#Population changes in New York and Los Angeles

[thesocialmag]

Texas and Florida Metros Thrive, New York and LA Stabilize

Metropolitan areas in Texas and Florida experienced a surge in population growth, while the decline in New York and Los Angeles slowed down, according to recent estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. The initial trend of people leaving urban areas during the first year of the pandemic seems to have reversed or slowed down in the second year. In 2021, fear of the virus prompted residents to flee…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Noah Lanard at Mother Jones:

Two weeks after the election, I met Dianela Rosario in Huntington Park, California—an almost entirely Latino city that swung hard to the right this year. A 51-year-old Dominican American shopkeeper, Rosario told me that before this year she had never voted for a Republican presidential candidate. But, in 2024, inflation and the prices of groceries were front of mind. President Joe Biden and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris were not fully responsible for the cost of living crisis, she said, but she still wanted someone new.

“If she’s been vice president and there’s been no change, then I wasn’t sure she was going to be able to change things as president,” Rosario, who identifies as Afro-Latina, explained in Spanish about why she had not voted for Harris. “That’s what influenced me the most—that things might stay the same as they are now.” Earlier that afternoon, a Guatemalan shopkeeper shared a similar perspective. She told me she missed the lower prices of Trump’s first term and that she hoped the incoming president would deport people she saw as causing problems in the area. Unlike Rosario, though, she hadn’t been able to cast a vote. “Soy ilegal,” the shopkeeper explained of her own immigration status. In 2016, stories like these would have been hard to find in cities in Southeast Los Angeles like Huntington Park, where 97 percent of residents are Latino. That year, Trump lost by huge margins. In 2016, Hillary Clinton received 84 percent of votes in the area, compared to only 8 percent for Trump. Sometimes, Trump even came in third; in several precincts, Jill Stein was the runner-up to Clinton.

Eight years later, a Mother Jones analysis of precinct-level voting data shows that Democrats have lost more support in Southeast Los Angeles than any other part of Los Angeles County. Democrats’ combined margin of victory in nine cities in the area, which are more than 90 percent Latino on average, has declined by nearly 40 percent since 2016. Trump has gone from getting less than 10 percent of votes to nearly 30 percent. This is not just a function of Democrats staying home. Trump received more than three times as many votes this year in Southeast Los Angeles than he did during his first presidential run. While the data makes clear that voters in largely working-class Latino areas have moved right, the results do not reveal how individual Latinos who live in more mixed (and often richer) parts of Los Angeles voted. Compared to Southeast Los Angeles, Democrats’ have lost less support since 2016 in more middle-class majority-Latino cities, although those cities remain more conservative overall.

Still, a national trend—working-class Asian and Latino voters shifting to Republicans, and upper-class voters choosing Democrats—can be seen in miniature in Los Angeles County.

The results in Southeast Los Angeles mirror the dramatic drops in Democratic support in heavily Asian and Latino areas across the country, ranging from the border counties of Texas' Rio Grande Valley to the rural towns of California's Central Valley to urban areas of New York and New Jersey. While some of these losses have been offset by gains among affluent college graduates who once voted Republican, it was not enough for Harris to win. The voting records analyzed by Mother Jones include results for roughly 170 communities. Since 2016, Democrats’ margin of victory has dropped by at least 25 points in about 40 of those places, which is well above the countywide shift of about 17 points during the period. In nearly every single community with that large of a drop, Latinos and Asians comprise a majority of residents. The main exception is Beverly Hills, a famously affluent area with a large Jewish population. (Most of the shift in Beverly Hills happened between 2016 and 2020—meaning that it was not primarily a reaction to how Democrats discussed October 7 and Israel's military campaign in Gaza.) Karina Macias, the mayor of Huntington Park, said in a phone interview that the shift to the right among her constituents reflected concerns with issues that voters across the country prioritized: price increases, crime, and immigration. Macias noted a significant uptick in the number of families in Huntington Park who rely on food distributions, including among residents who probably would have never considered seeking help in the past.

“I think a lot of people were looking at their current economic situation, and [were] pissed off about it," Macias said. "Can you blame them? No, right? Especially in a community like Huntington Park, they feel it. They’re paying a lot more for things and are not necessarily being paid a lot more. If they work two jobs, maybe somebody in the household needs to go and get another job, right? We have a lot of families here that are doubling up in an apartment, and that’s how they get by."

The nearly 40-point shift in Southeast Los Angeles is far different from what has happened in some of the wealthier communities in Los Angeles. In the affluent coastal cities of Manhattan Beach, Redondo Beach, and Hermosa Beach, Democrats have maintained or slightly improved their margin of victory since 2016. But these voters did not necessarily back Democratic candidates all the way down the ballot. In 2020, Los Angeles County voters elected George Gascón, a progressive Cuban-American district attorney defeated his more moderate opponent by seven points. After the win, a backlash began almost immediately. This year, Gascón still managed to secure the endorsement of the Los Angeles Times. But he ended up losing to Nathan Hochman, a comparatively tough-on-crime challenger who became an independent after running as a Republican for California attorney general office in 2022. Hochman won by 20 points—a 27 point swing from 2020. Wealthier cities like Manhattan Beach and Santa Monica moved harder against Gascón than most of the county, despite being the areas where Democrats had some of their best results at the top of the ticket. Santa Monica residents went from supporting Gascón by a nearly 2-to-1 margin in 2020 to backing Hochman. In Manhattan Beach, Gascón lost by about 50 points—nearly 40 points worse than he did there four years ago. It meant that there was an almost 80-point gap in the city between Harris and Gascón, even though both are Democrats.

[...] Another dynamic is a belief among some Latino voters that Venezuelans, who crossed the border in record numbers in recent years, and other people arriving today are different from them and their ancestors. Gustavo Arellano, a Los Angeles Times writer who covered the recent political history of Southeast Los Angeles earlier this year, told me before the election about how his cousins objected to "these new immigrants" and were turning Venezuelans into scapegoats. "Venezuelans they get free everything," Arellano said, paraphrasing his cousins. "Our parents, when they came here illegally, didn't get anything at all. They did it on their own." Arellano tells his relatives that "these immigrants are just like our parents" but they insist otherwise. Macias didn't hear this perspective too often, but did recall someone saying about recent arrivals: "They're demanding things, and we work for them." It also doesn't help that Democrats—largely as a result of Republican opposition—have been unable to deliver on their promises to provide legal status to family members of some of the voters now turning against them. An undocumented Salvadoran immigrant named Sam made that clear when we spoke in Huntington Park—even though he was one of the strongest Kamala Harris supporters I interviewed. "The Democrats had the opportunity to help us," Sam explained in Spanish. "They didn't do it. As a result, all the Hispanics that are scattered throughout the United States, who are now citizens, who can now vote, are making them pay."

While Los Angeles County, California provided hefty winning margins for the Democratic Party this election, there are blinking red lights that the Democrats ought to be concerned about: Heavily Hispanic and Asian areas, especially lower-income ones, swung hard to the right. Example: Voted handsomely for Hillary in 2016, modestly for Biden in 2020, and either narrowly for Harris or flipped to Trump in 2024.

[mariacallous]

During his first term as the U.S. president, Donald Trump occasionally floated the idea of buying Greenland, but few took it seriously. Now Trump is repeating the calls, backed with threats against Denmark, and nobody is chuckling anymore.

The Nordic nation is facing the prospect of a close ally taking Danish territory by force. But despite only having a small army and navy, Denmark has no shortage of economic leverage with which it can try to reason with—or, if necessary, pressure—the U.S. president.

Indeed, there are several Danish multinational companies without whose products and services Americans would feel immediate pain.

Over the weekend, the Financial Times disclosed details about a Jan. 15 call between Trump and Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen.

According to the Financial Times, it was a fiery 45-minute conversation in which Trump—who hadn’t yet been inaugurated—was “aggressive and confrontational.” The crux was Fredriksen’s refusal to sell the Arctic island of Greenland to the United States.

Denmark is a committed and well-liked member of NATO, but it can’t change the fact that it’s a small country with a population just shy of 6 million and armed forces of some 20,000 active personnel.

If Trump is serious about acquiring Greenland, Denmark would not be able to mount much of a fight against its NATO ally even if it wanted to—though Washington’s meager aging fleet of icebreakers would make any naval operations in the polar north a challenge. (The will of the Greenlanders appears to be a secondary consideration in Washington.)

