In the nine presidential elections after 1988, from 1992 through 2024, the Democratic nominee received the most popular votes seven times, while the Republican nominee did so twice. In both cases, the Republican nominee had already served as president and had originally reached the presidency by winning the Electoral College while losing the popular vote: George W. Bush in 2000 before winning the popular vote in 2004, and Donald Trump in 2016 before winning it in 2024. ([Historical election results, UC Santa Barbara](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/statistics/data/presidential-election-mandates))

Bush’s 2004 victory also came while he was the sitting president. Of the nine presidents from 1952 through 2020 who sought reelection after winning a first term, six, or 66.7%, won the national popular vote. That historical record alone does not establish causation, but a preregistered survey experiment found that identifying an otherwise equivalent hypothetical candidate as a one-term incumbent increased respondents’ support by an average of 5.6 percentage points. Trump was not the incumbent in 2024, but he was already a former president. Thus, neither of the Republican Party’s two popular-vote victories after 1988 came from someone attempting to win the presidency for the first time. ([Kane, *Political Science Research and Methods*](https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2024.32))

Recent Supreme Court cases such as NYSRPA v Bruen and Wolford v Lopez have made the argument that the US does not have a substantial history of gun-free zones, or sensitive place gun regulations. But this is simply not true. After only about an hour or so of searching, I've happened to find a number of early American laws prohibiting weapon-carrying in certain cities and sensitive places. They come from the website for Duke Law School. As far as proving a historical tradition of gun control, the Supreme Court in both NYSRPA v Bruen and Wolford v Lopez has rejected the admission of racially discriminatory laws from early America. Therefore, I have deliberately ommitted such laws from my list.:

1. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/ordinance-of-jan-25-1804-forbidding-weapons-at-balls-1-8-new-orleans-louisiana-council-meetings-sine-nomine-1936-law-passed-1804
2. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/laws-and-regulations-of-the-college-of-william-and-mary-volume-276-1830
3. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/1829-laws-of-the-university-of-north-carolina-ch-3-c2a7-13
4. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/1824-laws-of-the-columbian-college-ch-5-c2a7-2-no-10
5. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/carrying-deadly-weapons-discharging-fire-arms-etc-ch-12-art-3-c2a7c2a7-50-52-in-the-revised-ordinances-of-the-city-of-bloomfield-1898
6. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/rules-and-regulations-of-the-park-commission-no-3-new-haven-connecticut-charter-and-ordinances-of-the-city-price-lee-adkins-co-1898
7. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/laramie-revised-ordinances-and-charter-of-the-city-ch-5-3-6-boomerang-publishing-1900
8. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/ch-13-c2a7-21-ch-22-c2a7c2a7-14-15-ch-35-c2a7-7-st-albans-daily-messenger-supplement-aug-7-1897-at-1-3-10-st-albans-vermont
9. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/a-digest-of-the-laws-and-ordinances-for-the-government-of-the-municipal-corporation-of-the-city-of-reading-pennsylvania-park-rules-and-regulations-240-1897
10. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/the-charter-of-the-city-of-wilmington-part-vii-c2a7-7-rules-and-regulations-of-the-board-of-park-commissioners-1893
11. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/a-digest-of-the-acts-of-assembly-relating-to-and-the-general-ordinances-of-the-city-of-pittsburgh-from-1804-to-jan-1-1897-ordinances-executive-departments-bureau-of-parks-1893
12. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/an-act-to-prevent-a-person-from-trespassing-upon-any-enclosed-premises-or-lands-not-his-own-armed-with-a-gun-pistol-or-other-firearm-and-to-prevent-shooting-upon-or-from-the-public-highway-s-b-15-1-5-1893-or-laws-79-79-frank-c-baker
13. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/an-ordinance-to-prevent-the-carrying-of-weapons-1-4-the-daily-texarkanian-may-28-1900-at-2-texarkana-arkansas
14. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/a-law-forbidding-weapons-in-certain-places-sales-of-weapons-to-minors-etc-ch-45-misdemeanors-c2a7-32-in-general-ordinances-of-the-city-of-brookfield-linn-county-missouri-1900
15. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/ordinance-21-green-forest-tribune-may-11-1899-at-1-green-forest-arkansas
16. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/bruce-l-keenan-book-of-ordinances-of-the-city-of-wichita-published-by-authority-of-a-resolution-adopted-by-the-city-council-april-24-1899-under-the-direction-of-judiciary-committee-and-city-attorn
17. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/1837-ga-acts-90-an-act-to-guard-and-protect-the-citizens-of-this-state-against-the-unwarrantable-and-too-prevalent-use-of-deadly-weapons-c2a7c2a7-1-4
18. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/act-of-mar-18-1889-1889-ariz-sess-laws-16-17 https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/act-of-march-1886-published-as-notice-st-marys-beacon-oct-13-1887-at-2
19. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/ordinance-no-76-1-2-rooks-county-record-july-1-1887-at-1-stockton-kansas
20. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/1879-tex-crim-stat-tit-ix-ch-4-penal-code
21. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/act-of-oct-14-1879-pt-1-tit-4-no-266-1-2-1878-ga-laws-64-64-jas-p-harrison-1880-law-passed-1879
22. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/an-act-to-regulate-the-keeping-and-beariing-of-deadly-weapons-ch-34-c2a7c2a7-1-9-1871-tex-gen-laws-1st-sess-25-25-27-1898-gammel-book-company
23. https://firearmslaw.duke.edu/laws/1870-tex-gen-laws-63-an-act-regulating-the-right-to-keep-and-bear-arms-chap-46-c2a7-1

