@sjuvonen actually. We at work had some "problems" with the drivers for the thinkpad usb-c dockingstations. We had to search a little bit and the driver is only available as deb package. So installing and updating on a fedora is system is a little bit annoying.
With my nvidia card I don't have any problems. But I'm not a gamer so maybe I just don't see the problems.
@dashdsrdash unless you have an Nvidia card or a network adapter that the kernel doesn't support, which apparently is most of them available in countries like Brazil, according to a Brazilian friend o.o
drivers: constant anxiety about when a cyclist will run a red light directly infront of you or swerving in and out of traffic erradically. There is no if, only when.
@samofhearts the fuck are you taking about? cyclists often run red lights to wait a few feet further along, or if they're turning into a bike lane or whatever, sure, but I've never seen a cyclist just randomly move out into the path of oncoming traffic, that's just not a thing that happens, because evolution very does not select for those cyclists, and even if it did happen it would barely scratch your paintwork. meanwhile, three motorists have cut right across my lane and actually endangered my life, so how about you shut the hell up blaming the most vulnerable road users for your own dangerousness with exactly the same energy as a man reading some sexual assault statistics and responding "sure, but women always take ages in the bathroom, am i rite fellas?"
I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about or upset about with women. I'm sorry if you're a misogynist. <- Twitter is that way.
Obviously we live in different places and have different experiences. We can learn from each other rather than hate, but whatever floats your boat man.
Where I live in a city, like actual city not a suburbs near a city. The cyclist never stop or even slow down for red lights, they just go straight through them with the pedestrian walk sign and then continue on the road. They need to follow the rules of the road, but they don't. They follow their own rules and they make it very dangerous for pedestrians and any cars that are turning with a green arrow.
Finally, I like how you assume I'm a dangerous driver based on literally nothing. I'm a pedestrian you donut. These cyclist going 20 on the pedestrian walk because they don't want to stop at a red light are going to do a lot more than scratch my or my child's "paint."
My concern is they have a complete disregard for any law or rule of the road. If they want to be on the road or bike lanes. Sweet, follow the same laws and rules cars have to follow so that everything is predictable.
@samofhearts Why does that concern you? If cyclists are actually endangering anyone then *that* should be your concern. If they're just ignoring rules that patently don't matter then why do you care?
“Cyclists are ***holes, they’ll see a bike lane and ride in the road because they can.” That’s an actual comment we got on this channel, and it’s one of the ...
Researchers have found that almost all road users break the law, but the reasons for the infractions differ between modes, with cyclists doing it to save their necks.
I'm not a gamer and I don't have any Nvidia hardware, but another concern we've had is the migration to Wayland. I just did a one year stint using Fedora 40 with the KDE Plasma desktop, and it was really a breath of fresh air with Plasma 6.
At the moment, I'm back to Linux Mint because it's simply easier to get things done when you don't have to screw around. They do a wonderful job taking Canonical's already amazing job and focusing it for traditional desktop users.
Finding drivers for Windows is much more of a problem nowadays. Even for many rather rare and outdated pieces of hardware, drivers are quite often part of the regular vanilla Linux kernel, while it is near impossible to find any Windows 10 or 11 drivers for a 15 year old printer or scanner which otherwise still works perfectly.
@clayton i was just discussing today (with someone worrying about Windows drivers) how if i can plug something in, i plug it in. (I convinced them to go get a 30 foot ethernet cable instead of trying to mess with a wireless driver of some kind.) So, i do not worry about drivers much (except when biking, and even then, about ⅓ the time…) Had to walk down every aisle in Microcenter to find plug-in keyboard and mouse, and i am very happy. USB works.™ And audio jacks. Never bluetooth!
That was scary for a couple of days. The Friendica server I'm on was suddenly gone. This happened before when Nerdica died. I was afraid friendica.opensocial.space had done the same.
So I'm glad it's back. But I'm also thinking the only way to guarantee continuity is to run my own server,
@Martijn Vos Hello 😀 We had a technical malfunction in the data center - our domain was unavailable for about 1.5 days. But now everything should work as usual again. A separate instance is always a good solution, as it supports the decentralized approach of the Fediverse.
@ErgonWolf Can confirm. I joined Greenpeace in 1984.
Also, never forget that the French government sunk Greenpeace's ship, Rainbow Warrior, in New Zealand in 1985, killing Fernando Pereira. Nation states were clearly prepared to kill to prevent climate action. It was a genuinely scary time to be active back then.
What they mean, of course, is that some technomagical hyperintelligence will find a solution where everyone can keep doing whatever they do, the rich and powerful can keep their power and wealth, and nothing really changes at all.
Worse than that, many of the solutions to climate breakdown would actually have improved the lives of ordinary people: better insulated homes lowering fuel bills, more efficient cars, better public transport, more green spaces in cities, less air pollution, reusable containers instead of single-use plastics, etc. etc. All things that could have been done in the mid-twentieth century. #climatecrisis #ClimateAction
And all ‘AI’ is going to do is repeat the solutions that are statistically most likely, which are going to be those same solutions we already know about but refuse to implement.
@ortgard @ErgonWolf If Greenpeace had of been involved in the climate action movement back then than perhaps I'd give some weight to your conspiracy theory.
Well, with the polls so tight a week out, we decided to revisit US Election politics one last time, and ambitiously to have a stab at building a parody aroun...
This is amazing. Incredibly well done, but also a vital reminder of just how terrible Donald is. How intentional and dangerous January 6 was. How non-partisans who have every reason to know, consider him a threat to the country and to the world.
The cryptofascists are out in force today. The number of dishonest arguments trying to paint antifascism as fascist and fascism as antifascist is off the charts all of a sudden.
Just saw someone argue that supporting an independent Ukraine is fascist while Putin is left-wing. But that's hardly the only weird mirror-universe conversation I've had these past two days. What's going on?
We played 18Ardennes for the first time yesterday. Although my dad claims we've played it once before, but I have no recollection of that.
The game was fun, and in many ways an improved version of 18EU (from the same designer, David Hecht). Much more going on on th board, and it feels more balanced and dynamic.
