So, states already have their list of registered voters, this is about culling people from that list the state doesn’t think should really be there (but really specifically those supporting the opposition of the party in power, typically Republicans removing minority groups).

The reason removing people is a real thing that needs to happen is that people aren’t permanent citizens of a state, they’re just residents, and what state they are a resident of for voting purposes is extremely easy to change, and doesn’t really require notifying the state you’re leaving, just the one you now want to be a resident of.

The reason this specific thing is bullshit is that every time anyone does any kind of check for non-citizens voting, it’s basically non-existent. Instead, they’re going to use the pretense of checking citizenship to check other information, which they’ll selectively find other discrepancies in to remove people who are registered, but are likely to support their opposition. Likely with little time before an election, so hopefully they don’t find out until it’s too late or other frictions cause them to forgo voting voluntarily.

When I started Chilluminati, I kept current on new episodes as they came out, and worked from the beginning otherwise.

Nah, you do all the setup so it looks like a decapitation video, but have the victim read out your advocacy speech instead of a ransom or whatever, then just end the video. Enough people will report it based on looks in the early segment that it’ll get flagged for review still, but it ultimately won’t be problematic.

Oh, let me have just a little bit of peril?

Signal used to be the best answer to this conundrum, since it would use its own internal protocols if it could or fall back to SMS if it couldn’t, unfortunately they decided to drop SMS support a few years ago, citing users that sent sensitive information not realizing they were using SMS (that always felt kinda flimsy). I really disliked this change, because it raised the difficulty of adoption, from just getting people to replace their default app with Signal to making them manage multiple apps.

Now though, you basically need to advocate socially for the change you want to see in the world. Anecdotally, I started using Signal when they still supported SMS to talk with 1 friend group, and eventually convinced most of my closest family groups to also use it, many after SMS support was dropped. Apart from 1 tech illiterate elderly couple and 1 extended family member, I haven’t received any personal (non-company related) text messages in like 5 months.

I’m a little disappointed that they looked at each of social media, phone use and video game use independently as part of the study and didn’t seem to consider any covariance. If you’re looking for which things are really associated, seems like it’d be helpful to see where they overlap.

I’d rather have any cop willing to do that sitting in a chair staring at a monitor than out in the streets armed, at least until they start to arm the drones …

Surprise attack on Ukraine?

Real answer, surge or scarcity pricing.