They also usually rent out equipment, like carpet cleaners, post-hole diggers, large drain snakes, etc. And relatively cheap for the one time possibly in your lifetime you need to use it.

There have been thousands of far-right Americans who have, in some manner or another, been collaborating with Russia. It doesn’t make it reasonable or appropriate for Russia to invade the US, another sovereign nation (like Ukraine).

The reality is because of the lived experiences of people based on the color of their skin, people are different based on skin color. You’re right that it’s a stupid reason to think differently of people, but if people had been mistreated for many generations based on the color of their hair, and there was still a good chunk of people that something so arbitrary was somehow important, then you would want to approach a person with that hair color with understanding of that history and current struggle.

So why does it matter? Because 100 years ago, their great-great-grandparents had any wealth they managed to build up taken from them, 70 years ago their great-grandparents were kept boxed into separate, substandard areas, and 50 years ago their grandparents were kept from being able to buy homes outside low-income, substandard housing areas, and 30 years ago their parents were told it was their fault for growing up in crime-filled, poor areas with under-funded schools. And the whole time police have continuously treated them as that same substandard, poor, likely-criminal, so they have disproportionately been put in jail or grown up with one parent in jail. This obviously doesn’t apply to everyone, but it’s enough to lead people to treat them differently, either because they presume (until otherwise established) that they are poor, poorly educated, and likely criminal (by basically racist assholes) or with a certain amount of respect for their presumed struggles.

Taking it to an extreme, if a person comes across a very old person with a number tattooed in block letters on their forearm, they will respond one of two ways: with respect and concern for their presumed struggles and trauma, or with irrational hatred (by neo-nazis). Judging or “separating” a person for a barely noticeable tattoo that they didn’t even put on themselves may seem arbitrary, but only if you ignore the entire history that makes them different.

I’ll add that this is practically impossible to replicate in adult life until you get into a “retirement community”.

Small disagreement (that shows how possible it is if effort was made to make it happen): I’m in the military, live in military housing (sizes of which are largely based on family size, up to a certain point… 3 bedroom for my wife, 2 kids and me, but 4 bedroom for the families with 6 goddamn kids omigod I can’t imagine), walk to work and the galley (cafeteria-type place for meals, including for dependents), am surrounded by families with similar lifestyles and kids, have two workout spaces on base (as well as access to off-base gyms and pool through my work), and am a short walk to downtown with plenty of entertainment (and most decent sized military bases have similar situations on base itself).

So it’s possible, you just have to sign your body and will away. Or, like, convince a developer to make a civilian equivalent you can just buy into, like an uber-HOA.

Gotta launch the arrows at the climax, too, for maximum effect.

My question was less about how doable it is, and more… if you can’t afford to buy a house, how can you afford to pay rent (and thus someone else’s mortgage plus a little extra)?

The last place I lived, I could afford my mortgage but I wouldn’t have been able to afford to rent an equivalent house. Hence my confusion.

I know this wasn’t your point, but I’ve been confused on a particular point for awhile:

buying a house is simply out of reach unless you have dual income and it better be nearly six figure dual income…

Just the general idea of it being impossible to afford to buy a house. And don’t get me wrong, the prices on houses have gotten ridiculous! At the same time, we talk about landlords buying houses and charging exorbitant rent (suggesting at the very least more than what they pay).

So if rent is more than the mortgage, insurance, etc, then how is it impossible to buy a house if it is possible to rent (an equivalent home)? Is it the down payment (if any)? Costs involved in purchasing? Because it seems like month to month it would be cheaper.

I say this as someone who has rented and owned, and owning felt significantly cheaper.

(Full disclosure, I’m in the military, so I had access to a VA loan… though not really sure what that did for me except maybe allow 0% down… if other people are absolutely required to put up a percentage then I can definitely understand it).

A president who wants what is best for his people, seeks out the smartest man on the planet, and puts him in charge of the most challenging problem facing the country?

Yes. I want president Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho as president.

But if you wanted to do something about it: these weapons come from this country and they have to get there in trucks traveling on roads to ports that load them on ships.

We are discussing voting, though. That’s a bit tangential, because you can vote or not vote and still commit acts of… resistance…

And it’s not like there’s not a value to making genocide come with electoral consequences…

If you otherwise would have voted Dem against the Republicans, who are as bad or worse when it comes to the specific issue you’re punishing the Dems for, you are hurting one group committing genocide by helping one who commits and wants to commit even more genocide.

