"I give you $50 if you vote for me, you'll get it when I win the ballot"
If someone is willing to sell their vote in the first place, they have zero incentive to vote for another candidate. They only have to trust the buyer to follow up on his promise (which is required in any other scenario also).
The report itself is interesting [0] and I recommend reading it for good context.
Here's a couple things that stood out to me:
- Measuring net migration is difficult. The report from TFA estimates a net migration between –295,000 and -10,000 for 2025. Some reports estimate much lower numbers, and some reports actually estimated a positive net migration for 2025. In any case, it's certainly trending downward.
- While there *has* been a decrease in the number of green cards and work visas (H1B's), it seems that the majority of the drop off has been from refusing to take refugees (from ~100k in 2024 to ~10k in 2025), basically eliminating asylum petitions at the border (from ~1.4M in 2024 to ~70k in 2025), and reduction in "Entries without inspection", aka illegal crossings that do not encounter law enforcement (~270,000k in 2024 to ~30k in 2025)
Given these numbers, I'm actually surprised the estimated net migration wasn't lower. I'm not sure if there's another component that made up for it, or if their estimates are just on the conservative side.
Then how does ozempic, whose primary mechanism of action is to decrease appetite, work for obese people?
Yes, your body will compensate somewhat for caloric deficit, and yes, when you gain enough fat mass your adipocytes will divide, creating more/stronger hunger signals that encourage weight gain moreso than someone who was never obese.
But your body is not magic. If you feed it a sufficiently low amount of calories, it has to break down energy stores, e.g. fat, to make up the difference in energy requirements.
That's a report on one person under direct medical supervision. The general consensus, afaik, is that starving yourself doesn't work, at least not more than short term - the weight comes right back.
>I grocery shopped like an American - filled up an entire cart with a week or two worth of groceries
Is that really how the average American shops though? The majority of shoppers these days are in the self checkout or "15 items or less" lines with only a single basket of stuff, at least in the stores I frequent. Granted, I'm close to a city center but the store I go to is not very walkable
EVs pay a gas tax in the form of enormously more expensive registration in almost all states. I pay way more for my EV registration than I would have paid in gas tax.
> Registration is like $100 a year for "unlimited" access to roads. Quite a bit cheaper than a yearly unlimited transit pass.
But that's still "some of it".
> And electric cars don't pay a gas tax.
Electric cars' registration fees are much higher to make up for that, e.g., in New Jersey, you owe an extra $260 per year for an EV (which automatically goes up by $10 every year) vs. a gas car.
>but you are likely setting them up for life of social awkwardness and ostracization.
Citation needed.
If you put your kids in homeschooling and provide no other outlet for socialization then sure, they'll be socially awkward.
My brother and I were homeschooled, but we were also heavily involved in our community. We were at the local park playing sports 3-4 times per week, we did various summer camps, we had a few other homeschool families that we'd setup playdates with. Our parents would sometimes joke that we barely ever home! And, unsurprisingly, we had no problems with socializing or making friends later in life.
Was it the same kind of socialization you get from going to public school? No, but I consider that a feature :)
So we can conclude that proliferation of guns are a necessary but not sufficient condition for excessive gun violence. Remove the necessary condition, remove the violence.
According to that Wikipedia link there are 1 million registered firearms in the USA and 400 million unregistered firearms. Could somebody explain these numbers, since they seem very odd?
I'm not sure how Wikipedia is distinguishing them but for the most part firearms do not have to be registered in the United States. Some states require firearms to be registered but most do not. Unregistered firearms can nonetheless be counted because they are inventoried and sold legally (firearms dealers must be licensed and regulated), even though the end purchaser is not registered anywhere.
Federally, only specific categories like fully-automatic machine guns and short-barreled rifles have to be registered.
Only a tiny minority of firearms need to be registered. My guess is that covers NFA weapons like machine-guns, which are uncommon. Virtually all typical firearms people own don't need to be registered.
No one really knows how many firearms there are in the US or who owns them. Just the fact that something like 15 million firearms are sold every year in the US gives a sense of the scale. The number of firearms in the US is staggering, no one knows the true number, and they have an indefinite lifespan if stored in halfway decent conditions.
Certain kinds of firearms are required to be registered, like machine guns, short barrel rifles, and short barrel shotguns.
Tons of guns are not those limited categories, so they are not required to be registered.
Its entirely possible to sell a gun in the US without any kind of paperwork depending on the type of firearm sold, the buyer of the firearm, and the seller of the firearm. I'm in Texas, so I'll use that as an example. Lets say I want to sell a regular shotgun I currently own to a friend. IANAL, this is not legal advice, but my understanding from reading the applicable laws would be all I have to do is verify they are over the age of 18 and that I think they are probably legally able to own a gun (I have no prior knowledge of any legal restrictions against them owning the gun). We can meet up, check he's probably over 18 and can probably legally own a gun and is a Texas resident, he can hand me cash or whatever for trade, I can give him the gun, and we go our separate ways. I do not need to do a background check. I do not need to file any registration. Nobody would know this guy now owns this gun. I do not need to keep any record of this sale at all. This shotgun has been an unregistered gun for its entire exstence.
This wouldn't necessarily be true if I trade some certain amount of guns as then I would probably need a federal firearms license and thus have some additional restrictions on facilitiating a sale. This also isn't necessarily true in other states which have additional restrictions on gun sales. But if I haven't done any gun sales in a long while, such restrictions wouldn't apply (according to my current understanding of the law, IANAL, not legal advice).
The first court ruled in Yahoo's favor and the appeals court ruled that neither it nor any lower court in the US had the power to adjudicate the matter altogether, which was kind of a loss for both yahoo and the French organization.
Let's not be too hyperbolic here. The average mid-level dev at Amazon is making over $250k while the average senior makes over $400k (source levels.fyi) so they're hardly "just scraping by" and can afford many of those same life comforts.
> Let's not be too hyperbolic here. The average mid-level dev at Amazon is making over $250k while the average senior makes over $400k (source levels.fyi)
This $400k guy still pays an enormous mortgage, still struggles to pay $2.5k for daycare, still can't call a concierge to take care of medical appointments, can't just hire Uber eats for every meal, can't just hire a service for everything, still has to commute in traffic for work, still has to take cars for servicing, still has to call handyman and play scheduling poker for fixes in the house.
Compare this to Andy Jassy making $7 million in the NEXT 3 months. He's going to be able to hire services for everything, helicopter into work, get catered food, have schools, house, kids, services all taken care of. His life is literally just work in the most comfortable setting possible.
It is not even comparable. Higher compensation does not compensate for shithole lives imposed by an employer who themselves are living the most lavish life possible. The $125k/quarter person will NEVER be as motivated as $7m/quarter person. It is delusional to expect the same level of work for such wide pay disparity.
You go into the voting booth alone.
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