In the United States, the Constitution states that in order to take your land for this purpose, you must be compensated fairly. Of course, “fairly” in terms of market value did not amount to very much, but compensation was paid and even dilapidated housing in so-called “blighted” neighbourhoods were still worth something and the cost does add up when you’re knocking hundreds of houses down and having to pay thousands for each one.

Israel’s government issued a formal declaration of war against Hamas on 7th October 2023. But that doesn’t give it the right to attack Syria.

You don’t need to recognise the entity you are declaring war against as a state to do so. Cameroon declared war against Ambazonia (separatist group) on 4th December 2017.

Notably for this conflict, the First Syrian Republic declared war against Israel in 1948. While the two never agreed to a peace treaty, the First Syrian Republic no longer exists, nor its successor, nor its successor’s successor, Israel’s attack against Syria is—to put it very, very generously—of extremely dubious legality under international law. I don’t claim to be an expert in international law, but after the Assad regime was overthrown, I would consider the new Syrian Arab Republic as a legally different polity than its predecessor. I don’t recall hearing any confirmations from the new Syrian government that they want to continue war against Israel, so if that is all correct then Israel just attacked a neutral country that so happened to be populated by Arabs sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, which is honestly par for the course for the Israeli military.

There is no easy way to withhold the taxes because the State of California never touches the money. Most of the federal tax revenue from California is remitted directly to the Internal Revenue Service by individual taxpayers.

I’m not going to pretend that I know the whole picture as to why this project is so severely over budget and behind schedule (there is likely nobody on Earth who does), but let me give some pointers as to why countries like China have built hundreds of thousands of kilometres of high-speed rail while California struggles to build a few hundred.

For one, the legal environment in China is one of the prerogative state. “Rights” in China are whatever the Government suffers you to have or deems it expedient to honour. So if you “own” a piece of land in the middle of the planned rail route, the Government will just kick you out. What are you going to do, sue? In the US, environmental laws, land rights laws, and legal procedural law mean that anyone who can spend $50,000 on a lawyer can cause $1 million worth of headaches for the high speed rail authority using the American legal system, which believe it or not, actually sometimes holds the State accountable to the law.

Secondly, in China, the Government has an unprecedented control over the economy that allows it to offer carrots and sticks to a degree that American politicians could only dream of. Yes, you have no say on whether the Government will order your house demolished to make way for an expressway, but in return, if you go quietly, you’ll get a flat in a high-rise in exchange and generous monetary compensation. Raise a stink, and you’ll be paid three strawberries and a steamed bun for your house instead.

Thirdly, under Chinese property law, all land in the country belongs to the State. Everyone else can only lease it from the State.

Agreed. Gamers are probably one of the demographics which are most likely to care about the enshittification of their operating system, while most other users who only want Microsoft Office and their Web browser could not care less. The former can be swayed to endure a small amount of temporary inconvenience to switch while the latter will not.

IIRC there’s still an ICANN fee that has to be paid by the registrar per domain registered

I might be wrong, but I seem to recall there’s an ICANN fee associated with registration as well.

Great idea! This will save the taxpayers literally hundreds of dollars in domain registration fees! That’s over 0.0001¢ per taxpayer!!

In many localities voters have used initiative powers to ban red light cameras and in some jurisdictions red-light camera fines are deemed constitutional violations because the US Constitution requires those accused of crimes to be able to “confront their accuser” in court which is not possible if the accuser is a machine.

Especially not their opinion column but I’m just posting here because it’s interesting to see what the neoliberals think about it and it’s a good discussion point

Washington Post columnists said it would probably just capture the “Never Trumper” moderate Republican voters who currently begrudgingly vote Democratic because they understand that the Republican Party is nominating only yes-men and fascists.

While it is rude to honk immediately when the light turns green, it is also true that taking too long to accelerate when the light changes severely reduces traffic flow and causes congestion. And this is commonly caused by distracted drivers. You are supposed to release your brake and begin moving at roughly the same time as the car in front of you, i.e. when the car in front of you turns off their brake lights or when the traffic signal turns green if you’re in the front.

Edit: “Too long” realistically means anything more than half a second. If everyone’s reaction time was one second it would reduce the number of cars per green light probably by half. That doesn’t mean it’s polite to honk after half a second but if your reaction time is that bad you should not be driving.

Important distinction: A triangle is a three-sided polygon. For example, a quarter-circle is not a triangle, despite being a three-sided shape.