alvvayson

RIP Navalny.

I remember him flying back from Germany to Russia after the poisoning. Watching Ricky & Morty with his wife.

Very brave, but incomprehensibly stupid.

If ever there was a person who had a justified claim to political asylum, it was him.

It's the same across the world.

The problem is that real estate has become an asset, a form of capital.

The only way out of this mess is to shift taxation away from labor and onto capital.

Higher property taxes (1-2%), that can be subtracted from income tax for working people are the answer.

Let's say Joe the Plumber and Elon the Muskrat both have an income of $100K and pay an income tax of $25K.

Joe owns one property worth $1M that he lives in and pays 2% tax on it, $20K. Which gets subtracted from the $25K income tax, meaning he effectively pays $5K income tax + $20K property tax = $25K combined property and income tax. Pretty sweet deal.

Elon owns 20 properties valued $500M collectively, which means $10M in property taxes. He officially resides in the most expensive $100M property and gets a $50K credit for that. The $50K is larger than the $25K, so he pays zero income tax.

Total tax is $10M.

This (or something like it) is the system the whole world must move towards if we want to simultaneously (a) lower taxes on working people (b) increase taxes on property and (C) not let working people lose economic power relative to the capitalists over the longterm.

The middle class has to outsmart the owning class if we want our children to remain middle class.

A megagram is 1000 kg, by definition. It's symbol is Mg.

In metric countries, we just use the word "ton" as shorthand/slang for it, since it is an easier term and was well known.

The only reason the US calls it a metric ton, is because they have archaic units (long and short tons).

Metric countries don't call it a metric ton.

If there is no easy way to own what you buy, then piracy becomes a moral obligation to preserve culture for future generations.

One thing about the greatest generation (my grandparents).

They saw some serious shit and were just legitimately happy we don't have to see that same shit.

Funny how the coddled Boomer generation is often much more critical of the young, when they had the easiest ride ever.

Is she still living rent free in their heads?

PSA: The old Opera guys have a new browser, Vivaldi.

It's quite nice and I use it daily.

The IPCC calculations were always criticized for being overly optimistic. Anyone following this debate knew that we would hit 1.5 C sooner rather than later.

We are definitely going to hit 3 degrees in our lifetime, once the melting tundras release their methane store.

Or, perhaps this article is just trying to sow discord between workers.

One of the old tricks in the books to make people despise unions is to take the very best union deals and sensationalize them, so that others hate the union out of jealousy.

Make it appear like the UPS driver is getting paid $170K for 32 hours of work, in a fully A/C'd vehicle on a short, easy route, starting pay, right out of college without a degree, four weeks of vacation yada yada.

When in reality, the $170K probably only kicks in if you take the absolute worst routes, worst shifts (weekend/night) with max overtime and even then, a third of it is retirement, insurance and health care contributions. And you only get the max after 10 or 20 years of service, if they didn't fire you as you increased.

Luckily the SCOTUS justices have no ties to the wealthy and are such excellent, impartial arbiters of blind justice.

I'm sure we all have full faith in them.

/s

Fully agree, but have to add:

Most of the aid to Ukraine is actually just money for the US defense industry and military. They get to donate old stuff without paying for disposal and get money to build new staff.

The ROI on supporting Ukraine is huge. The US is eliminating their second biggest threat without sacrificing a single soldier and only at the cost of donating old equipment.

Israel, on the other hand, is more of a leech on the USA. They don't provide much benefit and they cost a lot of money and soft power. Unlike Ukraine, they have a powerful lobbying group to get out much more from the USA than would ever be warranted if they didn't hijack US domestic politics.

This right here.

The TV comes with the cheapest removable feet, because VESA mounts exist.

Also Fox News.

And to be honest, the problem is much deeper.

America was founded on racism and slavery. The belief that white people are superior to brown and black people sits very deep with many Americans.

The enthouisam of those Americans to see Palestinian children die in Gaza is just vile and disgusting.

I really hope that the more progressive and enlightened Americans can figure out how to get rid of it.

Boomer elites will transfer their money to millennial elites.

These articles are an attempt to create an age based division.

The problem is, it never works. We all have parents and grandparents. Many of us have kids. And we tend to love them, regardless of social, economic or political differences.

Solidarity between generations is extremely solid and very hard to break.

These articles are just weak and failed attempts to sow discord.

TIL

RIP Seneca Village

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seneca_Village

So, it seems the Israeli government knew something was going to happen and then let it happen so that they could steal more land in response.

WTF is wrong with them.

I didn't expect small town USA to actually defund the police first.

If we are going to shed tears for the loss of culture, then the loss of Roman era bath houses and early Christian churches in Gaza is quite a bit more concerning to me than this painting.

Whenever communists or socialists gather, the tankies take over.

It's been like that since the past 100 years.

Let's not forget, this is exactly how we ended segregation in the US and Apartheid in South Africa.

Activism works. Let your voice be heard.

This is also why bad actors fill sites like reddit with bots, to try and control the public narrative.

But bots can't vote. Bots can't demonstrate. Bots can't boycott.

And also kudos to Lemmy and Lemmy mods for keeping this place relatively free from bots.

Americans flex about the weirdest things.

