Absolutely. Every country's local media will try to get people to stay home and spend money locally, and not complain because elsewhere is much MUCH worse!

It also makes it easier to dehumanize people in-case of a conflict.

This isn't limited to far-away places. There are plenty of influencers and social media shills that specifically parrot how bad cities are - to people who live in those cities. Hyper-local news outlets that no one outside of the city would read are filled with crime reports and people giving all kinds of warnings. Even decades ago, local news would excitedly report on crime because it draws viewers.

Almost every single large city subreddit needs to have some kinds of rules restricting crime posts, because people love to post every single act of crime that happens and it eventually takes over the sub. Then "alternative" subreddits are created and the cycle continues.

Scaring people has always been profitable, social media just lowers the bar. It's not just old people anymore.

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I almost fell into one of these traps. It was a guy walking around the dead San Francisco mall and talking about how it was DEVASTATED and SF was COLLAPSING. I had actually been there recently and yes, it was pretty empty. The Youtube algorithm seized on this and started showing me more videos.

Except one of the videos was on a street next to me. The video was just the one guy walking around two blocks that were empty, but looped over and over for 20+ minutes. So it was clearly nonsense.

I checked his channel again. It has paid subscriptions and a PayPal link. He gets minimum 50K views on every single video, with some hitting 800K. He makes two a month. That's an easy income.

Does not using a VPN free you from surveillance?

THEORETICALLY the government has _some_ restrictions against monitoring US citizens (https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/soci...), and it sounds like none of those are deemed to apply if you're using a VPN, per the original article.

Many VPNs are owned and operated by organized crime, intelligence services from all kinds of nations, and cops. The idea that a VPN somehow protects you does not enjoy a rational basis.

In the same way that wearing a full-face mask frees your from recognition, yes.

It also frees you from going unnoticed, and from entering many buildings.

Yeah but how many Iranians bet on Polymarket? /s

Lawnmower strikes again.

This is a great idea. I think you should ask people to pay a subscription for commenting. Turn it into a community supported site from the get go!

Sounds pretty bad until you look at the numbers.

And then it looks very bad?

The amount of each incident is fairly low, and probably goes a long way to funding the local community.

But the number of incidents is nuts - well over 1000 per year.

"Around 100,000 people hike to Everest Base Camp every year"

I have no idea how many of those people have to buy insurance.

Source: https://everestcamptrek.com/how-many-people-hike-to-everest-...

Seems simple. Is it effective?

Reasonable so, slump tests have been in use for as long as I can remember. There's a couple of other tests that need to be performed as well for fresh concrete. One for air content in the concrete, then temperature and volumetric weight.

IIRC the big tests that occur are the cylinder samples that are taken as well of the concrete and allowed to cure to full strength before destructively tested anywhere from a week to a month after pouring.

AI = Actual Indian.

Maybe Pitbulls are bi-polar more often than other dogs.

Perhaps this will be a larger peace between hypersonic powers than the one we've had between nuclear powers.

Nuclear weapons gave us global stability (i.e. no WW3). Hypersonics, hopefully, will also give us regional stability.