Things will not calm down, Daniel Jackson. They will, in fact, calm up.

And many .ml posts are 4chan tier.

Officially the reason is that a gradually increasing carbon price is easier to predict compared to some more sweeping legislation.

Unofficially, well...there was that fossil fuel lobbyist (former Exxon I think) a few years ago who got tricked into going on camera for a fake job interview where he was saying something along the lines of "of course we are going to support a carbon tax because it makes us look good, but there's no political will in America for a carbon tax".

I feel the best move is to take API at their word and praise them in public for supporting climate friendly policies, while in the meantime continue to work on proving that lobbyist wrong and building political will.

I've heard that a carbon price was very close to getting included in the Inflation Reduction Act. But the fact that it didn't means that the idea is likely dead in the water politically for the moment at least. It's still worth building support in the meantime though, because it is still 100% relevant.

In some ways, for the moment the conversation has moved past carbon pricing because stuff like solar is taking off exponentially, and we're realizing that we don't have the grid / transmission capacity to handle it. The permitting process is way too slow, and Republicans have been asking for changes in that process for decades, so there's a really good chance for bipartisan action (fingers crossed that it happens in the current Congress).

Tldr: yes, their strategy is probably a little bit of "publicly say one thing, but actually fund something different". But their public support is absolutely useful to us, and it's a really good talking point, especially with Republicans, if we can say "hey, the fossil fuel industry supports this policy too!"

API, perhaps ironically, has also been a big advocate for carbon pricing, and for some other climate friendly bills (like the PROVE IT act).

Badge of honor.

U.S. has been complete shit for the last 8 years, but somehow we haven't collapsed and life goes on as usual. So I'm usually pretty skeptical of specific predictions (though the trends are worth paying attention to).

Absolutely. As far as solar goes, one statistic I like to point out is that China added more solar panels last year than the U.S. has in its entire history.

I mean, scandals like this and "chabuduo" attitude putting health & safety at risk is really nothing new in China. I agree with you in general that certain parts of China are in decline / potential to collapse. Especially economy & environment. But speaking from a U.S. perspective, other aspects are enviable, like public transit.

I'm just saying that I wouldn't necessarily hold this specific incident up as an example of collapse.

As I understand, usually without references they will want to verify you in some way. Checking employment, for example.

Then you would need sex worker A who accepted you as a client via some kind of verification to also be willing to refer you to sex worker B.

In places where it's illegal there are still independent & professional escorts, but they want references or some kind of assurance that you're not LEO or someone crazy who's going to hurt them.

When learning another language, it's really normal for your comprehension to be way better than your production. Input > output. Just keep talking to people and consuming English media and it will come to you. The more you increase your input, the more fluently and naturally you'll speak -- it won't sound like you're speaking from a textbook.

Like you I also struggle with vocab though. What I like to do for focused study is watch a show or some piece of media and pick out some words I want to learn in context and make flashcards from them.

Yeah not a fan of it for all of the reasons you stated.