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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 5, 2024

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Always good to hear from DTulpa Gabbard herself! :)

It's just one more point towards simulation theory. I was having a conversation with somebody in my kitchen while making dinner, half-assedly and uncharitably trying to anticipate the kind of minimizing response one could expect to see to this story (pending corroboration tbf I guess) not even one hour before seeing this post.

And then - there it is. The world is a hologram.

I'm just over 30, which means 9/11 happened in elementary school, and I came of age right when society was starting to question the Iraq war and if all the post-9/11 stuff was worth it. I especially remember people (myself included!) being very upset about the Do Not Fly list, which used to be absolutely horrendous nightmare-fuel (people wouldn't get told they were on it, would get on it for stupid reasons, even if you were obviously on it by mistake they wouldn't even admit you were on it much less take you off, the list grew very large very quickly, etc etc), as far as I knew that was still the case, and so in that context finding out the new version is "they let you fly but someone has to secretly babysit you" is kind of underwhelming in terms of "I should be upset". It's possible even I have been gaslit into thinking this is all okay and fine, but I won't pretend that kind of upbringing didn't play a role.

One thing I am quite upset about is the biometric Clear thing, which seems like a nefarious corporate conspiracy to steal your biometric data (and for airports to bilk the public out of money). Like, my home airport dedicated a TSA officer just to the Clear line, and they used to pay literally half a dozen salesman to sign people up for their "free trial" (yearly price over 100 bucks) (if you can afford to pay that many salespeople, your product is dodgy). So not only are they worsening TSA wait times for poor regular people, they are dedicating public money to do so (my airport is at least ostensibly owned by a public benefit type thing).