This is why Europe must take control of its own defense. Europe doesn’t want to be a mere vassal of the US for precisely this reason.

The United States is currently experiencing a shortfall in the number of immigrant workers. This has exacerbated service disruptions and labor shortages in vital industries that rely on immigrant workers, like leisure and hospitality. However, the impact of this shortfall extends beyond just the industries in which foreign-born workers perform a significant share of the labor. For example, immigrants also help counteract the slowing growth rate of the U.S. population, which helps drive the expansion of the labor force and contributes to overall economic growth.

Foreign-born workers are more likely to participate in the labor force than their native-born peers. As a result, immigrants have helped power the U.S. economic recovery by returning quickly to work, despite being disproportionately affected by job losses during the pandemic.

The importance of foreign-born workers will only continue to grow over time, as these workers remain vital to sectors that drive economic innovation and competitiveness. For example, jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), which rely on the contributions of immigrants, are projected to continue growing faster than other occupations. Similarly, foreign-born workers are vital to the care industry, shouldering a significant share of the work performed by home health care and child care workers. Immigrant workers, a significant share of them women, are also helping to meet the growing demand for caregivers as the overall population ages.

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Am I the only one who finds this kind of disturbing? We need immigrants because Americans aren’t willing to do certain jobs, for the amount of money that companies want to pay, and because Americans aren’t having enough babies? We need immigrants because we don’t do a good enough job developing talent and competency in STEM fields? We need immigrants because our people don’t want to do home health care or child care work, for the amount of money those companies are willing to pay? It sounds like immigration is necessary due to our own failures.

That’s not good, and I don’t think immigration really solves the problem. In fact, I think it makes it worse, because it allows us to continue to not invest in our own people the way we should. Plus, what happens to those other countries? If we have all their talented and hard working laborers, what are they going to do?

Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal

I wonder how the other 6 in 10 young women would describe their political views. While 40% isn’t a majority, I would think liberals are a plurality. Still, it’s a little disheartening that there isn’t a clear majority in the US. It would be nice if a majority of Americans could reach a consensus.

Of course parents not taking appropriate precautions doesn’t absolve the companies of responsibility. Unethical behavior is unethical behavior, even if there are things consumers can do to protect themselves from it. After all, the precautions wouldn’t be necessary if the companies didn’t engage in this behavior in the first place, so these precautions aren’t really solutions only mitigations.

I used to advocate for Linux, because I wanted more people to use it, so that more software devs would support it. I care a lot less about that since proton came to prominence. Linux still doesn’t get all the support from devs that I want, but there’s so much great software available now, both open source and proprietary, that I don’t really worry about non Linux users anymore.

So use whatever OS you want, folks. I don’t really care.

RIP Lt. Zogg

The irony is, something like this probably would have been a lot less expensive to make, while also appealing more to fans. It’s funny how so many people in the movie business are not very good at, you know, the movie business.

Classic schlock.

When people are told that depression is an aberration, we are telling them that they are not part of the tribe. They are not right, they don’t belong. That’s when their shame deepens and they avoid social connection.

And that’s not the only reason people are made to feel they’re not part of the tribe, that they don’t belong. There are many things in this modern (post modern?) world that cause us to become alienated from other people, even and especially those in our own community. The nature of community itself has changed. Many relationships and social institutions feel more tenuous or impermanent.

It’s a vicious cycle: people feel alienated from others, it causes them stress, the stress causes anxiety, that leads to the immobilization response and depression, the effects of the anxiety and depression cause people to become further alienated from others, and the process accelerates and perpetuates.

Sorry, you’re all getting techno-feudalism.

I know a Gen Zer who’s hoping her Gen X parents will leave her their house and their 20+ acres of land, but it ain’t gonna happen. When they reach retirement age they’re going to sell it all and that’s going to be their retirement. Retirement is expensive, and the longer you live the more expensive it is, especially if you get sick, and you will get sick, eventually.

One reason the suburbs even exist is that there isn’t space in the city for everyone. Many suburban families would rather live downtown but cannot as they do not have the mega millions to own a 3br condo.

But I think the reason there isn’t space for everyone in many cities is because a large percentage, or even a majority of the land in many cities is zoned for single family only, even very near downtown areas. I think parking requirements have a lot to do with it as well, since they result in parking lots being built where condos, or other multifamily housing could be built. Theoretically if you get rid of single family only zoning and the parking requirements, more housing units could be built, even larger units, increasing their supply relative to the demand, thus bringing down the per unit price.