But Denmark is not powerless in the matter. On the contrary, it has several trump cards—so to speak—up its sleeve. For starters, the Scandinavian country is home to Maersk, the world’s second-largest container-shipping company by cargo capacity. Most of the world’s nonliquid cargo is transported in containers, and in 2023, the Danish shipping line transported some 24 million worth of them on its 672 ships. Maersk is so large that the firm’s ships account for an estimated 14.3 percent of the global container ship fleet.

In the United States, Maersk delivers goods to and from Baltimore, Charleston, Houston, Jacksonville, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Mobile, New Orleans, New York, Newark, Norfolk, North Charleston, Oakland, Philadelphia, Port Everglades, Port Hueneme, Savannah, Seattle, Tacoma, Tampa, and Wilmington.

On Jan. 1, for example, the MSC Tomoko arrived in Houston, then traveled to New Orleans and from there to Freeport in the Bahamas. The following day, the MSC Ensenada arrived in Houston, traveling on from there with cargo bound for Colombia and Brazil, according to Maersk’s website, where anyone can track its ships’ calls.

And right now, shipping lines are at—or near—full capacity. If any shipping line were to suddenly stop shipping to or from the United States, other carriers would only be able to fill a tiny share of that gap. If the Danish government banned Maersk from sailing to U.S. ports, then American businesses and consumers would instantaneously feel the pain.

And speaking of pain, millions of Americans would feel it in their waistlines if Frederiksen banned health care company Novo Nordisk from exporting to the United States.

The Danish pharma giant is, after all, the maker of semaglutide—the active ingredient in Ozempic and Wegovy, the weight-loss drugs that have revolutionized anti-obesity and diabetes treatment in the United States. The company produces semaglutide in Denmark and, despite many attempts by copycats and others, genuine Ozempic can’t yet be created from scratch in the United States.

Between 2021 and 2023, the number of Ozempic prescriptions in the United States jumped by nearly 400 percent, an academic study shows. The total number of prescriptions for drugs containing semaglutide reached 2.6 million by December 2023. In May 2023, a survey by Barclays Research estimated that more than half a million Americans were taking Wegovy.

So stratospheric has Ozempic’s rise been in the United States that in 2023, Germany warned that German supplies of the drug intended for patients with diabetes—the disease that the drug was initially developed to treat—were being shipped to weight-loss customers in the United States.

Like Maersk, Novo Nordisk makes large sums of money in America. The company’s shares surged by more than 7 percent last week on news of positive trials for its new obesity drug amycretin. The demand for Ozempic is so strong that Novo Nordisk has invested $4.1 billion in a facility in North Carolina that will make the drug’s key ingredient.

But if the Danish government were to conclude that the country’s security is imperiled by Trump’s threats, it could order Novo Nordisk to cease doing business in the United States. Many Americans would immediately notice the company’s absence.

If Denmark decided to hit back, U.S. consumers might suddenly also notice the absence of luxury Danish furniture and their kids might mourn the loss of the latest Legos. Today, Lego sets are made in Mexico (and Denmark, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and China), though the Danish toy company is building a plant in Virginia that will manufacture for the U.S. market. It is expected to employ more than 1,700 people.

Lego’s U.S. facility is, in fact, a form of friendshoring of the very kind Trump has been calling for. (“Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth,” he told global leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week.) But he won’t be able to count on Danish investment if friends are treated like enemies.

A Danish blockade would be a dramatic step, and it’s one that Frederiksen would be reluctant to take. But she should remember that Trump’s trademark is issuing threats and speak back to him in a language that he understands.

Denmark’s prime minister should remind her American counterpart that her country has options that could damage the U.S. economy—and doing so might just level the playing field and lower the temperature, setting the stage for a more serious negotiation around U.S. interests in Greenland.

That’s what Chrystia Freeland—until recently Canada’s deputy prime minister, now running to succeed outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau—did after several Trump overtures suggesting a U.S. takeover of her own country.

“The threats won’t work. We will not escalate, but we will not back down. If you hit us, we will hit back—and our blows will be precisely targeted,” she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed the day before Trump’s inauguration. “We are smaller than you, to be sure, but the stakes for us are immeasurably higher. Do not doubt our resolve.”

Ordinary Americans may not care much about Denmark, but the Scandinavian nation has given them much to enjoy in life. They would certainly hate to lose it.

[adastra-sf]

Russian & North Korean Underwater "Radioactive Tsunami" Drones

image from full story at Popular Mechanics: X

Russia and North Korea have both developed underwater uncrewed vehicles (UUVs) designed to carry nuclear warheads capable of generating catastrophic waves of radioactive water, threatening coastal cities and entire regions - called “radioactive tsunamis” by the Korean Central News Agency.

This significant and challenging threat is all the more dangerous because of a growing military collaboration called “Joint Sword,” including North Korea, Russia, Iran, China, and others. Russia and North Korea have officially signed a defense treaty, codifying their relationship.

Putin was first to publicly showcase such a weapon, described as a “doomsday device.” Russia’s Poseidon nuclear-powered torpedo is capable of creating destructive, radioactive waves that could wipe out entire coastal populations and infrastructures.

Concerns among global military strategists are sharp when it comes to Joint Sword’s uniquely capable UUVs.

The primary advantage of these weapons is their potential to launch surprise attacks on unsuspecting nations. Both Russia’s Poseidon and North Korea’s Haeil could, if deployed, create massive radioactive waves, not just inflicting devastating damage on coastal regions but also spreading fear and chaos through misinformation online, to which we are susceptible due to increasingly unreliable content on social media.

Perhaps most concerning is the West’s apparent lack of preparedness for these radioactive tsunami weapons - there is no indication that the US Navy has developed countermeasures designed to protect against such threats or to emulate their abilities. No US officials have so much as acknowledged the phrase “radioactive tsunami” as something they're aware of or addressing in any real way.

The stealth and unpredictability of these weapons is changing the dynamics of the world's growing conflicts, making military attacks more unpredictable and harder to defend against. Experts emphasize that such weapons will have severe psychological and other impacts, particularly if targeting major cities like New York, Los Angeles, or Tokyo, which lie along vulnerable coastlines.

[darkmaga-returns]

01/15/2025•Mises Wire•William L. Anderson

Much has been written about the recent wildfires in Los Angeles, including articles on this page and other libertarian sites. After several days of uncontrolled fire and destruction, we are very familiar with the governmental failures that have led to this current crisis. Progressivism is the guiding star of both California’s state government and local governments in the highly populated regions on the state’s Pacific Coast, and progressive policies have all but guaranteed this latest disaster.

Governing ideologies matter and matter greatly. The former Soviet Union and Nazi Germany would not have been as repressive as they were without guiding ideologies of their political leadership. Modern progressivism, while not as virulent and violent as the German and Soviet regimes, operates with a similar utopian worldview to repressive ideological regimes, and people living under progressive governments pay a serious price.

California’s governance has been ultra-progressive for more than a decade and cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco have become the poster children for failed progressive regimes. Democrats hold a 3-1 edge over Republicans in both state houses, while the California congressional delegations in the US House and Senate are dominated by the Democratic Party, which has won almost all the statewide elections for office in the past 30 years. Democrats hold a supermajority in both houses of the state legislature, which means Republicans cannot mount a challenge to any policies favored by Democrats.

Not surprisingly, California’s legislation is highly progressive, from the setting of high minimum wages to environmental policies, all of which impose huge costs on Californians that people in most other states don’t directly experience. Likewise, Los Angeles and San Francisco also have progressive governments that place leftist ideology over the nuts and bolts of ordinary governance.

[jadagul]

I'm sorry if this is a stupid question. Why is it harder for larger countries to have citizens with a high median level of wealth? What makes it harder for a country with the US population vs, say, Japan? I can imagine obvious challenges, but also reasons why larger countries can make their median citizen wealthier more easily. Economies of scale, more chances for innovation that can later be widely adopted, strong institutions having outsized effects. Can you help me understand the logic more?

It's not a stupid question! It's a common but incredibly counterintuitive thing that comes up in statistical comparisons. The short version is: you get more variance with small samples than with large samples.

To start off, let's point out this isn't just theoretical. According to the IMF, the twelve highest GDPs per capita are in this chart:

(If you use a different source the numbers change somewhat but not dramatically so.)

If you rank countries by population, those are rank 122, 163, 118, 134, 162.5, 95, 99, 115, 3, 191, 169, and 103.5. The US is in position 3 and the next-highest is at 95 (out of about 200).