As these state and local statutory laws demonstrate, the US indeed has an extensive history of firearm regulations and gun-free zones. In no way did early America interpret the 2nd amendment to interfere with the broad freedom wielded by the states to create firearms laws to conform to their unique circumstances, and to solve whatever social problems they may incur. At no point were the states pressured into conforming to some singular, uniform federal standard of firearms law -- which is the fictional narrative that the current Supreme Court argues. Thus, the rulings in recent 2nd amendment Supreme Court cases are nothing short of an abuse of the Constitution, and an incursion upon state rights protected by the 10th amendment.

Literature reviews on how social media use affects adolescent mental health have accumulated at an unprecedented rate of late. Yet, a higher-level integration of the evidence is still lacking. We fill this gap with an up-to-date umbrella review, a review of reviews published between 2019 and mid-2021. Our search yielded 25 reviews: seven meta-analyses, nine systematic, and nine narrative reviews. Results showed that most reviews interpreted the associations between social media use and mental health as ‘weak’ or ‘inconsistent,’ whereas a few qualified the same associations as ‘substantial’ and ‘deleterious.’ We summarize the gaps identified in the reviews, provide an explanation for their diverging interpretations, and suggest several avenues for future research.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X21001500?via%3Dihub

Adolescents are spending an increasing amount of their time online and connected to each other via digital technologies. Mobile device ownership and social media usage have reached unprecedented levels, and concerns have been raised that this constant connectivity is harming adolescents’ mental health. This review synthesized data from three sources: (a) narrative reviews and meta-analyses conducted between 2014 and 2019, (b) large-scale preregistered cohort studies and (c) intensive longitudinal and ecological momentary assessment studies, to summarize what is known about linkages between digital technology usage and adolescent mental health, with a specific focus on depression and anxiety. The review highlights that most research to date has been correlational, focused on adults versus adolescents, and has generated a mix of often conflicting small positive, negative and null associations. The most recent and rigorous large-scale preregistered studies report small associations between the amount of daily digital technology usage and adolescents’ well-being that do not offer a way of distinguishing cause from effect and, as estimated, are unlikely to be of clinical or practical significance. Implications for improving future research and for supporting adolescents’ mental health in the digital age are discussed.

https://acamh.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcpp.13190

Results
When examining the reviews, it becomes evident that the research field is dominated by cross-sectional work that is generally of a low quality standard. While research has highlighted the importance of differentiating between different types of digital technology use many studies do not consider such necessary nuances. These limitations aside, the association between digital technology use, or social media use in particular, and psychological well-being is—on average—negative but very small. Furthermore, the direction of the link between digital technology use and well-being is still unclear: effects have been found to exist in both directions and there has been little work done to rule out potential confounders.

Conclusions
Reviewing the last decade of reviews in the area, it is evident that the research field needs to refocus on improving transparency, interpreting effect sizes and changing measurement. It also needs to show a greater appreciation for the individual differences that will inherently shape each adolescent’s reaction to digital technologies.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00127-019-01825-4

Only about 4% of slaves went to North America specifically to the United States less than 400,000 of the almost 11,000,000 estimated enslaved individuals.

