Citations needed or all citations point to unreliable sources (Adrian Zenz).

My group abuses this word and I fucking despise it. Every manuscript I see has "novel" in it, I call out unless it actually is displaying novelty in that context.

Australians.

Southern Australians.

I have not seen anything suggesting that said investments are highly conditional or designed to keep the recipients dependent on them indefinitely.

There are examples of them writing off unpaid debt in favor of completing the projects to maintain a good relationship with the countries they are working with. They don't seem to do this lightly, and sometimes it's only the interest, not the entire loan, but it does happen. This difference in approach can be easily picked up in western media as well despite them often moving goal posts and not telling the entire story of IMF loan programs compared to BRI programs.

Idk if it is anymore, but I wanted the coke with the most words in it.

Also, it was actually pretty good.

"Why don't you just move to another country if you don't like it here?"

"I say this as a true patriot."

There's your issue.

But if you talk to them informally, they will excitedly show you pictures of cool rocks, which is neat.

Many of the main characters in WoT are just phonetically different spellings or slight alterations of characters from the Arthurian Legend.

• Egwene al'Vere = Guinevere
• Amyrlin, Merrilin = Merlin
• Moiraine = Morgaine (not to belittle your insight)
• Artur Paendrag = Arthur Pendragon
• Gawyn = Gawain
• Lan = Lancelot
• Tar Valon = Avalon
• Etc.

Something along those lines. He had a more questionable association than just receiving research funding, I think it was partying on JE's island and there were a bunch of young girls at the party?

Still making excuses for the purposefully incompetent Democrats, huh?

Funny how the Republicans always manage to accomplish their ghoulish goals, but the Dems never seem to substantially progress any of the social benefits they promise to the people while quietly progressing all of the corporate goals they weren't so vocal about supporting during the campaign.

You'll notice I gave as much credit as they were due. Capable of letting Roe v Wade get overturned while having executive control, but incapable of codifying it when they had a majority in the Senate, SCOTUS and the executive branch.

They're worse than incompetent, they're complicit, and they'll keep stringing people along with the threat that things will get worse if you don't vote for them...as they participate in making things worse for everyone but their big $ donors.

Looks like he's just doing the shit that the US government already should have been doing based on existing programs that were actively mismanaged in the past. Promises not kept through administrative technicalities.

Not a bad thing, but a far cry from the political win it is touted as. Essentially, "we are no longer actively trying to fuck over people who applied to old debt-relief programs." Weighing this against the predatory nature of student loan policy in the US, the unforgiving bankruptcy policies Biden directly helped put in place over a decade ago, and his failure to achieve the two student loan relief efforts he promised (or publicly campaigned on if you want to get pedantic), I'd say that the progress made is wholely insufficient.

We can simultaneously recognize that there has been an improvement while also recognizing that it has not been enough and these politicians must be held accountable for these policy failures.

These are not the markings of a promising or successful presidential campaign.

I think you missed the point of the meme and then argued about a common, tangentially related topic, which made it sound like a strawman argument. Because you seem to be more genuinely confused as to my response than arguing in bad faith, I'll drop it. Those types of dismissive comments are meant for people arguing in bad faith.

The image is not attacking urban sprawl, it's attacking the very mindset that you displayed in your comment: "why do I have to choose between these two things? I hate living in apartments, so why would you force me to do this?"

The meme is showing two different approaches to dealing with a massive housing crisis where many people did not have access to housing. In the first image, we see how the USSR dealt with it: they needed more houses for people, so they forced families with homes to share with those without until new homes had been built. The government subsidized the construction and focused on building economical housing that functionally fixed the problem, but at the expense of luxury and some comfort. Would people have liked more space? Yes. Was it reasonable to accommodate that want before the needs of people without housing? No.

The lower image is showing how the US has handled a massive housing crisis...it hasn't. If someone can't manage to find and/or afford to house themselves, they choose to force those people to live on the streets. The thought process is more individual focused rather than community focused as in the top image. "Why should the people who have houses be inconvenienced by those who do not?" This assumes that those without have some type of moral or personal failure that justifies them having nowhere to live rather than the situation being a result of a system that does not prioritize human needs. It rests on the callous assumption that people do not deserve a place to live, but they instead must earn a place to live.

As to your argument, I don't think you offered a third option so much as a complaint about the state of the things. To be honest, I agree with your complaint. Assuming the context of your comment was focused on the US, there is plenty of space for people to live in larger homes and there isn't some false dichotomy where we only have the options of urban sprawl or dense apartments. The problem with how you approached the problem is that without further analysis of why a housing crisis exists and how we can eliminate the source of the problem, saying "just build more medium-density housing" equates to no more than a complaint.

You cannot fix a problem unless you address the root of the problem. Pushing the homeless out of sight does not fix the problem. Much of the problem is caused by our economic and political systems, but there is also the influence of the cultural aspect in how we think about the problem and how we think about people (individualistic vs collective focus). When you focus on yourself and how the problem affects you, it is often at the expense of other people. For the people this hurts and the people cognizant of the cultural influence, seeing individualist-focused complaints really rubs them the wrong way.