drphungky

@drphungky@lemmy.world

I’m just a guy, my dudes.

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drphungky ,

He didn't appoint anyone to the NY state supreme court.

drphungky ,

It's not even just that they're at the margins, it's also a math problem. One bad actor can sexually harass hundreds, perhaps even thousands of women over the course of many years. Now make that thousands of men, and see how it's very reasonable that 1 in 2 women or whatever it is have been sexually harassed or assaulted - and that can still be less than 1% of the male population doing it. Anyone who doubts women get harassed or even assaulted often needs to have their head examined. There is a guy in my neighborhood currently who has not been caught who is following women while in his car. The neighborhood listservs are awash with women who have noticed this guy. There was another guy who was groping women on the trail who affected multiple women before they caught him.

And this is not just sex crimes. Recently, they arrested a group of car thieves/car jackers in my area. The four of them were responsible for over two hundred car thefts, and possibly up to three hundred additional unaccounted for crimes. And that's for a very visible crime like stealing a car - imagine the numbers for something like groping someone on a crowded train or bus.

This is why people who say stuff like, "just teach men not to rape" are as insane as saying "just teach minorities not to steal cars". It is a tiny portion of the population having an outsized influence because they can harm multiple people. When you start blaming a group for the actions of a tiny portion of that group, you're just lost.

I mean sure, call out crime in general when you see it, but I have seen this type of harassment probably a dozen times in my life. And it happens all around, dozens of times a day.

drphungky ,

I replaced the washer line on my 2016 Outback. It looked way more complicated than it was, and I think I took the bumper off when I didn't have to. You should look at YouTube. I recall thinking how easy it would be to do it a second time.

drphungky ,

I'm unironically interested in trying it, but the ratios seem off at first glance. Too much crunch, not enough chew. Also the hot dog is already salty, so adding a salty pickle means you might need a sweet batter, and certainly more of it.

I think, much like a Chicago style dog, this could be amazing.

drphungky ,

Did no one read the article? All of his complaints are correct! Replacing old city pipes, that are almost assuredly covered in years of internal layers to mitigate lead leaking, will have a negligible to possibly even negative effect on lead at the tap. Even Brookings said so in their study! Buttigieg is getting a total pass here ignoring the real issues raised by just rebutting about how lead is bad, when they're both saying that. So tired of people scoring cheap political points on soundbites, and Buttigieg doesn't usually fall prey to that sort of thing.

Yes, the funding should have been higher, but if we've only got 15 million to work with, it might actually make more sense to do targeted fixes in low income communities in old residential buildings, where you're most likely to have lead effects actually being felt at the tap from (relatively) newer lead pipe still in walls. But that would be expensive and much harder than just replacing water mains, so they're doing the easy less-important work first, rather than getting the biggest bang for their buck.

drphungky ,

Wealth tax is a terrible idea. People think it will solve the problem with billionaires taking out loans collateralized with their stock and not paying income tax, but the solution for that is far simpler - just treat loans as income. You can even add an exception for an owner occupied mortgage if you want to keep encouraging forced savings into property. We have existing solutions that don't have the massive disincentives a wealth tax would create.

A wealth tax actually discourages investment through stocks, which is what keeps the economy moving (and before anyone says publicly traded companies thinking about short term profits is destructive, that's a separate, but serious, issue). Worse, it discourages savings of any kind. The problem with saying "oh we'll just start it only a billion dollars" or whatever is that allows for later expansion of the tax to 100 millionaires, 20 million, and boom suddenly you're taxing people with 5 million dollars which is what you'd expect a middle class elderly couple from a high cost of living area to have squirreled away for retirement. And if you don't think that would happen, you should look at the history of the income tax - because that's exactly what happened.

Also, a wealth tax is really hard to enforce, and would require a huge increase to the administrative state that itself would create a need for more taxes. That's not inherently a problem (obviously we have legions of IRS agents, etc) but we already have that infrastructure set up for income taxes and are just underutilizing it. Take how many lawsuits and hearings we already have JUST with tax assessors for property, and then try adding that to cars, boats, art, luxury clothes, appliances, privately held companies, anywhere you can hide money or that has a questionable value. It's a boondoggle we don't need to mess with when all we have to do is just reclassify collateralized debt as income because it is functionally the same as selling something.

