America really needs to get back to building small scale housing such as onsie-twosie projects of singe level 4-plexes and 8-12 tenancy two story apartment buildings. The kind of stuff that can be both financed and built locally.

The finance industry has us twisted up because they only want to fund overly-large and expensive single projects; typically entire neighborhoods of outsized single family homes or enormous multi-building apartment complexes. That means those are the only projects getting financed which means that those are the projects getting built.

As the article notes, with examples, we’re already seeing that happen.

Zohran Mamdani seems a model for a kind of modernized Islam that I’d really like to see more of. I don’t know anything about him other than what’s available on Wikipedia and Social Media but I wish him well dealing with the problems of NYC and the churls on the other side of the aisle.

They’re likely a Canadian.

I should have known that I needed to make my joke more obvious.

Also, I can’t go back to reddit. I’ve been gone so long that they cancelled my passport.

What kind of low rent plebian is still using google? Ewww…

I thing getting rid of plastic sacks is good and we shouldn’t have ever had them anyway. They only came into being due to misguided and low information efforts to “Save Trees” by getting people to stop using paper!

Just ban plastic bags completely and bring back paper. Then charge for the paper bags if necessary in order to incent re-use.

They are re-usable but so were the old ones. A lot of people re-use these bags for various things like trash can liners.

Honestly this whole thing went off the rails when plastic bags were introduced. “Paper or Plastic” was an oft asked, and ridiculed, question a couple of decades ago.

The trees used in the manufacture of paper bags come from cultivated forests so nothing was really being saved PLUS if we’d stuck with paper bags it would have boosted recycling, specifically paper recycling.

Well intentioned interference is what created this mess. We should have left things as they were.

Some dipshit would try crushing it with their lifted diesel pickup to compensate for their tiny pp.

The far larger problem would be that every single charging cable would be stolen in 60 minutes or less.

But then again, that can be solved with a pair of concrete bollards. One on each side.

If they were going to be crushed it’d mostly be by EV drivers who can’t fucking park. Adding bollards could make opening the charging side door pretty interesting for some models. As an example if there were bollards in the setup in the picture then you’d be entirely unable to open the right rear door of the vehicle. For vehicles who have their charging port on the front ahead of the drivers door the driver themselves may be unable to exit.

Then you should have made that argument instead of stepping forward with the weak sauce you used.

Ah yes, the classic “lOOk aT tHE TOlEraNt LEfT” argument.

The person I was replying too didn’t mention Left or Right and neither did I.

It’s a false equivalency.

Silencing your ideological opponents is ethically and morally inferior and I don’t care what your supposed motivation is.

Yep, but I did it with that official statics and impeccable logic not hand-waving vagueness.

I also noticed that you didn’t answer my question.

Counter-Counterpoint

America right now is somehow simultaneously the best its ever been and enormously fucked up. I’m in my 50s and the amount of positive change, particularly social, I’ve experienced in my lifetime is incredible.

There are definitely problems that need solved, Gun Violence is one of them, but the story of America isn’t over. We’re in a period of turmoil right now but we’ll come out of it better than what we started. Just like we have before.

What makes you think that?

Haven’t you wondered why he’s all but stopped making videos on his primary channel? In January of 2024 he released a video where he openly says that he can’t make money like he used too so he’s dialed back his “main” channel and is instead focusing on his Barcade channel.

This isn’t the first time he’s done it either. Remember, he started off as the “TheiBookGuy” where you bought, fixed, and resold used Macs. When that stopped making money he quit doing it and launched a PC Repair channel and when that didn’t pay off he moved to RetroComputing.

Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy his historical retro type content. I also appreciate the projects and energy he contribute(s/d) to the Retro community but in a contest of altruism between The 8 Bit Guy and Perifractic there’s really no contests.

It ain’t gonna go well for the folks at home either. Your “tongue-in-cheek” comment is a thin veneer over brutality, violence, and death on a massive scale. Literally tens of millions of people.

It isn’t clever and it isn’t funny.

My ideological opponents are already silencing speech.

Uh huh. I can fire up Social Media and find endless content openly discussing the entire spectrum of Political,Cultural, and Economic beliefs. Nearly all of that is openly discussed on Mainstream Media as well. You aren’t being silenced.

As long as fascists exist they must be silenced.

Define “fascist”.

When they seize power, they will not do you the courtesy of allowing you to speak…

Which is precisely what you yourself are proposing. Congratulations, you are rubbing elbows with the very people you claim to despise.

If you do not tolerate dissent then you are ethically and morally inferior.

Uh huh, so Cops going door to door to take the guns away from the 24% of Black and 15% of Latinos who own them. I’m sure that would go super well! Excellent suggestion! /s

Censorship of speech is a powerful tool. Why, if you have the true conviction of your beliefs, would you fight with one hand behind your back?

Yes, but have you considered the outcome of everyone doing this?

Moreover, I’ve seen no evidence in my lifetime that letting my ideological opponents speak leads to positive results.

Mmmmm, yes. All ideological opponents should be silenced. This is clearly the way.

Seriously, if this is what you believe then you are clearly stating that you have no interest in a Free Society. You are literally placing yourself in the same group with every other Tyrant, Authoritarian, and Fascists who needs to be resisted.

Free Societies must tolerate dissent, it is a foundational requirement.

Counterpoint: We’ve tried a lot and there’s no magic fix to this issue.

The objective truth is that there are far more gun laws in the United States today than there was 60 years ago. To give a single example; in 1968 you could literally mail order a firearm directly to your doorstep. No background check, no registry, no nothing. In fact that’s how Lee Harvey Oswald got the rifle he used to shoot President Kennedy.

Yet despite the vast increase in firearms laws both the Homicide and Suicide by firearm rates in 2023 are very close to 1968.

You can argue that we haven’t done enough but to say that we’ve tried nothing is completely ridiculous.