Yeah, my only takeaway from this is that we really should bring back dueling so Musk and Bezos could settle their dispute in a way that might actually make the world a slightly better place

If someone from the Trump administration says the sky is blue you should look outside to confirm

This is a pretty striking statement.

For starters the Federal Aviation Administration, an agency within the US Department of Transportation Duffy leads, has previously said it will take no part in determining whether people who fly on suborbital flights are astronauts. The agency makes this clear on its human spaceflight page, stating: “The FAA no longer designates anyone as an ‘astronaut.’ In addition, the FAA does not define where space begins.”

To step back just a little bit, the FAA created a commercial “Astronaut Wings” program back in 2004 to recognize the two pilots of SpaceShipOne, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie, who flew the vehicle above 50 statute miles (80 km). After that time, the program recognized private citizens who flew on Virgin Galactic’s Unity spacecraft, Blue Origin’s New Shepard, and SpaceX’s orbital Crew Dragon vehicle. You flew, and you got astronaut wings.

Then, in December 2021, the agency stopped issuing wings. “With the advent of the commercial space tourism era, starting in 2022, the Federal Aviation Administration will now recognize individuals who reach space on its website instead of issuing Commercial Space Astronaut Wings,” the agency said. “Any individual who is on an FAA-licensed or permitted launch and reaches 50 statute miles above the surface of the Earth will be listed on the site.”

Sanchez, Perry, and the others are recognized on this site today.

Aww, poor baby justices had to stay up late working? Well, maybe if you didn’t issue a stupid as hell ruling that tried to have it both ways a week ago and then kicked everything into the 5th circuit you wouldn’t be working at midnight on a Saturday, but here we all are.

It’s one rock breaking loose when we need a landslide, but that’s how landslides always start

The courts at the time said he was formerly in a gang

I don’t think even that’s right, I think ICE claimed he was a member of MS-13 (based off of one bullshit statement from a cop whose not allowed to testify anymore for the state prosecutors because he got caught lying about so much other stuff (arc)), but I don’t think the immigration court ever really addressed that and just left it at “If you wanted asylum you should have asked within one year after getting into the country but you’ve been here 7 years, and that’s reason enough to rule against you”

Besides that, Garcia never said he was a member of a gang. He said his family was threatened by a completely different gang and that they were going to hurt him if he didn’t join them, but he left instead of joining them (arc).

Like, his only real connection to a gang is being a victim of it, but the Laken Riley Act supporting assholes of our world will never give a shit about brown people being victimized by criminal gangs because they’re racist hypocritical douchebags (and maybe they understand on some level they’ve got the same kind of symbiotic relationship with MS-13 that George W had with Al Quaeda and Netanyahu has with Hamas).

If they spend weeks convincing you that you should do it, give you money or other resources to do it, or so on, then it can be entrapment.

Things like that should theoretically help you make an argument for entrapment, but it’s no sure thing

Ok, so Republicans tried to defeat her but Alaska’s election system stopped them. Seems like she’s in a uniquely secure position to be doing more.

The problem is these are Republicans were dealing with. Unless somebody on this site has a few million dollars to throw at them there’s nothing tangible we can offer them personally, and we wouldn’t have gotten here in the first place if they had any basic sense of right and wrong we could appeal to.

However, the good news is that we can honestly point out the very simple situation they’re obviously in, and if enough of us do that often enough reality might finally break through to them. The situation is that Donald Trump has a list of people he wants to hurt and they’re all definitely on it because they could threaten his power. Being nice to him might move their name down the list but it won’t get them off of it. The only way they can protect themselves is by taking Donald Trump’s power from him before he gets to them.

We don’t need Republicans to be good people to deal with this situation (which is good because they absolutely are not and haven’t been for decades and decades), we just need them to be slightly less stupid than they’re currently being.

Didn’t they already try to do that with Murkowski and she won as a write in?

Is the rest of the Salvadorian society ok with this?

If they make too much trouble for Bukele he will just throw them in there too

Many arrests appear to be based on the appearance or social background of detainees or on anonymous calls, and Salvadoran and international human rights groups have documented detentions of hundreds of people with no connections to gangs. Detainees include union and community leaders as well as environmental human rights defenders.

I know the guy is incredibly popular there,

Imprisoning or killing people who disagree with you will make it appear that way

I bet it would show up very quickly because they’ll realize the same thing could happen to anyone of them whenever Trump wants to do it and that they need to take him out before he takes them out

Trump could throw a thousand immigrants into a woodchipper right in front of Congress and it would just be furrowed brows all around, but if a hair on a lawmakers’ head ever gets touched by an official action I think they’d impeach him

Yeah, and giving people a visual will help make this more real for them. I doubt this one press conference is going to be our turning point, but it’s at the very least a small step in the right direction and better than ignoring this.

Some people are. In spite of all the terrible news I read everyday I still think most of us are good most of the time, we’re all just being subjugated by the worst of our species.

Ah, I see what you’re getting at and agree with what I think is your larger point, however all the first amendment nuances shake out this isn’t a case about a trans athlete getting any kind of special protections, this is just an “individuals’ free speech rights vs organizations’ rights to assemble without disruption” case. If these guys were thrown out for waging Palestinian flags or whatever other kinds of protesting it would be the same basic legal issue.

I don’t think that’s right, fancy restaurants and other private establishments can enforce dress codes and things like that. Generally speaking, any private organization is allowed to exclude whoever they want from their events so long as they don’t do so for a forbidden reason. Kicking someone out because you don’t like their haircut is fine, but kicking someone out because (for example) they’re Muslim is not.

I feel like that’s unlikely and that a lot of the people dissenting online are the same ones who are protesting, calling their lawmakers, etc.

Also, it’s not like any of the IRL stuff has been effective yet anyway. Online dissent probably gets seen by more eyeballs than any one protest sign or IRL action that doesn’t end up with the person doing it being arrested or killed (and thus unable to continue resisting this administration), so if it really is an either/or situation I think online dissent is more effective than IRL peaceful protest or writing yet another letter to my lawmakers.

That all said, I really don’t think it is an either/or situation, so I think we can and should be encouraging all the kinds of dissent.

Would you rather people stop dissenting online?

Lots of us are peacefully protesting and it’s pretty hard for most of us to do anything more than that

It is funny how all the things our lawmakers and pundits call “national security” don’t actually ever seem to do anything to guarantee our physical safety. Kinda like how “the economy” doesn’t have much to do with how close most of us are to poverty.

The fact that that made the news shows that

it’s not commonly covered by the news

it was the guy’s own government who snatched his phone,

I don’t see what difference that makes

People really should be cautious when travelling to countries with authoritarian governments… it’s the same caution that needs to be observed by anyone living in such a regime

100% agreed, that article is focused on a particular place where people should exercise even more caution but people should be on guard the whole time they’re under an authoritarian 's jurisdiction

People really should be cautious when travelling to countries with authoritarian governments but that’s not because they’re crossing a border

No, borders are extra risky places where there is extra surveillance and more guards who could threaten you

People really should be cautious when travelling to countries with authoritarian governments but that’s not because they’re… in a foreign country

Totally agreed