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I’m looking for a good podcast to get a history of the People’s Republic of China. Any recommendations?

All the different purges and initiatives under Mao all run together in my mind, and I’d like to have a better sense of the progression of the social, political, and economic events.

This election map looks insane to my contemporary eyes. What did all the states from Minnesota to Louisiana have in common that they voted Clinton? And why were Colorado, Virginia red?

I often see urbanists lament about how car businesses lobbied for larger roads to make things more car dependent. But the record just isn't the case.

First off this is entirely circular. Cars only became popular because of lobbying and then got rich to lobby more. But how did they get the money to begin with to enact mass lobbying to begin? Let's also put aside how strong train lobbying was and how infamous corrupt railroad barons were in the 19th century who suddenly just stopped being corrupt and greedy and now all railroads are run by saints who just want to save the environment and provide wonderful and efficient service.

Instead it is the opposite. Roads began to expand for cars because in the 1900s cars were seen as the future of travel. By 1925 the US saw nearly 200 cars per 1000 citizens and after stagnation of the great depression, resumed its growth

People say post WWII is when car centric design became more common, but it is clear that outside of the depression years, cars were already becoming extremely common.

Moreover even in the 1910s, people began to see and predict the rise of cars. As a small example Virginia historical societies began placing roadside markers for road side tourism

A quote from NYT in 1915 said:

"Virginia roads improved for automobile touring... Richmond a centre of good roads to many places of great historic interest... with the improvement of Virginia roads, Richmond is destined to become an important tourist gateway between the North and the South.”

So even in 1915 when mass produced cars were extremely young and in their infancy, people predicted the rise of a car. Even the designer of modern Barcelona, Ildefons Cerdà Sunyer, built roads wider because he believed rapid transportation like cars would become more common to be used for roads. Cerda died in 1876 a decade before Karl Benz invented the first car.

And on a slightly related note, NJB in a recent video argued the old city argument is flawed because most of Amsterdam was built after 1908 when the Model T was invented. Now I am not familiar with the history of Amsterdam so sure I'll defer to NJB that the area was totally undeveloped before 1908. The thing is cars were extremely rare in Europe until after WWII for the most part. By 1950, car ownership was still extremely low in the Netherlands being virtually unchanged since the 1920s during the depression and of course later WWII. The dutch population in 1900 was 5 million and by 1950 it had doubled yet car ownership was still extremely low. NJB of course also brings up the dutch car phase and even said most of Amsterdam was built in the 1960s. Gee would you look at that? When did cars become extremely popular? For a guy who loves the Netherlands so much, it is ironic he still takes an American/Canadian centric view of when cars became popular, ignoring how Europe literally at 2 World Wars, and while the Dutch were mostly unscathed by WWI, would be leveled in WWII. Could the urban planning change have possibly coincided with the explosion of car sales? And car ownership continued to increase at roughly the same rate, even after the 90s when they decided everyone should ride bicycles everywhere because they are the greatest transportation ever invented. My bigger issue with NJB is he thinks urban planners were either stupid or malicious after 1950 when it was the most logical step of transportation at the time. We can argue if they were right or wrong, but there is no reason to act like they were idiots.

So why is this idea so common?

Since 22:30 yesterday Serbian authorities have ‘confiscated’ their documents & people are not being allowed to leave. This comes immediately after the vote in Council of Europe which with absolute majority of votes supported Republic of Kosovo becoming part of this institution.

https://preview.redd.it/600-kosovo-citizens-and-11-buses-are-being-held-in-serbia-v0-kz8t30dkg0vc1.jpeg?width=640&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=8458f7420cf96bd8f3a39424b12dd8f3abf625bb

As well all know the electoral map likes to change every decade or so. The 90's saw a blue Arkansas, Red Virginia, and a Purple Ohio. The 2000's brought us Purple North Carolina and Blue Colorado.

The point is, every so often something happens in a state that causes it to shift it's political leanings. Most of the time that shift is unpredictiable, or underestimated. For example, if you told a pundit in 2000 that a Democrat would win Colorado by 14 points they'd probably look at you funny.

As we continue into the political hellscape that is the 2020's I have a question for this sub. What are some states that could become competitive in the future?