As other have said, housing, at least in the US, has always been seen as an investment, and investments are supposed to appreciate in value. It is difficult to sell to political bases that one of two things must then be true: 1) People who bought houses 20+ years ago will have to lose equity on the house which they potentially were relying on for some amount of retirement, or 2) The government will have to step in and fill the gap (a la systems similar to agricultural subsidies). Neither of those things would you be able to sell to a wide enough base that they could be acted on.

In the end, this was caused by two things. On a practical level, prices continued climbing while wages stagnated over the past 40 years. On a more philosophical level, I personally don’t think that necessities such as housing should be commodified.

This also brings up the fact that single family homes, the predominant home type in the US, are not good from an environmental standpoint or an urban planning standpoint. It would be better to convert into duplexes and such. In the end, I agree that buying a home is way too much, but in the long run it may be good that the market is pushing more people towards lower impact forms of housing

I would check out Semafor as well

Malt vinegar or brown sauce

• Accidental Tech Podcast: Three dudes talking about tech and (mostly) Apple
• The Allusionist: podcast about language and linguistics
• The Bruenigs: Matt & Liz Bruenig talk about random stuff
• Cortex: podcast about productivity by Myke Hurley & CGP Grey
• Factually: Interviews with interesting people hosted by Adam Connover
• Hello Internet (Dead): two dudes talking, GGP Grey & Brady Haran (Numberphile)
• Intentionally Blank: Random conversations with Brandon Sanderson & Dan Wells
• No Such Thing As a Fish: Intersting and odd facts by the team behind the British TV show QI
• Puck Soup: Ice Hockey News and information
• Stuff You Should Know: Funny podcast about all kinds of stuff
• The Tennis Podcast: podcast about tennis
• Ungeniused: brief episodes about interesting Wikipedia pages
• The Unmade Podcast: mostly random stuff, but about pitching ideas for other podcasts
• Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me: the NPR News quiz

For me I think part of it is more nostalgia for a certain relationship I had with this person, even if it wasn’t a close one, and my life during the time I knew them.

I think that the internet has given us this almost elongation effect to personal relationships though. Some people are just meant to pass into our lives for a brief time then pass out of them, and that’s okay

Lots of cakes in Germany for example are traditionally made from yeasted doughs

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The problem isn’t socialism in the countries I’m sure you’ve seen (Soviets, etc), it’s totalitarianism. Leaders have used the guise of socialism to get the initial public support to gain power, and they make a show of it, but the real game in town is the power structure. Look into Pinochet’s Chile for a similar example with a hardcore capitalism as the economic system

Correct me if I’m wrong, OP, but it sounds like you’re talking about retreating to the axioms of the particular belief system, as in there is a point where reason breaks down because you get to things that you (the person whose expressing their opinion) have accepted that’s different than me.

To me this is a bit of a Motte and Bailey fallacy as your question was whether or not you have a good argument and then someone replied to that and then moved to the set of assumptions which has nothing to do with argument.

For me personally, the other person has to demonstrate some level of critical reasoning for me to respect their opinions, even if their assumptions are different than mine. Beliefs that are entered into using reasoning are more useful than ones without because they can be changed which is what discourse is all about

This is interesting. I’ve been wanting to sign up for something like this, Incogni, or DeleteMe for a while, but haven’t done any research yet

My degree and professional training is all in physics. Biggest one for me is that they use “high temperature” when relating to superconductors like we’re going to have superconducting phones next year, when in reality high-T superconductors are still colder than 100 K (-173°C, -280°F). Also they gotta stop flipping out over Water on Mars. That’s so passe, there’s a literal list on wikipedia on how many times that’s happened. On the plus side though, most have just stopped trying to explain anything around physics and instead go for a more “x does y cause physics” approach

Late stage Led Zeppelin was definitely affected by Robert Plant’s affinity for country music that not many of the others shared. I agree that Plant’s preferences mixed with everyone else’s was what led to their initial and enduring popularity. I doubt they become one of the best Rock bands ever if they didn’t have everyone pulling in very different directions