But maybe that theory is flawed. Maybe the problem goes deeper than zoning and parking requirements. A lot of these real estate developments are investments, and investors have an incentive to not build so much housing that the per unit price goes down significantly. Some people might argue that developers and investors could make up for lower per unit prices in volume, but that’s only true if they are large enough and have capital resources to produce at that higher volume, which might be fine for very large developers and investment companies, but not for smaller ones. Plus, large or small, why try to make money selling or renting more units at a lower per unit price when you can make the same amount of money selling or renting fewer units at a higher per unit price?

I think the thing that would help the most would be to get rid of single family only zoning. That should result in a lot more, higher density housing being built. However, that’s not going to bring down the price of single family homes. In fact, it would probably make them more expensive. Maybe not everyone would think that’s such a good thing, but it’s absolutely necessary if we want to reduce car dependency.

Nobody’s laying tracks all over the place to actually make cars obsolete - that would be an insane waste of space, resources and time.

Cars may not require tracks, but they require infrastructure. You’re not driving anywhere without roads, bridges, and other car infrastructure, unless you are driving a fully off-road vehicle.

I’m ok with a decent amount of tech in a car. Like I’m fine being able to connect my phone to the car and have android auto take over the infotainment system.

This reminds me of my 2016 Honda Civic. It had just the right amount of tech.

I don’t think the housing crisis is being caused by people who live in rural areas and don’t want there to be endless urban and suburban sprawl. Most people want to live in urban areas, because those areas are where the jobs, shops, and infrastructure are. Sprawl is expensive, inefficient, and bad for the environment. It should be prevented as much as possible. But, the only way to prevent it is to make housing in urban areas, the area where people want to live because it’s where everything is, more affordable, and that means building more, dense housing in those areas. The real NIMBYs are people who own low density, single family homes in urban areas and don’t want higher density housing to be built in that area because it would bring down their property values.

Nevertheless, a nationwide housing drive risks stoking homeowners’ ire in a country where the middle class derives most of its wealth from real estate and two-thirds of dwellings are occupied by their owners.

That’s the thing that nobody wants to talk about. I’m constantly hearing people saying that “NIMBYs” are the cause of the housing crisis, which isn’t untrue, but it doesn’t really get to the heart of the issue. Why do NIMBYs exist? I think the prevailing assumption is that they’re just greedy, miserly boomers who love money and hate young people, but I think the problem is systemic, not simply caused by some individuals who happen to have character flaws.

It’s easy to call these property owners greedy, because it’s not your wealth. If it were your wealth, I bet many of you would be NIMBYs too. Because, again, it’s not just a matter of you having better moral character than them, it’s about the incentives, and how people with opposing financial interests have different incentives. People with wealth have an incentive to protect their wealth, and people without wealth have an incentive to try and acquire wealth.

This is why I’m a critic of capitalism, and why I want to move toward something that could be called socialism (although, not necessarily a Marxist or Marxist-Leninist conception of socialism). I think capitalism creates too many oppositional relationships. It causes people to have opposing interests. Owners and workers, companies and consumers, home buyers and home owners. I think it would be better to try and build a system around our shared interests, around the things we have in common, as opposed to one where we are constantly in opposition to one another.

We all need housing. It is a universal human need. So why have a system that incentivizes some to restrict other’s access to it? Why have a system that creates an adversarial relationship between those who have a home (and the wealth associated with it) and those who don’t?

All of these oppositional, adversarial relationships cause conflict and division.

The level of paranoia is kind of crazy.

It feels like there’s still some, mostly unspoken animosity between liberals and demsocs like AOC. I think the Democrats would like people to believe that liberals and demsocs have reached a consensus, and that moderates and progressives are unified, but I think there are still philosophical and ideological differences between them, maybe even some that are irreconcilable. The liberals have definitely made a lot of concessions to the demsocs, but I think they have also tried to make it abundantly clear that the Democratic party is still a liberal party. And that’s understandable, liberalism is the predominant ideology in America. Sure, there are a lot more demsocs today than twenty years ago, but we are still heavily outnumbered.

One of the many games just sitting in my steam library, waiting to be played.