Conversely let's look at the ten most populous nations:

When ranked by GDP per capita, those come out at ranks 73, 127, 8, 98, 138, 144, 87, 128, 56, and 71.

And notice already this looks different: these numbers are mostly in like the middle half, whereas the others were almost all in the bottom half. And that makes sense based on the theoretical argument I'm about to make.

A big country has a lot of people in it. And more than that, it has a lot of places in it. And while those places all have a bunch of stuff in common (like being part of the same country), they also have a bunch of things different from each other. So you can think of the per capita GDP of a big country as, like, averaging together the per capita GPDs of all the regions in it. (And then the per capita GDP of a region is a weighted average of the incomes of all the people in it.)

If you look at a city-state like Singapore or Hong Kong, you're "averaging" together one city. And for a small country like Ireland or Luxembourg, you're averaging one city with a small amount of hinterlands. That means that if that one city is unusually lucky, the whole country is rich.

(And if that one city is unusually unlucky, the whole country is poor. The ten least populated countries on the list that have IMF data have GDP per capita ranks of 146, 119, 95, 9, 152, 60, 106, 16, 134, 52, which are all over the map. None of them are at the very bottom, and I assume that's because cities are richer than non-cities, in general. And also maybe a city-state that's also dirt poor gets swallowed up.)

And if you look at our list of richest countries, you can really see this effect. Ireland is a tax haven for the EU, and traditionally so is San Marino. Singapore is a weirdly-managed outlier city state, as is San Marino (and Hong Kong used to be). Qatar and the UAE are all drafting off of oil revenue, and for that matter so is Norway.

And to drive the point home, let's look at the list of US metro areas by per capita GDP.

San Jose beats every country in the world hollow. San Francisco is tied with the top entries on the list. And our tenth-richest metro area would place fifth on the list of countries by per capita gdp. (Contrast Paris at €60 and Berlin at like €42k, if my quick googling is right.)

And then to drive the point home, look at the top of the list. The richest metro area in the US isn't San Francisco or New York or Los Angeles (which at 18th and $86k doesn't even show up on that list up there, but would still put it at 8th in the world); the richest metro area in the US is some place called Midland TX. It's a small town that sits in the middle of a giant oil field, and as I understand it it's basically a base camp for all the oil work out there. So it has one thing going on, and that thing is super lucrative, and distributed across relatively few people; so it gets the top spot.

And that's why the richest countries are likely to be small.

[amadholes-lostre]

Countries - North America

I currently working on denominations in Califinity, mainly the two biggest ones. However, I hit a snail due to just trying to think up names for it. Like, GRR Martin said he doesn't bother with it for Westeros' names like The North and King Landing, but I am obsessed with namings. If the name doesn't have meaning, or doesn't looks right, I gonna fucking throw myself off a bridge.

Anyways, right now I focusing on North America states because there are a lot more countries than ours today. And I including Central America and the Caribbeans, because it's still part of North America. I will also talk about UNAC, which is a supernational union similar to today EU (EU was already federalized in bhna contemporary) and superseded NAFTA.

United States of Fredoia

I already talked about Fredoia briefly on my last post, only that it superseded the USA. Fredoia inherited the majority of USA lands (there were time they didn't, thanks to Neo-Confedercy). They did lose many lands due to many Native tribes declaring independence (I will elaborate that later).

Like USA before, Fredoia kept it capital city where Washington, DC was, and like Washington state, its name is change (maybe Unionpolis, very original lol). It incorporated Arlington Country and Alexandra City, giving DC a total land area of 270 km². It population should be around 3 million. It administration level will be called a metropolis-state level: it status is equal along with other states (they are represented at congress), but it functions more as a city.

New York City is also a metropolis-state, incorporating counties and cities in its surroundings, including Hudson Country, NJ(yep, Jersey City included). However, it lost being the biggest in the US (being now 18 mil), Metropolis of Los Angeles is bigger, far bigger (24 mil). Also, they rebuilt Penn Station, now called Empire State Central Station.

Also, voting systems and constituents' representation are different. It is a proportional representation by parties, meaning Fredoia has a multi-party system. The head of state and head of government is separated, and its government structure is a parliamentary republic like Germany.

Thanks due to quirks, immigration, civil wars, geographical barriers, and the fact that this takes place hundreds of years later, Western and Eastern Fredoia have very different cultures compared to today. How people differentiate West and East is by geographic barriers like how we do so with Mississippi River. The Rocky Mountains Range helped differentiate the two regions.

For one, Latines are now the majority in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and other Western states (maybe not Oregon nor Washington). There are already articles that projected this will happen. What is unique due to the mixture of Latine and Anglo culture, especially the language, created a new ethnicity called Californians (Kalifornán written as gender neutral). They even developed a unique language called Kalifornán in its native language (Kalidán if you read my other post for Dune). It's a mixture of Spanish and English, mainly that Spanish superceded English phonetics and any words that were originally French. However, many English words still remain, words like ín (and), islán (island), lán (land), ríf (river), and such. Also, some letters change due to pronunciations, like Spanish J is now Hr (Juan will spell Hruan), Spanish and English Ch, along with English J is now Ç. The C that pronunced similar to the word city is now S (reason why Frinsica has an S now). I gonna write a post for this.

One key factor for Californians' ethnicity is that the majority are Califinitans. The majority of Fredoia Califinitans are located beyond the Rocky Mountains, with exceptional of Upland South-

-due to The Great Blooming and the Neo War. Almost all of those in Upland are what I called Deitist: believing that Califia is someway a deity.

There is also a new ethnicity/race called Biras (Birace?Biase?). They are the English version of Mestizos. I was thinking that since interracial is more acceptable, and therefore more biracial children, that will be far more biracial in the future. I will think they will be the majority (maybe 1/3?), though they will likely have different groups depending on their background. Sasha Waybright is likely a Biras, however, this will depend on if her one or both her parents are from the Eastern. She probably will view herself as a Mestiza since she will be a Kalifornana.

I also want to create a different post that focuses only on the State of California.

Native American States

After the Second Civil War, many Native American tribes declared independence. How many, I don't know, and to be honest, I don't think it is more than 10. Right now, I gonna create ones from the US since I more familiar with it. There likely are independent First Nation states in Canada, and there definitely is a Mayan state in the Yucatán Peninsula (and maybe whatever the Zapatistas are controlling now).

Kingdom of Hawaii

This was already a no-brainer as there is already a sovereign movement by Native Hawaiians. Honestly, it is rather they would have a monarchy or republic is the question.

This part is going a bit controversial, but once the USA government kinda just collapsed, there was a lot of chaos in the islands. There was a massive exodus, many who were non-native, who went back to the states. However, there was also an expulsion of other non-native, even those were not white, by Native Hawaiians; there were conflicts between two groups who wanted to either remain in the union or become independent, which led into this. Hawaiia also has a right of return for diaspora Hawaiian like many other countries do.

The capital is still Honolulu. They are a member of UNAC. When Amphibia was transported at the Pacific, Hawaii claimed some islands in its southern water that were uninhibited. There are political tension between the and the Kingdom of Newtopia due to this, and also the fucking megafaunas they traveled to the islands.

Navajo-Hopi Nation

Again, a no-brainer, however, the thing that was a bit shockingto me was that there is another tribe reservation inside Navajo. I was wondering why there was a hole in Navajo until I look at a proper map and saw Hopi in it lol

(Other reservations in the East likely will be incorporated simply because Navajo-Hopi ask them "hey you wanna join us?")

Honestly, it likely they had the most peaceful transition: it isolated thanks to being in a desert (and behind the Rocky Mountains), there is not that many non-native in it to begin with, there are other issue happening for the USA government to worry about, and the most hilarious reason, is that they never publicly declared independence. They decided to ignore DC and acted like an independent country for either half to nearly a century.

I don't know if Navajo-Hopi should be a binational state or not. Binations don't usually last that long, and there are other non Navajo-Hopis that live in the nation. The capital city is Jeddito, an actual place in Navajo that is inside Hopi. Population in the nation should be around 10-15 mil. NH is part of UNEC.

Republic of Lakotah

Likely the biggest Native country if Alaska isn't independent. It is actually based on a proposal state for Lakota.

It capital and largest city is Omaha (will go by a different name). The city is right on the tip, and it is the most important city as it is connected with the Mississippi River.

Even though Lakotah is meant for Lakota, there are other Native tribes who emigrated to it. There is likely ethnic tension between Lakota and the other non-Lakotas, but I don't think it won't be as awful as other places.