All under the mistaken belief that by refusing to vote for the group you would otherwise vote for, you will get them to move Left. But if the Dems lose to the VERY right wing party, if the voting shows that Americans favor more right-leaning policies, they would move to gain the votes of the people who actually voted.

The reality is, refusing to vote is still a choice. As long as you are an adult who can legally vote in the US election, you are partly responsible for the results of the election. You don’t get to wash your hands of it. Choosing to abstain because you don’t want to partipate out of moral self-righteousness is saying your soapbox is more important than the lives affected by your choices, from the Palestinians to the Ukrainians, immigrants to LGBTQ. Nobody is more important than your ability to say “I didn’t vote for a party that commit genocide.”

So what are the other choices?

Oh, we have the military superpower. We’re constantly putting it on display. We’re basically a giant weapons and war factory. When we go down, it won’t come from the outside (except in the form of cyber attacks and misinformation campaigns).

Though I could see it in a few decades. Russia was a powerful body full of rot. We’re a powerful body with an infection. If the authoritarians win, they’ll replace competent people in key positions with unqualified party-loyal yes men, and that will start the rot.

Do you need to be an -ian? Like, if you like the teachings of Ghandi, or Socrates, or Marcus Aurelius, you don’t have to call yourself a Ghandian, or a Socratian, or an Aurelian. You just agree with their teachings.

I feel like you’re just making a dig on Christians, and it’s not like a lot of them don’t deserve it, but what you’re talking about isn’t a religion. You don’t need an -ian to like a philosophy.

Does anybody know what this said?! I’m having the same problem!

Edit: nevermind, I figured it out.

My parents were wonderful, so I have no real complaints, but my father had a weird quirk. Tools, equipment, whatever that he had interest and purchased himself were “his.” I mean, obviously, but he would use the possessive when referring to those things.

“You have to prime my lawnmower first before you try to start it.” “Go and get my ladder.” Never the ladder, always my ladder. I never questioned it (because I didn’t care), but when I was a teenager I started noticing it and it was odd. Like he was establishing that the lawn mower or the ladder or whatever didn’t belong to the household, they were his. And nothing seemed to get him worked up more than a neighbor borrowing something and taking more than a day or so to return it.

Look, I completely agree with the general sentiment, but if you conflate the current illegal theft of agreed-upon and earned wages with what workers deserve to be paid, it doesn’t help the latter argument, it just confuses the former.

This type of thing is “defund the police” all over again, where the intention is to transfer funds from the police to social services specialized in situations the police shouldn’t be handling in the first place, and then got conflated with the idea of abolishing police. And while the former would have, it seemed, broad support (even among a lot of police who felt ill-equipped and trained to deal with every kind of emergency), the latter immediately turned off a significant portion of people, and conflating the two hurt the entire movement.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have a serious focus on wages increasing with profitability, I’m saying don’t use the terminology of a separate problem that needs to be fixed and could have broad support right now.

I suppose. I’m far more likely to die in a helicopter crash. Never been shot at, nor have just about anybody I’ve worked with. The only people who have gone to a war zone in the past couple decades were people who specifically requested it.

Though I have worked with a few who survived helicopter crashes (five, between two crashes), so definitely not without its dangers. That’s the specific job I chose, though. Plenty of jobs in the Coast Guard with paper cuts or oven-related burns as the most danger they’ll experience.

So… I’m not shilling for the military, but…

Coast guard gets 30 days of leave, 3 months of paternity leave, and unlimited sick days.

Just saying.

Edit: to be clear, US Coast Guard.

You’re looking at it all wrong. It’s like having an 8-man highly coordinated platoon with a brilliant commander and amphibious capabilities.

Glockodile ain’t got shit.

I’ll be honest, with the exception of “Keep Us Connected” I absolutely hated the musical episode… except the first time they mentioned that it had affected a Klingon vessel. And then I powered through in the hopes of seeing Klingon musical time, and when it happened, it redeemed the whole thing for me. Better than I could have hoped.

I imagine it’s something along the lines of calling people at companies who her family knows. I just assume when rich people say nonsense like that, it’s just networking or nepotism that normal people don’t have access to.