Is there a big push in the EU to expand deportations or something? Since this article seems to indicate that’s a focus of the talks on the EU side. I read something similar as an aside on the news that the suspended cooperation agreement the EU has with Syria is being revived, that said they were looking to send 80% of Syrians back or something like that.

Mozambique has you covered

The “Good Taliban, Bad Taliban” theory really did not age well at all for Pakistan

Why do you expect it to fall? Amish and Haredi Jews intentionally stay at arms length from wider society. They maintain strict social pressures that encourage their members to focus on children and discourage the dizzying alternative uses for time socially available to Catholics and the wider US population. Certainly in Israel the Haredi growth rate is remaining stable and has taken them from a marginal groups of a few tens of thousands up to one and a half million, 14% of the population.

Anyway say they do defy their customs and assimilate and follow suit, then other currently marginal groups that do find some way to keep birth rates propped up over time or raise them will eventually inherit the world. Not in our lifetime to be sure.

Amish and Mormons and Heredi Jews continue to have large families be they poor or rich. Culture is definitely a factor.

Cultures that don’t have kids will be replaced by ones that do so this is a shame. Incredible that they insisted on one child policy for so long (though it had its exceptions), the transition will be so painful

12 inches isn’t that bad as far as subsidence issues can get. The ground below you is filled with very tiny holes and gaps that water seeps down into and fills and flows through, kind of like a sponge. While water fills those pores it’s difficult to squish down the soil.

If a heavy weight is on them like a building, though, that can put on enough pressure to push the water out of those pores and flow down out and around. A mix of soil and voids/air give much less resistance to weight than a mix of soil and water filling the gaps so then the voids get compacted down and the ground sinks. Different soils in different conditions may not evenly subside and that can give you a situation like the Leaning Tower of Pisa where one side was subsiding faster than the other side. In modern construction people try to get the water out and compact the ground ahead of time so that it acts more consistently and doesn’t make big changes when a heavy object is placed on it.

Here’s a picture from an agricultural area in California illustrating ~30 ft of subsidence that occurred in that area over a half century of pumping out the groundwater to water the crops.

(This also makes flooding worse… ground that used to be filled with holes that could channel the water down and away into large aquifers is now compacted such that those holes are gone. So instead water piles up on the surface in huge sheets that flow and wipe out whatever is between them and a lower elevation.)

I’m sure Abdul is thrilled to be out of Homs province, that position had to suck with how much everyone hates each other there

The war situation has developed not necessarily to the Malian government’s advantage…

Apparently many Israeli people are also mad about Ukraine’s close relations with Turkey. (Turkey and Israel are in competing emerging power blocks)

The furthest away in their entire history being 17 minutes to midnight seems too dramatic imo but different strokes for different folks

These guys have been a meme for their entire existence

Tbh our country re-elected him so I can see why they’d get that impression

Realistically red state depopulation is not happening by next census. There has already been substantial net migration towards red states since the last one and it would be quite a tall order to go back to the 2020 status quo in time let alone to substantially reverse those migrations. And the regressive policies of red states aren’t unknown; most people making those moves just consider them less as important than the housing affordability angle as evidenced by them still making those moves even as many are getting more extreme in policies. In theory it would be easy to game the electoral college if people moved in organized ideological ways but most people are moving for mundane kitchen table reasons rather than for their rights and ideology.

I’m not saying it’s unsolvable, just that it’s not solved right now which is why there is currently a stream of people going to red states that are building. That needs to be fixed to stop before that stream can be turned around. I want that solved so more people can afford to live in states that aren’t psycho! Red states have indeed not solved NIMBYism either but their advantage is that building single family homes in sprawl around major cities is easier under current zoning regimes than building up; they can still build that low hanging fruit since they historically were less desired places to live and had lower populations, whereas the best spots for that easy to build sprawl have generally already been built a while back in blue states.

Here’s the chart of vacancy rates. I considered new housing permits more relevant in the last post because people are putting money on the line that the house they’re building is worth it either for themselves to live in or to sell or rent to someone else, so generally that’s tied in with proximity to a local economic center. If considering vacant houses the problem is that say if the local mill shut down and the place has no jobs then maybe they have a ton of vacant homes after much of that community left but no one wants to live there since you can’t make a living. So ex. West Virginia has a huge number of vacant homes but they no longer have the economic centers that made most of them viable so people are generally still moving out rather than in. Whereas say the Carolinas have well developed economies in the areas where they are building & and are building at a huge clip so the large number of vacancies from new construction are desirable and many people are flooding in to buy those relatively cheap homes near decent jobs.

I agree that those laws can be changed and I would like that to happen. There is room for expansion still in blue states - not so much horizontally because generally any place that could be sprawled out within a long commute near a city with a decent economy has had that happen already. People also won’t move to houses built in the middle of nowhere where no jobs are available. But, there can be much more vertical, denser building. Even returning to historic densities would be a big help in buffing blue states politically (ex. Manhattan had a peak population of 2.3 million in 1910 but is now only 1.7 million.) But there is a big NIMBY problem to overcome before getting there since homeowners have big incentives to oppose new housing whatever the source, and those special interests have not disappeared just because the states are blue.