The main downside is that maybe there's a bit too much going on, and everything has its own custom rules. You can get bonus income from mines, from ferries, from collecting fort tokens and from east-west and north-south runs, and everything works slightly differently, so it's easy to mix up and forget something.
I'm not sure why Hecht loves using so many minors; 1861 works great with far less minors. 1861 is by a different desiger (Ian Wilson), but feels similar to 18EU and 18Ardennes in scope, starting with minors and later turning them into majors.
I like that 18Ardennes keeps minors viable until the end; you don't have to merge them into majors. And they first turn into 5-share companies before you can convert to 10-shares, which makes the switch from minor to major more attractive, and that conversion is really just about issuing more shares to attract more money, which feels realistic and appropriate, giving the game a smooth progression. Downside is that it took a while before we started buying each other's shares. I think the game could have used more stock rounds; one after each operating round, instead of two.
Oh yeah, my son won. This is starting to become a regular occurrence. Once upon a time I used to be the most common winner of these games in our family, but those days increasingly seem to be behind us.
I love it. I love these somewhat larger 18xx games that have mergers and conversions. I definitely like it more than 18EU which used to be my favourite long ago. I'm not sure I like it more than 1861, but we intend to play it a couple more times.
I personally think starting with all 15 minors at once is a bit much, and I think a system that allows you to start minors later, like 1861, is better, but I'm not sure.
sounds great. I just tried out 18EU on .games but am not sure how I feel about it. I might be spoiled by the 22 series. Also not having everything at the start but still in the game is one of the benefits of 22.
So I guess I'll try 18Ardennes online next! 👍 Btw, adding the #18xx hashtag helps if you wanna have a discussion about it.
I used to love 18EU, but eventually every game seemed to turn out fairly identically and the game didn't have a lot of unexpected changes. It was too predictable. 18Ardennes has a lot of the same features, but is a lot more dynamic. Also more complex due to the many different types of bonuses, though.
(I included the #18xx hashtag for exactly that reason.)
hey, yeah sorry, my bad. My client didn't show it but it popped up in my #18xx subscription, so I should have realized you're using it.
22 is named after 1822, which spawned a lot of successors, like 1822MX, 1822CA, 1822PNW etc. They all start with lots of minors which you can later merge. Another big McGuffin is that tons of privates are auctioned with different powers, like Pullman and you try to build combinations of Minors/Majors with the best fitting Private Powers.
My contract is ending in a bit over a week, so I'm looking for new projects (software dev). Now, I don't know what's going on, but I'm suddenly receiving offers from the likes of booking.com and Uber. Are those really the kind of companies I want to be working for?
Maybe only if they pay significantly more than others? Or maybe just no. How strong are my convictions in the face of the need to have an income? Why is that suddenly a thing I need to be thinking about?
I've long thought that if I had the option, doing a series of short engagements, maybe 3 months, with a bunch of companies ranging from super focused to super sized, would be interesting to survey and understand how they do things differently. Approaches to handling old tech, local dev, test environments, risk mitigate etc etc. Getting a broad understanding of the differences.
Been playing around with my new 3d printer, making tile holders for 18xx games. It's always annoying having to sort those and keep them from getting all over the place, and it turns out there's a neat .scad project that lets you specify exactly how big you want these to be. My A1 mini isn't very big, so mine are pretty small.
My impression is that YouTube is completely and utterly broken now. I thought it was just Google being obnoxious about ad blockers, but even without ad blockers YouTube doesn't work anymore.
Does anyone know a good proxy that might fix YouTube? I just tried to install Invidious, but that seems to require Docker, and installing Docker on Arch doesn't seem to work.
I didn't watch the US VP debate, but something about the run up to it and analysis afterwards gave me this little piece of insight into the fundamental difference between the personalities of Donald Trump and JD Vance, especially regarding to how they lie:
Donald Trump simply has no concept of truth. He lives in his own reality, and facts are what he wants them to be. He will lie about the absolutely stupidest and non-consequential things. Like crows sizes. Nobody cares about crowd sizes, but he does, and his ego demands that he believes he draws the biggest crowds. And since he went into politics, he's been projecting his personal alternate reality on everybody else.
JD Vance knows very well what's real and what's not. He knows right from wrong. He knows truth from lies. And he lies because he has accepted it as their strategy. He consciously chooses to do wrong because that's his ticket to power, whereas Trump lacks the very concept.
Yeah, I think that one is mostly about American cities where beautiful dense city centers have been bulldozed to make space for endless car lots and now you can't get anywhere on foot anymore.
@fishidwardrobe I think that line is more referring to places where new suburbs are being built without schools or shops, because "you can just drive to them"
But yeah, the generalisation of it makes it seem silly
@SuperTaliaDX Well, yes, but that only works if you are building on a featureless plane with weird zoning laws. It's probably true in parts of the US? But here in the UK it would be "no, you can't build the houses closer to the city. There's a 14th century church / river / gas plant / protected woodland / Saxon burial mound / 'not really a mountain but certainly a famous hill' there, and anyway, don't the existing houses have shops you can walk to?"
Excellent point. In my experience, new Dutch neighbourhoods always come with a shopping center and a set of schools. This has always seemed to me like such an obvious way to do it, that I sometimes forget the US doesn't do it that way. People need to be forced into their cars.
@mcv Australia does it too, which is where I see it. New suburbs are *supposed* to have all these things, doctors surgeries and schools and shops, but they just... Don't. Many of them don't even get bus routes for a few years, because the developers don't work with the council to make it happen. They're also creating huge heat islands. They're just all around bad.
What also makes biking dangerous is the incessant, flagrant violation of basic traffic laws like stopping at stop signs, as well as commonsense behaviors like hand signals to alert other drivers what a cyclist’s intentions are at turns, etc.
The incredible mystery about cyclists continues to be the wearing of helmets and use of blinking red lights for safety but then the guaranteed violation of stop-sign, and often red traffic light laws. It destroys any argument cyclists make.
and yet when places implement Idaho stop laws (legalising cyclists treating stop signs as yield signs - only have to stop if there's cross traffic - and red lights as stop signs - stop but then proceed while it's still red if there's no cross traffic) cyclist injuries reduce, not increase.
