People are homeless not because the government lacks funding, but because the government doesn’t give a damn. Those billions being given to Ukraine were never going to be spent addressing poverty had the war not happened, and if Congress suddenly had a change of heart, they’d have zero problems finding and allocating as much money as they want to anti homeless programs Ukraine war or not
The 3 Gorges Dam in China slowed the Earth’s rotation by .06 microseconds per day due to the amount of water moved altering the Earth’s moment of inertia
Another interesting approach to trash management is what Taiwan does. Taiwan charges per bag of trash, and residents have to manually bring out their bags on trash day to garbage trucks that sing like ice cream trucks. This makes each person care about how much they are throwing away, as unlike in places that charge a flat fee per bin per week, you could spend or save a lot of money and effort on trash days based on how much waste you make. However, in most municipalities, recycling and composting are free, encouraging residents to choose items with the least amount of recyclable/compostable waste to save money. While such a system would not go over well with the people if it were implemented in a place like the US, the program is successful in Taiwan and has done wonders for reducing their waste and keeping their cities clean
Countries have the right to expel foreign diplomats and embassies as long as they don’t arrest them or go through their stuff when they leave. The newly couped Niger junta requested the French ambassador leave and revoked his visa, but the French are still refusing to leave, claiming that because they don’t recognize the legitimacy of the new junta, they don’t have to follow the junta’s orders to leave. Regardless of your opinion of the new junta, in how does a former colonial power be in the right when they are blatantly ignoring the legal rights and sovereignty of their independent former colony’s government that is doing things by the book? They stopped sending the ambassador food and are confining him to his embassy until he leaves, especially given the current junta that is extremely gentle treatment
The dependence they had on Western technology was a key motivator against war precisely because the US can unilaterally restrict access to their tech. Going to war means losing US tech, and Russia decided that war was worth losing US tech
Seniority plays a major role in committee appointments. Sure, you could replace the senile 95 year old who doesn’t know the cold war is over with a younger candidate, but that senile 95 year old has been in Congress for longer than the other guy has been alive, and he’s on some important committees because of it that the younger candidate wouldn’t be able to be in
What’s even more mind boggling is that despite Starlink being so critical to Ukrainian communications, neither the Ukrainian government nor the US entered into a contract with a clause obligating Starlink to maintain service. Musk can just legally turn off Starlink for them with no legal repercussions because they never negotiated something against that into a contract with him. Even if they had to pay a premium rate for Starlink, for a service that critical to the Ukrainian Armed Forces it’s worth it
The value of their investments is lower because they’ve been pulling out of Russia. The article you sent says they’ve slashed the value down by 90%, and they’re still going. Liquidating hundreds of millions in stocks while getting a decent value out of them takes time, and so far they’ve done a pretty good job selling off 90% of their Russian holdings with just a few more millions to go
China is facing a massive traffic issue with cars that makes becoming a car-dependent society difficult. As their middle class becomes larger and wealthier, the amount of cars on the road has increased exponentially, far more than their road and highway systems were designed to handle. While the US has had over a century to build society around car ownership, China has to scramble in order to build enough infrastructure to accommodate all their new cars, a task much more difficult than building public transportation. Add in China’s heavy dependence on foreign oil imports compared to the US, and being a car centered society just doesn’t make sense for them
Ukraine has been in war economy mode for over a year now, and it’s not sustainable long term while all of the sanctions on Russia haven’t crippled their economy to the point of being unable to continue fighting. Their ability to fight Russia is largely dependent on continued western aid, largely from the US, which has become increasingly controversial politically. The current counteroffensive has been a slow, long grind without much in the way of territorial gain so far, further decreasing popular support for Ukraine in the west. If Russian sympathizers in the US government manage to block aid to Ukraine before they are able to break Russia’s defenses, the Ukrainian Armed Forces will run out of funding and equipment and be forced to negotiate best case scenario, or be overrun by the Russians worst case scenario. It is still a long time until the next US election so they should still fight, but unless they’re able to make dramatic gains like they did previously, Ukraine may have to negotiate eventually
