It wouldn’t happen, but theoretically if it did it could be hilarious.

The US doesn’t look kindly on people who lied on official documents. Mostly this affects people who once came into the country illegally or overstayed their visas. That makes it nearly impossible for them to get citizenship later. So, if Musk had his citizenship stripped, he could be in a position where he could never get it back.

Additionally, the US has an exit tax for citizens who want to renounce their citizenship. That includes taxes on “Assets that haven’t been taxed yet but would be in the future, such as capital gains on stocks or funds in retirement accounts”. So, if they hit him with that after stripping him of his citizenship, they could tax the hundreds of billions of unrealized gains in his various companies.

I agree that it’s not going to happen unless something dramatically changes, but if it did it would be epic.

Almost everything in any religion is a “telephone game” retelling of things. These days they’re the same to most people which is what really matters.

Luce means light in Italian. Lucifer means “light bringer” and the mythos is about trying to steal the light (luce) of god. It doesn’t mean “luce” is bad.

I guess the Catholic church overestimated the education of its followers.

“Luz” is an incredibly common name in Spanish speaking countries. It means light. “Luce” means light in Italian, but seems to be less common as a name. Lucifer means “Light-bringer”, and the myth of the light-bringer is much, much older than Christianity.

Old religions thought things in the sky were gods. Venus orbits closer to the sun than the Earth, which means light reflecting from it is extremely bright, but that light is only visible near sunrise and sunset. During the rest of the day the brightness of the sun overwhelms the reflected light from Venus, and during the rest of the night it’s not visible because it’s near the sun, so it’s behind the earth. So, old religions talked about the brightest “god” in the sky, who disappeared when it got too bright or too dark. That led to the myth of the god who tried to be the brightest light and was cast down. That, of course, led to Satan, A.K.A. Lucifer.

I guess the Catholic church was giving its followers too much credit in their understanding of words.

It is. It’s that plus an important process for living organisms rather than just burning something.

What makes you think there’s a threshold?

It’s pretty interesting how “concentration camp” used to just mean “a camp where people were grouped together”. It wasn’t necessarily pleasant, but in many cases it was effectively a relatively nice prison. Then, it became a euphemism for an extermination camp. The Nazis pretended they were just grouping people together in a camp, when in reality the aim was to kill everyone there. That euphemism tainted the original meaning, so now when people hear “concentration camp” they think of the Nazi extermination camps.

Technically, Guantanamo Bay probably qualifies as a concentration camp, but I bet they are very careful not to ever use that term.

“B” has never even been considered. That’s a bogeyman that the Republicans are trying to invent.

The US is constantly enforcing immigration laws. That’s not going to change. The issue is that laws that used to work, like asylum, no longer do.

And even if there were, First Past The Post means a vote for anybody but D or R means you’re taking a vote away from your preferred D or R candidate. A smart “I” voter would only vote for an “I” party (if one existed) in cases where the more preferred D or R candidate was already basically guaranteed to win, so their third-party vote wouldn’t affect the D or R result.

Not really. For immigration, someone might think that only the best of the best should be allowed to immigrate. They think that includes them, but doesn’t include a lot of the people who do it illegally. And, to a certain extent, they’re probably right. It’s pretty hard to immigrate legally to the US as a menial labourer, but that’s what a lot of illegal immigrants do. They work in restaurants, slaughterhouses, on farms, etc. doing extremely hard work, but work that doesn’t require any education. Meanwhile a lot of legal immigration slots are only available to people with “extraordinary ability”.

The kinds of jobs that illegal immigrants do are the ones that US citizens would only do if they were really desperate. Meanwhile, the kinds of jobs that legal immigrants do are often the ones that very few US citizens can do, so that the companies need to hire from outside the country to fill the position.

Being against student loan forgiveness is also a pretty reasonable position, whether or not you paid yours off, or you never went to university.

It’s not just one generation receiving an education vs. another one that didn’t. It’s that the platforms the generations used are fundamentally different.

Gen X / Millennials grew up with Macs and PCs, computers that were fundamentally not locked down. You could install any software you wanted. You could modify the OS in many ways. DRM wasn’t really a thing in general, and there were almost always easy ways around it.

Gen Z / Gen Alpha grew up mostly with cell phones. The phones they had are much more powerful than the PCs from 20-30 years ago, but they’re incredibly locked down. The only applications you’re allowed to use are the ones that Apple / Google allow on their app stores, unless you root your phone which is a major risk. It’s very hard to even load up your own audio files, movies or images let alone “dodgy” ones. DRM is everywhere, and the DMCA means you risk serious prison time if you bypass access controls.

Gen X / Millennials grew up at a time when there were still more than 5 tech companies in the world, and the companies out there competed with each-other. There were plenty of real standards, and lots of other de-facto standards that allowed programs to interoperate. Now you’re lucky if you can even use an app via its website vs. using a required app.

It’s not just a difference in education. It’s that companies have gained a lot more power, and the lack of antitrust enforcement has made for plenty of walled gardens and “look but don’t touch” experiences.

You bought Winzip!?

Or, what if a government granted a monopoly on sidewalks within the city to SideWalking Inc. SideWalking spent all kinds of money setting up turnstiles all over the busiest sidewalks equipped with NFC readers, then ran an ad campaign telling people where to buy their sidewalk authorization cards, etc. And then they realized that people were just hopping over the turnstiles! Who recoups the cost to put up all the turnstiles and install all the NFC readers?

Hey, you’re that guy who doesn’t know anything about copyright, but has strong opinions, right?

In other words “You’re right, I don’t know anything about copyright.”

Stealing what from him?

All that’s happening here is a bunch of computer nerds have figured out how to get things for free

No, all that’s happened is that the state has convinced you that it’s reasonable to grant someone a monopoly on the expression of an idea that lasts something like 120 years. I bet you’ve never even stopped to question that, or that you even know what the length of the original copyright term is. I bet you don’t know the history of Hollywood, and how it ties in with copyright infringement. Or, how when the US was a new country it immediately ignored all the copyrights imposed by the British monarch.

Same thing as all the looters in California who know that they can steal up to $1,000 of merchandise from any brick and mortar store, with no consequences

Suuuuure… That happened. And now you’re conflating theft with copyright infringement again. They’re not at all the same.

and running out the door

Why would they be running out the door if there are no consequences? It’s almost as if there would be consequences if they were caught.

Is this the kind of world you want to live in?

You mean, the current world? The one that works according to the rules you’re advocating?

Steal what?

Movies, video games and music aren’t “products”.

If I want something, I need to pay for it. That’s how the world works.

Yes, it is. Isn’t that a shame? They’ve convinced you that that’s normal, when it isn’t. We could make the world a better place.

By “product” do you mean idea?