Of all the native states, Lakotah was the most violent; the country situated in five Republican states. The likely reason how they managed to gain independence is due other tribes from the surrounding coming over to help (similar to Bleeding Kansas). And anti-quirks were not as pivotal or heated compared to Whites (especially Republicans), so while Whites were fighting among themselves about quirks, quirks and non-quirks Native were teaming up.

There is a unique architecture in Lakotah, buildings which are called Tipi. Tipi are small, arcological buildings that are meant to house either 2,000 to 10,000 people. They primarily house people without hurting the environment. They are small, 1/4 to the size of a square kilometer. What is unique is that it is a commune, allowing people to share and control resources via democratically. It's the only place on Earth where they have true communism. How Tipi interspersed the lands is unique because I got the idea from Not Just Bike on his video of Switzerland. Lakotah is a sprawling country, where half the population lived in 5 major cities, and the other half lived in Tipi in said city's region or somewhere else. Instead of having sprawling suburban like the USA and Canada, Lakotah is sprawled by Tipi.

Lakotah land area is 200,00 km², with a population of 55 mil., and Omaha population is 10 mil.

It is also a member of UNAC

Country around Oklahoma

I know for a fact that tribes in Oklahoma declared independence too, the only issue is I don't know a name for it. There are multiple ethnicities in Oklahoma, and there likely need to have a lingua franca.

I still gonna call it Oklahoma. Oklahoma City is the capital, with a population of around 1-2 mil. The country itself is 15-20 mil. Oklahoma is a member in UNAC.

Maya Republic

Mayas initiated their country during the Dark Age/Vigilant Era, like the four other countries I mentioned. And when i said Maya, I mean Indigenous Mayas , not Mestizos who don't identify as such. The Maya Republic controls Chiapas, Yucatán Peninsula, Belize, and Northern Guatemala.

I don't know where the capital city will be. Either Mérida in Yucantán, Jovel, or Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Population is likely at 30 million. Maya is a member in UNAC.

The majority of Mayas are likely Califinitans, though I don't know if they will be deitists or nondeitists.

UNAC

UNAC, or United North America Confederacy, is what I said before: a supernational union similar to EU. And I mean similar in many ways.

Border between UNAC members are open, there is a singular currency (called Uneso), no visa required for nationals when working in different countries, UNAC Nationals allowed to vote and stand in office in local government, no restrictions in trading, etc. There is not much standard when it comes to infrastructure. However, they do have major projects for UNAC to feel more connected. Almost all railways in mainland North America are electrified (25kv/50hz), all have standard gauge, have uniformed signals, and are connected. It's theoretically possible to take an hsr (450 kph) line or two from New York City to Panama City. But a more preferrable opition is a Maglev (750 kph) line, which goes directly to either city.

The capital city is at Rio Grande mouth, called Rio Grande City. It picked for a symbolic reason: Rio Grande separated Latin and Anglo culture, the treatment of Mexican, and proxy Latines, by the former USA, and picking the capital on the mouth bonds the two cultures together.

The city population is around 20-25 million. Some interesting things i think up is that there is a lot of bodies of water in Rio Grande City, like what it is today-

-so the city kinda looks like Venice. There are artificial islands similar to I-Island off the coast, though they are much smaller, likely at average of 10-50 km². There is a pro-hero academy meant for UNAC national students. There is also a Triwizard-like tournament for Pro-heros academies, and it is always hailed in the city.

I think the UNAC government is similar to the EU along with Switzerland. It has two legislative, one voted by population, another by it state government. There is also a commission committee that handed making laws, but I too lazy to look it up. UNAC Senate, the one elected by population, has a degressive proportionality when giving each state senator. Let's be honest, Fredoia will fucking out vote every countries due to having the highest population. Mexico comes in second by population, with maybe a population of either 250-300 mil, but even then, adding all the other countries, they still won't outnumbered Fredoia, even if Fredoia did lost many states before. So, small countries (maybe less of 10 mil?) automatically have 5 senators, and the Senate will apportioned senators accordingly. Likely Fredoia only filled 1/3 of the Senate. The executive branch is a council of each countries head of state and government, like the EU.

Amphibia and the Boiling Isles

Amphibia can't be a member due to it government and representation. Even though Amphibians could elect local leaders, non-Newts can't vote for the supreme legislative body, and the kingdom is a semi-constitution monarchy. Like, UNAC is okay with Hawaii being a monarchy (if Hawaiians choose it) as it government is very much a constitution monarchy. The monarch has restricted power, similar to the British monarch. Andrias has far more privileges that will make UNAC very uncomfortable. There is some trade right between the two, and the Amphibians do have an easier time getting a visa (this I imagine how Hop Pop and two kids manage to enter California).

For BI, it is complicated. BI is situated in the middle of the Atlantic, and therefore does not feel connected to North America. Actually, there's likely tension between UNAC and BI (and likely other countries, especially EU and West Africa countries). Many of the islands block shipping lanes, so conflicts between BI and other countries are likely to happen. Doesn't help they are also do magic and far more non-humanoid like.

Not only that, but BIS are very isolationist. Rarely do they connect with the outside world. Even when Belos becomes emperor, it didn't really change its isolational policy other than scaring other countries because now they are united and far more powerful.

There's nothing else much to talk about. In the EU, they have a similar international pro-hero academy for EU national students to learn together -this is the premise for snk/bnha fic, where 104th class are a pro-hero class (Eren was a non-quirk until his father gifted him one, and not only Ymir (freckles) is from a famous and loving pro-hero parents, but she also in an arranged marriage with Historia, her childhood best friend).

Anyways, that's it.

[caesarflickermans]

dear prof. dr. caesarflickermans, expert in thg, i request your knowledge.

how do you picture the capitol outlines? is it something like the rich are in the middle and the outer circles are poorer? or are there different neighbourhoods with different levels of wealth with no real logic in how it happened?

also is there a clear border between the really rich and the rest of the population? or between the general population and the poor? are people in a way "restricted" to their neighbourhood a bit like inhabitants of the districts are confined in their district?

do you have any more elements that you would like to add?

thank you! 💕

(Please keep in mind I'm no expert in anything city planning, my words are by no means as educated as someone who did study this subject. Maybe @plvtarch can give some more educated information!)

My brief mention in SSLWR 13 might have indicated that the poor live in the outskirts while the rich live in the inner city, but that is not at all the impression I had intended to give!

If you look at city maps, you will usually find that if we are differentiating between inner and outer city, the rich usually tend to live a bit further away from a direct city centre, that is because they have greater mobility than the poor, feel more secure there, and have the option for larger homes.

Nothing about levels of wealth and where they settle is truly random. Much of it is determined by zoning laws or gentrification. There are many quirks in city planning and many reasons for different income levels or different races to move to or from specific neighbourhoods.

While I can see the Capitol influencing some of these aspects very actively, the Capitol is also not expanding, has no new people move to it (other than those who are born in there), and much of it is likely more stuck in a gridlock. I do believe that social mobility exists, and therefore some parts of it are moving up and down on the social ladder which implies a changing of neighbourhoods, but I assume it is much slower due to tighter class systems.

On a location level, I believe that the Capitol is located in Salt Lake City, though that is not my only inspiration and I will not keep 100% to the geography of this city. My reason for this belief is the mention of a natural mountain barrier to the East of the city (THG, 4). We also frequently receive a view of the Capitol's lake to the West and IIRC it is mentioned in the books somewhere, but I'm not sure where. Either way, lake to the West, mountain to the East. Salt Lake City seems the natural conclusion here.

When we look at the Salt Lake City area, we notice the following based on (A) median income and (B) a rating on based schools:

(A) is an obvious indicator for wealth, and it seems to accumulate in the Eastern area. (B) further supports this. Rich people like to send their kids to the best of schools, and it can be a good supporting indicator for wealth.

Thus, we have identified the Eastern part of Salt Lake City as a rich neighbourhood.

In addition, while I believe the Capitol to be located in Salt Lake City, the Capitol is a representative of large wealth concentration. The cities that, to me, as a Non-American, come to mind and were part of my inspiration on how I see the Capitol are Los Angeles and New York City. They both are THE metropolitan areas to be and have a large influence on areas such as entertainment, fashion, and finance. They feel quite right for the Capitol. Let's look at the former and its wealth concentration first:

If we compare this with topography levels, we notice a very clear pattern for both Los Angeles and Salt Lake City: The richer areas are closer to or even on mountains. Thus, we notice that our wealth indicator maps correspond with topography level:

I've always liked Los Angeles in terms of Capitol representation for its Northern mountains that overlook the city and the rich people that look into the downtown area. I've never been to Los Angeles, but the property there appears more spaced out which allows for the wealthy to built their larger residences up in the mountains.