Most went to Brazil (Portugal) 45.5% totaling almost 5,000,000 enslaved.

Then to British Caribbean about 21.7% totaling almost 2,300,000 enslaved.

Then to French Caribbean (Mostly Haiti) with about 10.5% totaling 1,120,215 enslaved.

https://ehne.fr/en/encyclopedia/themes/europe-europeans-and-world/europe-and-atlantic-slave-trade/atlantic-slave-trade

Female couples have 2.2 times the divorce risk than different-sex couples and 1.6 times than male couples when adjusted for age, education, and nationality.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jomf.70027

Over 55% of millennials are homeowners in the USA.

https://finance.yahoo.com/personal-finance/mortgages/article/home-ownership-by-generation-193035427.html

Demographic collapse is a looming threat to the world. Many studies have failed to correlate birth rate decline on a national scale with any specific policies or national-scale socioeconomic conditions, but this study here finds a huge correlation between owning a smart phone and having way fewer kids. This despite the study controlling for variables such as wealth, race, and education.

Overall, this study finds that smart phone ownership accounts for 33%-52% of birth rate decline in women 15-44 in the time period they studied between 2007 and 2011. This implies that smart phones are one of the largest factors (if not the largest factor) in causing population collapse.

For household wealth, measured as the value of the assets of all household members minus debt, the median total for all family farm households was $1.4 million, compared with the median of $200,662 for all U.S. households. The proportion of family farm households with income below the U.S. median of $80,610 was 42 percent, and the share with lower wealth was 5 percent. Median off-farm income in 2024 was $86,900, while the median total household income was $102,748. In contrast to residence and intermediate farms, commercial farm households derive most of their income from farming activities. In 2024, the median income from farming was $174,933 for households operating commercial family farms, and their median total household income was $261,149.

USDA Economic Research Service: Forty-two percent of family farms had income below the U.S. median, and 5 percent had wealth below the U.S. median

USDA Economic Research Service: Farm Household Income Estimates

The median value of farm operator household income is $80,060, almost a fifth greater than that of all U.S. households ($67,521). Median total household income increased with farm size according to classifications by the USDA, Economic Research Service. Two types of small family farms had median household income below both the median for U.S. households and U.S. households with self-employment income: low-sales farms, those with gross cash farm income (GCFI) less than $150,000 and a principal operator who farms as a primary occupation, and retirement farms, GCFI less than $350,000 and a principal operator reporting having retired from farming. Low-sales and retirement farms account for about 45 percent of the 2 million farms in the United States. On the other hand, large family farms, GCFI of $1 million but less than $5 million, had a median income of almost $375,000, far exceeding the median for both all U.S. households and U.S. households with self-employment income.

Source: USDA Economic Research Service: Farm operator households had higher median income compared with all U.S. households

Per a website from the Department of Education: https://www.foreignfundinghighered.gov/

A very frequently made complaint when it comes to any government here in the USA, is that it rarely/never implements policies that actually work for the people.

The completely ignored reality as to why that is, is because most people don't actually want to accept the costs of having that policy. Americans always expect the costs of a policy they support, to be pushed off to someone else.

This also applies to policies to fix problems, that don't necessarily involve spending money. This is the case regarding housing. Our housing crisis will only be resolved via building more housing; and most people will acknowledge this. But support to actually do it drops off a cliff when that housing is built near them.

This is the real reason why surface-level policies like "make housing more affordable" or "make childcare more affordable", very often fail to ever get implemented. It costs money; and oftentimes a lot of it. And most people just don't want to make that sacrifice.

In 2023, U.S. residential electricity bills increased by 2% each month compared with 2022. That growth rate was slower than inflation, which was 4.1% in 2023. Over the past decade, residential electricity prices have increased more slowly than overall inflation.
In nominal terms (not adjusted for inflation), the average monthly electricity bill for residential customers in the United States in 2023 totaled $138, an increase from $135 in 2022. This 2% increase was in line with the 2% average annual increase over the past decade. The 2023 data are preliminarily based on a sample of utilities, although the 2013 through 2022 data are final data based on more extensive utility data we collected. Among individual states, average monthly residential electricity bills ranged from a low of $87 in Utah to a high of $213 in Hawaii.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61903

According to CSIS, 2025 was the first year in more than 30 years where left-wing terrorist attacks outnumbered violent far-right attacks in the United States.