Below are two photos of internal migration by state and new housing permits per capita. Since housing is THE major cost in most people’s budgets there is a flow going towards where housing is cheapest. Some have actually coined the term “New Great Migration” as many African Americans are now coming to the South on net. This is buffing the political power of those states even while the politics are rather rancid.

After a spell of being a NEET I managed to wiggle my way into my old job despite being a fresh out of college grad … they were desperate to hire because they couldn’t hold onto people willing to be regularly on-call, occasionally flipping to nights and working twelves at random and extended times in the worst site of that industry in the worst state of the union, AND it was legally required so they had to have it. Each time they hired someone they had to not only spend usually two years training them while they were on intro engineer salary before they could become useful, but also spend a few tens of thousands of dollars on contractors to teach classes and the valuable time of qualified people as mentors. Then after the trainees got qualified it was like coin flip odds of them either staying for a couple years or instantly booking it and the whole investment wasted.

The bosses were constantly showering the qualified people remaining with promotions, raises and golden handcuffs and so on to placate people to please stay and not have them do more rounds of interviews, even when the people weren’t that good. Of course, that also meant it was a great way to develop the resume for an exit artificially early too.

Talked to a doctor there, there was a deal for foreign doctors to be stationed in undesired places like that in exchange for progress towards getting a green card. On finishing their time the department they joined could be on the verge of dissolving from the older people ditching so then BOOM program director by attrition rather early in their career. Which then looks great on their resume when sent to someone else so the cycle continues lol.

Tbh Biden did set himself up for trouble on gas prices specifically. He had that make Saudi Arabia a pariah initiative he was giving speeches on when he first got elected, it was going OK while the US held the cards… but after the Ukraine war started and the supply was reduced, gas prices became a giant glowing weak spot that the Saudis could vengefully mash just in time for mid-terms. Biden recognized the danger then and visited hat in hand to ask for forgiveness and more production, but it was too late after making very public positions and statements that the Saudis REALLY didn’t like at all so the trip didn’t amount to much other than embarassing news articles about him crawling back to the guy he had been calling a murderer.

Unfortunately most of our blue states have shot themselves in the foot by making it too difficult to privately build dense housing while also not using public resources to build densely in sufficient amounts either. Blue states were generally already nicer places to live so they filled up and sprawled out a while back after that it’s been harder to keep stapling on homes near cities with decent economies. Whereas most red states are a lot emptier and still have that room to sprawl out development near their economic engines… so that’s where the building happens and the people are drawn in by more affordable housing. Eventually red states will sprawl out too much and the low hanging fruit will be gone but for the time being they’re still building like crazy in places like South Carolina.

Population is growing and the household sizes have been shrinking so more homes are needed to house fewer people. But existing housing stocks decay and possibly become unusable if not cared for and constantly need to be replenished. If blue states want to grow their population they have to overcome interest groups and obstacles opposed to either making it easier to build housing or the government itself building housing in sufficient quantities.

You know, I’ll take a stab and say Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia! He came in on a reform slate but while they are experiencing quite rapid economic growth the country is boiling with ethnic tensions.

The Tigray War a half decade ago saw Ethiopia’s military join with Eritrea and local militias such as Fano against the TPLF, once the former ruling party of Ethiopia but reduced to controlling the Tigray region. It was a rather nasty affair with a lot of death and displacement (and accusations of genocide), and it was concluded by the Pretoria Agreement between the TPLF and Ethiopia. Other parties got cut out of the peace, which created a rift with Eritrea and Fano militias. Since then the situation worsened. Ethiopia is often having speeches about bringing Eritrea to heel and gaining control of its ports (the deal with Djibouti is expensive) which obviously doesn’t help relations with that neighbor (also Eritrea is claimed to be arming Ethiopian rebels) and Fano has grown stronger and more organized and armed itself after taking much of the rural Amhara countryside. There is still an existing insurgency in the Oromo areas of the country and there were still clashes with the TPLF earlier this year.

Ethiopia is friendly with Somaliland with which it publically wanted to get a port access for recognition deal but then backed down from in the face of international pressure and Turkish mediation with Somalia. The UAE has moved much of its equipment that was based in Yemen, Somaliland and Puntland over to Ethiopia after the debacle from the failure of the South Yemen separatists that also sent the UAE’s relations with Somalia to the dumpster when the separatist leadership was transported to the UAE via Somaliland.

With respect to Sudan it was discovered a while back that Ethiopia has been recruiting and hosting RSF training camps on the UAE’s dime. Sudan is also very recently (Reuters reported it today) claiming it has evidence to prove that drone attacks on Sudan are being launched from an Ethiopian airport. For their part Ethiopia is now claiming that Sudan’s recognized government is supporting the TPLF and infringing on Ethiopia’s territory. (They have a disputed area called Al-Fashaga). I think there is some exile group of Tigray people fighting in Sudan for the SAF but I forget their name, I think it was Army 4-something but I can’t remember and I’m drawing a blank.

So, aside from the ongoing Iran situation, that ring of Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea and their internal messes are where I would say there is the least stability and most opportunity for friction between the blocks.