I nonetheless also like the idea of skyscrapers which would be more representative of New York. I can envision some wealthy people who are sick and tired of the mountains to prefer living in downtown area in high rise apartments and penthouses. I think for New York City its geography is a bit less relevant, partly because it is so encased by water and the differentiation is more Manhattan/Boston. Nonetheless, I take the NYC comparison and apply it to the Capitol insofar that I read it as the rich liking to live close to or with a view of the river.

Where does this leave us with?

Well, we know that the mountains to the East of Salt Lake City host the wealthy, we know that something similar is happening in Los Angeles with its North, and we know that the wealthy in New York really love looking at the river (or parks, lol).

I like the idea of combining all three aspects into one map, bastardising SLC a bit in the process (they'll survive).

As you can see, I've moved the lake a bit more inward to allow for the New York comparison to make sense. I've added some more mountains on top to have the Los Angeles feeling.

There is an area labelled downtown which is, while still having astonishing real estate prices, the area of the training centre and the bigger shopping area. Most city districts have their own feel to it and their own inner shopping streets, but if you want to shop the big designers, you go to that grey area.

The middle class and lower class are way less defined, but I've placed them roughly in that manner as the lower part of the Capitol is the weakest area in terms of protection.

While the mountains might appear fragile, Katniss mentions that it is impossible to enter through them and, instead, the tunnels are the weak points. Thus, I've figured that the wealth distribution both in the East (SLC) and LA (North) wasn't affected (i.e. moving to the West post Dark Days).

Instead, the lower class area with its mountains receding is the true weak point, and it is likely that the rebels came in from roughly around there, possibly with the tunnels being somewhere around there, too.

This is the general inner city circle for the Capitol. There is a greater area around it which hosts vacation spots and some of the arenas.

The vacation spots I perceive as similar to the arenas, insofar that they are equally unnatural in how they have been built, but they are less adventure-y (yikes) and mostly focused on relaxation. Capitol people do not go to the Districts on vacation, but they have some beautiful areas that are meant to resemble some popular vacation destinations, such as beaches or mountains. They come in different price ranges, of course, and you usually stay overnight there in themed houses. Those places are large, thus they host several groups.

The arenas are nothing we haven't heard of in the books. I think some are in the Capitol outskirts while others are more around its actual border or around the empty stretches of land in between the Districts (no-mans land, essentially).

As to restrictions: No, there aren't any. We can gauge as much from the books as the poor and the rich shop in similar areas (avenues and the side streets, as described by Cressida in MJ & visited by Virgilia in SSLWR 17). But, generally, they maintain this idea that the middle and lower classes are able to make it big. It's a necessity to keep those people in line, and overall successful insofar that they quite literally buy into it and go in debt.

Any restrictions in place usually come through where the best schools are placed, where demand has the housing market skyrocket, but overall they, as previously said, change fairly little.

In this manner, I also think that the Capitol heavily relies on public transport. It's a small city that has had a long time to establish its public transport system, which also means that the people aren't truly restricted to one area over the other, i.e. everyone who wants to can easily attend the tribute parade. Only few people own a car--because I want some utopia in my dystopia--and only those who truly require one in the moment, such as President Snow, own one.

As to where my main cast of characters live: Virgilia obviously lives in the President area, Caesar in the Eastern NYC area (no seaside view for him), Plutarch in the Los Angeles-esque area, and Tigris in the grey downtown area as she lives above her shop.

[foreverlogical]

As the Midwestern and Eastern U.S. braced for what could be the longest heatwave in decades for some locations, a wildfire near Los Angeles forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate over Father's Day weekend.

The climate crisis caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels is making both heatwaves and wildfires more frequent and extreme, and politicians and environmental advocates pointed out the role that state and national policy can play in fueling extreme weather.

"Each of the last 12 months have been the hottest on record," Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media on Sunday. "This week, cities across the country will see record-high temperatures. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to surrender the fight against the devastation of climate change. We cannot let that happen."

"Politicians making bad policy decisions (like killing congestion pricing) is the number one cause of climate change, which makes heatwaves like this one worse."

Former U.S. President Donald Trump reportedly told oil and gas executives this spring that donating $1 billion to his campaign would be a "deal" for them because he would dismantle the Biden administration's climate regulations.

Sanders' remarks came as the National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Prediction Center forecast that "record-breaking heat" would "expand from the Midwest and Great Lakes to the Northeast this week, potentially lingering through early next week."

NWS said the heatwave would be the "first significant" heatwave of the season and could break daily temperature records and some monthly June temperature records for the portion of the country stretching from the Ohio Valley to the Northeast between Monday and next Saturday.

"The longevity of dangerous heat forecasted for some locations has not been experienced in decades," NWS said.

The heat index could come close to 105°F in many places, and nighttime temperatures of around 75°F mean that those without cooling infrastructure will see "little to no relief."

The high temperatures could impact millions of people from Michigan to Maine. As of Saturday, 22.6 million people were under extreme heat warnings, watches, or advisories, according toThe New York Times.

University of California, Los Angeles, climate scientist Daniel Swain told the Times that the heat would "affect a bunch of highly populated areas where there hasn't been quite as many stories about extreme heat recently," adding, "Now, it's New England's turn."

The NWS warned, "With the intense heat and high humidity it is important to take precautions to protect one's health, particularly those without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration."

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a warning on social media on Saturday, pointing out that extreme heat is the leading weather-related cause of death in the U.S.

However, climate advocates criticized Hochul for exacerbating the root cause of more extreme heatwaves with her last-minute cancellation of a New York City congestion pricing plan earlier this month.

"Politicians making bad policy decisions (like killing congestion pricing) is the number one cause of climate change, which makes heatwaves like this one worse," the Sunrise Movement wrote in response to Hochul's post.

Long-time climate advocate and author Bill McKibben said: "This governor just blocked congestion pricing, one of the most important climate policy advances possible. She's redefining trolling."

Climate Central noted that, "while heatwaves are common in summer, this early season excessive, likely record-breaking heat is made as much as two times to five times MORE likely to occur in mid-June due to human-caused climate change (particularly overnight warmth)."

Meanwhile, on the West Coast, the Post Fire ignited at around 1:45 pm on Saturday local time in Los Angeles County, California, about 65 miles from downtown Los Angeles, The Washington Post reported.

As of Sunday afternoon, it had spread 12,265 acres and was 2% contained, according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire). Fire officials said the blaze was fanned by heat, low humidity, and wind and had damaged two structures.

"Currently crews are working to construct perimeter fire lines around the flakes of the fire. Aircraft are working to stop forward progress but have limited visibility," Cal Fire wrote on Sunday, adding that "the fire is pushing up into Hungry Valley Park. California State Park Services have evacuated 1,200 people from Hungry Valley Park. Pyramid Lake is closed because of the threat of the Post Fire."

One of those evacuated was 33-year-old Oscar Flores, who was visiting Hungry Valley Park with his 12-year-old son on Saturday.

"It looked like it was the last day of the world," Flores told the Los Angeles Times. "People were loading quickly and merging out, driving fast. The ranger said you have 10 minutes [to get] whatever you can pack."

[trainsgenderfoxgirl2816]

The revolution hasn’t started in America for many reasons, primarily that we actually aren’t that uncomfortable. When the Paris commune was formed, more than 50,000 poor and impoverished people had moved from the countryside to the city to look for jobs. 8-10% of the cities population in 1790. If you wanted to do the same in America, you would need a comparable contemporary city of importance, say Los Angeles or New York. To reach the 10% threshold, you would need 300,000 to 800,000 today. It’s about the visibility of the problem. America is and has always had the advantage of spreading out its malcontents.

Additionally, the system is working as intended, it’s just that the intended purpose was to allow people to accumulate capital. This has been tempered by physical limitations before the advent of steam power, and later electric power and the internet, shrunk the distance between owners and their markets. The founding fathers, fuck it, Lafayette himself, we’re all proponents of free market capitalism because they had come from traditions like the Firm in France that literally caused starvation. No one alive, even my grandmother who was a child during the dust bowl. The closest was the starving of another grandmother in Estonia due to government believing that party orthodoxy would see them through (much like our dear beheady-boy in France). The closest America gets is the intentional and systematic racism towards its black population, which surpasses the 10% margin (12%) but which is spread out and which has, through economic integration from liberals (and/or “economic conservatives”) diluted its capacity for solidarity.

