Somehow I’m also an idiot with finances. I guess the moral is I had a hands off dad who didn’t know shit.

This is what happens when you have a banker for a dad.

For years I just drew a line and then sawed down the middle of it. 🙄

If you already knew this expression, here is chapter two:

Account for the width of the blade.

Or they even say this is a sign of wear and means you should throw it out.

And because I enjoy sharing knowledge more than boasting I know more than others: the reason it moves is to account for the thickness of the metal hook itself.

It makes a difference if you are hooking it onto the back of something and measuring from there, OR butting it up onto something and measuring from there.

If you want accurate and consistent readings in both of these situations, the hook has to move. It basically pivots around the true point you’re measuring from.

There’s no way I’m going to let you characterize the Great Leap Forward as “famine happens.” That is absolutely criminal apologism.

China has only moved away from a state-run economy in the last 50 years, resulting in its current, larger and much more dynamic economy. It’s probably the world’s best current example of a country abandoning communism for capitalism, and reaping the benefits. There is wealth inequality, but fewer people are starving. All they’re keeping from their former regime is centralized single party political control.

Under economic Communism they proved over and over that a central government can’t command a entire set of industries and markets better than they can run themselves. People starved in the tens of millions finding this out. An uptick in suicide rates is nothing by comparison.

That’s somewhat either/or thinking when the emergent ideal is capitalism held in check by sane and compassionate social policies. You could call some of the latter socialistic if you want. But where in the world is Communism providing anyone a relevant alternative to the “decay” of capitalism? Capitalism is in its energetic teenage years still, in Asia, if you’ve noticed.

If you’re talking about the US, the slowing birthrate is compensated for by immigration. This is what drives immigration policy and why the US hasn’t fallen into the same demographic slump as Japan has, and China soon will.

Add to this that much of the tight housing market is driven by people around the world investing in US real estate. Some estimates are as high as 30% of homes sitting empty, held by foreign investors, just appreciating.

Between these two things, we are extremely far from being able to visualize too much housing. I hope we get there, though. Because it would fix the high pricing and allow us to demolish some of the oldest, shittiest housing which is only still around because the market is so nuts.

Yeah, and this is not a view of “the right” anymore. I know that leftism used to terminate with hard capitalism but if anyone is still advocating for that, I think they are on a different scale entirely. Being leftist these days is about proper environmental regulation, policies that encourage wealth equality, and using government to address the needs of the most vulnerable. It terminates at something like The Netherlands. Capitalism is no longer up for debate. Very little about foreign policy is either.

Yeah. I would also say that WE don’t understand what it means to “understand” something, really, if you try to explain it with any thoroughness or precision. You can spit out a bunch of words about it right now, I’m sure, but so could ChatGPT. What’s missing from GPT is harder to explain than “it doesn’t understand things.”

I actually find it easier to just explain how it does work. Multidimensional word graphs and such.

It’s super weird that it would attempt to give a time duration at all, and then get it wrong.

Take heart. America, like all developed nations, can’t live without immigrants to counteract its declining birth rate. If you live in fear that all immigrants will be expunged, you can relax.

Meanwhile women have already been targeted and shot at and hit because one of the last elections didn’t go well. Gay and trans people are being erased from places like a Florida and Texas right now.

Turn that anxiety into volunteer hours registering voters, or helping women access critical healthcare.

Do you think that would actually improve anyone’s mental health? Seems like it would become an echo chamber of complaint where absolutely everything in the world, including running out of toilet paper, is a classist plot to take away your humanity.

It’s okay for it to die down a bit after a massive influx like we saw from Reddit.

In the long run though, if it isn’t growing it’s dying. Lemmy is still small. If it succeeds at what it’s trying to do, it should definitely grow.

It’s a little worrying that we can’t grow faster than the novelty-die-off rate. But not cause for alarm as yet.

Thanks for clarifying - no apology needed.

You left the end of your statement unsaid so it wasn’t clear to me. It could be taken more than one way. Such as “Don’t complain that blue lives don’t exist, because if BLM hadn’t started it, blue lives wouldn’t even be a thing.”

Glad to know you didn’t mean it that way.

So… what? The point remains that black lives exist, not blue lives.

So… what? The point remains that black lives exist, not blue lives.

I don’t 🙋‍♂️