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Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid
  • I can understand that people hold their college as some part of their soul and want their universities actions to reflect their political beliefs. But, I don't think universities (as an entity) should be involved politically or have political opinions.

  • Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid
  • I still believe the university benefits from government funding since NSF, NIST, DoD etc are all agencies funding university research. I don't think it's possible to un-fund yourself completely from the government given that it spurs research everywhere.

  • Columbia University community 'shattered' after police raid
  • Yes, anti-BDS laws. These were passed years ago (not reactionary to now). There are state and federal rules but in general, a university can't boycott or divest from Israeli (or many other nations) in political protest or it loses funding.

    I think this is why we see most universities have their hands tied.

  • The drug war devastated Black and other minority communities. Is marijuana legalization helping?
  • 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.

  • The drug war devastated Black and other minority communities. Is marijuana legalization helping?
  • 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 rates now stand at,just from 2021 to 2022.

    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.

  • The US has so much space
  • 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.

  • Texas' skyscrapers are going dark to keep billions of birds safe
  • 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?

  • The dark side of Medellín’s sex tourism: Child prostitutes and depraved men
  • 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.

  • They're such great investors!
  • It's also harder to invest with the amount of funds that Berkshire Hathaway has. The slippage must be a difficult task to manage. Also, they have to make more than 20% because they have to payout the employees and guarantee growth for the investors.

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