In truth, Americans are not actually as discontent as a small and disparate portion of us need them to be for change to come.

In truth, we are employed enough, fed enough, and entertained enough for this to take another 100 years.

If we weren’t though, there would be greater trouble than anyone really realizes. Revolution would make the vulnerable even more so, who is actually available to ensure the care of the disabled when 10% of a city cannot get a job or food?

In 2022 the estimated homeless population of America was under 600,000, which, if all in Los Angeles, would be enough people (who would have to be willing to get injured or even die) to maybe take over the city. But again, 10% was enough when we already had muskets, now look at what our militarized police can kill us with.

Even if they did, who would they listen to? Do they have a leader who could tell 600,000 desperate and disenfranchised, rightfully angry people, to not engage in the Terror? Americans in 1770 had 150 years of thinking of themselves as separate from the British Crown before those slaveholders, the most comfortable!, were so (economically) pressed as to form their own government. And that’s what’s lacking, there is no social structure circulating or in place with a leader so charismatic or powerful as to be able to secure peace, not just change.

America isn’t immune to revolt or revolution, but it was built to resist it.

Sigh I'm aware but I just angry and frustrated

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Chris Geidner at Law Dork:

The far-right extremist group Moms for Liberty on Friday asked a federal judge in Kansas to dramatically expand an order blocking the Biden administration’s new rule aimed at protecting LGBTQ students — seeking to nationalize an injunction issued July 2. Moms for Liberty asked U.S. District Judge John Broomes, a Trump appointee, to expand his preliminary injunction against the administration’s new rule under Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972 to cover more than 850 counties across the country — including all 25 of the most heavily populated counties in the nation and all 10 of the largest school districts in the nation. If the group’s request is granted, the Kansas-based injunction — covered previously at Law Dork — would effectively become a nationwide injunction blocking enforcement of the rule before it is set to go into effect August 1.

The final rule, issued earlier this year, interprets sex under Title IX’s nondiscrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity and changes obligations for addressing sexual harassment complaints, among other elements. Although the preliminary injunction issued by Broomes on July 2 covered four Republican-led states — Alaska, Kansas, Utah, and Wyoming — it also covered members of three organizations that were a part of the lawsuit, including, Broomes wrote, “the schools attended by the children of the members of Moms for Liberty.”

Broomes asked the groups — which also include the “members of Young America’s Foundation or Female Athletes United” — to submit their lists of applicable schools by Monday. This was a step that I questioned in my report last week due to the fact that Broomes had issued an injunction before he even knew what it covered. Ten days later, Moms for Liberty proved my point.

In Friday’s filing, Moms for Liberty did not list the schools attended by the children of their members. The group acknowledged that they don’t even know the answer to that question. Citing the “impracticality” of obtaining that information, the group instead asked Broomes to expand the scope of the injunction substantially to include “any K-12 school in any county in which the child of a member of Moms for Liberty resides.” Moms for Liberty then claimed that it has more than 130,000 members, and provided a list of more than 850 counties in which it claims it has members.

The filing noted that the Justice Department opposes this request and will file its opposition by Sunday. If granted, the injunction out of Kansas would block enforcement of the rule in all of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, D.C., Detroit, and several other jurisdictions where local and state officials are not seeking such relief — and were not made aware of the fact that their obligations were at issue in the case before Friday. Moms for Liberty’s claim is that if it has one member who has a child attending a school in Los Angeles Unified School District, the entire district and its more than 1,300 schools should be covered by the injunction issued by a federal district judge in Kansas — regardless of the law affecting such legal questions in California.

Anti-LGBTQ+ extremist “parental rights” organization Moms For Liberty seeks to block the expansion of Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ people to over 850+ counties in America that would be a de facto nationwide injunction in Kansas v. Department of Education, meaning that a single M4L member in a county could be subjected to an injunction regardless of local laws.

[polijakefim]

Meet Travis the Aussie who's big Down Under BRIEFS ENCOUNTER THAT CHANGED 'CROC DUNDEE' KID'S LIFE As he scanned the Los Angeles horizon with just $60 in his pocket and beaten-up old shoes on his feet, newly-arrived Travis Fimmel had little idea of what fate held in store for him.

Just a year or so earlier, this latter-day Crocodile Dundee was running barefoot around his family's dairy farm in Australia and tearing about the bush on a motorbike.

Now Travis, 21, was on the verge of fame and fortune - but old habits die hard. As he walked into the offices of LA Models, he realised that he had instinctively slung his tatty trainers over his shoulder.

He needn't have worried. Model booker Paul Nelson cast a professional eye over the muscular torso topped with an angelic, boyish face - and signed him on the spot.

"He had a beautiful face, a very funny personality - it all clicked," says Nelson. "We helped him out with money and a place to stay. We believed in him from the beginning."

That was last April. The young man who used to milk cows to earn pocket money was months away from one of the biggest deals with Calvin Klein since Kate Moss made her name at the fashion house.

THE extremely well-endowed Aussie, now 22, is on a six-figure deal to front the underwear campaign that has sent ripples of desire and envy throughout the population.

Gazing down from a giant billboard in downtown New York, Travis is an Adonis clad in skimpy white briefs. His image is plastered on billboards and in magazines worldwide. A week ago, he was in London's Selfridges autographing underwear for fans.

But when he opens his mouth to speak, the words that come tumbling out are not in sync with his sex-symbol status. In his Aussie drawl, he says frankly of the huge poster: "I don't look at it, man." He is also quick to laugh off the idea of being an object of desire for many women - and some men, too.

"Can't take it seriously, mate. Embarrassing. Funny." Then with a cheeky smile, he relents saying: "It's good, it makes a lot of people happy."

There is no holding back the Aussie bluntness. He says of new boss Klein: "You'd think he'd be stuck-up but he's just so down-to-earth. He's rich as f***, though."

After appearing in a Jennifer Lopez video, he described the diva thus: "She's got a fat a*** but she's very nice." As for his instant success and the underwear shoots: "I felt like a p***k. I was very self-conscious I have to say, mate." Still, at least he did them. He once declared: "No way, mate, I'm not wearing jocks."

These days Travis has more "jocks" than he can use. Along with the year-long contract comes a supply of Calvin Klein pants: "I've got 500 pairs of them at home. I only have to wash about once every two months."

Travis grew up on his parents' remote farm 26 miles outside Echuca in Victoria. The youngest of three brothers, he worked on the farm and rode around on motorcycles and hunted foxes.

Proud mother Jenny says: "He would disappear and camp out for the night. Even now, he jumps on a motorbike and heads out to see what's been happening on the farm." She offers some insight into why her son is dismissive about his good looks: "He was small, the little guy, so it doesn't suit his character to make a big deal about his looks."

At 17, Travis moved to Melbourne to play football and study sport management at university. But hopes of a sporting career were dashed when he broke his leg.

It was while working out in a Melbourne gym that he was spotted by a talent scout from Peter Chadwick Model Agency.

Booker Matthew Anderson recalls: "He never saw himself as a star and I don't think he does now. He is either genuinely not aware of his appearance, or he's just playing it cool. It might be a mixture of both." Part-time modelling jobs took Travis from Melbourne to London. At 19, he dated then All Saint Nicole Appleton. But after a short affair, Travis dipped out of the limelight, dumping Nicole because she was "boring".

It was only a matter of time before he decided to try his luck in America. "Just to see the country," he says. "I keep saying: 'I am not a model, mate. It's just a job to make money to travel'."

After being plucked from obscurity by LA Models, the young Aussie found himself in close proximity to a number of leading ladies.

But his talent for speaking his mind appears to be almost as big as his talent for filling Calvin Klein's new Body Underwear line. He even describes playing the love interest in a Janet Jackson video as "cheesy". Today he lives in LA and is more likely to be found surfing the waves than trapped inside a gym: "I'm the most unhealthy person in the world."

Travis has also been spotted out with Hollywood beauty Meg Ryan, 40. The pair recently dined at Manhattan's Nobu sushi restaurant owned by Robert De Niro. They shared plates of raw fish and giggled like schoolkids.

But we'll have to wait to see whether a more mature woman can tame this wandering Aussie spirit. "Modelling is so boring," he confides. "It's meant to be glamorous but you sit there for ages.