What's happening, in other words, is that they're not riding dangerously, they're riding in keeping with the different safety properties of the bicycle and you don't like it.
Absolutely. Cars dominate our cities, making biking dangerous, public transit slow, and distances too far to walk. This, paired with our ultra-processed culture, has likely contributed to 73.6% of American adults being overweight or obese (CDC). We’ve designed our lives around convenience and speed—and it’s hurting our health.
But imagine the supermarket was so close you could easily walk there every day. Mine is. I've got two supermarkets within a few hundred meters, and 5 within 2 km.
And I could drive there (it has underground parking), but I don't because what's the point?
@argv_minus_one @mcv I bike to my local grocery store. I have a couple of bike saddlebags. I can’t do all my week’s shopping at once so I go every 3 days or so but that’s fine. It’s only a 15-minute ride away.
How in the ever-loving hell is ANYONE undecided at this point??For Christopher Titus tour dates, specials, and merch visit: https://www.christophertitus.com/...
At Shipping Of Theseus, we guarantee fast delivery of your package, or an amalgam of your package and other objects that contains enough of your package to still be considered your package from a philosophical standpoint.
Friday, September 20th, MSNBC Films presents “From Russia with Lev,” executive produced by Rachel Maddow and directed by Billy Corben. Featuring former Trump...
I still enjoy physical books. It's absolutely practical to have a PDF, but usually I prefer to read and learn the rules from paper. Besides, some RPG books are gorgeous. But many of these are produced in the US and often not sold in the EU. An apparently getting them shipped across the ocean costs a ridiculous amount of money (but why is shipping stuff from China so much cheaper?).
My latest example: Greg Stolze's Reign. I keep hearing great stuff about it, and it sounds like it might be just what I need for a campaign idea I've got, so I want to check it out. Turns out there's just been a kickstarter for the second edition, and of course I want that version. What's more, there's a gorgeous luxury version with a fancy GM screen.
But as far as I can tell, it's only available directly from the publisher, and shipping adds a whopping 75 euro to the cost. That's a bit much. Kickstarters also often surprise me with additional shipping costs that are way higher than I expected.
There really needs to be a way to get these things more cheaply. Is there no European distributor that can handle small amounts in a more affordable way? The Atlantic is a really expensive obstacle this way.
Or maybe I should just get used to only buying PDFs.
My game group finally opened te discussion of what to do next. I've been running Shadowrun for years now, and I want to do something else, and I've got some ideas for something a bit more player-driven, and I've been thinking about something like Kingmaker-but-better.
Only at least one player really loves the Shadowrun campaign (which is nice to hear of course) and doesn't want us to stop.
Meanwhile I'm thinking about whether to use Burning Wheel or Reign.
I don't know newfangled stuff, so I'll just randomly list some of my favorites:
1) Torg. I think this one has been enjoying something attention as of late. The way it handles transitions from one realm to another is similar to WandaVision.
2) Call of Cthulhu - I doubt this one needs any intro. Just mentioning it.
3) Paranoia ... on second thought. I guess not. Both CoC and Paranoia tend to not be so player-driven.
I do see Torg mentioned a lot lately. Not sure why. I admit I can never keep Torg and Rifts apart in my head, but it's not really what I'm looking for.
CoC is great of course, and I've actually been thinking about Delta Green, but that's a very different direction than what I'm currently talking about.
Paranoia is something I'd love to play in, but not something I'm going to run.
In Rifts, physics/magic/etc works the same everywhere. Therefore everyone needs to be superpowered, supernatural, or have supertechnology armor just to survive.
In Torg, physics/magic/etc works different in different realms. This lets the world have wildly different technology and magical powers, and political structures without breaking everything everywhere. You can be just some dude in jeans and reasonably survive in appropriate realms.
I came across Burning Crowns, a BW campaign on YouTube that sounds like it's literally playing through the Kingmaker campaign. I'm going to watch that.
My oldest son is 15, and finally going out in his own for the first time. He's going to an amusement with tons of rollercoasters with a friend (he finally discovered rollercoasters 2 years ago).
He originally wanted to be brought by car, but that's an hour each way, so 2 hours, and public transport is also two hours, so I argued he should just do that. After a bit of resistance, we finally reached a compromise: they're going by train, but my wife picks them up by car after work.
So it's his first train trip without us. About time.
I expected just a bunch of cool indie storygames, but the bundle includes a bundle of Delta Green adventures and the 13th Age core book. That's crazy value.
Klangphonics are a trio that produce and perform live electronic music. By using a combination of acoustic instruments and electronic elements, they bridge the gap between producer and live band.
this is a crisis created by private equity firms who’ve spent hundreds of billions hovering up every kind of housing stock across the country, as well as trailer parks and apartment complexes
Then, they’ll do what they always do: squeeze every last dollar out of the asset — then they’ll leave hollowed out towns/neighborhoods with destroyed housing stock when they’re done and then demand huge tax breaks for their ill-gotten gains.
Unregulated capitalism is social darnwinism writ large.
sure, do all that. But also: build more effin' housing. Build it sustainably: full walkability & bikeability, dense enough to support local shops & services for daily needs within walking distance, dense enough and with a structure to make quality transit a real thing, and with parks etc.
We also need to ban corporations from buying single-family homes.
I was told a while back that Meta was on a buying spree in and around our neighborhood, buying up houses with cash, pushing real living and breathing people out of the market.
@riking that is to say: construction rules & inspections are a must. That last major earthquake in Turkey? the city that handled it well, few building collapses etc, they actually had inspectors that did their jobs and politicians that backed them up.
This isn't "truth," this is NIMBY bullshit masquerading as social policy. He's proposing taxes on rentals, but not on home ownership, so renters will end up paying more than homeowners. Then he repeats the canard about vacant housing, when American housing vacancy rates are low; New York has a regular housing survey with a line item for units that are vacant because they're held for occasional or recreational use, and they're 1% of the supply. Less NIMBYism, more housing construction.
"Poison pill" means the taxes are so great on the rental owners that it becomes untenable to own a house just to rent it to others. That doesn't increase rents, it increases available housing supply for people to own a home that the can live in. He's proposing a tax so people can become homeowners.
