We have bottle deposit in some states in the u.s. Some do it better than others though, grew up in Michigan and there any place that sold bottles had to be able to return them and a lot of the grocery stores had the machines. Moved to California and it seems like none of the stores are set up for it and the cashier will often turn you to a recycling center.

Housing as an investment leads to real estate speculation which pushes up prices. It creates a class of people who stand to gain when property values, and downstream of that rent, go up.

This class of people are very wealthy and tend to oppose any action that will decrease there property value. That includes things like building dense affordable housing, especially close to them, as that increases the supply of housing and thus decreases there property value.

This is true especially for land lords, even small “mom and pop” landlords. There goal is to raise rent and the value of there investment. Anything that will lower rent or even stabilize it like rent control they will oppose, no matter their scale.

Tl;dr: housing speculation creates a wealthy class of people opposed to housing affordability.

another of these clearly illegal things

They seem to be actually doing work. Yeah it’s illegal to work without authorization but by the same logic an undocumented migrant working is illegal. Sure but I wouldn’t argue it’s immoral or would make them a rogue state.

There’s plenty of other horrible shit that north Korea is doing, but I wouldn’t put this in that bucket, this is probably the most honest work they can do considering they’re sanctioned by nearly every country.

Interesting that it is a very clear downward trend. Hopefully this is a sign that more and more people realize the two parties are failing them and are ready for a shake up.

In general the president has been gaining power over the past 50 years as congress has become more gridlocked and inept.

Now we’re at the point where a president can bomb a foreign country backed only by the approval of his buddies in a signal chat.

Same with SO answers that are “use this library i made”

This isn’t data security though. In a cyber security context, yes paranoia is a valuable attribute. It can let you catch threats before they happen which is good.

In a political context though, paranoia, especially directed within the organization, is a corrosive and reactionary attribute. It divides and causes factionalism in political organization and brings energy away from making positive change and fighting the actual oppressors and puts that energy toward testing and purging your “allies”.

If a group out of power gives into paranoia and conspiracies they just divide into smaller and smaller factions who don’t trust each other and can’t work together to gain power. If a group in power gives in to paranoia, the majority group tends to start purging whoever they can claim are “fakes” conveniently along with everyone else they disagree with.

I can’t think of a single time in history where paranoia directed at secret enemies within has ever helped a progressive cause. Meanwhile I can name tons of instances where it destroyed a progressive cause, or at least it’s credibility and popularity: the reign of terror, stalins purges, mao’s cultural revolution, even in modern day Maduro loves to claim the CIA is out to get him.

It never helps the cause, it is just used as a way for the leaders of the group to offload any anger directed at the people in charge of the organization towards some, often imagined, sabotoeurs. Collectivization failing and causing mass starvation? Is it stalins fault?, no it’s the kulaks and the trotskyists sabotaging the revolution.

The democrats have failed us, twice now. Instead of recognizing there failure and changing tack they’re trying to direct anger at the enemy within, progressives and Palestinian activists who they claim are sabotaging the democratic chances and are probably agents of russia. Pelosi literally told a group of pro-palestinian activists protesting on her lawn to “go back to russia”.

We need to stop focusing on finding the “Russian assets in our midst” and focus on reforming the democratic party and defeating trumpism with a positive plan for change.

In the u.s. a bidet refers to a type of toilet or an attachment for a toilet that shoots water at your asshole to clean it while your still on the toilet after you shit. The separate sink as a bidet is unheard of here.

In a sense yes, people generally tell the truth more than they lie so the default assumption should be that someone is telling the truth, otherwise you enter into paranoia. That assumption can be broken when there is a clear gain from lying. Eg. You catch a thief outside the store they robbed they have a very clear reason to lie and say they were just walking by.

You’re explanation on why they’re lying isn’t very clear. First off, you fail to name who these people are and leave it ambiguous to let the person reading fill it in with their enemy (maga, nazis, russians etc.) just like every other conspiracy theory. Since the subject isn’t clear neither is the motive, you just sort of fill that in with "they hate the left, why do they hate the left? What are they gaining from convincing maybe a couple dozen liberals that the democrats suck on a very marginal social media? This isn’t the politburo for the comintern, there is barely any power on here to diffuse, so why put effort into doing so when there are far larger platforms to influence.

Yeah, the u.s. ended up with ~70% of the world’s gold reserves by 1947. In a global economy still mostly using “hard” gold/silver backed currency this was a massive advantage.