It no longer respects geographical preferences. Here in Estonia, if you go on OkCupid from Tallinn, you see about 30 Finnish people from Helsinki (across the sea, 80 km away) before you encounter a local (you also get 30 likes from Central Africa and South-East Asia).

It also has the card stack system now.

The question system remains and remains helpful, just the rest is broken.

A more detailed description:

Provided a card stack system, the dynamic balance of liking vs. skipping tends to stabilize into a state where men like everyone reasonably cute (“to get more chances”). This is also caused by their inability search for a conversation partner in a rational manner, because it’s a card stack system. Often enough, all the information you have is a photo, age and city.

This causes women to experience a saturation of likes: everyone likes them. This causes them to be extremely picky about who they like back.

The result: unbalance. Dating sites view women as a “resource” to attract men, and men as customers to be scammed out of money to actually show their profile to someone, once in a while.

Society is borked in many ways, and dating sites often reinforce this with their policies.

The Wikipedia article about online dating tells that typical (I assume: card stack, like / dislike) dating sites cause different genders to adopt different strategies:

Men liked a large proportion of the profiles they viewed, but received returning likes only 0.6% of the time; women were much more selective but received matches 10% of the time. Men received matches at a much slower rate than women. Once they received a match, women were far more likely than men to send a message, 21% compared to 7%, but they took more time before doing so.

By sending out questionnaires to frequent Tinder users, the researchers discovered that the reason why men tended to like a large proportion of the women they saw was to increase their chances of getting a match. This led to a feedback loop in which men liked more and more of the profiles they saw while women could afford to be even more selective in liking profiles because of a greater probability of a match.[15]

P.S.

My biggest peeve is that the monopolist Match Group (runs Tinder, bought and ruined OkCupid, etc) and its nearest competitor Bumble have both adopted a card stack system that makes searching impossible. They also won’t display any statistics to a user about the number of people who saw their profile - keeping their customer in perfect darkness.

In most fields of life, a customer would not be satisfied with this kind of shit. A company advertising their product would demand instant feedback about the number and profile of people who viewed their ad, where they came from, how long they browsed, etc.

Basically, we are all getting scammed by a few monopolists, who are actively ruining people’s ability to find partners. I would support a politician who promises to let the best university in the country to build a non-profit dating site.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

When I drive in darkness and heavy rain, and I want to be certain that there’s nothing ahead on the road (e.g. approaching an intersection or an unlit pedestrian crossing), I don’t only slow, but I start moving my head, either to the side and back, or forward and back.

While that’s human-specific - a fox doesn’t have a windscreen they need to erase from their field of view - moving one’s sensors around to get a better observation is universal. :)

If they win, the FEC won’t take directions from Trump.

This does not exclude the chance that Trump will provoke a more pointed confrontation. Or that Trump won’t eventually have to be removed by force. It’s just a basic thing to do - a road of 1000 steps starts with step 1.

This is the interesting bit - he might try that. As far as I know, something changed in 1969 about the structure of the federal marshals, and the courts no longer hire their own marshals. A comment from an American well versed in law would help clear things up.

The ordinary response:

• find the defendant in contempt
• send US marshals to carry out the court order
• alternatively, send them to jail the person who held the court in contempt

you have to get a new one issued

This is the part that’s mistaken: you don’t need a passport if you don’t travel to foreign lands. As far as I know, Americans usually prove their identity using a driver’s license, rarely using a passport.

Scanning the article, the practical threat (besides crazy ideological stunts) seems to be stealth disenfranchisement of this type:

House Republicans passed a bill (which stalled in the Senate) this session to require citizens to have a passport or birth certificate matching their name to vote. This would be a back-door ban on voting for any woman who took her husband’s last name and doesn’t have a passport, an estimated 69 million women. It would also disproportionately affect Republican women, who are more likely to be married, more likely to have changed their name and less likely to have a passport.

One absolutely doesn’t prepare such a large operation at such a short notice.

For an intelligence analyst, signs of an invasion are typically detectable 3 months ahead. If one performs a maritime invasion at a notice of weeks, failure is likely. (For reference, the D-Day needed years of planning and months of moving resources to work.)

Also, I trust that Taiwan has infiltrated China just as deeply as China has infiltrated Taiwan - they likely cannot keep massive secrets from each other.

Increasingly surreal stuff just seems to happen.

But I note that some high-profile Republicans have a spine - despite Elon Musk’s promise to beat anyone who diobeys Trump with his wallet (in primaries).

Subsequently, Trump was requested to be more truthful by: Mike Pence, Don Bacon, Lindsey Graham, Mike Rounds, John Kennedy, Thom Tillis, John Thune - and probably others who I haven’t even heard of, who didn’t make the news.

To my understanding, you cannot pardon someone whom a court fines or detains to force their compliance with their ruling in another case.

(It would be better if a lawyer answered that.)

If everyone is fine, it’s fine to mind one’s own business only.

But if my neigbour’s house is burning and I he has a big bottle of propane waiting to go thermobaric, then his problem is my problem.

If my neigbour’s neighbour is aiming a multiple rocket launcher at my neighbour, or has other ideas for wiping out the block, then a shared problem with high priority does kind of exist.

A president has immunity, but people implementing everyday life tend to follow court orders if they contradict presidential decrees.

If they consult a lawyer, nearly every lawyer will advise to follow court orders. If they don’t, a court can order other authorities to enforce its decision with force, fines or jail time. Lay people don’t have diplomatic immunity.

Now if cops won’t enforce court orders, then yes… then I hope you’re all stocked up on batteries, brushless motors and flight controller stacks. But I hope that won’t happen.