I like taxes. I even like my high taxes because I know they pay for good services since I live in a blue state. But a wealth tax is a bad idea when we already have income taxes and can add VAT taxes for luxury goods.

drphungky ,

The problem with that is there is a very clear policy purpose and interest in making housing an investment - the vast vast majority of people will eventually own a home, and it is a forced savings vehicle because people are REALLY bad at saving for retirement. Even if you fix our lack of a social safety net, home ownership is generally seen as a public good because it encourages people investing more in and caring about their community, being willing to pay higher taxes to support more services, etc. It's not a no brainer to make housing an investment (there are arguments against in a society with a good social safety net), but it is very purposeful through good public policy. It has little to do with the recent (very recent, relatively) buying up of single family homes by investment banks, etc, despite people implying all the time it's some secret cabal and shadowy wealthy figures doing it for their own benefit. Everyone sees conspiracies everywhere these days.

Of course, if we're going to say that home ownership is "good" and keep doing all the tax incentives for it, we do need to stop corporations speculating and driving up housing costs, and could do so by some targeted taxes on unoccupied properties in the same portfolio. But there's an argument to be made that that's a relatively small portion of the problem, since a lot of our housing stock issues can be traced back to single family zoning issues, as well as road and highway funding leading to suburban sprawl and unaffordable newly developed subdivisions while cheaper starter homes don't exist anymore...but either way affordable housing stock just hasn't kept up.

drphungky ,

Well for one, this isn't newly released: this is from 2016.

But to address your point, the reason it isn't hypocritical is because (like he said in the article) power and culture and conventional wisdom flows from the cities. It's the difference between punching up and punching down. Yes, rural people often have shit attitudes about cities, but it is culturally nearly homogenous to have negative opinions about rural people. The amount of people and the weight of the opinions they hold are not even close to balanced. Plus, and this is the more important bit: it's not just their shitty attitudes. They also have, as he outlines in the article, legitimate complaints and cries for help that we wrap up with their shitty opinions and ignore. It's not helpful.

I liked this article when it came out, and I still like it. I too moved from an area just like his to the city, and I couldn't agree with his points more. I have friends that have spent their whole lives in cities that continually miss the mark on this stuff because they have no concept of what rural people are like or actually think.

drphungky ,

For example, each vote in the electoral college for California represents 703,000 people. In Montana, on the other hand, each electoral vote represents closer to 250,000 people.

On the other hand, more conservatives voted for Trump in California than in Texas. That's a LOT of conservatives who are having their voice drowned out. This is also why a few red states have signed on to the national popular vote amendment. So many people in deep blue and deep red states stay home on election day, we don't actually know how the popular vote would play out. People like to say we have way more democrats but that's not necessarily true - it's just a matter of current vote totals.

drphungky , (edited )

The idea being you can get an hourly job and an apartment just about anywhere. The only real expense is moving your shit. Most everything else is time.

Edit: Jesus Christ this place is cancer sometimes. Imagine being downvoted for explaining someone else's point because people don't agree with it. Just reddit with angrier voices.

drphungky ,

Be more interesting

drphungky ,

I mean I was being flippant, but finding interests or passions and then finding affinity groups that do those things is a great way to meet people.

But also I just

drphungky ,

Hanlon's Razor, my friend.. Hanlon's Razor.

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

drphungky ,

The idea that you think people in the Bush administration sent soldiers to Afghanistan to make money is insane, and shows me you have never worked in government or met anyone who has. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant Iraq, not Afghanistan (since the US was attacked and the whole world agreed on going into Afghanistan). But even for Iraq, no one is making calculations on what's good for the military industrial complex - they're guessing on if the cost of human life is worth the human lives saved and suffering prevented, and yes "spreading democracy". We can certainly mock it now, and talk about the WMD justification proving false, but the idea of going to war to somehow make money is insane. War is a net negative (look up broken window theory) and everyone in government knows it. The point of war is to change the global order, not pad pocketbooks, and effecting global change still would be the point even if it worked for making money - which it doesn't.

drphungky ,

Well I'm sure he's the only one. This system sounds great.

drphungky ,

Who makes the consumables in a library economy? Why on earth would I farm for love of the game?

drphungky ,

Someone else will do it then, surely? I can just play video games and check things out permanently from the library and get free food from the farmer?

drphungky ,

Well the farmer has to share though, right? So what do I care if he's mad at me?

drphungky ,

So the farmer can arbitrarily decide who gets food?

drphungky ,

Gotcha. What about people who the farmer has never met, but they come to him for food?

drphungky ,

I'm asking you because you're in here arguing for this moneyless, library society! I feel like if we can't answer super basic questions about how getting rid of something as universally important as currency would actually work, then maybe we haven't really thought it through.