"I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I might go home straight after this. I might go travelling again. My plan is to make a plan."Interview by Emma Hibbs

[mariacallous]

Six weeks after Li Wenliang blew the whistle in Wuhan on an emerging infectious disease in early 2020, cities around the world locked down and turned into hotspots. From Rome to Tokyo to San Francisco and Los Angeles, COVID-19 ripped through the most populated areas of the world. By the end of that year, America’s cities—Detroit, Boston, and New Orleans among them—had death rates from the virus 20 percent higher than other regions of the country.

In New York, where I serve as health commissioner, almost 50,000 residents died, the majority in the first three months, denting New Yorkers’ life expectancy by nearly five years. It was the steepest drop in lifespan in the world that year.

Public health institutions and the field as a whole learned much from our successes and failures during the pandemic. The critical nature of healthcare supply chains; supporting our public health workforce, especially at the front lines; the essential process of community engagement for healthcare promotion, vaccination, and disease prevention; the importance of combatting misinformation and disinformation online and in person; the need to tear down our data silos so we can make faster, better decisions. The list goes on and on.

However, as new threats arise and old ones intensify, there is still much to learn. Cities—concrete jungles that experienced the worst of COVID-19, and in some ways, struggled the most with the public health response in the early days of the pandemic—may be our best teachers on how to keep our world safe and healthy.

That’s because the sentinel cases for brooding public health threats, whether infectious or not, are often in cities. Cities are the canaries in the public health coal mine, for everything from mental health and homelessness, climate change to forced migration, substance use to sex trafficking. The way these challenges play out across our cities should not only drive national policy, but also serve as an important corollary for how to respond in less dense, less diverse, more rural areas. Yet when we consider the multilateral institutions where decisions are made and policymaking happens, cities rarely have any role in governance.

The reasons for city-as-public-health-epicenter are simultaneously obvious and not so obvious. For one, urban densification has accounted for the majority of population growth, even as land mass occupied by cities is growing. Today, around 56 percent of the world’s population live in cities—a percentage that experts expect will grow to 70 percent, with population doubling, by 2050. There is also the historic boom in airplane travel both domestically and internationally, which means communicable diseases (like SARS, swine flu, and mpox) can leap across borders faster than ever, quickly overtaking cities’ health systems.

An example of this in New York City in 2022 was when an old virus, mpox (formerly known as monkeypox), began circulating in explosive new ways among men who have sex with men. NYC had become the national and global epicenter.

Despite facing critical shortages of vaccine, in June 2022 we began vaccinating men who had the highest risk of getting infected, well ahead of the anyone else in the nation, including the federal government. This critical intervention to curb the virus’s spread helped bend the curve of mpox within a few weeks, by early August. Not only did our response set the tone for the rest of the national mpox response, it also influenced the way in which many other global centers responded.

The same happened with tuberculosis (TB), another old microbe—and one that remains a leading infectious killer in the world. Between 2022 and 2023, the U.S. has seen a dramatic 14 percent year-on-year increase in tuberculosis cases nationwide. NYC is once again at the country’s frontlines, with a 28 percent increase over the same period. The drivers of TB’s resurgence are manifold, but one is the shifting pattern of migration worldwide due to climate change, war, and economic and political instability.

NYC health officials again leapt into action. We not only increased investment into our TB program in response, but since 2014 have pioneered new and effective ways to control the disease including award-winning “video directly observed therapy” where a health worker observes the patient taking their daily medications. This telehealth protocol has now become a part of TB control guidance recommended by the World Health Organization.

But while cities like New York are battling disease threats with drive and innovation, a lack of formal representation in multilateral institutions means that cities are more susceptible to security concerns, bioterrorism, and economic disruption. Cities are largely expected to navigate their response to global health crises in silos, without a clear and dedicated means to exchange ideas between them. Moreover, they typically do not have a meaningful say in how their national counterparts navigate domestic responses or global deliberations.

That was New York City’s early experience during the pandemic.

As COVID-19 tore through our five boroughs in the early weeks and months—from Sheepshead Bay and Jamaica to Battery Park, Harlem and Hunts Point—New York’s public health authorities produced their own messaging campaigns; partnered with private corporations and others to source materials and protective equipment for healthcare workers to care for those in need; stood up a free testing network, and later; designed their own vaccine distribution system and engaged deeply with communities to promote vaccine uptake. These responses were—especially early in the pandemic—developed in the absence of clear national and international guidance, or resources. And our experience in the start-up phase of the pandemic response was not unique, with cities from Los Angeles to Chicago to Boston to Miami facing similar challenges.

If we don’t formally involve cities in our national systems for disease surveillance and public health response, we lose out. Best practices disappear into the archives. Innovative strategies collect dust in the pages of textbooks and journals. How can cities effectively respond to burgeoning health threats when institutional memory fades, and when protocols developed at national scale lack the specificity or practicality to actualize in our alleys or on our sidewalks?

A better strategy may pull from the discipline of political science: specifically, a concept known as “inclusive multilateralism.” This concept, which refers to the participation of non-nation states in multilateral institutions and processes, narrows the gap between the high-level authorities handing down policy decisions and the communities on the ground who are expected to make them come to life. It has allowed for civil society, nongovernmental organizations, the private sector, and other stakeholders to have a formal role in the most critical multilateral governance structures in the world, from international security to climate change bodies. It also creates a critical set of checks and balances, ensuring that special interests or anti-democratic actors, influencing national governments and elected leaders, do not have outsized sway in international decision-making by having representation of sectors outside of national politics.

In health, for instance, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and malaria, among others, have since inception had official civil society and private sector representation on its governing board and country coordinating bodies.

There is a growing appetite for cities to have such a formal leadership role, not only to share local experiences, best practices, innovations, and data, but also to build collaborations for emergencies. In remarks made during an event honoring the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary in 2020, Secretary General António Guterres specifically called out the need to draw on the “critical contributions” of cities and regional governments. Similarly, the 2017 Partnership for Healthy Cities launch stated that “city leaders are uniquely positioned to drive policies and programs to help transform public health. And a recent McKinsey report suggests sizable potential impact through a global focus on city-level work, not just for pandemic preparedness, but for overall health. They estimate that influenceable interventions at the city level could add more than 20 billion years of higher-quality life at a global level, while offering a critical opportunity to address health disparities and inequities, an important underlying driver of differential outcomes from pandemic disease, let alone chronic health challenges.

Following these leads, it is time national governments and multi-national organizations formalize the role of cities in global health governance and security. One proposal is that relevant multilateral institutions—such as the World Health Organization or World Bank—could establish seats for cities on their Executive Boards or Board Committees. These seats could even have city government representation from both donor and implementer countries. Additionally, each region could add representation for cities on their subcommittees or local oversight bodies, for example U.N. Country Offices or Country Coordinating Mechanisms.

Now, as the global health community gathers this week in Geneva for the World Health Assembly – the annual gathering of the official governing body of the WHO—there is an opportunity ripe for the inclusion of the local jurisdictions who will be at the forefront of the next pandemic. Negotiations on the Pandemic Accord, the global treaty intended to set international standards of preparedness, cooperation, and communication between nations in advance of the next global communicable disease threat, are set to conclude this week. It is essential that real-world lessons and insights from cities are incorporated into this document, to ensure well-meaning agreements translate to real-world action on the ground.

There are already glimmers of hope.

In the last two years, Tedros Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, has invited New York City to attend the annual World Health Assembly, the official decision-making body for the WHO and the International Health Regulations. That inclusion has allowed us to share our hard-won experience with WHO and other officials, in regard to the forthcoming Pandemic accord, including our insights on building stockpiles of PPE, mobilizing the health workforce and managing health facility capacity, ramping up testing through public-private partnerships with commercial laboratories, building a rapid and locally-driven vaccination effort, and ensuring that equity and place-based work is incorporated at the start of a response, rather than in subsequent phases. And in return, we learned first-hand about many of the challenges faced by nations across the globe in pandemic response and disease surveillance, especially in light of a changing climate and critical health workforce shortages, and have incorporated learnings about the WHO’s data sharing capacities and early warning and advanced surveillance systems, into improving our own population health data system.

New York City’s presence at the World Health Assembly has also given us an opportunity to demonstrate our front-line expertise and innovation in mental health, urban preparedness, climate change adaption, data modernization, and emerging health issues related to the global migrant crisis, among other issues.

Designing formal mechanisms to include cities in deliberations of global scale will allow each of us to not only sound the alarm earlier, but also to better respond to emerging public health threats lurking in our streets and sewers. By ensuring that cities have a meaningful seat at the table in our global health governance models, we will be charting a better course for the world to respond to forthcoming crises.

