tenderLoins

Well, the taxes/theft thing isn't quite appropriate.

Seizure, impounding, eviction, even fines, ...these might ring truer, since they're generally harsher, require less sophistication and such effects are more immediate. These things are often unavoidable, and inflicted without option or recourse.

Meanwhile, taxes, tolls, tariffs... eh, not so much. They're slow, often legislated amidst varying degrees of democracy (in our modern times) and in some cases can be met with degrees of flexibility, where a real slippery individual might be capable of avoiding them.

I always thought "dude" meant: The crusty tuft of hair on a horse's asshole?

Seriously, a science teacher in high school read that definition from a dictionary, and handed out photocopies of it to my class, in the hopes that it would discourage us from using the word, because he got sick of hearing it. It had the opposite effect, obviously.

...but anyway, that's why I laughed when The Stranger in The Big Lebowski implied, with subtlety, the same meaning when he said it was a name "no one would self-apply" where he came from.

I'm sticking with "hairy horse anus."

Oh boy! Now I get to wonder if this information is implicitly available to an alphabet agency without my direct consent or awareness.

I have to wonder, by what order of magnitude this improves the precision of "THEIR" geolocation data, when "THEY" collect on persons of interest.

(they? they who? gee, who's they???)

I like to think of South Korea as a nation state, gripped by such fear-of-the-other, that they'll agree to any irrational suggestions their military advisors might make.

So then, 10 or 20 years ago, when the NSA needed a secret laboratory to experiment in, where they could blunder away at trial and error, perhaps a huge wind tunnel to test the aerodynamics of this bird, well South Korea sounds pretty good. Let's see if the pentagon can get them to agree to a few absurd pre-requisites and static global variables, while we bootstrap this absolutely enourmous program we're shoe-horning into place.