“Economic anxiety”

Homes as wealth-creators.

Americans take it as received wisdom that homes are meant to generate income through higher valuations over time. We just assume home prices go up over time and if it’s not actively increasing in value, the home was a failure.

Many other countries don’t treat homes this way. They are dwellings, invest what you want to your liking, but it’s not a retirement account.

This focus on wealth generation creates lots of perverse incentives, such as exclusionary zoning, building on lots that are overly large, and suburban sprawl. These don’t reflect people’s actual, desired form of housing but rather maximize wealth for homeowners at the expense of everyone else.

We have a completely warped view of housing that causes us to be preyed upon by real estate agents, landlords, HOAs and the like.

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This is the angle I come at the issue from. Prohibitive zoning and perverse incentives for car use are skewing what the market would otherwise provide.

One of the few issues where free market liberals 🤝 socialists 🤝 libertarians

Going into any online space you either have to conform with Stalin apologists or neo-Nazis.

Meanwhile here I am supporting free markets and a functioning state like some kind of lunatic.

Same scummy shit that gyms pull. I’ll never forget the hoops of fire I had to jump through to cancel my LA Fitness membership a few years ago.

No way to cancel online (despite everything else being online)

Had to come in person during standard business hours to cancel

And then a manager had to be on staff, at any point in time during standard business hours they may not be there.

There needs to be regulation on making it simple to end these types of subscriptions or monthly membership dues.

Russian engineering at its finest.

I think something very understated about America is that we are aggressively democratic. Which to me means everyone shares their opinion, and thinks there is a meaningful way to enact that opinion. In the same way that you don’t celebrate your utility company keeping the lights on, we tend to take time to voice our opinion when something is broken, not when something is working as intended, because why bother speaking out about good things when they don’t need to be changing the first place? Thus, you have a large quantity of commentary and it also skews negative.

America has serious problems but our strengths go unspoken because we consider it to be the base level of society. We are incredibly wealthy overall, have the strongest military, and despite recent hiccups we are incredibly stable. Our geography is very diverse and can support a great deal of people and industry.

rawr :3

Agree. I want to ban TikTok('s algorithms) too, but on grounds of algorithm addiction and national security issues it causes. That also means Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

Made that switch two years ago, still absolutely love Tidal. Wish it had a WearOS app but I’ll take hot with the higher quality sound and no-bullshit app

This is good shit

Surely they were misquo-

Nope that’s what they said. Yikes.

And I’m glad for it! I naturally can only spend 15 mins max per day here and I consider that a benefit

I now know even which way the Dnipro flows when describing the battlelines (left bank = east, right bank = west). I barely knew the Dnipro existed two years ago.

Looks nice!

Basque Republic (most is submerged)

This is good shit lmao

My favorite bit is “Better to be a slave than dead, no?” Ummm… actually, yes, death may be preferable

“Following Sunday prayers, Sheikh Ron al Dee’santiz issued a fatwah against the Barbie Movie, decrying it as ‘against the law of Abraham’ and ‘promoting deviant Western concepts around women, homosexuality and the place of Yahweh in our lives.’”