Pack the Union: A Proposal to Admit New States for the Purpose of Amending the Constitution to Ensure Equal Representation

While a step in the right direction, these proposals are inadequate. To create a system where every vote counts equally, the Constitution must be amended. To do this, Congress should pass legislation reducing the size of Washington, D.C., to an area encompassing only a few core federal buildings and then admit the rest of the District’s 127 neighborhoods as states. These states — which could be added with a simple congressional majority — would add enough votes in Congress to ratify four amendments: (1) a transfer of the Senate’s power to a body that represents citizens equally; (2) an expansion of the House so that all citizens are represented in equal-sized districts; (3) a replacement of the Electoral College with a popular vote; and (4) a modification of the Constitution’s amendment process that would ensure future amendments are ratified by states representing most Americans.

Vox article that summarizes it: https://www.vox.com/2020/1/14/21063591/modest-proposal-to-save-american-democracy-pack-the-union-harvard-law-review

all from January 2020

Archived

[,,,]

According to the Brazilian Steel Institute, the Chinese offensive relies on... strategies deemed illegal to support the Chinese government to its steel chain.

Figures from Platts, a global price monitoring platform, show that the price per ton of Chinese hot-rolled coils fell from $560 in January 2024 to $454 in November 2025.

The decline coincides with a shrinking profit margin for Chinese steel mills, which, according to the institute, is a sign of dumping: when companies start selling steel abroad below cost or the price practiced in the domestic market to weaken competitors.

In the view of Brazilian industrialists, the steel arriving from China today would be sold at prices incompatible with fair competition.

[...]

According to the Brazilian Steel Institute, steel companies operating in the country [Brazil] had shut down four blast furnaces, one steel mill, and five minimills (semi-integrated plants that melt scrap metal in electric furnaces) by November.

[...]

According to the CEO of the Brazilian Steel Institute, Marco Polo de Mello Lopes, the strategy now is to convince the Donald Trump administration to remove this surcharge on Brazilian steel and revive the quota system created in 2018.

Under that model, companies in the country could send up to 3,5 million tons of semi-finished steel per year to the United States without paying tariffs.

The executive recalls that Trump had already adopted a similar move in 2018 and believes that, if the ongoing negotiation is successful, Brazil would return to operating with a duty-free quota, while the 50% tariff would remain applied to other sales outside that limit.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a $35 billion gas deal with Egypt on Wednesday evening as the US pushes for a summit between the leaders of the two countries.

In a televised statement, Netanyahu hailed the agreement as “the largest gas deal in Israel’s history.” He said the deal was valued at 112 billion shekels (about $34.6 billion).

The deal involves American energy company Chevron and will supply gas to Egypt.

US President Donald Trump has been trying to arrange a summit between Netanyahu and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as he pursues regional peace deals and an expansion of the Abraham Accords.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/47575737

[...]

The turning point [for China's property market] came during the country's first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns when President Xi Jinping's government imposed sweeping new rules on how much debt property developers could take on. The result of the "three red lines" reforms was brutal. Real estate giants like Evergrande, Country Garden and dozens of smaller firms defaulted, with more than 70 developers either going bust or needing state-backed bailouts to survive.

More than five years later, the subsequent bust shows no sign of easing. According to Barclays, a British bank, more than $18 trillion (€15.38 trillion) in household wealth has evaporated as home values collapse. Meanwhile, construction activity — once a key driver of gross domestic product (GDP) — has slumped so badly that it now drags overall growth below Beijing’s targets.

[...]

In a sign of just how sensitive the downturn has become, Chinese officials last month told private data providers to stop publishing home sales figures, cutting off one of the few independent windows into the current woes in the real estate market.

The move followed a 42% year-on-year drop in new home sales by the top 100 builders in October, the largest monthly drop in 18 months, according to China Real Estate Information.

Anne Stevenson-Yang, founder and research director of the Taipei-based J Capital Research, thinks this move helps mask the true price decline.

"You likely have a market-wide drop of 50%, which could go down to 85% before it balances out," she told DW.

[...]

Across China, the crash has left half‑finished projects, ghost cities and millions of households trapped in negative equity, sparking public anger and sporadic protests as buyers hope that Beijing will step in with stimulus measures to shore up demand.

"There's still a lot of excess supply — up to 3-5 years of unsold apartments and housing, mostly in the smaller cities," George Magnus, research associate at the UK's University of Oxford China Center, told DW. "It'll take a long time to clear, especially as the cohort of first-time buyers — 20-35 year olds — is now declining."

Having climbed to 1.41 billion, China’s population is now slipping backwards, marking the end of decades of growth.

[...]

China's major economic growth driver evaporates

Real estate once accounted for up to a quarter of China's GDP, helping growth remain in double digits for more than a decade during the 2000s and early 2010s. The slowdown has since dragged economic growth to around 5% last year — still impressive, but down sharply from the boom years due to the knock-on effects on the rest of the country.

