“No. Your kindle doesn’t count! You don’t own any of that shit.”

Yeah I’m clearly imagining it. When are they going to release the autopsy report again?

If there is ever an economic crisis that results in housing prices dropping, the banks get bailed out.

For me the biggest reason to buy is simply quality of life. On paper, sure, renting comes with ease of mind. You don’t have to do maintenance and the landlord takes care of everything. However, the responsible landlord is the personal finance analog of the physicist’s spherical cow. Landlords are in the business to make a buck. They never do any maintenance unless absolutely forced to do so by either the law or market conditions. If the city isn’t going to condemn the property, and as long as they can keep it rented, they don’t give a damn. However, when something at the landlord’s house needs fixing, it’s undoubtedly fixed quickly and properly.

I like owning a house because it ensures that I can actually have a pleasant place to live. Landlords have no incentive so keep their properties actually livable rather than just inhabitatable.

That’s not how fractional banking works. You’re confusing the economic concept of money supply with outright fraud.

They don’t “create” money. Someone deposits $100. They take $80 or $90 of that and use it to make loans. This increases the overall supply of money in the economy. But there’s no printing press in the back office turning out notes. And they don’t do the same thing digitally. The only bank that’s allowed to literally poof money into existence is the Federal Reserve.

What’s your loan:value ratio on your mortgage?

White men elected Donald Trump. I’m not sure how this is news to you.

Please stop trying to hurt Democrats in elections. You are a Republican operative trying to divide the left.

Sorry you’re getting downvoted. There’s this sickness among many liberals that think they can manifest their way to election victories. There’s this sick impulse to immediately deny any criticism or negative news about Democrats, even if acknowledging those failures is exactly what is needed for Democrats to win future elections. It’s the Blue MAGA gene, see no evil hear no evil speak no evil.

Can you provide any evidence at all that the death toll is higher under Trump than it was under Biden? Or is this just a vibes-based assessment?

False. One side giggles to themselves while telling their voters a two state solution is possible while they sat back and allowed Gaza to be bulldozed. The other looked at the rubble of Gaza created by the previous guys and promised to build a tacky golf course on top of it.

You’ve been lied to. A two state solution hasn’t been possible for many years. Democrats know this. They decide to collectively pretend that it’s still something they hope for, as voters like yourself are easy to fool.

Both sides are the same in outcome. The only real difference is that Republicans practice performative cruelty, while Democrats feign compassion.

Can you provide any evidence that the death rate in Gaza has been higher under Trump than under Biden? Any at all? Because my understanding is that the worst parts of the conflict were during the Biden term. Trump was a lot more crass about it, openly celebrating the murder of Palestinians. But Biden instead publicly lamented their deaths while also enabling them.

Or you know, just Nazism. Trans people were some of the first victims in the Holocaust.

I’m pretty sure Greenland is a massive financial sink for Denmark…

Trump says a lot of shit that isn’t true. And he does it with the goal of scaring people.

No. That isn’t how people lived. You call it “alms,” but alms had a specific definition. Giving alms was giving to poor beggars in the street. Taking care of your elders was not alms. It was just something you were culturally and often legally expected to do. The Ten Commandments include “honor thy father and mother.” In modern times, this tends to be read as “respect your elders.” But in premodern times, this really meant, “take care of your parents when they’re old.” It was such a societal obligation that it was a literal commandment from God.

What really tended to happen was that children would take over family businesses, and then in turn support their parents when they could no longer work. Are you a farmer? You have kids. All of them help on the farm when they’re young, but most move out when they get married. One of your kids works on the farm into adulthood and keeps doing so on the understanding they’ll inherit the farm. You and they work on the farm until you’re too old to work. Then they take over, and you keep living on the farm in your elder years. In these final years, you help out with whatever chores or childcare for your grandkids that you can manage.

Family businesses were the main form of retirement savings. You passed your farm, your shop, your workshop, etc to your kids. Then you lived with them in your final years. Agreeing to take care of you was a prerequisite to taking over the business.

There is simply no safe way to use a laser to destroy these things. Human eyes are more delicate than any electronic component. If the laser is powerful enough to destroy any component in the camera, random reflections will be a risk for any other person that happens to be in the area. All surfaces are both reflective and absorptive to some degree. All surfaces will reflect some of the laser light. Unless you’re pointing one of these high-powered lasers directly at an empty sky, there’s simply no way to use one of these lasers safely in public. Maybe if you were on some giant deserted ranch out in a rural area it would be fine. But forget about using one of these outdoors in any urban area.

I mean, fuck flock. But really, truly, do not do this.

I don’t give a damn about the Flock cameras. Set them on fire or steal them and sell them for scrap for all I care. But a laser powerful enough to quickly fry a camera sensor is going to be an extreme danger to human eyes. These type of lasers can be acquired fairly easily, but you don’t want to be using them in public outdoor spaces. At these power levels, even reflections of laser light can be damaging to human eyes. And when you shine laser light on a solar panel or camera lens, some is going to be scattered in random directions. Sure, you can make sure to wear laser safety goggles while doing this. But random bystanders won’t have that luxury.

This is literally how the Republican Party was formed. Slaveholders had captured both parties. Abolitionists found it easier to create a new third party rather than working within the other two.

People doom way too much about the two party duopoly. It’s a deeply ahistoric and defeatist narrative.

Yes, you can’t have a stable three party system in the US, but independent candidates can win and the parties in the duopoly can be swapped out for one another. Ross Perot almost won in 1992, losing only because he suspended his campaign for a time. And the Republican party was itself originally a third party. Abolitionists got tired of do-nothing centrists dragging their heels on slavery. Ultimately they found it was easier to start a new party rather than to work within the existing power structures that had been thoroughly captured by slave interests.