises match up with Hitler’s). Today, he sounds like Jim Jones making his death speeches while you can hear them forcing the cultists to drink the Flavor-Aid and gasping, choking, and dying in the background of the recordings.

The people who liked Trump the first time and didn’t change their minds then were never going to change their minds the second time. They’ve already bought into the cult. And that’s what Trump is - a cult leader. He promises them a solution to their misery by giving them an obvious target to take their aggression out on, and people eat it up because they want a simple solution that absolves them of any blame.

Don’t forget to inscribe transgender ideology on it like “0w0 what’s this notices bulge” and “hey fascist, catch! ⬆️➡️⬇️⬇️⬇️”

Ironically, Windows users have generally felt that way with every new Windows version after 7. Vista was painful for a lot of people and 7 was basically Vista but with the problems finally fixed, and every version since then people have complained that the newest version feels unfinished.

And in a lot of ways they have been. In 10, there are at least 2 different UIs for navigating the system and settings. Some options have been migrated over to the newer one, some only exist there, and some still only exist in the old version of the settings. And then 11 made it even worse by moving a number of frequently used options in the right-click menu into a second menu that you have to open after you right click.

People hated 10 at first, too, but by now they’ve gotten used to it and Microsoft has ironed off most of the rough edges people hated. But it’s been building for years and this pattern has seemingly hit some kind of breaking point with the present-day circumstances.

It’s not about taking the high road but about accepting the fact that the worst monsters to ever walk on this planet have all been humans. By accepting this and being aware that these monsters can come from anywhere, we can better make sure that “never again” actually means Never Again.

It always is. They always jump to blaming liberals, minorities, etc. long before there’s any information.

Attacks on Jews tripled in the days after 9/11. The hatred is the point.

Kirk certainly knows what it’s like when the blood’s pumping.

So it’s always had a negative connotation to it? Because that’s what I’m saying. That Google is using the word by its correct definition, but adding to the original definition a subtext that side loading is a bad thing. Hence, they’re twisting it from its original meaning to a negative connotation to the average person (who has never heard the word before).

It’s like Windows’ UAC popping up with a warning when you try to install just about anything. To the average computer illiterate person, they’re going to second guess whatever they’re installing as “dangerous” while the rest of us are like “shut up Windows, of course I want to install the Nvidia drivers, that’s why I clicked on the damn thing.”

America has been a third world country for decades now. The only reason that it hasn’t felt like it is because there’s so much money still circulating in our economy from helping the world rebuild after WW2 and selling military equipment and culture during the Cold War (plus the whole American Empire thing, can’t forget that). By all the metrics that are used to rate the quality of health of a country - things like infrastructure quality, wealth inequality, healthcare costs and CoL vs income - the US is much closer to third world countries than to comparable European countries.

As somebody once said, America is a third world country in a Prada belt.

By justifying getting rid of it as “security concerns”. This is the first time the average user will have heard the term, so it will be linked in their head to this and therefore as risky/dangerous and they won’t question why Google would want to make it harder, if not impossible, for people to install apps or other software without Google’s explicit permission.

The walls around the garden get taller, and those inside won’t question why there aren’t any doors.

Fingers crossed. I’ve been waiting a long time to get back into VR and replace my OG Vive.

Google is twisting the word to justify their purpose of preventing people from installing anything that isn’t from their walled garden. So anything that sounds even close to support for that motive is going to be met with pushback, even if it is a word that existed before Google’s use of it. Google’s implicitly saying that installing something from anywhere other than their store is something nefarious or otherwise bad/risky. Google is trying to perform the same kind of security theatre as the US with the NSA at airports.

Honestly, it doesn’t matter to me where you install an app from because you’re simply installing it. Whether that’s from Google’s storefront, Apple’s, or somewhere else, you’re installing an app. The circumstances where I’d need a term to specifically say that I’m installing an app from outside the default app store would also be covered by simply saying “I got it from GitHub (or wherever).” It takes the same energy to answer the question of where you got it from regardless of whether you say that you installed it or you side loaded it.

They mean a physical Target store, not a phone app. Target can track customers walking in and out the door and what they buy, how long they stay, etc. but they can’t track anything about you if you just go to a different store, especially something like a small business which isn’t hooked into the ad data sponge.