freemcflurry
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User ID: 106
This has some excerpts from Kevin Purcell's book. There used to be a more complete version online but I can't find it any more.
https://www.dismantleacademia.org/life-and-death-in-philadelphia.html
It's the story of his childhood in Philly where it started as a the type of streetcar suburb that everyone on youtube wants to build these days. It's walkable, there are parks and playgrounds and groups of neighborhood kids stay out playing baseball until well after dark. As black people start to move in it becomes less and less safe. At first they have to go to the parks in groups to stay safe and then later it's not possible to go there at all. There are gangs, break ins and eventually murder. His parents sell their house at a loss to move the kids somewhere safe.
freemcflurry
3d ago
There was this one from this 2000s: https://youtube.com/watch?v=liKnJ-ejztw
So at least sometimes they did.
freemcflurry
8d ago
He'd pay a small amount of income taxes on his Uber earnings, assuming he exceeded the standard deductible. But Uber doesn't provide health insurance to drivers and since he was over 65 he was very likely on medicare and the cost of that would exceed anything an Uber driver would ever pay in.
freemcflurry
8d ago
There's no way the Canadian people can come out ahead here though. Absolute best case is that the sponsor supports them and they never use any healthcare and the net benefit to society is zero (they contributed nothing and took away nothing). In every other set of circumstances it's a net negative because you have to pay for the old person and (in an alternate universe where immigration laws are enforced) pay to punish the sponsor. It's a "heads I lose, tails nothing happens" bet.
freemcflurry
8d ago
newly-arrived grandparents
It's insane to me that this is allowed. The justification for immigration is that these are net contributors and we need them to prop up the social safety net but instead actually we're letting in people who will never work again (or not for long) and will almost immediately start collecting benefits. There was a similar deal a while back in the US when a Pakistani Uber driver was killed after his car was hijacked by a couple of, um, youths. The guy was 66 years old and driving for Uber. He had only immigrated a few years previously. The citizens who fund this stuff in the US and Canada are getting fleeced. You work for 40 years and instead of getting to leave it to your kids it all gets sucked away to pay for people who just showed up and never contributed a dime.
freemcflurry
8d ago
If we were really going to be libertarians now I'd have some sympathy for that. In practice the Democrats only ever want more freedom on issues that will benefit groups they like (blacks and immigrants mostly) with things like open borders, getting rid of zoning etc. Everyone else gets a boot on their face with high taxes and totalitarian environmental regulations. I don't want regulations to be repealed only when they will hurt me but left in place in all other cases.
freemcflurry
14d ago
If you're already into paradox games you may as well try EU4, covers the entire planet for 400 years so it's pretty large in scale. Best way to get started is to buy the subscription for a month so you have all the DLC.
freemcflurry
14d ago
The Battle Barista.
freemcflurry
16d ago
Who is that in the video?
freemcflurry
16d ago
Evidence is a fuzzy thing. Toyota got mugged for millions because some old people stepped on the wrong peddle. Juries love people with dead relatives and they hate big corporations.
freemcflurry
18d ago
Those are often paid for by state or federal grants.
https://apnews.com/article/synagogue-security-federal-funds-worship-c687e3e7c15842fc51103479235cbf45
freemcflurry
21d ago
No, it's easier to ban meat if there is already an alternative. If there is no substitute then passing a ban is a much higher barrier. Lab grown meat is from the electric car playbook: make an inferior substitute to something people like, gaslight theme into thinking it's just as good and then ban the authentic version.
freemcflurry
27d ago
I can't really play new games any more, don't have the attention span. I cycle through RimWorld, Factorio, Slay the Spire and EU4 like I have for years. I think the last new one I picked up was Hades which was pretty good and critically it let you start playing the game within 2 minutes of launching it.
freemcflurry
27d ago
Is it just that they have more parties? If 22% of young people support AFD then presumably 78% of them support more left wing parties.
freemcflurry
29d ago
Did they spend a lot of time executing peasants for no reason? From everything I've read the complaints focussed on taxes, tithes and feudal dues. Louis XVI was barely even using letters de chachet to lock people up when the revolution happened, much less summary executions afaik.
freemcflurry
30d ago
I'm not saying you should necessarily, but if the plan is "accept X Slavic refugees to help beat Russia" then it's more effective if they're Russians instead of Ukrainians.
freemcflurry
30d ago
At the beginning of the conflict western countries accepted Ukrainian refugees on very generous terms but did not accept men fleeing the draft from Russia. Morally this feels right but practically it's completely backwards. If you want Ukraine to win you should only accept their children and old people. You should bribe able bodied Russian men between 18 and 30 to seek asylum which would deprive Russia of both soldiers and workers.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
I thought it depended on the place and time. The sugar producing colonies in the Caribbean were extremely profitable for example. And the Spanish got literal boatloads of silver out of their South and Central American colonies.But then you get into the scramble for Africa in the 19th century and a lot of those were prestige projects that never made any money for the mother country, with the Italians in Abyssinia being the the most egregious example.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
The tests weren't made public to protect trade secrets of the testing company unfortunately so I'm not sure.
I agree it might seem silly but I don't think that it would be racist or that you should get a $2 million pay out like in this case.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
But you don't know whether you can prove it or not until you end up in front of a judge. That's got to have some sort of chilling effect.
The other famous case recently was teachers in NYC schools. They proved that the test was fine to one judge and then lost on appeal and had to shell out $2 billion. So it's a pretty arbitrary standard that can go either way depending on the judge.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
Unfortunately I think she's not likely to pick up on your message and if she does it might just annoy her. And it might make you resentful if you're doing all this work and she's not getting the message and keeps putting on weight. As tough as it will be I think the only thing that has a chance of working is if you find some way to make your feelings clear to her. Maybe suggest couples counseling? Many women put a lot of stock in therapists so bringing it up in a quasi medical setting might take the sting out.
That said it can never hurt to look good.
Me too. Those two categories combined make up about 15% of federal spending. I could live without the rest of it.
If we reduced all federal taxes to 0% we could fund the roads and military with debt and cancel everything else. That would reduce the budget deficit by about 2/3.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
His two levers are to offer more aid or threaten to cut off aid. Both of those are a lot less severe than being invaded if Ukraine really wanted to end the war.
freemcflurry
1mo ago
What could Boris Johnson have possibly threatened Ukraine with that's worse than what the Russians are already doing? Is he going to nuke Kiev if they surrender?
Unless having bad customer service correlates with being a good doctor (House was right?) then it seems like it would still make sense to search for one with good reviews.
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