betz24

He was re-elected because he won the war and was a good leader at the time, nothing really to do with socialism. He navigated a depression for the American people and they loved him for it

I thought the whole reason universities had their hands tied were the anti-BDS law. Maybe Brown is in a state (RI) where it won't lose state funding, but losing federal funding would be a blow to the research orgs.

You originally said that you find Portugal less 'burdened', I am just pointing out that that is not the case. Decriminalization takes significant amount of spending and burden for both Portugal and Portland and isn't showing improvements in the community. If a policy isn't making an impact it's not a working policy: this experiment has been alive in Portugal for over 20 years. Feel free to look at more sources, or provide proof that it does work, I'm all ears.

I have heavy drug users in my family. Giving them access to more supply and mobility to shoot up whenever they want isn't going to help them. They don't think that way.

Aside from being there many times and seeing the problem first-hand here are a few articles:

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/is-portugals-drug-decriminalization-a-failure-or-success-the-answer-isnt-so-simple/#:~:text=Overdose%20rates%20now%20stand%20at,just%20from%202021%20to%202022.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/25/it-beats-getting-stoned-on-the-street-how-portugal-decriminalised-drugs-as-seen-from-the-shoot-up-centre

The idea that decriminalization leads to less hard drug usage is seen to have an initial positive effect (which could be why you had previously thought it was better) but unfortunately has led to a larger unmaintainable drug problema:

• locations become drug trafficking epicenters
• rubber band effect from expiring and unmaintainable government funding
• number of users growing

The number of Portuguese adults who reported prior use of illicit adult drugs rose from 7.8% in 2001 to 12.8% in 2022 — still below European averages but a significant rise nonetheless. Overdose rates now stand at a 12-year high and have doubled in Lisbon since 2019.

Check Portland, OR. Not going so great now. The drugs nowadays are synthetic and designed to be addictive to most people. Decriminalizing them isn't going to get them off the streets and stop people from getting hooked.

Idk, look at Portugal. Full drug legalization is not doing too hot.

Does anyone live in an electric building? I'd be curious if they can deliver enough hot water to all the units in time

The futbol clubs will disagree!

BG4 is going to be BGOnline 😂

I know lots of euro bros are showing how long their country is, but I think the point is that Texas is a state, not country. When you compare those things it's quite impressive, however still not even the largest state in the world. Here are some others. A nice drive from Anchorage to Prudhoe Bay will cost you 17 hours, or in Amazonas, Brazil, Manaus to Cruzeiro do Sul is 33 hours.

To the guy who annexed Arizona into California in order to beat Texas, shame.

I was curious why this is effective.

The influence of artificial light in urban spaces is a well-known phenomenon among birds, but is still not fully understood. Birds tend to migrate by night, and use the stars to navigate. By day, they use the position of the Sun to orient themselves. During nocturnal migration, they are often seen gathering around or crashing into lit-up windows and structures, or gathering around beams of projected life. The artificial glow of cities also appears to attract them for stopovers. One explanation is that they may generally fly towards light sources, but also, that the artificial light confuses, traps and disorients them.

I wonder if it's a deer in the headlights effect or more like moths?

This article is talking about Colombia, so I thought you were comparing Norway to Colombia. It would be interesting to see the Nordic model applied to the US. There are 370m Americans vs 5m Norwegians but our government budget per capita could theoretically be closer

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget_per_capita

Norway has a budget of $36k to spend per citizen and the US $20k. Say we raised our possible budget to $36k I wonder what impact that would make. $16k x 370m Americana would be ~$6b dollars. Looks like annual spend on US Medicare is $808b, so we couldn't even offer free healthcare. It seems like the US would need to be ground up rebuilt.