@RedOct @Alon but it doesn’t make sense even in the best case scenario for everyone to own a home. There are times when renting is a better option. But it does make sense to have vacant housing available for use one way or the other. People do hoard units in expensive cities and keep them off market. People have second homes they only use a little. Cities have tried taxing them, but not enough.
@maccruiskeen @RedOct People don't actually hoard dwellings in meaningful numbers, is the point. In New York, 58,000 units were held off for seasonal, recreational, or otherwise occasional use in 2023, down from 2017 - but there are 3.7 million units citywide, for a 1.6% rate. nyc.gov/assets/hpd/downloads/p…
that wouldn’t by itself solve all the problems. But 50,000 apts newly available would certainly have an effect. That’s housing that already exists but misappropriated.
@maccruiskeen @RedOct The number is down in half since 2020; it's not visible in rents. Annual housing approvals citywide (see socds.huduser.gov/permits/) are around 20,000-30,000; at Tokyo or Seoul rates, they'd be around 100,000. That's what's needed, rather than populist attempts to eliminate apartment renting as an option.
@Alon @RedOct I’m not for eliminating renting. I’m for getting more units on the market. Cities can do more than one thing to accomplish that; they’re going to have to.
There is no American "housing crisis" — there's a supply-hoarding crisis to rig local market prices above the liquidity of local buyer capital.
The policy solution is simple: poison-pill tax all non-occupant-owned housing to force immediate sale to local buyers at actual market rates.
Allowing unlimited non-local capital to supply-hoard vacant housing is simply anti-resident eugenics. Current residents are too poor, so replace them with richer ones— even if it causes widespread homelessness, forced migration and absurd energy costs for the displaced to commute. It's as discriminatory as Federal Housing Administration redlining of black neighborhoods in the 1940s.
Another interesting proposal I've heard, and quite like is: corporations are not allowed to buy homes. Ever.
They can own them if they build them (which is necessary for organisations that build social housing, for example), but if they sell, they have to sell to people. A bank may come to own a house when the original owner can't pay the mortgage anymore, but if the bank wants to sell the house, they have to sell it to a person. Other than that, any corporation that wants to own houses, has to build them themselves thereby expanding the housing supply, instead of shrinking it by buying existing houses.
How about we vote on who gets what land, and it can't be bought or sold? Real estate can't be a product, since it's just abstract coordinates, which are there regardless of who claims it. Territory as property isn't any more valid than NFTs.
@FrenchPanda @violetmadder Because the OP stated “No one should be allowed to own a residence where they do not actually reside.” In which case my sister, occupying a house owned by her siblings (but which they’d not be permitted to own under this ‘rule’) would have to move out as she is unable to afford that house herself.
Unless your siblings are subsidizing her, she already can “afford” that house because her rent presumably already covers its capital costs and maintenance.
@Indyposterboy @FrenchPanda Dude. Stretch your brain just a little bit and think about the far-reaching consequences of such a change. Nobody would be able to hoard housing. Home prices would plummet, drastically. In fact the whole thing would best start off with a huge sweeping expansion of squatter's rights, so somebody like your sister would own the place more or less by default simply by already residing there.
The entire dynamics of housing prices and exchange would be turned inside out, and big things would shift throughout how our society works.
I can't imagine pulling the property ladder up behind me if I somehow ended up in legal possession of two houses. I'd use it to give a leg up to someone who can't manage the financing on their own the opportunity to rent-to-own. Surely the vast majority of people have someone in their family or immediate circle of friends who could benefit from help. It's not like you'd have to look far afield.
@Angle Allowing houses to become distributed hotels via "vacation rental" use (or "STR", short term rental) has locked up a significant share of existing dwelling units. Some communities have tens or hundreds of thousands of units no longer available for permanent housing. Why build new at enormous cost when the supply already exists?
@mizblueprint Mmm. I'm not entirely sure this problem can be solved by just passing laws, at least not unless you're willing to pass a lot of them. Like, the underlying problem here is that a small number of people has such a concentration of wealth and power that their minor conveniences and luxuries (Vacation Homes and short term rentals) are valued above other peoples basic necessities (Having a house to live in).
@mizblueprint And whatever laws you pass, you can expect them to run up against this basic reality. The wealthy and powerful want what they want, they don't give a damn about anyone else, and their desires will distort everything they can reach. The law, the market, the media, you name it. So, pass a law banning short term rentals, and I expect you'll start seeing loopholes, exceptions, workarounds, and just flat out lack of enforcement immediately, as long as the money demands it. :/
@mizblueprint As a friend points out though, we don't have a lot of other options. It's either try and pass laws, give up, or resort to extra-legal action - which probably means a breakdown in law and order that the rich will be most able to take advantage of... :/
@mizblueprint I suppose there's always the option of 'venture out into the wilderness to build a new society from scratch'? But that kinda requires resources and organization, and if we had that, we probably wouldn't need to do it... XD
@Angle @mizblueprint The ultimate goal (I believe) is to create a prison slave-labor class to replace the lower working class. What better way to accomplish this than outlawing homelessness and making housing totally out of reach economically.
@pamleo65 @mizblueprint It doesn't really make a difference - that system isn't going to scale well. It's just a question of how miserable things get, and when. :/
@mizblueprint Oh huh, neat! Has there been a study on the effects? Of the cities that have done this, how effectively have they actually managed to prevent the practice, and how much has it reduced housing prices?
@mizblueprint @pamleo65 I went poking around Napa on street view - it looks like it really shouldn't be that hard to build lots more housing there, if people really wanted to. Wide roads, huge parking lots, vast swathes of single family homes, etc, etc. Same as much of the rest of America. Building can be expensive, sure - but that itself is amenable to change, if people really want to change it.
@mizblueprint @pamleo65 Like most things, building gets cheaper if you do it in bulk. A small initial change in how expensive and difficult it is to build things can have outsized impact, as it ripples outwards and changes how much people build, which itself changes how easy it is to build things. Has your city ever considered dropping parking requirements, for example? Loosening zoning laws? Any of the dozens of simple and straightforwards reforms to just let people build?
