Well, considering recent events I would say that "second world" is the correct term either way.

I don't, because the "fuck you, I've got mine" drivers will immediately hog them.

Piling on, Arizona Corporation Commission races are indeed contentious. They bring out activists that desperately want to turn Arizona into a California clone.

And I doubt the ACC will try to force this datacenter on Chandler. If you wonder how our Democrat Governor thinks of things, she is busy celebrating an "Ag-to-Urban” Groundwater Conservation Approval", just to ensure 825 new homes can be built in Buckeye, which were blocked because metro Phoenix does not have sufficient assurances of water supply for the next 100 years to permit further growth in that city.

It's darned hard to oppose development in Arizona. Too many stakeholders want to make their profits. Even Katie Hobbs will bow to them. Oh, wait, she bows to whoever greases the skids.

Only the small ones collapse. Large cults keep on living due to the initial momentum. Scientology is, unfortunately, alive and well, and so are, for example, Christianity and Islam.

They actually are breaking their own laws, but rule of law is something that never existed there.

Sitting in a cafe in the city of Mykolaiv right now, everything runs on generators. Earlier today, around 7:45 local time a few shahed drones flew over the city, this was after a lqrge attack from about 6 hours prior. Multiple energy distribution systems were hit in multiple regions. There were people killed, some drones hit homes, there were myltiple kinjal (dagger) missiles launched from mig-31 platforms. I crossed the border to Ukraine over 2 weeks ago, spent a week in Kiev, a day in Lviv, a day in Odessa, etc. Everywhere there are issues with energy distribution. Where I am now there are issues with watwr as well of course. People keep going because tbat is what people do, nobody here wants to give up anything to ruzzia, they want to stop the war in a way that prevents future attacs from the scourge that is ruzzia. As to this lawsuit, it is completely justified but it is not enough. Europe is giving ruzzia more money every year in oil and purchases than Europe spends on this war, given tbat Ukraine is protecting Europe from putin taking this war further west, I find this behaviour atrocious.

Well, guess what, Germany is a federation. Some states even had capital punishment in their constitutions until a few years ago, yet the federal constitution still made it illegal. Will most likely be the case with this too. The state surveillance attempts have been far worse 20 years ago, but ultimately went nowhere for the most part.

18% of Black 12th graders read at a "Proficient" level. It’s about the same for mathematics.
That’s shocking. What’s going on USA?

It's not just Germany. Most of Western Europe has been trending this way since the end of the Cold War, and the roots of such thinking were there long before Hitler was even an itch in his daddy's pants. A lot of Americans seem surprised by this. But Europe isn't America, and European governments have always had a more paternalistic view of their role than American political philosophy allows for. Further, most Europeans are fine with that. Americans gasp when they see such things, but this is just the latest line of code in the old European We'll keep you all safe, comfy, and warm under the blanket of *insert European capitol here* script. European thinking sees the welfare of their people in totality. So it's not just social welfare you get from such systems... "free" healthcare, subsidized housing, schools, etc... but you also get the rest of the "protection" philosophy... that you have to protect people from themselves. Speech codes, bans on anything the government deems "extreme", they're all part of the paternalistic view that you're protecting and providing for your people. Father's job is to feed, house, and keep the kids safe. Part of that is disciplining and setting rules that they have to follow, for their own good. With a few exceptions, this is No Bueno is most of North America, but again, Europe isn't America. It has a considerably different mindset.

This is merely Berlin. That city always had weird politics.

Did you even RTFA?

"Our analysis takes advantage of administrative data from a large, urban, public college system "

The analysts are from Columbia, a private Ivy League school. Not the students. Since they're NYC based, the students they were studying were almost certainly from the public City University of New York system. Not at all hard to get into, and no need for "nepo baby" admissions.

There was a movie called Kill the Irishman, starring the late great Ray Stevenson, that had a similar plot point: Danny Greene borrows money from the Mob to start a restaurant. The courier tasked with delivering the cash decides to take it and buy heroin with it, re-sell it at a profit, and keep the difference for himself. Except the sellers are Feds in a honeypot scheme. The money is gone, the Mob demands Greene pay them back, he refuses, so the order goes out to "kill the Irishman".

You had to go anonymous to post this? Pathetique...

Check the 3 year PMI at Trading Economics. Not obvious that manufacturing activity in the US has done anything but increase over the last 12+ months.

You have different statistics? Of course, we know what statistics are, don't we? Even that site has conflicting data, because there is no single measure that tells us much. Bitterness is not an acceptable economic policy.