“[Chinese] steel and cement prices and output are dropping, employment and [business] investment are weak — all of them collateral damage [from the property crash]," Stevenson-Yang told DW.

China was the world’s largest consumer of iron ore, copper, steel, and cement, much of it tied to construction. Exporters Australia, Brazil and Chile are among the global players suffering from the falloff in Chinese demand. As homeowners feel the pinch, the slowdown weakens household consumption, reducing imports of foreign luxury brands and autos.

[...]

Stevenson-Yang believes the Chinese property sector is on course for another "10 years of negative or flat growth," while analysts at S&P Global Ratings believe the downturn could persist well into the late 2020s. Some forecasts hint at recovery next year or in 2027.

That’s a hard pill for ordinary Chinese families to swallow. Many of them poured their savings into apartments that have lost value, leaving them stuck with mortgages they can’t escape and homes they can’t sell. Worse still, property values may remain far below the dizzying highs of 2020 for the foreseeable future.

[...]

Reportedly critical drone strike is first in Mediterranean since full-scale invasion began as maritime conflict grows

Ukraine says it has attacked a Russian “shadow fleet” tanker with aerial drones 1,250 miles (2,000km) from its borders, in the first such strike in the Mediterranean Sea since Moscow’s full-scale invasion nearly four years ago.

Friday’s strike off the coast of Libya, which reportedly caused critical damage, took place on the day of Vladimir Putin’s annual end of year press conference.

It came amid an escalating maritime conflict over the shadow fleet, a term used to describe vessels used by Russia, Iran and Venezuela to evade sanctions with deceptive practices.

Alliance Defending Freedom has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns to push its ultra conservative Christian values

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal advocacy group behind the overturning of Roe v Wade, has ramped up its global spending on litigation and other campaigns, in what appears to be an attempt to export what critics call its hard-right Christian theocratic values beyond US borders.

ADF and ADF International, a separate legal entity, spent a combined $10.9m on international grants and programs for the year ending June 2024, according to its most up to date public tax records, and appears to have increased by 70% year-on-year spending on Europe-related issues.

Paul Coleman, executive director of ADF International, who is based in Vienna, Austria, described the mission of his group as “not only defending the persecuted, but also countering censorship, upholding biological reality, and securing rights for parents”.

Just curious about Mario's meta lore and how people who are ennemies end-up having fun doing kart race together.

December 12, 2025

[from weekly newsletter about Cuba (with YouTube video links) from the Belly Of The Beast news/video collective. Their videos can also be found at: https://peertube.wtf/c/cuba_botb_videos/videos]

Archivo de Boletines en español - https://www.bellyofthebeastcuba.com/archivo-de-boletines/

Also:

• Cuban Interior Ministry: U.S. is the island's "main supplier" of drugs
• Former Cuban economy minister sentenced to life in prison for espionage
• Journalist Liz Oliva Fernández speaks at Amefrica in Cinema
• We're now streaming on Means TV

Do they really have two balls?

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/43927448

Web archive link

The Kremlin's annual 'Direct Line call-in show' in Moscow is an hours-long ordeal in which Russia’s de facto leader responds to carefully vetted questions from members of the public.

A German man has been found guilty of drugging and raping his unconscious wife for years and sharing video of his crimes on the internet, in a case that has drawn comparisons to the trial of Dominique Pelicot in France.

Fernando P., a 61-year-old school janitor, was found guilty of abusing his wife inside the couple’s home, filming it and then sharing it online without the victim’s knowledge.

He was sentenced Friday to 8 years and 6 months in prison following a trial at a court in Aachen, western Germany. An appeal may be filed against the judgment within one week, the court said.

Why should we bend to the will of Nazi's? I don't want to help them exploit us !

End of the year!

This will most probably be the last weekly thread for this year. Next Friday will be 26th, so the weekly thread will be back on 2nd Jan (or if something comes up, 9th Jan)!

Now, without further ado!

Finished Dark Souls Remastered !

Spent the whole weekend playing it and finally finished it! Ornstein and Smough, the boss I was stuck on last to last week, were probably the hardest boss in the game. Only thing that came close was a boss in DLC, Kalameet, an optional boss, but it was also a tough one. Rest of the bosses were much easier.

I would like to reiterate that if you are staying away from soulslike games because of their reputation, ignore that and give them a try. You just need to a bit deliberate in how you play them. Use a guide if you want, to get used to how the game works, but these are fun games. As for dying, I have probably died more times in a single Mario level then whole sections of Dark Souls. Of course, nothing wrong with it if you don't like the genre, just don't want people to ignore them because of the over hyped difficulty.

After finishing that, didn't feel like starting anything new, so went back to Princess Peach Showtime and finished that.

When I played it the first time I gave it a very bad review, but saw my daughter playing it later, and some of the stages looked fun. Not AAA game kind of fun, but a mobile mini-game kind of fun, which suited my current mood. So went ahead, cleared all the levels and finished the game.

