Not quite. From what I’ve been able to gather, housing in the postwar era was made fast and cheap to ensure everyone could have a place in the immediate aftermath of the devastation. Then, in the sixties, they came up with better building standards, more regulations, and evaluated the lifespan of typical housing. I don’t remember the exact number, but they determined a conservative lifespan to be like 20-30 years. With this in mind, they started to constantly update building codes to make new construction safer and more resilient to natural disasters. So, what would end up happening is old homes stay cheap because not many people want to buy at the end of its life, and it’s less expensive to build new to modern standards than rehabbing an old home. Side note: recently the old estimated lifespan was re-evaluated and they determined that housing lasts, again I don’t remember the exact number, closer to 50 years.

Now, while all this is happening they have a different relationship to zoning than, say, America. What’s in America? It’s mostly single use zoning. They have a lot more mixed use zoning that allows for building housing where it would be illegal in America like commercial zones or light industrial zones. Side note: America used to build like that too until suburbs were invented and pushed as THE solution to housing people in our postwar era. Think of the older parts of towns with stores on the ground level and housing being 1-4 floors above them. With this freedom to build, they have built way more housing than is actually needed and in places people want to live.

The last point, which was already mentioned above, is that they don’t view housing as an investment. It’s a place where you raise your family, you store your belongings, and sleep. You don’t buy a home with the idea of selling it to make a ton of money in a few years or even decades. With that, there’s no incentive to buy up housing and leave it sitting empty for the right time to maximize the investment. It’s sort of like we view cars. Cars don’t typically increase in value, and the ones that do it’s because they’re rare, beautiful, or historic. MFers are out here trying to sell the housing equivalent of an '80s Ford Fiesta at 2024 fully loaded Toyota Camry or even Mercedes S Class prices.

Summary: Housing has a shorter lifespan, can be built almost anywhere through more mixed zoning, and it isn’t an investment, it’s just a place to live.

Go Japan! Hell yeah!

Tally Gotliv, a Likud MP, told MEE: “We need to occupy the complete land of Israel. There are no innocent people in Gaza. Everybody who has refused to leave the north is a collaborator.”

Monday’s event took place against the backdrop of an escalating military assault on northern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remained trapped and subjected to daily air strikes.

The assault came amid reports from Israel that the military has started to implement a strategy known as “the Generals’ Plan” which called for the ethnic cleansing of the north of the territory, and condemnation by aid groups who warned last week that northern Gaza is being “erased”.

This is their plan. They’re doing it right now. I can’t imagine how folks will deny this, I guess they’ll move onto justify.

I think sentiment is changing. Recently I’m noticing more US mainstream media using language like

Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago

It’s a small thing, it’s better than the softer language they would normally use. But, damn, it’s not enough.

How naive of me to think “That can’t be a real article. Surely they wouldn’t publish themselves saying they crushed living and dead people by the hundreds with an armored bulldozer. They must know how abhorrent, insane, and shocking that sounds. Right?”

No. Of course the worst excesses of violence which had never crossed my mind are being done by the IDF. I’m… I have no words.

This isn’t exactly what the previous comment was talking about, but it’s similar. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers and there’s something similar going on Florida too https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1242236604/florida-economy-immigration-businesses-workers-undocumented

These are my go-to articles anytime the subject of undocumented workers comes up. Personally, I think we would go back to the old model. If I remember correctly, the 1930s was when immigration started to be severely restricted; but, before that, temporary workers would come up for a season of employment and then go back home. All of it was done legally. It wasn’t until immigration restrictions were enacted that there was an incentive to stay and move their families into the US.

This is exactly what I’ve been thinking lately. And on top of already existing laws, make new ones that criminalize currently normal things. Hell, the South enacted new laws after slavery ended and only applied them against Black Americans. Why stop there, why not increase penalties for certain crimes from misdemeanors to felonies and make 3 felony convictions mean a life sentence?

The only part I disagree with is the for profit prisons part. 8% of prisoners are in private prisons which is 8% too many, but 92% are in publicly funded and operated prisons. And those publicly operated prisons sell the services of their trapped slave labor for so many more things than stamping license plates or road work. Not only do they fight fires and clean up after natural disasters, they also make kit (armor, helmets) for the armed forces, they pick crops, they manufacture white goods (washing machines, refrigerators)(I can’t find a link specifically mentioning appliances and I’ll update this it I find one), and so much more. Shoot, some cities’ budgets would be blown up if not for the availability of publicly held prison slaves.

Here you go. Looks like it’d be about the eastern third to one half of the country getting high speed rail in just 10 years. That’s amazing.

I really miss the Voter Handbook with all the information I could need about laws or propositions, the candidates in the ballot, where and how to register, and I think where to vote.

The full text of laws and props are present along with calculated 10 year cost, and a statement from proponents and a rebuttal to that statement from opponents, and a statement from opponents accompanied by proponents’ rebuttal. For candidates, they submit statements which are usually a brief biography and things they say they support and oppose, why they’re running, and whatever else they think is important. There’s a sample ballot showing exactly what you’ll see on election day. It tells you how to register and where to go, about provisional ballots, mail-in ballots. It was such a fantastic resource.

Here in Texas, it isn’t easy finding information about the candidates besides their names and party. For any laws, good luck finding anything except for the name the dang thing. The plain text will be buried in a messy state website with nothing else presented. It’s like they don’t want us to know a damn thing about who or what we’re voting for.