Passively accepting one’s role in an unjust status quo is a perfectly reasonable survival strategy, but it doesn’t make that status quo good or just.
Your landlord isn’t providing you with housing. You are providing your landlord with housing. If landlords did not hoard more housing than they could personally use to collect feudal rents from tenants like you, then housing costs would be dramatically lower, all else being equal.
@storyworker @HeavenlyPossum @violetmadder the state, in the current model. Many cities in Europe — with Vienna being the canonical example — own a huge chunk of the rental properties, and it works very well for everyone.
Landlords, of course, in the same way that feudal peasants would have received the same answer to the same question.
I’m not telling you that you’re doing anything wrong. “The system in which we’re forced to live is unjust” doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong by renting. I too am a renter.
> “They have provided me more than housing - they have provided me a home, one where I have been able to dramatically rebuild what was a pretty awful life.”
No, they are using their control of a scarce resource to extract rents from you. Unless they’re renting to you at a loss, your rent is paying for the capital costs on the house—the mortgage, upkeep, etc. *You* finance their ownership of the house in which you live, with no ownership rights despite paying those capital costs.
You might also be paying them wages on top of buying them a house, if your rent is greater than those capital costs.
@HeavenlyPossum @violetmadder @storyworker I’d love a world where housing existed that did not need to be purchased but also did not need to be rented from… someone.
But I honestly cannot imagine how to create such a world, or how it would work. In the meantime, I can at least imagine there being a lot of public housing, and while that world is still flawed, it’s far less so than the one we live in now
I am not describing a labyrinth of words and concepts. You are purchasing housing for your landlord, and possibly paying them a salary in the process.
That doesn’t mean you can’t feel gratitude that you are housed. I am immensely grateful that I am housed. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a positive interpersonal relationship with your landlord. I’m not questioning your personal experience.
I would like people to be able to see things for how they really are, and landlording really is a feudal holdover.
@HeavenlyPossum fwiw I was genuinely not trying to be offensive. I’ve learned a lot from you and others, and in some cases I can use that to imagine how a different world might work. But in many others — like this one — I can’t quite. And I learned long ago not to let a better solution be blocked by the vague possibility of a perfect one.
I assume you have a more complete picture of how things could work. But I’m just having to muddle through, and usually do quite poorly here.
The only way that people can own things that they don’t personally use or occupy is through either a) the consent of everyone involved or b) institutional violence.
Landlords do not have everyone’s consent. What they do have is institutional violence—cops who will hurt you if you don’t pay a toll for living in your home, the same as medieval lords.
Remove that institutional violence and all that’s left for them is consent or, better, living in their home while you live in yours.
Medieval serfs were also taught to believe that their feudal lord had provided them the homes that those serfs had built and the farms that those serfs worked.
@lkanies @HeavenlyPossum @violetmadder @storyworker I think co-ops are a great stepping stone where one is not required to take on the full responsibility of homeownership but also is not being exploited by others
@storyworker @violetmadder People who do not pay landlords or banks for housing are typically under threat of being violently made unhoused, with all of the harms that come along with that.
Your claim is false. “The universe” did not provide you with a roof over your head. It did not suddenly appear. It did not congeal through magic. It did not accrete through natural processes. Someone made it (a builder) and someone financed it (you).
Landlords merely interject themselves into that process to collect rents—a toll, a private tax—off your need for housing.
@violetmadder @storyworker Yes, I am making the claim that “the universe provided it” is a nicely poetical metaphor but it doesn’t change the reality of how houses are built or financed.
Are you telling me that no one built your house and no one pays for it?
“Feudal exploitation is ok because the self is an illusion” is a hell of a take but it would go a long way towards explaining the survival of feudal landlording by Buddhists in Buddhist societies in which people are ostensibly eschewing the accumulation of material wealth.
Or if not “owning one’s own home,” maybe more simply “dwelling in a home without paying a toll to someone who merely owns a tollbooth guarded by a cop with a gun.”
Housing is structured in capitalist societies as, generally, a choice between *renting* and *owning,* and owning comes with its own financial and cognitive burdens. It makes sense for a lot of people to reject home ownership in the sense of capitalist hegemony in a way that wouldn’t make sense absent that structure.
You say that it is your home. Isn't it by default your business? If the current owner decides to kick you out, wouldn't that be an issue? A direct impact on your life? I still can't understand your resistance to the idea of owning your home?
Okay then. You don't care about whatever happens to you and your living place. I cannot even fathom that, and I don't understand your "complexity" but okay.
Less complex people tend to not like not having control over the place they live in. They don't like to be faced with the options of paying more and more money each year or be homeless. They would actually like being able to be sure that their home is actually their home.
It’s easier to dismiss a new and uncomfortable idea as “ideological dogma” than actually consider that your understanding is incorrect. I get that! Cheers.
Rentierism consists of a person who threatens to hurt you, or kill you, if you don’t work for them.
Sometimes it’s quite naked and explicit. Sometimes it’s obfuscated behind elaborate social rituals and fictions. By far the most common of these fictions is the ownership of some asset you need to survive. “Pay me or I will starve you to death.”
That’s it. That’s the distilled essence of rentier ownership. That’s what every rentier relationship consists of. You labor on their behalf, and in return they refrain from hurting you, or killing you. A protection racket. The only thing the rentier owner “provides” you is a promise not to hurt you, at least until the next month’s rent is due.
@HeavenlyPossum @violetmadder @storyworker I think the point you may be missing here is that not everyone has the desire to own a home. Home ownership is a lot of responsibility and work that not all may be willing or capable of doing. Home ownership also typically implies that you plan to stay somewhere long term. Should people not be allowed to live nomadically? I'm all for abolishing rentirism, but we also need to consider and plan for how to house non-home owners during our pursuit to get there.
I quite explicitly said in this thread that not wanting to own a home makes plenty of sense under capitalism, because it entails all sorts of financial and cognitive costs.
That doesn’t mean that being housed intrinsically accrues these costs, and it also doesn’t mean that rentierism somehow becomes good.