[cosmicanger]

Neoliberalism in the arts

Indeed, the prevailing political landscape often reveals a pervasive misalignment with neoliberal principles, as the majority tends to lean towards a more center-leaning liberal stance adorned with a veneer of radical chic attire. Paradoxically, these individuals often falter in their pursuit of genuine reformism or incrementalism, despite purportedly championing these causes with fervor. While acknowledging the complexity inherent in assessing the merits of reformism and incrementalism, it becomes apparent that a significant portion of this demographic struggles to manifest tangible progress in these domains.

Consider, for instance, the domain of the arts, a microcosm reflective of broader societal trends. Were the arts authentically concerned about issues such as the plight of Palestine or the interlinked genocides, a paradigm shift would necessitate a cessation of artistic endeavors predominantly spearheaded by white creators. Ideally, art exhibitions would witness a notable demographic recalibration, with a substantial majority comprising Black individuals and nonblack Palestinians. Regrettably, the present reality contradicts this envisaged transformation, as the current exhibition landscape remains disproportionately dominated by white artists.

An illustrative example underscores this dissonance. The arts community ostensibly espouses a commitment to progressive ideals, yet concurrently, the inaugural retrospective of the first Palestinian artist is met with cancellation. This disconcerting juxtaposition unfolds against a backdrop where the proverbial microphone is extended generously to careerist virtue signalers, perpetuating a discourse that ostensibly champions inclusivity. However, the prevailing exhibition circuit in major cultural hubs such as New York City, Los Angeles, Berlin, Paris, among others, continues to be predominantly populated by the creative output of white settlers.

Moreover, the disconnection between proclaimed ideals and tangible action extends to the realm of public health consciousness. Notably absent from the daily practices of white artists and art workers is a consistent adoption of respiratory protective measures, exemplified by the scarcity of N95 masks or their superior counterparts. This oversight is emblematic of a broader societal reluctance to engage with precautionary health measures, potentially indicative of a lackadaisical attitude towards collective well-being.

In conclusion, a critical examination of contemporary sociopolitical and cultural spheres reveals a disconcerting incongruity between professed ideologies and substantive action. The arts, as an illustrative microcosm, underscores the urgency for a genuine commitment to principles of equity and inclusivity, transcending mere virtue signaling. Addressing these dissonances mandates a concerted effort towards transformative change, both within the arts community and society at large.

[darkmaga-returns]

Annual FBI crime victimization surveys show violent crime is up 10.4% and property crime is up 6.4% between 2019 and 2023.

Each year, the FBI releases headline crime report data for the calendar year prior, and a separate crime victimization survey that asks Americans what crimes they have been the victims of. Comparing these reports provides insight into crime reporting rates and the accuracy of crime statistics.

While earlier reporting demonstrated that theft is worsening and often underreported, the growing divergence between the FBI’s annual crime victimization survey and its tabulations of reported crime indicates worsening trends in theft.

However, recent changes in how crime reporting data is collected, along with anomalous 2020 COVID-era data and reporting, have muddied the waters.

The FBI set a January 1, 2021 deadline back in 2016 for agencies to transition from the paper-based Summary Reporting System, which reports each incident of crime with the worst crime committed in the incident, with the computer-based National Incident-Based Reporting System, which can log up to 10 crimes per incident. But 40% of law enforcement agencies didn’t make the change in time. This included most agencies in populous California, New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and the two largest agencies: New York Police Department and Los Angeles Police Department.

As a result, reported violent and property crime dropped 15.9% and 27.3% respectively between 2020 and 2021, while at the same time victimization for violent crime rose 0.9% and property decreased 3.3%. The ratio of reported violent crimes to victimization declined from 85.6% in 2021 to 71.4% in 2021, while that of property crimes declined from 51.6% to 38.8%, highlighting how the 2021 reported crime figures are the product of a muddled transition in data collection.

[ausetkmt]

Some people describe a police dog’s bite as a deep tear through their flesh. Others are haunted by the feeling of a Vise-Grip, the dog's jaws slowly but painfully tightening around their arms or legs until the muscles go numb.

These are not the nips or snaps of a pet dog in a backyard. A police dog, trained for weeks on how to bite harder and faster and with little reservation, can inflict debilitating injuries and lasting scars. The physical damage lingers as long as the memories of a dog’s snarling teeth, its guttural growls, its head ripping back and forth upon crashing into a fleeing target, all while a police officer stands nearby shouting commands and praise in German, Dutch or Czech.

Across the nation, police dogs bite thousands of people a year. And in no major city is someone more likely to be bitten than in Indianapolis.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, home to one of the largest K-9 units in the country, has the highest rate of dog bites among police departments in the largest 20 U.S. cities.

Some cities saw one police dog bite over the last three years. In Indianapolis, it was once every five days.

Law enforcement officers from around the United States train with their police dogs on how to capture a suspect at Vohne Liche Kennels, in Indiana, on Sept. 23, 2020. Dogs are muzzled for the protection of the man acting as a decoy, who is not wearing typical bite gear for this training exercise.Mykal McEldowney/IndyStar

Those are just some of the findings of a yearlong investigation by IndyStar and the Invisible Institute in Chicago, along with The Marshall Project, and AL.com.

The first-of-its-kind national analysis included a review of police dog bites from 2017-19. That review found that IMPD dogs bit 243 people over those three years. That’s more bites than New York; Chicago; Philadelphia; San Antonio; Dallas; Austin; San Francisco; Fort Worth; Columbus; Seattle; and Washington, D.C.

Combined.

Police K-9 Bites per 100,000 Residents

Among police departments in the 20 largest cities, some have much higher rates of police dog bites than others. Between 2017 and 2019, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police dogs had 243 bites, or about 28 bites per 100,000 residents. But city police in Chicago, Philadelphia and San Francisco each recorded only one incident.

Source: Analysis of use of force data from police departments, population data from the Census Bureau.

Per-capita rates use the latest five-year census population estimates and are approximations. City police departments in Los Angeles, Houston and San Antonio may include serious non-bite injuries in their K-9 use of force records. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department data for bites in 2019 include numbers through January 23, 2020.

The investigation also revealed for the first time:

Nearly 60 percent of people who had been bitten in Indianapolis were suspected in only low-level and non-violent crimes or traffic infractions; bites that would appear to be out of policy in some other cities, such as Seattle and Washington, D.C.

At least 65 percent of those bitten were unarmed and did not act violently, facts that contradict IMPD’s stated reasons for using dogs so often.

More than half of the people who were bitten are Black, a disproportionately high number for a population that makes up just 28 percent of the city.

15 percent of people bitten were younger than 18. Three-fourths of the juveniles are Black.

Sometimes police dogs bite the wrong people entirely, such as police officers at a crime scene or innocent bystanders in a neighborhood.

Marshawn Wolley, a community leader who has worked alongside Indianapolis city and police leadership to reform IMPD’s policies, said he was shocked to learn about what’s happening with IMPD’s dogs.

"This is not meeting the standards of what we expect from a professional police department. They have missed the mark. Dramatically,” Wolley said. “There’s really no hiding from this. They set the standard for being the worst. This has to be addressed. This has to be addressed."

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett declined an interview request. He answered questions by email.

"These numbers are clear evidence that we must continue to have a dialogue with our community around what they expect not just of the K-9 unit," Hogsett said via email, “but of their police department as a whole."

The high number of bites in Indianapolis is driven in part by the convergence of two factors: a comparably loose set of IMPD policies that enables K-9 officers to release their dogs on people suspected of committing low-level offenses and, critics say, an old-school policing culture that encourages officers to do just that.

When IndyStar presented its findings to IMPD Chief Randal Taylor this month, he said he was concerned about the numbers.

"You know, I would hope we wouldn't have to bite that often," Taylor said. "If there's changes we need to make, I'm always for that."

Then, in an email Oct. 7, Taylor announced his department had drafted a new policy that, he says, will eventually place restrictions on the use of police dogs. For example: Officers would no longer deploy dogs on suspects in misdemeanor cases unless they believed that person is armed, though dogs would still be justified in all felony cases.

The policy change, if enacted, would have stripped out as many as 23 bites in misdemeanor cases over the last three years—an amount larger than the total number of bites found in some major cities.

That said, it's just 10 percent of the bites in Indianapolis. Even if they were removed from IMPD's total, Indianapolis would still remain the major city where someone is most likely to be bitten by a police dog.