I don’t see the connection between public surveillance and oppression that most other people here apparently see. With all other things equal, I’d rather not have the government know where I drive, simply because I enjoy having privacy in that domain for its own sake. However, I’m not afraid that the government will use this information to oppress me. (An oppressive government can oppress me whether or not I’ve actually done anything illegal, so the surveillance doesn’t make much difference.) And in the absence of that concern about oppression, I value the potential to reduce crime more than I value my privacy while in public (something of a contradiction in terms).

That would be about as much electricity as 2% of what the entire USA uses. Wow!

I support more public surveillance (although I don’t know whether or not Flock specifically does a good job of it) but I recognize that controversial famous people are in fact in a lot more danger from lunatics than the average person is, and here, despite the denial by the people intending to do this, the intent is clearly to increase that danger.

I like the dog, but I feel sort of how I felt about my sister’s dog when I took care of him for a couple of months while my sister traveled. I enjoyed having him around and we had fun together, but the thought of giving him back to my sister didn’t upset me and I wasn’t sad after I did. If somehow it turns out that my new dog ran away from a loving family and they found out that I had her, I don’t think it would be difficult for me to give her back to them.

My little guy was generally a happy, friendly dog who didn’t appear to have any trauma (beyond whatever issues ending up in an animal shelter itself causes) although I was told that he had been adopted before and then returned to the shelter because he was rather high-maintenance. By “high-maintenance” I mean that he expected to share my food, sleep in my bed, sit on my lap (he wasn’t a small dog), and spend most of the day next to me, not that he had to be nursed back to health. But still whenever he saw something unfamiliar or scary, he would look at me and if I was calm he would be calm too. I could even go watch fireworks with him. It was always clear to me that I was special to him, even from funny stuff like how when we visited my grandparents, he would go sleep next to my grandfather because my grandfather went to bed early, but then when he would hear me going to bed he would abandon my grandfather and run to me.

Yeah, to be honest I’m not sure I should have gotten a new dog. I’m certainly not going to give her back to the shelter and it has only been a couple of months so maybe things will change over time, but we don’t have a bond the way I had with my old dog from day one. Some of that is because she has a different personality, and some might be because I’m just not as open to bonding.

My old dog freaked out when I just walked past his cage at the shelter; I hadn’t even been planning to get a dog, but it was clear that he had picked out me in particular. Then he always had separation anxiety from me for the rest of his life. My new dog is nice and I guess it’s good that she doesn’t have anxiety like he did, but I feel that if I just gave her to another person who also took care of her well, she wouldn’t be particularly upset.

trying to Learn

Is that what kids are calling it these days?

By electing Le Pen, or so it seems.

I suppose they could - they’d have to go across 10 miles of Iraq (realistically more, unless they want to build some rather long pontoon bridges) and I can see Iraq sitting that out.

A contested amphibious landing against the US Navy?

Their options:

1. Armenia
2. Azerbaijan
3. Turkey
4. Iraq
5. Turkmenistan
6. Afghanistan
7. Pakistan

I think all of those fall into at least one of the “Trump wouldn’t care” or “capable of fighting back” categories.

Should be a line.