I’ve heard this story before, it’s not a new incident. It’s also getting a lot of coverage from lots of media.

Similar story, 2014: https://www.cnn.com/2014/07/31/living/florida-mom-arrested-son-park/index.html

2022: https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/texas-child-protective-services-waco-heather-wallace-b2226799.html

2014: https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/07/debra-harrell-arrested-for-letting-her-9-year-old-daughter-go-to-the-park-alone.html

2015: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/04/13/parents-investigated-letting-children-walk-alone/25700823/

Utopias are inherently dystopian in they only work when everyone wants the same things and everyone is bound by strict rules. There is no such thing as a utopia.

This is far from boring. It’s terrifying.

Finding the correct bolt size, thread pitch, material, and trusting that when I order grade 8 bolts, I’m actually getting grade 8 makes Amazon quite a pain in the ass.

If it’s something I don’t care too much about, yea Amazon is fine. But when I want to trust my life to it or it’s going to take some serious stress I’m going to want McMaster.

I’ve been tempted to create a bot that does nothing but search comments in code for misspelled words and create pull requests for them.

If it stays in comments, little chance in breaking a working codebase and I’d have an insane amount of commits and contributions to a wide variety of codebases for my resume.

I’ll never be a top tier coder. But I might make management.

I would literally prefer a steaming pile of shit as president than Trump.

Black and white as VR

Bunker gear isn’t using asbestos anymore. It would be nomex and kevlar now.

Whichever path it takes. It will only go in a single path unless you have some incestuous relationships. And if that happens and multiple routes work, it doesn’t matter which one you take.

So if you look at a family tree, the bloodline is the direct order from person a to person b, with everyone in the middle. It doesn’t include everyone else that isn’t in that direct path.

It doesn’t include brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, marriage or anything like that.

Bloodline is a subset of the data in a family tree.

People are crazy. Feeling threatened by telling someone “hey, you didn’t vote last time. Please make your voice heard by voting” is wearing your persecution complex on your sleeve.

Fragile fucks.

380k with a 30 year mortgage and something like $25k down. Amortization on 5.89% will show at the end of it, you’ll pay over 774k for it. Mortgage payment would be $2150. That’s after closing costs. Property insurance and property taxes about $700/mo. And I live in a high property tax area.

Utilities aren’t included, but I haven’t seen many rentals that include utilities either. The house may be bigger and use more utilities though.

The lowest rent in my area for 3 bedrooms is 2.2k/mo and that’s an outlier. Most are $2,700+/mo. If I were to pay the $2.7k for 30 years, that’s just shy of $1 million. And at $2200, it’s just shy of $800k in 30 years. That’s break even.

This isn’t even addressing the instability of rental prices. My mortgage payment is locked in, at a fixed interest rate. If I were to rent, there is no guarantee that the rent i am paying today is the rent I’ll be paying in 5 years.

Renters should be getting renters insurance too, so add that to the renters side.

Yea, I will have home repairs I’ll need to pay for. But I’ll also have equity that I can leverage for them if I need to. I’d have to put in $200k in the course of 30 years to match what a renter in my area would be spending. And that’s just repairs, if I were to spend on renovations and/or additions than it would raise the property value.

As for capital gains, that’s only when I sell, but if I have to pay taxes because I made money. Well, then I made money instead of… Only spent money?

If the house doesn’t appreciate and only holds it’s value, it’s an asset that protects against inflation.

Have an asset that likely with appreciate, paid off after 30 years. Or continue to pay for a place to live for 60 years?

Financially, if you can afford it, housing is a good way to solidify your worth and lay a foundation for your future and retirement. If you pay off your mortgage, by the time you retire hopefully your set income won’t have to pay for housing anymore. Only property tax and maintenance.

A political first

It’s been open less than a year!

My city has a referendum to replace the middle school and add a wing to the elementary school. Oh and add fire suppression systems to both of them since they are so old they don’t have them.

It’ll cost me $700/year for like 25 years.

I’m voting yes. Let’s invest in our schools and education system. Let’s understand how incredibly useful the power of local taxes are.

Are you American?

That. Doesn’t. Work.

Full stop.

Let’s say for a moment that progressives and Democrats did that for whatever issue they personally felt strongly about.

First, we have to acknowledge that the Republicans ARE NOT doing that. So they’re vote count doesn’t change and they win

Second, people will disagree on the same issue. You can’t capture everyone on every issue. Refer to the first point, Republicans win.

Third, there will be huge factions each with their own issue. A candidate cannot sway all these single issues groups. See the first point, Republicans win.

What first past the post representative democracy means is to vote for the viable politician that MOST ALIGNS with your political position. Not the one that EXACTLY aligns. If you build the third parties at the local and representative and Senate level. Maybe you can get there, but for now, this is the political system we have to work in.

So your neck doesn’t whip back and keeps your spine in line.

File an injunction. Put up every legal barrier to prevent this asshat from having an audience.

There is a big population of women who are past childbearing age that are voting for Trump. It’s fucked up, but just getting women to vote may not work. They need to get young women to vote.

So many elderly women are going to be voting who no longer have skin in the abortion game.