Well, that’s customer satisfaction.

Knowing I’m using a VPN is not the same as knowing where I’m using it from.

The browser thing is bloody irritating, though.

I think I’m dramatically overestimating normal people’s understanding of computers.

I know a VPN isn’t a cloaking device. I just want my ISP to not know what I’m looking up, and my website top not know where I am located.

Would you care to expand upon this point? I know that a VPN is not going to protect me from everything, but “almost nothing” seems harsh.

I would like to know more.

In this example, the child is living, and has needs.

Very nice.

How about those Epstein files?

I’m an actual engineer with a degree and everything, although this is not my area of expertise, it’s one I’m familiar with.

They could do something like you suggest, but every step becomes more expensive and less effective. The exhaust from a coal fired power plant is still plenty hot, and more energy could be extracted from it. But it requires more and more to make less and less.

The curse of every engineer is to see a way to them every waste stream into a useful product, but not being able to do so profitably. (Which means no-one will approve the project)

The difficulty is, to put it in very simple terms, is that physics doesn’t allow that. The less simple explanation is a thermodynamics textbook, and trust me, you don’t want that.

Everything generates heat. Everything. Everything. Anything that seems to generate “cold” is generating more heat somewhere else.

A condenser will generate the same amount of heat that they are trying to dissipate.

Back when I lived in N. Carolina, there was a local brand called “Dr. Enuff.” Loved that stuff.

Also, that whole thing is nonsense of the highest order.

maybe stop comparing race and gender then.

Isn’t the entire premise of the post that someone is seeing parallels here, and would like to understand why the similarities are not meaningful? As I said, I agree that transracial people are being silly, but I haven’t seen an argument here that can’t be used against transgender people.

trans women only pass because we’re women.

But there are plenty of transwomen who don’t “pass” despite being women. But they should still be treated as women. Hell, there have been at least a few reports of ciswomen who couldn’t pass as women, at least to sufficiently assholish observers. On that basis, I don’t think we can use “passing” as a factor to determine people’s identity.

So, as a white person, I cannot pass as black, so I can never expect people to treat me like I’m black?

Don’t get me wrong, I think the idea is silly, but all the arguments I’ve seen in this thread are a word-swap away from being a bad argument against transgender people.

What’s the essential difference?

Problem is that “race” isn’t just cultural. How you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “race” and subsequently it will shape your life reality

But surely how you will be treated definitely depends on how other people perceive your “gender” and subsequently it will shape your life reality?

Everything you described up there sounds exactly like “cultural.”

I thought I was wrong, once. But I was mistaken.

Oh, infuriating, certainly.

That’s amazing is it? That they (grudgingly) take care of us while we are doing what they want, and hurt us until we fall in line when we don’t?

Seems a bar has been lowered while I wasn’t looking.

My loyalty is for sale.

The cultural relationship with time is more important than its absolute measurement.

This was the statement at the top of this discussion. It values the local concept of what time should be over an objective measurement of what time is.

The proposed change wouldn’t cause much of a problem. But the idea under the statement I quoted would.

that is such a small edge case that it’s not necessary to talk about them

Did you manage to overlook this point?