True, forgot about them! Only issue with Lems (or at least their boots) is their construction doesn’t lend itself super well to resole-ing (though neither do Vivo’s, really), though I have heard of cobblers doing it by grinding down the existing sole and gluing on a replacement.

The Jim Green Barefoot African Ranger is constructed like a traditional boot, so is easily resoled by any cobbler, but I had to send mine back since they weren’t wide enough for me (they seem to be on the more narrow end of ‘barefoot’ style boots).

But for how affordable lems are, they’re a solid choice and have way more cushion than vivos.

After trying Barefoot style shoes (which usually have much wider than normal toeboxes) I can never go back.

Vivobarefoot shoes are expensive, but pretty high quality and have a great toebox.

Freet are more affordable and often made of recycled material, but some of their designs can be slightly odd looking. They hold up well though, very nice quality from the reviews I’ve seen. They’re made in the UK, I believe.

Splay shoes offer what is essentially wide toebox vans.

There’s tons more though. I’d recommend Anya’s Reviews to narrow down what suits you best, she’s pretty legit in her info from what I’ve seen.

Some communities have a lot of homegrown posts that you could share over there, especially text heavy posts, though they can be interspersed between links to elsewhere as well.

as an example, @Blair@slrpnk.net made a ton of really well done informative posts in various communities on my instance, such as this one.

Yeah, that sounds about right. I only read the first few chapters of the expanse, but I believe the world is still capitalist overall, yes? if so, that would make it more in line with perhaps the end goal of a social democrat, where there’s a super strong welfare and social safety net, but still capital and big businesses.

The assumption from Anarchists is achieving that Social Democrat ideal is impossible under capitalism, as it would remove almost all of the leverage corporations have to exploit their workers, leaving little profit left for them, and thus inciting them to revolt, like they almost did during The Business Plot in response to FDR’s new deal finally giving the working class some room to breathe.

Yes, and charging below that would be a deviation from the norm.

Dense community housing would still be optimal for cities and towns, especially if housing was a human right, as it’s much more efficient and uses less resources. They would still exist as cooperative housing, where each tenant owns a share of the complex. Those already exist today quite successfully, they’re just not the norm as it doesn’t generate profit for a landlord or realestate investor.

Individual houses would likely still exist in the countryside, though I think it would be pethaps unreasonable to expect communal maintainence if they are remote, in which case it would likely just be up to the individual using it.

The ethical option would be to give the deed to the friends after the mortgage is paid off.

I agree, that sounds fair.

I suppose after the house is paid off, they could switch to pay the equivalent percentage they were paying for the mortgage, toward property taxes and utilities instead.

If you’re not charging them above what is required to cover their share of the mortgage, then that’s not immoral at all.

If you take out a loan to purchase the apartment, then have your friends pay just enough rent to pay off the loan without attempting to profit yourself (perhaps a small amount extra to cover any recorded time spent in administration responsibilities, for a reasonable hourly rate). After the nortgage is paid off, you could then give them the deed. That would not be immoral at all, and would, IMHO, be a net good, as you’d be rejecting the profit incentive and giving your friends a very rare opportunity.

An alternative to a landlord is for the apartment complex to be collectively owned by the tenets, making it a housing coop. That would mean any big expenses would be dustributed amongst everyone, making it more nsnageable. Collectively owned buoldings tend to recieve more maintainence, as the tenents have an incentive to maintain the value of their property.

Alternatively, those apartment complexes could be cooperatively owned, cutting out the landlord without any loss.

Your stocks do not deprive anyone else of an essential human need, while owning and renting out a house you do not personally use artificially deprives another of buying that house, which further raises housing prices, making an essential human need, an investment vehicle.

Using a different analogy, if you lived in an area with scarce water resources, but happened to purchase land with a particularly abundant spring, you could then profit handsomely by selling that water to the thirsty at an extremely high rate, exploiting the human need for water, and depriving those who cannot afford it in exchange for your own enrichment.

Ideally houses that aren’t used by anyone would be cared for collectively, and would be free for anyone to use for as much time as they need it.

That assumes that housing is a human right, and that adequate housing exists with a small surplus in most societies (and considering there are more empty homes than there are homeless in the US right now, that would be a feasible thing to achieve were capitalism not creating intense conflicts of interests).

The answer you receive will vary based on which political ideology you ask.

I will answer from the perspective of an anarchist.

Your Aunt and her Husband are not committing the greatest of evils, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re a part of a bigger problem, one that they themselves would not even perceive, and in fact would have strong personal incentives not to grant legitimacy were it explained to them.

Anarchists, or libertarian socialists, are generally against the concept of private property in all forms. This is not to be confused with personal property, which are things you personally own and use, such as the house you live in, your car, your tools.

Private property is something you own to extract profit from simply by the act of owning it, and necessarily at the deprivation and exploitation of someone else.

By owning those townhomes that they themselves do not live in, they are able to exploit the absolute basic human requirement for shelter in an artificially restricted market, and thus acquire surplus value in a deal of unequal leverage.

You could argue they are justified due to offering below market rates, taking on the financial risk of owning and maintaining the property, and fronting the capital to own the investment.

But the issue is: their choice to become landlords is what in fact creates the conditions for which they can then offer solutions in order to claim moral justification.

For if we consider if landlordism were completely abolished, and people were only allowed to own homes they personally use, it would result in an insane amount of housing stock to flood the market, causing housing prices to plummet. This would in turn allow millions of lower income people to be able to afford a home and pay it off quickly, allowing them to actually build wealth for the first time instead of most of it going to pay off rent (remember, your aunt charging below market is the exception, not the norm).

Most humans would much rather pay off a small mortgage on a non-inflated home themselves, instead of paying off someone else’s artifically inflated mortgage and then some.

But that’s all assuming we have a housing market still. In an ideal Anarchist society, housing would be a human right, and every human would have access to basic shelter and necessities of life, like was enacted for a short time in Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.

modern digital thermal scopes can often record to internal storage.

I put together a large list of categorized Linux compatible games, many of which are multiplayer, all if them are free, and each entry lists their open-source status. Hopefully y’all can find some good ones there for this group :)

Personally, I suggest OpenSpades

There’s nothing from a user experience currently that makes bluesky bad, it’s just that since it doesn’t seem to actually support decentralization, there’s nothing to stop it from eventually getting just as bad as twitter over time due to profit incentive. Misskey/mastodin are the only microblogging platforms that are truly immune from corporate manipulation and enshittification, which would mean it’s a long term solution (that while imperfect, can only get better).

XMPP has quite good encryption nowadays, and at least according to our sysadmin, it’s quite a bit lighter on system requirements. I think there was also some concerns about the matrix foundation being pretty corporate oriented.

My instance uses a self hosted XMPP for mods/Admins to communicate quickly, which works quite well.