Barely anyone uses Linux, and among those who do, distros vary wildly enough between each other to the point of breaking viruses that it’s just not worth the effort to make viruses for them compared to Windows or Mac
They didn’t intend for there to be a war. They fully expected to just walk in without much resistance, take over the country without much hassle similarly to how they took over Crimea, install a puppet government, and have the west barely react just as we haven’t been reacting to their annexation of parts of Georgia, Crimea, and their conflict in Donbass for years
Trump was exposed to large amounts of highly classified information as president for four years, and has shown a willingness to sell it to the highest bidder. He’d 100% throw the US under the bus to stay in Russia, and his supporters will deny he ever did such a thing just as they deny he publicly called for storming the Capital or as they deny the current charges against him
You just need 3 largish televisions, a small TV or monitor for the top, and stuff to mount each screen in that configuration. Your PC doesn’t need to be that good unless you are doing something like gaming, just enough to run 4 1080p windows. Once you connect them, it’s fairly easy to adjust the configuration in Windows to extend and rotate the monitors to make the setup work. Depending on how you get the televisions (you can buy them used, flat screen 1080p TVs have been popular for a long time and are relatively affordable) and how you decide to mount them, you can build this setup for only a couple hundred
When the words “experimental nuclear reactor being built near you” doesn’t attract massive groups of protesters fueled by the coal companies, allowing for the tech to actually be built and tested
For decades, the Republican party has had the Baptist/Evangelical vote in the bag without having to actually do anything thanks to abortion. Republican politicians could rile up their base attacking abortion and be excused for not doing anything about it by their constituents as abortion was a constitutional right, and because abortion was a constitutional right that couldn’t be taken away, those who cared about it could still be in good conscience when they vote for a Republican. The dog caught its tail when Roe was overturned, and now that abortion can be outlawed on every level of government, Republican inaction on abortion will see their support among Baptists/Evangelicals tank. Overturning Roe is the most self damaging thing the Republican party has ever done, and now they are forced to choose between catering to religious fanatics or normal people
Unfortunately the current situation appeases the global powers the most. China and Russia will not stand to have a US allied united Korea so close to Beijing and Vladivostok, which means a united Korea is a neutral, non US aligned Korea, which the US does not want. Having North Korea be a buffer state between China/Russia and the US aligned South Korea is the most stable option, and as a result North Korea knows that it can do whatever it wants and still be propped up by Beijing, just as it has since the Korean war
Awesome. We get to save money on storing and disposing of old, surplus equipment, and Taiwan gets weapons that will prove vital should war break out. In the event of a war between Taiwan and China, US intervention is not guaranteed, and it will be significantly more difficult to send arms to Taiwan compared to how we’ve been sending arms to Ukraine, so ensuring that Taiwan has the means to defend themselves ahead of time is vital if the US wants to make sure Taiwan survives. The amount is basically nothing compared to the US military’s annual budget or the aid we’ve given to other countries, but hopefully this opens the door for further investment into Taiwan’s military
They shipped the Wii encryption key along with the emulator. While there’s no established legal precedent that encryption keys are protected by copyright, it’s largely been assumed by those in the industry that they are. It’s also blatantly a measure to circumvent anti piracy measures. If Dolphin required you to go find the Wii encryption key on your own and input it into the emulator, Nintendo would have no grounds to stand on, but they screwed up and risked everything by one of the most infamously anti emulator, litigation happy corporations on earth
Western doctrine is also largely based on the US’ needs. Artillery just isn’t practical for the US, who needs to be prepared to fight all over the world oceans away from home. Artillery is much more stationary compared to air power due to the size of the guns and the difficulty moving them, while the US can easily fly planes anywhere we need them. As such, Western doctrine became heavily reliant on having air supremacy and massive amounts of air support and our equipment was designed for that battlefield. Ukraine just doesn’t have nearly the same arial capabilities as NATO, relying much more on artillery which NATO weapons and doctrine weren’t designed around, and they’re having to figure out how to make them work without air power