Didn't try for 100%, if you miss a collectible you can't just backwards in the level and collect it, you have to replay the whole level. So ignored that completely. Game is too expensive for what it is, but if you can get it at a very good bargain, then not a bad game for little kids who like Princess Peach.

With those two wrapped up, and after the new Mega Man announcement, I wanted to give the series another try (tried them once a long time ago but found them super hard so never tried again), so after some suggestions from the wonderful people here, I decided to go with the published order and got the Mega Man Legacy Collection .

Played (and finished) Mega Man 1 and 2.

These games are hard, specially the first one, but the bosses were interesting so had fun fighting them, though I had to make extensive use of Rewind feature to stay alive. Specially in final bosses sequence. You fight multiple bosses back to back without any healing in between. Would have died over half a dozen times if not for Rewind.

Next was Mega Man 2. It is such an upgrade from the first game, I had to confirm it was still a NES game and not a SNES one. It was much easier than the first one, but still not an easy game. Another set of interesting bosses, and some extensive use of Rewind still required, though I like to think I got a bit better by the time I reached the end.

This is pretty much what I played the last whole week. I did start two new games, but I have just started them so can't say much about them yet.

Started Assassin's Creed: Rogue Remastered. Wanted to get it on Switch, but it's only available in a bundle with AC: Black Flag, and since I have already played that, didn't want to buy that again. So got it on PS5, and playing through it now. Have only played couple of hours yet though.

On Switch, I have been itching to play Skyrim again, was planning to spend dozens of hours in that, but then decided to start Risen . It's remaster of 2009's RPG, originally developed by Pirhana Bytes, developers of Gothic series. I loved Gothic, but never played Risen, or any other game from them, and it has been on my wishlist for so long, so it was a good moment to start that. I have only played an hour or so and the only complaint I have is that jump is on R3, and there doesn't seem to be any way to rebind the keys. Other than that, it's scratching that do-anything-RPG itch of Skyrim.

Will probably have more to say about these next time.

What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?

cross-posted from : https://lemmy.zip/post/55299032

https://archive.is/QHK8m

The trade talks showed just how much leverage China has over the US. This is largely thanks to its near-total domination of the supply chain for rare earth minerals

The US also relies on China for ingredients in nearly 700 medicines—a dependency so sensitive that China’s negotiators didn’t even bring it up in the recent trade talks.

And the decision by China in October to cut off exports of computer chips made by Chinese-owned Nexperia, leading to production slowdowns for carmakers including Japan’s Honda and Nissan, shows just how much disruption it can cause when it wants to.

• In clean energy, China is running laps around the rest of the world, building twice as much solar power capacity as the US and Europe combined.
• The country dominates the global EV market, producing 70% of the world’s electric cars. It’s the leader in battery technology too: At this year’s Shanghai auto show, carmaker BYD Co. demonstrated a battery that charges most of the way in five minutes.
• In 2024, China installed more factory robots than the rest of the world combined.
• Shenzhen-based DJI sells 70% of commercial drones for consumers and businesses, and the US lags China in military drone technology as well.

recent report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission found that “China leads the world in quantum communications and is making rapid progress in quantum computing and sensing.” While China is behind on cutting-edge AI, it’s receiving more AI-related patents than any other country and is pushing the limits of what’s possible without the most advanced chips

For awhile I've liked the idea of using a VPS for "critical" services. Currently looking at running:

• Authentik
• Komodo (with periphery agents on local boxes)
• Uptime Kuma
• NTFY
• Panglolin (or Cosmos Cloud?)

So, first of all, to folks already using a VPS, do you think it's worth it? Do you think I'm missing anything? Happy to discuss/research alternatives, too. I've thought about TinyAyuth+PocketID in place of Authentik. While I think Authentik is probably more complex (and likely overkill), it's a single solution. That said, I haven't played with TinyAuth/PockedID.

Second, I was pretty interested in Pangolin until I saw Cosmos Cloud mentioned elsewhere. It seems like it actually ticks a lot of boxes:

• Built-in authentication
• Reverse Proxy
• VPN (At least for local-to-VPS connection, but possibly also for external clients?)
• Docker management(?): They have an "app store" that's all docker images, so there's some docker capability built-in. Not sure yet if it can handle multiple hosts like Komodo.
• DNS (I would still keep at least 1 local pi-hole instance)

Looking at the doc for chaining proxies and hiding IP, here, it mentions creating an A record for services hosted on a different server. I'm curious to know if this means Cosmos will only manage DNS for services hosted on the same box. Honestly this seems kind of odd, unless I'm misunderstanding how proxy servers work.

Anyway, I know this was a bit of a meandering post. Curious to know thoughts on my original plan, but also if anyone has played with Cosmos, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Lastly: This morning, I found this interesting write-up to manage container updates using Forgejo, Renovate, and Komodo. Another rabbit hole to explore!

EDITS:

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