Very interested to hear more though, particularly as someone who studied things like this and is now an economist who works in inflation.

drphungky ,

This doesn't really have anything to do with capitalism, nor with propaganda. This is the difference between "Freedom to" and "Freedom from" and which is valued more. Capitalism works under both systems.

"Freedom from" is a more European model, where the state is more likely to provide a good social safety net, regulate against potential harms, and more tightly curb free speech in the interest of protecting others from having to hear hateful things, or gun rights in the interest of protecting people from potential violence. "Freedom to" is a more American model where you have fewer restrictions but far fewer protections. You're essentially on your own if someone who hates you wants to get a gun, but you're just as allowed to get one to defend yourself. You can say whatever you want, but have to deal with well-meaning bleeding hearts defending nazis and their right to spout hate (or you did, anyway - this is changing somewhat). There are pros and cons to both systems of value, but we should probably recognize them for what they are rather than tilting at windmills.

drphungky ,

I get that you're being flippant, but they also have more freedom to make way more money, say what they want even if they're assholes, protect themselves when they live out in the country, do what they want with their land, start a business with less regulation, etc. You could also just as easily say Europeans are free to have more than half their income seized to pay for other people's benefits, free to be thrown in jail for saying something mean about someone, etc.

I might agree with your specific points, but I think it's important to emphasize to anyone who blindly reads your post and is like "Yeah!!! America sux!" that there are unquestionably costs and benefits to both systems, and just because you value one more than the other doesn't make the other one wrong, it makes it different. If you think one is "right" and one is "wrong", I can guarantee you haven't fully examined the pros and cons. (As an aside, there are also tons of issues in America and Europe that make them good or bad places to live that are unrelated to this philosophical problem of what constitutes freedom.)

But there will always be people who value more freedom (freedom to) over more protection (freedom from) and vice versa. At one extreme, you have anarchy and the Purge everyday, at the other: living in a prison. Finding the right balance between safety and freedom is an ancient problem, and recognizing that the OP clearly thinks only their definition is the "right" one on a multivariate scale with many different equilibriums is the epitome of "Wake up sheeple" and assuming anyone who has different values than you is a rube.

In any event, attributing any of it to capitalism is just wrong.

drphungky ,

You're a mad man, and your food classification theories are overwrought AND lead to bad conclusions!

A salad?! Clearly a deep-dish pizza is a form of quiche!

drphungky ,

While admittedly mashed potatoes and rice are miscategorized and switched from where they should be, the cube rule is a parsimonious and more accurate model! The footnote misrepresents it as location of carbs, when it is clearly stated as the location of structural starch. When reading it in this manner it is much more clear than any soup-based hyperspace nonsense!

drphungky ,

Is a pinwheel the same as a burrito? Of course not! Is a pepperoni roll a calzone?! Never! Structure matters! If it didn't, why would you be able to order a personal pan pizza or a slice?! Clearly, they are different!

By your logic, I could pick out all of the greens from my salad bowl, hand you a bowl of croutons, and have given you a salad. Preposterous!

drphungky ,

"Oh no, they're not taking me seriously!"

Cashes 2.5 million dollar check

"Anyways..."

drphungky ,

Trump's PACs, in turn funded by a bunch of people who are being told how they're funding his "campaign".

drphungky ,

I actually undershot, since the 2.5 must've been just from one PAC.

3.5: https://www.newsweek.com/alina-habbas-firm-has-been-paid-over-35m-defend-trump-1862002

drphungky ,

This is wild. I even thought lasagna was worth the minimal effort before, but I just got KitchenAid attachments for Christmas and it's insanely easy. You mix the dough in the bowl, and then flatten a couple times, run through the slicer, put in the water and it boils way faster than dried. It's also so so much better than dried.

I'm with you on like, ravioli though. Also we occasionally made wide rice noodles from scratch for Thai cooking and while they're not technically hard, they're very labor intensive and time consuming. The problem is the difference between them and dried is night and say - dried wide rice noodles arent even really worth eating. Finally found a shop that sells them fresh though so we are golden.

drphungky ,

I know it's just conventional wisdom, but among those who look back and forward and think about this stuff, it's been common conventional wisdom for a century that 20 years is an exceedingly long time for change.

I like Bill Gates' quote the best, "People often overestimate what will happen in the next two years and underestimate what will happen in ten."

https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/01/03/estimate/

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