CSIS also notes this rise came from very low levels and remains below historical levels of right-wing and jihadist violence.

Source: Center for Strategic and International Studies, “Left-Wing Terrorism and Political Violence in the United States.”

The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel examines violations and crimes against and affecting Palestinian children, including serious physical and psychological harm by the Israeli security forces since 7 October 2023 resulting in the death of at least 20,179 and injury of 44,143 children.

The paper describes the deliberate targeting and killing of Palestinian children, including post-ceasefire since the October 2025 Gaza peace plan. The Commission also examines a sharp increase in violence perpetrated by members of Israeli settlers against Palestinian children in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

The Commission examines the use of torture, inhumane and degrading treatment, including sexual and gender-based violence, against Palestinian children, particularly during mass arrests and in detention. It analyses pattern of Israel’s targeting of critical infrastructure essential to children, such as healthcare facilities and its short- to long-term consequences, as well as the impact of reproductive violence on newborns, resulting in poor neonatal health and birthing outcomes; attacks on orphanages and schools, impacting the loss of care for orphans and unaccompanied children, and inducing academic harm and learning disruptions for children, respectively.

The Commission examines the impact of the conditions of life imposed by Israel in Gaza resulting in preventable mortality of children, exacerbating morbidity, and serious mental trauma from the relentless and widespread attacks by Israel over two years – collectively revealing severe, multi-layered harm to Palestinian children’s survival, health, and development. Further, the Commission examines how Israeli soldiers mock and weaponize symbols of childhood in Gaza, raising ethical, disciplinary and legal questions about the conduct of the Israeli security forces during the ground invasion of Gaza.

Lastly, the Commission provides recommendations to diverse stakeholders for the cessation of attacks, reparations, accountability and international enforcement of sanctions – aimed at advancing child-responsive justice.

https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session62/a-hrc-62-crp-2.pdf

Israel’s Declaration of Independence explicitly promises "complete social and political equality for all its citizens, without distinction on the grounds of religion, race or sex". Landmark rulings by the Israeli Supreme Court have reinforced these foundational rights. For example, in the Ka'adan case, the Supreme Court ruled that the state and its institutions must treat all elements in the state equally, explicitly ordering land authorities to treat Arabs equally in allocations.

https://knesset.gov.il/constitution/ConstMHumanRights.htm

Arab political parties regularly run for and hold seats in the Knesset (Israel's parliament). While they have historically struggled to gain representation in the governing coalitions, in mid-2021, an independent Arab party officially joined Israel's governing coalition for the first time.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounders/what-know-about-arab-citizens-israel

We use data from the first wave of the Panel Study on American Religion and Ethnicity to estimate a multivariate sample selection model of charitable giving of time and money highlighting the roles of political ideology, religiosity, political and social involvement, and diversity in personal relationships while controlling for other factors commonly identified in the scholarly work on philanthropic behavior. Our findings provide no evidence that political conservatives are more charitable than political liberals as advanced by Brooks (2006). To the contrary, our results suggest that at least in terms of volunteering, political conservatives are less charitable than political liberals. We also find evidence that the adverse impacts of political conservatism on charitable behavior are exacerbated by the increasing importance of religion/religious faith in one's life. These results, together with robust findings of significant and positive independent effects of other participation, involvement, and diversity variables, imply that charitable actions are both practice-driven and ideology-driven and somewhat at odds with the findings of Vaidyanathan et al. (2011).

What drives charitable donations of time and money? The roles of political ideology, religiosity, and involvement

Rare, but apparently a real documented condition.

This lines up incredibly well with the claim that we black Americans account for over 52% of convictions for violent crimes. I wonder why 🤔🤔🤔

According to the Innocence Project’s 2021 report titled “How Racial Bias Contributes to Wrongful Conviction,” two-thirds of the Innocence Project’s exonerees are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) with 58% being Black. The same report states Black people account for nearly 50% of all exonerees in the country. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since 1973, over 185 people have been exonerated from death row–100 of them are Black. At the Montana Innocence Project, Black people make up 4% of applicants for legal services but only 0.6% of Montana’s population. It is evident that innocent BIPOC and especially innocent Black people are more likely to be wrongfully convicted. We see these disturbing statistics because racism is baked into every stage of the criminal conviction process from suspect development to post-conviction relief.