Firewatch is a very beautiful game

Capitalism has become such a bore Wish waged labor existed no more I’d rather pay taxes Take billionaires assets And distribute some wealth to the poor

Swiss Army knife, bottle opener, pocket pen, and most important of all: one of those wavy keys to open toilet paper and paper towel dispensers

In my opinion, most Mountain Goats songs. John Darnielle is an amazing songwriter, and he tackles very difficult subjects, especially in his earlier stuff. The Sunset Tree album is all about growing up with an abusive step-father, Tallahassee about a couple who fall apart, Full Force Galesburg about a small town you can disappear in, etc. Some of my favorites include “The Mess Inside” about two people that can’t find the love they lost, “No Children” about a couple that hate each other, and “Jeff Davis County Blues” about a sort of meditative experience after a breakup. I’d give it all a listen. To go even deeper, the albums All Hail West Texas and In League With Dragons have sort of companion podcast seasons (I Only Listen To The Mountain Goats) where Darnielle and Joseph Fink of Welcome to Nightvale go through each song, the inspiration, the meaning, stuff like that.

I have read receipts on with my wife, but no one else. Too much pressure, especially for someone like me who habitually clears notifications even if I haven’t addressed anything

Depends a lot on your interests! Some good ones I’ve aggregated over the years:

• Pluralistic by Cory Doctorow: Daily links for reading by a very pro-decentralization and free web person
• A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry: History and Pop Culture, usually one post per week on Friday
• Pedestrian Observations: Public transportation and urban design
• People’s Policy Project: RSS feed for articles from the only crowd funded think tank (Lefty if you’re interested)
• Bartosz Ciechanowski: Great blog with interesting animations, all very well researched. Only downside is that you usually have to use the RSS feed as a method of knowing when the article is posted and following the link to the website, plus he usually only posts one every 3 months or so
• xkcd: Old guard web comics, always fun to read

There are a lot of great RSS feeds out there though! I encourage you to see if your favorite blogs or news sites or things like that also have RSS feeds and suggest consuming them on there (for example I read CBC and Radio Canada exclusively through RSS) as it usually streamlines the whole reading experience.

If you use Apple’s Ecosystem, I would also suggest using MacStories’ Find RSS Feed Shortcut which will grab any available feeds from any website you feed it and let you copy the link to your clipboard to add to your favorite app. Enjoy!

Someone who lives in California not originally from here chiming in. For me personally, I hate it because of the weather. I live in SoCal, which people claim to have good weather, but to me it’s hell. It never rains, the sun is always shining, and it’s always hot while most apartments don’t have AC. This may sound lovely to you, in which case more power to you. I’m the kind of person where the sun saps all energy out of my body and I prefer being cold to warm, so this sucks. Other main downside is housing cost. My 650 square foot one bed apartment in suburban LA costs over $2000 a month and it’s cheap for the size and area. Maybe Northern California is nicer, but SoCal ain’t it

Currently: None. I guess you could swing a semi-benefit that it gives more power to smaller states so they don’t “get overrun” by the big boys, but the way most states decide their electors, this happens anyways and would probably be better without the EC. Unfortunately to get rid of it requires a Constitutional Amendment which is very hard to do in this country (only 27 times in 230 years under the Constitution, 11 of which were proposed with the Constitution). There are a couple sneaky ways states are trying to get around this. I think CGP Grey has a video or two all about the Electoral College if you’re interested

Historically: Actually more than people think. It was difficult to spread information around the nation cause it was really big for the technology at the time. The optimistic idea behind it was that a state could hold their elections, the electors would then be informed what the desires of their electorate would be, then they would spend a month moseying up to the Capital (originally NYC, then Philadelphia, then DC) and once they got there they could then vote for the President using not only the desires of their electorate, but the most up to date political information. The cynical view is that this allowed the wealthy and powerful to elect other wealthy and powerful men to be President. Real history probably places the true reason somewhere in between