@HeavenlyPossum @storyworker @violetmadder if they don't profit, that would be incorrect and undermine all the rest you would argue from here. Why would you put a gaping hole like that in an otherwise perfectly interesting line of reasoning?
But even if we take the very narrow view of profit as income over operating expenditures, all rent is profit. The operating expenditure of ownership is effectively zero.
@HeavenlyPossum @storyworker @violetmadder Even without Capitalism I think it's valid to not want to own a house. It's not just financial and cognitove cost. There is a lot of physical required to maintain a home, and not all are physically capable of that work.
@violetmadder @storyworker @shamogan Yes, I agree. All I’ve tried to convey is that “not wanting to purchase and own a home under capitalism” is not the same as “not wanting a permanent home in the abstract,” and the latter doesn’t somehow justify rentierism.
For example, if you’re not physically capable of maintaining a house and rent instead, you’re paying a landlord rents and probably a salary to hire a worker to perform maintenance. This is not something a landlord is necessary for; the landlord is still just inserted into a transaction between you and a maintenance worker.
There’s a whole universe of mechanisms by which people could live without permanent homes and still not rely on rentier landlords.
I noted from the very beginning that being grateful for an opportunity to rent is a perfectly legitimate survival mechanism under capitalism, and that I was not criticizing this response at all. You can scroll back up through this thread to read that.
My goal is not to abolish landlords by forcing them to sell; my goal is the abolition of landlords through the decommodification of housing.
@HeavenlyPossum at low scale the costs of ownership are not negligible, and if we remove the speculative value, as we should imo, then owning something for someone else is a service with an associated fair price.
I think the root causes are not the ownership itself, but:
1. Human rights to shelter are not guaranteed properly, 2. Artificial scarcity and unfair prices are allowed.
If the private ownership would be limited, the service of owning shelters should be provided still.
@HeavenlyPossum @storyworker @violetmadder and so I believe what @storyworker was expressing is that they are glad they have renting as an alternative to owning, and as someone who does not want to own, they we're asking if you removed all the landlords, how would they get access to housing, if not thorugh renting. Which is a valid question, in my opinion.
@HeavenlyPossum @storyworker @violetmadder To bring this around to the original post, which calls for a "poison-pill tax" to force non-occupant owned homes to sell to at lower prices, there is a group being forgotten in this strategy: the current renters of these homes. Many of these renters would still not be the ones able to afford (or willing) to buy those homes. So if this policy we're to be followed without also investing in alternative housing options, such as co-ops, we would see a displacement of current residents renting in that area to those who have the will and means to buy.
@HeavenlyPossum @violetmadder @storyworker That's great that is your goal but that's not what is being talked about in the original post, which is what they commented on
But why can't you afford a home while you can afford to rent? That is part of the problem. Why is your rent enough for the landlord to be able to afford it, but is the same amount of money not enough for you to be able to afford it?
Mind you, there's absolutely a good case to be made why rent should still exist. Some people move around a lot and having to buy and sell homes everywhere is a pain. Rent has to exist.
And cheap, rent-controlled appartments definitely fill an important role too. But at some point you start getting a two-tiered society where a shrinking group of people own everything and rent it to the rest for extortionate prices, and that's what we need to get out of.
@Angle @mizblueprint @pamleo65 I’ve been through Napa a few times, when I lived in Sonoma County (to the west). Your impression from Street View is correct. But it is surrounded by vineyards, many of which are run by “lifestyle vintners,” who want their chalets and their labels and everything except good wine.
And they have money, lots and lots and lots of money.
I always figured that my oldest son, a highly intelligent nerd, aspiring programmer and D&D player, would be interested in the same sort of books I read: Tolkien, Asimov, Pratchett, Douglas Adams, other fantasy and SF.
But no. He hates everything I give him, but finally found a book he loves: No Longer Human, by Osamu Dazai. If I look for similar books on Goodreads, it recommends Dostoyevsky and Kafka.
Of all the bad habits he inherited from me, definitely not my taste in books. My hopes are now on my youngest son. He seems to like the SF from Tonke Dragt, so that looks promising.
Ah, I just got a bit more background, and it makes a lot more sense now.
He's actually reading/watching the manga/anime Bungo Stray Dogs, which features characters with super powers, but the characters are literary authors, and their super powers are based on their books.
So Dazai is a character, partially based on the author, partially on the main character from the book No Longer Human, being no longer human is also his super power. Dostoyevsky is another character, with the power of Crime and Punishment (he's a terrorist, apparently).
So this is apparently how my son discovers which books he wants to read. It makes a lot more sense now. I'm glad it's making him read books.
I still can't get him to read Philip K Dick, though. Although when I explain Ubik to him, it does kinda sound like it could have been an anime.
“What makes biking dangerous is all the cars. What makes the bus so slow is all the cars. What makes driving a car so slow is all the cars. What makes everything too far away to walk is all the space we have to reserve for the cars.” 🚗 🚙 🚗 🚙 #biketooter
@robinlovelace @josi loads of pollution in urban areas did you say? "oh, but i've got an electric car and it doesn't have emissions". really? have you heard of tyre dust, then?
Tolkien: "What if there was a magical artefact that let you communicate across long distances, but it was addictive and secretly spied on you and fed you disinformation and filled you with paralysing despair?" Me: "That's a phone."
Today I ran @S. John Ross 's adventure Toast of the Town, partially to understand what he means by "high-trust trad", and partially because it's simply a really well-written adventure and I needed a one-shot. It was perfect.
Spoilers in a comment below.