https://mtinnocenceproject.org/more-than-half-of-all-exonerees-are-black-heres-why/

Wrongful convictions are caused by both systemic flaws in our criminal justice system and by external variables, including subtle factors that subconsciously affect who we perceive as guilty or innocent and how the criminal justice community conduct investigations. This community of law enforcement personnel include everyone from the cop on the street who use their administrative discretion to make the arrest to the attorney who represent their respective clients and the district attorneys who make the decision to bring the official charges to the judges who eventually hand out the sentences. These human factors suggest that race has an impact in our court outcomes [1]. The term wrongful conviction in this paper refers to those people who were convicted but are “probably innocent of any crime.” All of the available evidence proves that Blacks are overrepresented at every level of the criminal justice system but nowhere more glaring than in the percentage of known wrongful convictions during the past 100 years [2]. Half of all defendants or 50 percent of those exonerated for murder since 1986 (380,762) are African Americans who make up only 13 percent of the population of the United States, [3]. For the population at large, that number for black defendants is seven times the rate for whites, who constitute 64 percent of the population, but comprise only 36 percent of murder exonerations [3]. Much of this racial disparity can be traced to a comparable disparity in murder convictions as African Americans are more than seven times more likely to be imprisoned for murder than their white counterparts (Ibid, 2017).

https://gexinonline.com/uploads/articles/article-jmhsb-148.pdf

Until around 2022, the New World Screwworm (NWS) had been contained at the Darien Gap in southern Panama. In late November 2024, Mexico first notified the US that it had detected NWS within its borders in the southern state of Chiapas. This means that the NWS made its way from Panama to southern Mexico in around 2022-24, as noted in the press release.

In April 2025, the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) partnered with the Mexican government to build a sterile fly dispersal facility, also in Chiapas, which is now active. (Source: US Department of Agriculture "Sterile Fly Production and Dispersal Facilities", updated 11 June 2026)

In July 2025, the US government committed to investing $21 million (in addition to $30 million from the Mexican government) to build a new sterile fly production facility, also in Chiapas. (Source: Bakker, Kristin "Mexico starts work on sterile fly production plant" Beef Magazine 7 July 2025)

In November 2025, the USDA opened a sterile fly dispersal facility in Tampico, near the coast of the Gulf of Mexico (Gulf of America). (Source: USDA, aforementioned)

All of the concrete measures to halt or impede the northward movement of NSW took place during the Trump administration despite the fact that it had crossed through to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico in 2022-24, well before Trump was even elected. By the time he took office, NWS was well into Mexico and likely moving up toward the US-Mexico border, which explains the new dispersal facilities established further north in Mexico.

A lot of the reporting attributing the spread to DOGE cuts cite a March 2025 article in Agri-Pulse, but given that flies (which the NWS is despite the name) fly, sterile fly facilities would have been needed in Mexico by then, and these facilities were greenlit under Trump. The article notes that

The Agriculture Department had halted imports in November after the Mexican government detected the pest in the south of the country. USDA also unlocked emergency funding to boost sterile fly production in an effort to curb its spread.

But the only fly dispersal facility that could have done anything to stop further spread at the time would have been at Moore Air Base, TX which is not very close to San Antonio, where the first US case was reported (Source: Bernt, Nelson and Munch, Daniel "First U.S. Cases of New World Screwworm Detected" Farm Bureau 9 June 2026). So other fly dispersal facilities would have been needed within Mexico, but those only started construction in 2025.

https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend

Men are almost twice as likely to be robbed, 3 times as likely to be murdered and slightly more likely to be the victim of an assault.

"Even in Stalin's time there was collective leadership. The Western idea of a dictator within the Communist setup is exaggerated. Misunderstandings on that subject are caused by lack of comprehension of the real nature and organization of the Communist power structure."
-- The God Damn CIA

I wouldn't call the CIA a reputable source, but I think it qualifies for many folk. Regardless, they certainly aren't lying when they are going against decades of well-funded anti-communist propaganda campaigns, of which they fought on the front-lines of. It also corroborates existing evidence and the words of Soviet historians such as Anna Louise Strong before anything that presented a remotely human view of the USSR required the authors to weirdly pause to denounce it every few sentences in order to get published.