I feel like the middle-aged guy that I am, because it keeps suggesting lawncare, forging (“can I melt and cast himilayan salt rocks?” He did, it was fantastic), silly engineering (“I’m going to see if I can 3d print a rifle that will make a nerf dart break the speed of sound…”), dnd (I don’t even play dnd, and i still enjoy the videos), and Jon Stewart. And… a weird mix of civil rights people showing bad behavior of police, and police supporter showing bad behavior of people (honestly both are entertaining, because police are awful and so are people).

But it doesn’t even try for that right-wing bullshit.

If I had the choice of the Yaris or another car, I would choose the other car. Because driving that car would make me at least low-level angry for the time I had it.

The Yaris ads did this to me. I got so pissed off by their “It’s a car” commercials that I absolutely despised the product.

I want this product (not the 3d printed parts) with a bluetooth connection to build into my retired flight helmet (I have flown in military helicopters most of my career, but am old and grounded now).

Edit: responded to post instead of comment

I appreciate the write-up, thank you! I feel like a lot of this is semantic differences. I’ve always thought of socialism as any public funds used specifically to help citizens (e.g. social security, medicare, unemployment, UBI, etc) and Communism to be the public owning and running the means of production, and distributing goods thereof, and the stateless, classless, moneyless society to be the ideal utopia it aspired to (similar to Star Trek). From your comment, I see that what I call Communism, you call Socialism (which explains a lot of confusion from discussions in the past with self-described Communists I’ve known), and the nameless Star Trek post-scarcity system you would call Communism.

Do you think it is possible to slow-roll the transition peacefully, though? If, for example, instead of the government bailing out industries, they bought out industries on the cheap, slowly growing and monopolizing like Google or Amazon have? Or do you think the rich would simply block that from happening?

So I will admit that I am ignorant of a method of attaining Communism that isn’t at the end of a rifle, and thus authoritarian by nature (and fully accept that, to a degree, Capitalism is also at the end of a gun, but typically less overt, or often directed without instead of within). The only nations I’ve seen flying the red flag have appeared highly authoritarian (and I’m not going to get drawn into a “USSR and PRC aren’t/weren’t authoritarian, and DPRK is actually a utopia!” discussion, so if that’s the direction this is going, let me know and I’ll politely see my way out).

I’ve seen in the lower comments that Socialism would be used as a gateway to Communism, but I am unclear about the transition from “everybody’s basic needs are met via taxation and distribution” to “personal property is abolished” (as I understand Communism to mean, please correct me if I’m wrong). Plenty of European countries have had (for the west), strong seemingly socialist systems, but they don’t seem to be deliberately angling toward Communism, for example.

So I’m curious what this peaceful Capitalist to Communist timeline would look like.

I thought they accidentally got rid of Black Friday with their anti-DEI measures?

I’ve told my kids that I don’t condone intiating violence, but if someone else starts getting physically violent first, feel free to fuck them up (provoking them will still get my kid in trouble, though).

However, if the institution itself fails to protect the kids, and my kid told me they and their friends were doing this on purpose, I’d take the day off for their suspension and take them to the arcade and a movie or something. And then I’d have a very serious talk with their principal.

Isn’t that the bad guy’s rationale in Collateral?

Am I out of the loop? Why the fuck would we be invading Venezuela?

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I’m pretty burnt out on bubbles. The message is… not exactly something I agree with, but is an interesting take I find worth consideration (good to challenge your biases, right?).

But the memes are such low-quality it’s like I’m viewing “The Right Can’t Meme” but from the Tankie side. They aren’t funny. They aren’t thought-provoking. They’re just cringe-inducing. And I’m not really into that vicarious embarassment type of comedy.

Guys, this is nonsense ragebait. Move on.

BC seems like it has more in common with the rest of the west coast than Alberta.

a lot of older people downsize when their kids move out,

And we plan to, when both kids move out. But just one kid, with one five years behind the other? But anyway, isn’t moving the guest space to the main house section and renting out the apartment essentially “downsizing” to a three-bedroom anyway? Either way, the house remains a two-unit house. If somebody wants a temporary living situation by themselves or with one partner, what is wrong with them renting an apartment from me?

Look, I get it, the system is set up to screw people over to get big corpos big money. If somebody is living in apartment for a decade, that is a fucked up situation. But where I live there are military single young’uns wanting to get out of barracks for a year or two before their tour is done and they transfer, or regularly traveling nurses or others who come seasonally for work who aren’t in a position to buy a house and wouldn’t want to.

This whole “no good landlords” reeks of the same mentality as “no good lawyers.” Yes, there are a lot of greedy, unscrupulous (or overly adversarial) lawyers, but there are situations where having a lawyer is really important and there are plenty of good ones for those situations. The problem is a system that allows and encourages the profession to be abused.

First, that doesn’t solve the problem because then somebody else has two units in one building.

Second, downsize… from a four bed to a three bed? Not sure what sense that makes. Our needs won’t have changed dramatically.

Another piece that I didn’t mention is that I’m in the military, in a place with 3-year tours (so fairly temporary), and the young single people who arrive usually don’t wany anything too permanent, and are not in a position to buy. But I do know what their allowance for housing it, so I would be able to charge less than their allowance for housing, meaning they would get money out of the deal (and stuff is expensive here, so I’m not sure how they live anyway), and I get a respectful, reliable tenant (and we could offer home-cooked meals to whoever stays).

I know it’s a unique circumstance, and an exception hardly disproves the rule, but I don’t think “there’s no such thing as a good landlord” is a true blanket statement.

there is no such thing as a good landlord.

Okay, I’ll bite. I just bought a 4-bed/3-bath (actually 4 bathrooms, but bathroom math made it “3-bath”) because we are a family of four in an expensive tourist spot and wanted a guest bedroom for family and visitors. It just so happened one bed and a 3/4 bathroom is in an attached 1-bedroom apartment with its own kitchen and living room.

So when I retire, and my oldest is out of the house to college, we are thinking we could rent that particular part (at a very reasonable rate to people we know). It is part of the house, so I can’t sell it separately. So the choice is be a landlord, or don’t offer housing (I suppose I could make it an AirBnB and make even more money, but this area is already fucked for housing for that reason).

So if there is no such thing as a good landlord, what would you recommend in a situation like this? Let someone live there for free? Then they’d be costing me money. Don’t rent it out? AirBnB?

Technically an amendment to the constitution, the third section of the 14th amendment, that nobody who has engaged or helped an insurrection can hold office in the government or military (except with a 2/3 majority of congress).

Yeah, there was already established law to prevent him from running for president. It got ignored. He ran anyway. He won anyway. He became president anyway.

Any of these legal mechanisms only work if they are upheld.