We used the Risus system it was written for, which was a first for us. Risus is super lightweight, and has a few oddities could be unbalancing or metagameable, or the GM has to work to balance it. But it encourages creativity, and that worked great.
spoilers for Toast of the TownThe players chose Morgain, Manciple and Gin Giria, so they were super stealthy, and ended up saving the Huzrael without anyone (except the Huzrael and Max) realising what had happened. So no fame for them; just the knowledge that they quietly did good. . As the PCs arrived in the town, I almost forgot to have Alderman Calway welcome them and point them in various directions. Actually, I did forget, and as they entered the square and started looking around, I realised I forgot and retconned them back to the docks for their official welcome. . This adventure has a lot of interesting NPCs that can be hard to keep track of, but the Alderman is easy; I had no excuse to overlook him. But the PCs weren't that interested in asking him information, so I might as well have skipped it. . They headed straight for the inn, but when they saw the demon on display, they immediately felt sorry for him, and almost wanted to free him right there and then. But they saw no way to do that with the crowds on the square, so they went to the inn, talked to Max, who spilled some of the beans, but not all. (The PCs didn't ask for the location of the Nest, and Max had already volunteered enough info.) . Then they examined the smoking ruins, and this is where it became obvious that having an intelligent cat in your group is practically cheating. Sure Bascombe won't let them into the shop, but is he going to notice a cat? So Morgain examines the ruins, find the tunnel, the impressions of the moved crates, etc. while the others talk to Bascombe. This would soon turn into their standard strategy. . After that, they visited the temple. Convincing the priests to let them visit their dead friend, and perform some farewell ritual on him that they claimed meant a lot to him, took some convincing, which I handled as social combat. Works great. In the end, the priests were somewhat relieved that the PCs offered them an excuse not to display the bodies in the square. . They also snuck around the catacombs a bit, and I let them have a locked door that connected the catacombs inside the temple to the ones outside that had been turned into the town's sewer system. They located a convenient grate entrance for their next plan: freeing Hirash. . The plant mage used alchemy and plant magic to create some hallucinogenic spores to daze the guards (no idea how to do this against multiple opponents, so I made the guards a grunt squad, which made this pretty hard, and the mage used several lucky shots to defeat them), then more plant magic to have the big oak tree grow and drop lots of acorns, while Morgain used some illusion magic to make the sound of the dropping acorns a lot louder. With both the guards and the crowd distracted, the plant mage used more plant magic to loosen the ropes, and Manciple caught Hirash. They quickly hurried to the grate behind the temple to disappear into the sewers, while Morgain create an illusion of a flying demon in the sky to make it look like Hirash flew away. Amazing plan. I had no idea how they could possibly free Hirash under so much attention, but they pulled it off. . Then a lot of searching through the sewers where they wasted a lot of time. Originally they wanted to take Hirash to the Nest, but they had no idea where it was. I could of course have let them find it anyway, but decided the sewers and catacombs were a maze and they had no idea where they had to go. And neither did Hirash. So instead, they took him to Max. Aranged a hand cart with a tarp to disguise the sewer exit, and hid Hirash in the cellar of the inn. . Max explained how they could find the Next, and here they split the party! Morgain headed to Drakeshall to check it out, saw lots of goons, but who cares about a cat wandering around? Found an open window to the kitchen and headed down. The rest headed into the sewers, found the Nest, talked to the Huzrael, discovered the secret door had closed behind them, so they had no choice but to head towards Drakeshall, just when Morgain came from that direction. Morgain headed back to the kitchen just to see Drake and his little army leave for the square (a bit earlier than originally planned, because their demon had escaped and Drake wanted to get the others before Hirash could reach them). . The Huzrael stayed in the cellar of the kitchen while the plant mage spent half an hour growing roots through the cracked dome of the Nest to collapse it. Meanwhile Manciple and Morgain climbed onto the roof of Drakeshall to open a window to the attic. (Then I discovered that the text explicitly says there's no window there, but I figured a small window is a cheaper way to give the servants some light than constantly burning candles there.) They soon found some Emerald Oil, didn't explore the rest of the house, but immediately headed back to heal the Huzrael. The description of Emerald Oil says it takes 5-7 hours before they're healed but that felt too slow for me, so I let it take effect quicker in the Huzrael because it's their life force in there, after all. . They then helped the Huzrael flee the city through turning trees into stairways to get over various walls, including the city walls. It was twilight already, so I figured they could do this without getting discovered. . When they finally got back to the inn, Hirash had disappeared (his foolish bravery playing up). For a moment they considered it his own stupid fault if something happened to him, but decided to look for him anyway. Finally Whisper the Wonder Dog got to shine: his nose picked up the scent, and he jumped onto the roof and lead them to where Hirash had found Jaina. . They didn't see any need to expose Drake or claim any fame, content that the victims were safe. Nobody needed to know of their sneaky heroics.
Content Warning button seems to do nothing, but manually adding a spoiler tag works, but only hides a single paragraph instead of everything between the tags; empty lines break the spoiler. I added a dot on every empty line to keep some formatting. My spoilers look different from those from Mastodon users.
Looks like Friendica's handling of content warning/spoilers is inconsistent and buggy.
spoilers for Toast of the TownGin's player originally thought her plant magic was a bit useless in a city, but then they saw the big oak, and realised there's always small plants everywhere. . I've got to admit I had no idea how to handle the power level of the cliches. They did get away with a few big effects, but I thought the plan was awesome, and I figured that's what counts. . And yeah, they saw Drake only from a distance. I didn't get to perform any over-the-top hero wannabe theatrics.
Yeah, no need for revenge, and they were content to do good without public recognition. I like it. Drake can continue pretending to be a hero.
Not only did I not get to play Drake and only very little Gravas, I also completely forgot to introduce Firemaster Yosh. But they didn't really need him.
"Old Soul", the first video taken from Gnome's upcoming album "Vestiges of Verumex Visidrome". Out September 13th, 2024 on Polderrecords.Original footage fro...
Interested in soms '70s doom metal mixed with '70s cheesy fantasy aesthetic?
I do wonder if it takes extra effort to get that old grainy '70s/'80s look in the video. This is a new band. This was released 3 months ago. It feels like an old classic I somehow managed to miss all my life.
Official music video for “Fresh Fur,” plus intro track “Realm,” from Castle Rat’s Debut LP “Into The Realm.”Pre-Order “Into The Realm” here: https://castlera...
An old friend of mine started doing 45-day challenges: if he wants to change some habit, he has to keep it up for 45 days, and after that, ue can decide to continue doing it or he can stop. He's done a lot of them, and acquired a lot of positive new habits that way, but one of them is that every day he writes 5 sentences. Sometimes a poem, sometimes the start of a short story, or something else.
