I wish more people understood that the models they were taught in Microecon 101 are not a particularly accurate representation of the actual inner workings of human society.
Leaving aside for a moment the huge number of people who have moved to North Dakota - so many that energy boom towns are experiencing severe housing shortages - working in the oilfields is physically grueling, and so unsuitable for anyone not in good physical condition; and your typical boom-town is not exactly the best place to bring a family.
Beijing is generally worse more often, partly because they get hit by dust carried from the increasingly large Gobi Desert in addition to all the man-made pollution.
The Northeast Corridor metro areas (Boston-NYC-Philadelphia-DC; dense, 4mm+ pop centers all located within a few hours of one another) and a handful of other regional short-haul routes (San Diego-LA, Boston-Portland, etc) account for almost all Amtrak traffic; the long-haul cross-country routes are basically tourist attractions subsidized by the commuter rail segments of the system.
You're describing one method of coping with the inevitable decline, and I think your advice is excellent and I'm glad it works well for you. But the OP was complaining precisely about a decline in energy and that 'sense of novelty'. I don't think there's any point in suger-coating the reality that for most people those feelings peak early in your youth.
You have aged. Your energy level and motivation will decline until you die.
The rate of change varies from person to person, and you can probably reinvigorate yourself to a degree with a better lifestyle (more exercise, a better diet, a stimulating job, a vibrant social life), but slowing down is inevitable.
One suggestion: Adjust the game so that the player is only presented with countries that have populations within a certain distance of each other. Right now I'm getting a lot of "Marshall Islands vs Pakistan" type questions.
There is a huge degree of difference between being denied entry to a foreign country and having punitive action taken against you by the government.
Your second case is about a guy who was thought to be making immediate threats, rather than simply tweeting something offensive, and he was released after the grand jury refused to indict him on free speech grounds:
It's worth noting that in the United Kingdom, you can already be fined or jailed for tweeting. Neither of these would be criminally actionable offenses in the US, and the first one especially would be clearly protected political speech:
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but haven't most of these 'quit/don't go' essays come from academics in the humanities? Are there similar essays coming from science or engineering grad students / tenured professors?
There's no reason to think that Al Jazeera will be a player in the 'adversarial journalism' game. It's a massive media conglomerate just like NBC, CNN, or FoxNews; at best, watching al-Jazeera will just become a way for people to brand themselves as 'independent thinkers'.
It is definitely enough to have CBP flag any packages crossing the border that are associated with that name, for which no warrant is required. After that, well, I'm no lawyer, but I think intercepting a package full of fake IDs is enough to justify a broader criminal investigation.
Brain technology. Eventually 'wireheading' is going to stop being science fiction and start being science fact. The people who commercialize that technology first are going to swim in oceans of money.