SwingingTheLamp

Armenia and Cambodia are screwed.

Remember who? I don't know who Farley Burke is or was.

e: Oh, Charly. I misheard. I will gladly honor the sacrifice of Ensign Charly Burke.

Yeah, so what? This is the natural evolution of online communities. It's a good thing. When the user base is small, we should have a few, non-specific channels/forums/communities/whatevers so that everybody is in the same place to talk to each other. Metaphorically, it's like sustaining a nuclear reaction: The fissile material has to be in close enough proximity so that the radiation (posts and comments) can strike more fissile material (other users) to keep the chain reaction going. In the past, I've criticized the urge to immediately atomize Lemmy into thousands of highly-specific communities, and indeed, most of them have withered away.

Once a particular topic starts to dominate a community, once it's reached critical mass, then it's time to fork it off into its own community. I don't think that's happened to !asklemmy@lemmy.world yet.

Oh, certainly not! True, all of the men I know now who wear bow ties regularly are gay, but not the guy I knew back when I was a high school senior. Y'know, good, solid, conservative Limbaugh listener. Had a girlfriend even—back home, while he was at college—you wouldn't know her. Real friendly, he'd invite me over to his apartment to talk computers, share his university Internet login password with me, that kind of thing. Yup yup. Totally. 110% straight.

Here's the crux of the difference of opinion: No, Pres. Harris would not have been talking about luxury hotels on the rubble of Gaza. Israel, however, has been talking about it for years. The U.S. President has very little influence over Israeli intentions, and whether the U.S. President talks about it sounds like an objection based on style rather than substance.

I think they’re this powerful right now because there are a lot of non-billionaires who are dumb enough to do whatever they’re told by them even if it’s not in their own best interest (or the rest of the world’s) at all.

And they always will be. The thing about one's own best interest is that it's self-interest, always at least parochial, if not outright selfish (as in the US). If the people comprising a billionaire's private security force can obtain a better standard of living, more power, more perks, for themselves and their families than they could by cooperating with the rest of the proles in a (let's be honest) speculative venture, even if it did pay off? Well, some people will take the billionaire's offer, at least enough people to comprise a private security force.

I get the thinking here, but past bubbles (dot com, housing) were also based on things that have real value, and the bubble still popped. A bubble, definitionally, is when something is priced far above its value, and the "pop" is when prices quickly fall. It's the fall that hurts; the asset/technology doesn't lose its underlying value.

Indeed, it's not really a flavor, but that sensation is called astringent.

It's the other way around. Residential properties are used as investment vehicles, because it's profitable. It's profitable because the prices are high and rising. The prices are rising because of the housing crisis, which is caused by lack of supply. Lack of supply is caused, in large measure, because of restrictive zoning.

If there were a glut of housing on the market, prices would crater, and it wouldn't be profitable, investors wouldn't buy residential properties. They could still try to buy up all of the properties, and create artificial scarcity that way, but the idea is to make a profit, not just collect residential property for the sake of having it. As soon as they started selling or letting properties in large numbers, supply would rise and prices drop again.

It's the artificial scarcity mandated by law that's driving the high prices. This explanation is confirmed by many cities, like mine, that have a very low rate of private equity ownership, and still have a housing crisis.

You are correct. I forgot to qualify my statement to say that it applies on city streets. Apologies, I can't find the YouTube video that discussed the study right now.

Hi-viz doesn't do anything. There's no statistical difference in casualty rates between people wearing it and people not. Consider that drivers routinely plow into the back of emergency vehicles stopped by the side of the highway, completely wrapped in hi-viz, reflective material, and with million-lumen flashing lights. This is victim-blaming nonsense.

How DARE people move around the landscape in the traditional way that humans have been locomoting for tens of thousands of years without considering YOUR needs!

(That is, if you can't see what's in front of your car, you need to slow down.)

e: typo