Anyway, this got me thinking: as a kid, I used to draw a lot. Somewhere along the way I quit. I want to pick it up again, so for the next 45 days, I will draw something every day. It doesn't have to be good or finished, but it has to be something.
And here's my first one: a dragon perched on Scrooge McDuck's Money Bin.
Yeah, I used to give them front legs and considered that here too, but decided not to. The look of the dragon is quite different from how I used to draw them way back, also because of the different angle, and because I wanted to get rid of the standardised dragon shapes I used back then (which I think were pretty cool).
I'm not happy about those wings, though. Maybe adding front legs would hide the awkwardness oof the wings, or maybe I should attach them to proper shoulders.
Either way I'm happy to be drawing again. That's the important part.
Every couple of weeks I keep getting calls from a (Dutch) phone/internet company (Ziggo-Vodafone) who always start immediately with trying to make an appointment for laying some new cable, it's just an appointment, nothing commercial, it's just infrastructure and it's going to happen anyway, and every single time, a couple of sentences later, it turns into a sales call and they tell me my neighbours complain about internet and I will definitely also want to switch to them etc.
Every single time I tell them I don't want to switch and I don't want to get called by them again. And by Dutch law, that means they aren't allowed to call me again. And yet they do. Time and time again.
I just had my most fun call with them, because I kept catching the guy in mistakes, everything he claimed turned out to be false, he made some claims about coax being better which I laughed at (turns out he was talking about a new glass fiber/coax mix that they're selling), and eventually I confused him enough that he handed me off to his supervisor.
And then I did the same to his supervisor, except now regarding the law. That he's not allowed to call me without my permission, and I've explicitly said several times I didn't want to get called by them, and he claimed he could because I have a company (freelancer) and I had to quote the government website at him that even freelancers are protected.
He finally relented and promised to remove me from their system. I really wonder if this will stop the calls, because I believe nothing these people say.
We played I think our third game of 1861 this year. It's still my favourite 18xx game, although it's possible the fact that I won again is a factor in that.
We all definitely played much better, less naive, followed coherent strategies, abused loans as much as possible, etc.
A setback was that I couldn't save Nikolaev from nationalisation, so immediately after losing it, I created Ekaterinin which turned into an amazingly good company that dominated the end game. My brother thought I created it just to use it to buy a train and then dump it (a valid strategy), but I just really wanted another company.
My real leap ahead happened when I could convert Ekaterinin from minor to major just before a new stock round, but decided not to. Instead, I kept it as a minor for one more operating round, used my money to buy the other players' shares instead, and used the revenue from that to convert Ekaterinin one round later. That put me ahead in shares at a critical moment when several companies were running 3 train routes and making ridiculous revenues, which helped me buy more shares than anyone else, and that's ultimately what wins the game.
Also, if you pay attention to the board, you may see two routes from Moscow to Siberia. My son was very eager to build that route (he came in second), and my brother helped him, but I locked everybody (except my son) out of Siberia during the mid game (which denies them a nice bonus for Moscow-Siberia runs) and I used the secondary route quite a lot.
(I'm just pretending everybody understands what I'm talking about as if it's not a fairly obscure game. Feel free to ask anything about it.)
skibidi eichkat3r
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •🚲 murph
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •Sami Juvonen
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •This has never been a worry I’ve had in almost 30 years of using Linux personally and professionally.
Is this something about gamers and not people using computers for productivity?
CaptainMalu
Als Antwort auf Sami Juvonen • • •@sjuvonen actually. We at work had some "problems" with the drivers for the thinkpad usb-c dockingstations.
We had to search a little bit and the driver is only available as deb package. So installing and updating on a fedora is system is a little bit annoying.
With my nvidia card I don't have any problems. But I'm not a gamer so maybe I just don't see the problems.
-𝚍𝚜𝚛- (has pronouns)
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •True for cyclists, other drivers... and Windows users, these days. Linux, not so much.
Linux problems tend to be along the line of "new computer, why won't you sleep?". So Linux users and new parents, I guess?
hazelnot
Als Antwort auf -𝚍𝚜𝚛- (has pronouns) • • •Samofhearts
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •Andrew
Als Antwort auf Samofhearts • • •Samofhearts
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about or upset about with women. I'm sorry if you're a misogynist. <- Twitter is that way.
Obviously we live in different places and have different experiences. We can learn from each other rather than hate, but whatever floats your boat man.
Where I live in a city, like actual city not a suburbs near a city. The cyclist never stop or even slow down for red lights, they just go straight through them with the pedestrian walk sign and then continue on the road. They need to follow the rules of the road, but they don't. They follow their own rules and they make it very dangerous for pedestrians and any cars that are turning with a green arrow.
Finally, I like how you assume I'm a dangerous driver based on literally nothing. I'm a pedestrian you donut. These cyclist going 20 on the pedestrian walk because they don't want to stop at a red light are going to do a lot more than scratch my or my child's "paint."
Have a good day brother. choose love not hate.
Andrew
Als Antwort auf Samofhearts • • •Samofhearts
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •Andrew
Als Antwort auf Samofhearts • • •Space Hobo
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •Laust
Als Antwort auf Samofhearts • • •youtu.be/fDf8CwcBdiw?si=WzrDbK…
Why Don’t Cyclists Use Bike Lanes?
YouTubeAndrew
Als Antwort auf Laust • • •Motorists Break Law To Save Time, Cyclists Break Law To Save Lives, Finds Study
Carlton Reid (Forbes)Quark Maker
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •I'm not a gamer and I don't have any Nvidia hardware, but another concern we've had is the migration to Wayland. I just did a one year stint using Fedora 40 with the KDE Plasma desktop, and it was really a breath of fresh air with Plasma 6.
At the moment, I'm back to Linux Mint because it's simply easier to get things done when you don't have to screw around. They do a wonderful job taking Canonical's already amazing job and focusing it for traditional desktop users.
Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •Lord Caramac the Clueless, KSC hat dies geteilt.
Clayton Dewey
Als Antwort auf Andrew • • •OMG @mlncn it's you!!!
ever simultaneously? 😀
benjamin melançon
Als Antwort auf Clayton Dewey • • •