The most common truck, the most common phone, food from the most ubiquitous fast food joint, having merch from the most popular artists and sports teams.

Those are their biggest flexs.

Yeah buddy, great flex with your Taylor swift hoodie, Starbucks frap, iPhone 12 in your Ford F-150.

A right to self-defense is not a blank check to commit war crimes.

And the Western governments are being so hypocritical, that we are attracting the anger of a billion Muslims and others who sympathize with the Palestinians.

We are risking the safety of our own civilians by supporting the war crimes by an apartheid state. And it brings us no benefit, at all.

This madness has to stop. We should be neutral and stop supporting apartheid in Israel. Condemn terrorism by Hamas and war crimes by Israel, but stop supporting Israel and let them figure it out with their Arab neighbours.

By only condemning human rights violations by Hamas and tacitly approving bigger war crimes by Israel, our American and European leaders are choosing sides in a very obvious and hypocritical manner.

We are unnecessarily antagonizing a billion Muslims and making ourselves a target for terrorism by blindly supporting an unjust apartheid state.

I don't want to on the side of Hamas, but I also don't want to be on the side of Israel.

Why drag us into this?

If ever I would need to be killed, this would be my preferred method of leaving the earth.

Happy to see them try it, even though I am against executing people.

With hypoxia, you get euphoria prior to death. No suffering, no pain, just a little high to send you off this earth.

Wait until they hear about Bibi's plan to flood all the tunnels and drown the hostages.

They 100% think they are the good guys.

I know for sure, because they are my close family members.

Those who supported the KKK, Nazis, confederates, slave owners and apartheid leaders.

They all have in common that they saw themselves as the good guys and saw the other people as bad or naive.

This isn't state level. This is just an individual script kiddie.

State level actors will use LLM's to generate unique comments that seem to be human.

Eventually, state level actors will infiltrate Lemmy. Taking the technology that works on reddit and YouTube and making it work on Lemmy is not technically difficult.

We need to think about how to avoid such a scenario unfolding.

By unionizing.

To afford good lawyers in order to fight back, unions need money, which requires more members to pay union dues.

To keep politicians honest and to credibly threaten their electibility, unions need more members that can be politically mobilized.

It's a feedback loop. The more people unionize, the more powerful unions become and the more powerful unions become, the more they can protect people who unionize.

What a strange wya of fear mongering.

I the end, you can only have one life path. Choosing to do something always implies choosing to not do other things.

So it's an illusion to think that all those green paths are possible. Only one of them is possible.

So the Hamas oct 7 terror attack (which we all condemn) hit about 1/3 security forces and 2/3 civilians.

And Israel is hitting like 90% civilians in Gaza, and even civilians in the West Bank and Lebanon, where Hamas and Hezbollah are or were keeping low.

I always thought it was a terrorist organization against an Apartheid state.

But it seems to look more and more like a terrorist state against freedom fighters.

I, too, thought a lot about this.

Having kids now and reflecting on my childhood, it's extremely obvious that my parents truly had the best intentions and tried their best.

But they, too, are fallible and made mistakes.

Some of those mistakes were due to a lack of knowledge or bad advice they received. I think that nowadays, thanks to the internet, it's quite feasible to get much better advice. On the other hand, there is also a lot of disinformation.

I am optimistic that each generation will get better, because knowledge tends to accumulate and humanity tends to improve over time.

But perfection is still far away in a distant future.

Also, the constitution seems to require it.

You can't just ignore the constitution, even if you disagree or find it inconvenient.

It's the supreme law of the land and it must be followed.

Otherwise, California might as well send 10 senators to Washington. That would be fair, compared to Wyoming. And since we are ignoring the Constitution, what's an extra Senator or 8 between friends?

For the normies, I just saw someone recommend the wefwef app on reddit and now here I am.

It's 2023, people don't need to know how the fediverse works, they just need to know which app to install.

Content is nice. It feels like reddit of old.

This is going to be great.

Also, they curate the collection so that it doesn't get filled with low quality garbage.

Part of preserving and sharing knowledge is doing quality control.

"Life appointments" should really only extend to something like age 75, with yearly mental fitness tests after the social security age.

Yubikey also has usb-c versions with compliant plugs.

Buying a house is currently the backbone of middle class wealth.

If we want a society with a lot of renters and a strong middle class, then we will need to introduce strict rent controls.

Otherwise rent becomes a way for the owning class to exploit the working class.

Over the past 4 decades we have greatly loosened rent controls and promoted home ownership.

Either model can work, but most people seem to prefer owning their home rather than renting.

You people have to do your research and read his biography.

He wakes up at 5 AM, works 7 days a week and never takes a vacation.

He co-founded PayPal and that is where he earned all his money through hard work.

/s

(Yeah, he claims a lot of things, but others around him have told the truth, including his first wife. He had a lot of money as a kid from his dad and was never at risk of having to live an average middle class life)

He only got 25% of the vote and it's a consolidation of other right wing votes, so there is no right wing majority.

So it's not much different than earlier elections, but now it's concentrated in his party, making him the largest.

He will not be able to form a government without making concessions. And making concessions will lose him voters.

So yeah, interesting times, but I am not worried.

I hate landlords too, but killing six year old tenants in cold blood with a knife is - thankfully - very atypical landlord behavior.