SwampYankee @ SwampYankee @mander.xyz

Posts

3

Comments

418

Joined

2 yr. ago

Just make sure no one named Ted Faro gets anywhere near the project.

On the other hand, Tuvix creeped me out.

The problem is democrats love exploiting brown people for their cheap sweat shop labor.

You could build an IMAX theater with all that projection.

I'm not going to tell you all the things you mentioned are impossible. I've read your other comments too. I've seen homeless women crying in the street, people with obvious mental or physical problems begging. Homelessness - visible homelessness - is terribly common. As far as crime goes, I don't know, maybe people target tourists? My rental car visibly full of luggage was broken into in San Jose once, and they stole a bunch of electronics. Learned my lesson on that one. Apart from that I've wandered around some rough areas on occasion and in 36 years I've never been victimized in person.

Anyway, one last point: according to official stats, the rate of homelessness in Australia is nearly 3x that in the US, although I imagine that Australia probably counts homelessness differently, so it's hard to compare, but 3x seems like a big difference for simple differences in methodology to account for. That said, I'm sure Australia has better services, so it may not be as visible to the average person, and less of a struggle for those experiencing homelessness. Hard for me to believe things are all that much better in the land of Murdoch, though.

I suppose that's because parliamentary parties are much stricter with their membership. A small difference of opinion could lead to the expulsion of a member. US parties can't really do that, so instead we have caucuses within the parties that vote along party lines most of the time, but differently on some important issues. In a parliamentary system, the caucus members would be expelled and would have to form their own party to have their views represented.

Yeah, beyond that I was mostly responding to the assertion that "Americans are stupid and easily manipulated."

No, they are responding to an imperfect system that punishes them for having strong morals. Far from stupid, it's actually quite rational. The best thing you can do if you care about not having to choose between genocide and even more genocide is get involved in pushing ranked choice voting through ballot measures, lobbying your state legislature, or hell, start with just municipal elections if you think you can get that done.

I say this as someone who's going to vote third party - Trump and Biden are the only two choices. One of them is going to win, period. I'm voting third party because I know beyond reasonable doubt which one is going to win my state, so I have the privilege of throwing away my vote. I can't fault someone for voting on a "lesser evil" basis in a swing state.

It's more that the third-party spoiler effect is inherent to the first past the post system, so voting your conscience (for a third party) is effectively the same as not voting, and if enough people vote their conscience, it's effectively like voting for exactly the opposite of what you want.

To be fair, Gary, Indiana isn't most people's first choice to visit...

The CIA staged a coup in Iran in 1953 at the behest of Britain/British Petroleum when the newly elected PM decided to nationalize the oil fields. Iran remains Israel's greatest geopolitical foe, because of Israel's ties to the West.

The Suez Canal, an originally French/British colonial venture, which carries an absurd amount of cargo from former British colonies into the Mediterranean, was the cause of the Six Day War; not to mention there's a plan for a new canal through Israel to avoid all the nasty geopolitical issues the Suez Canal raises.

The US has a network of Middle Eastern allies and enemies and meddles in the affairs of every middle eastern nation because they've got all that sweet light crude we love so much.

Do you think, maybe, that the US's (and more broadly the West's) objectives in the region outweigh, possibly, whatever "influence" Israel has over our politics?

Look, AIPAC sucks but do you guys really think we wouldn't be dumping weapons into the middle east if it weren't for the Israel lobby? Like the US government doesn't have its own reasons for doing so?

The US is a global empire built on oil, which makes Israel (an ideologically similar nation in the middle of the largest oil producing region on earth) a natural partner. Influence doesn't really have anything to do with it.

As it turns out, more Americans are engaged in lobbying the US government than Israelis. Go figure.

The barnacles must be a more recent phenomenon, I was there a couple years ago. There were still fish skeletons lying around, but mostly this:

Sources say the shark warned the woman, saying "American woman, stay away from me."

Fun fact, the beach is made entirely out of barnacles and it smells like someone ate 10 pounds of salmon and then ripped ass straight up your nose. Don't go in the water, you'll die!

You're missing the important point which is that when women sell their bodies it's icky. Human trafficking only matters if it's for icky reasons.

I love when people who grew up in the 70s tell me the world is so much less safe today.

$150k is twice what my parents made combined back in the 90s, and they lived a solid upper middle class life in an upscale suburb of a small city. Always had a nice TV and my dad and I both had PCs that we upgraded every year AND they saved up two years worth of college for me. Amazing how quickly things have changed. They bought their house for $180k and it's now worth nearly $500k.

My career now is generally a higher valued one than theirs, but adjusting for inflation, my pay has always been lower than theirs at the same point in their careers. And that's the story. Incomes may have doubled since the early-mid 90s, but everything else has tripled or quadrupled.