That was- I cannot convey just how insane that was using spoken language. I think I’d need to smash a watermelon, aim a sandblaster filled with crushed seashells and desiccated termites at it, start blasting and let my intuition do its thing until something resembling art was produced. Possibly while doing interpretive dance and making primal guttural grunting noises. That would get me pretty darn close to properly communicate my thoughts on what I saw. Thank you.

This

Rundle acknowledged that studies have raised concerns about the technology’s accuracy and fairness. “You cannot rely on this for probable cause alone,” she said.

However, her office said it could not commit to reviewing all 186 cases identified by The Post. In an email, Chief Assistant State Attorney Kathleen Hoague said “it is more important for us to work on a policy moving forward.”

and this

Despite a New Jersey appeals court ruling that Arteaga had a right to information about his AI match, the NYPD, which conducted the search for police in New Jersey, declined to provide it. Prosecutors in New Jersey reduced the charges against Arteaga as a result.

By then, Arteaga had spent four years in jail awaiting trial. Though he maintains his innocence, he said he pleaded guilty to second-degree robbery to get back to his two children. Caitlin Mota, a spokeswoman for the Hudson County prosecutor, declined to comment.

got me. My disappointment with the legal system continues to grow, seemingly, endlessly.

I do wonder, though, what they’d do when

crops are left rotting in fields and houses and buildings aren’t rebuilt after disasters because all undocumented immigrants have been reported;

after LGBT+ folks hide themselves and “fit in” for safety like it’s the 1950s;

when there are masses of unemployed young people born after abortion and contraception are outlawed living in a nation unequipped to handle them;

after the education and environmental protection systems cease to exist and the country falls behind in every metric of a developed nation from an absence of knowledge pools and poison in everything.

What will they do after creating an environment that fosters stability, innovation, and a thriving society like we saw in the mid-2010’s Middle East. It sure sounds like a great and prosperous future, doesn’t it. Right?..

Here’s a list of states that have effectively banned adult films websites by requiring sites to verify a user’s age:

The states are:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Nebraska
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia

How age is verified:

While the specifics vary between states, in general the new laws mean users are required to provide a pornographic website with a copy of their ID to obtain access or by sending it to a third party.

Project 2025 and “adult conent”

“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology … is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

What does this mean? Well it seems to mean that the far right want to define a book that features a same-sex couple as illegal pornography and throw the author of the book and any distributors of the book in prison. It seems to mean that a book talking about sexual violence could be classified as porn and banned. It seems to mean that talking about the existence of trans people would be “porn” and criminalized. In short: anything that goes against normative gender roles and hierarchies, or interrogates those hierarchies, could be considered obscene and criminalized.

These are the kinds of laws they have in theocracies. These were the kinds of laws they had in the Soviet Union. This is where they want to take us. And that is where we will go if we let them.

There’s a neat post I came across some time ago showing how few votes can still win the electoral college.

Comment link

Direct link to website

Turns out, though unlikely, it is possible to win the election with less than 25% of votes through the magic of the electoral college and disproportionate representation.

Here’s a fun thing about student loans: we have stupidly high tuition thanks to CA governor Reagan and president Nixon wanting to reduce the number of students protesting against the Vietnam War. Of course the excuse they used was to balance the budget. This is just one more in a long line of things that Reagan and Nixon ruined in this country for decades.

https://12ft.io/https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

Also, the real reason school vouchers were pushed was to backdoor segregation after Brown v Board of Education desegregated schools.

https://12ft.io/https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Here’s the original since 12ft.io looks a little weird on mobile. https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Here’s a fun article about how different people are treated differently for the same crime. You gotta love the good ol’ U.S. of A.

White Trump voters get probation for intentional election fraud while Black women get years in prison for being given bad information by the State.

Nope! Everyone knows undocumented immigrants are buying ALL the houses, they’re taking ALL the jobs, and getting ALL the public benefits (except for the benefits welfare queens get), they’re bringing in and doing ALL the drugs, they’re committing ALL the crime, and they’re voting in ALL elections. It’s true, I saw it on the TV. They’re busy, I don’t know how they have the time to do all of that.

You know, it seems kind of ridiculous when typing it all out like that. Were the TV people lying to me? Can’t be; now excuse me, I’m going to tell my employees to keep working after clocking out and use the savings to buy several blocks of housing and rent them out at high rates. Their poor time management is not my problem.

That’s certainly possible, but I think they’re afraid of Trump and the Trump base. Whenever a Republican goes against Trump, he calls them out and his base picks up the message and goes on the attack. Not only are their rivals in primaries supported, they’re also threatened with violence. And, unsurprisingly, even when they’re on the receiving end of Trump’s ire, they will still vote for him:

The fallout “was like a tsunami,” Rogers said in an interview. “There’s people that actually worship Trump like a deity.” He still plans to vote for Trump, dismissing Democrats as too far left.

They’ll call everyone else a radical leftist Marxist, yet they’ll never reflect ‘Did we shift too far to the right?’ It’s such that, I believe, a copy of Ronald Reagan would be labeled a communist by the current Republican party.

Especially since it’s legal in California. Like, c’mon guys, what the hell are y’all doin’?! What’s Michael Jordan saying “Just stop it” when you need him.

Right?! And we can’t be sure he even smelled the weed he claimed to smell. The other things could be verified by being photographed or requesting documents. But the marijuana smell, the thing that probably made the warrant approvable at all, can never be verified. I wouldn’t be surprised if he made it up; hell, they do it during traffic stops so why not for a search warrant.