GoodbyeBlueMonday

I had an enormous reply essentially "yes-and'ing" your reply (I agree with it, but wanted to add a "but" in a few places), but...into the ether it went. I'll listen to that podcast mini series.

One thing I wanted to add is that I grew up in Atlanta, so I agree that plenty of folks should leave NYC and LA. However, there's plenty of folks there necessary for the city to function, and I think that legislation is probably the only viable way that things will change for them, since lower-income folks are just being squeezed from all directions, given how much of a commodity real estate has gotten since the last big housing bubble burst.

Again though, I'm not an economist, so my ideas are certainly not immediately viable, and I agree there's little chance of "solving" most of this under the best of circumstances. I just think there's too much greed, especially related to housing, that can be improved. We're a rich enough nation that we can do better. Also I just wanted to be sure to give your nice comment a thoughtful reply, because the internet is too toxic in general, and we need to try to make it otherwise. Have a nice end of the year

Because plenty of folks would have a solid down payment, or better credit score, if rent wasn't so damn high. Likewise affordable rent would make it easier for folks to move to places where they could get the type of stable job necessary for a mortgage, etc. It's not the only reason folks don't have the economic resources at hand, but it's usually the biggest expense in ones budget, no?

Greedy landlords are the problem, imho, and unfortunately every landlord except exactly one I've rented from (out of about ten in total) have been greedy assholes.

As for a fix: housing is a right, imho. I'm not an economist so anything I offer will be full of holes, but some way of securing that people have stable, safe, comfortable housing is essential. Making sure people can't exploit the need for shelter is a big component of whatever fix we need.

It's designed that way in the same way as a hole was designed for a puddle*. The caterpillars are evolutionarily successful because of a "spray and pray" strategy, and other species are successful because of the easy food.

Biology is an arms race, in a sense: so everything is interlinked, and affected by everything else, even if only by distant, myriad links in an unbroken web of chains. It's the reason a lot of biologists like myself are anxious about the ecological destruction that's been unfolding for so long. Life finds a way in the long term, but short term...it sucks to be alive when many of the things you depend on aren't.

*This metaphor thanks to Douglas Adams

Thanks for inspiring me to take a crack at it myself! If I actually wind up starting a tank, I'll try to remember to send you a message

Do you have a favorite site to suggest how to get started?

You're entitled to feel the way you do too, but it doesn't change what I've seen in my years, either.

I think I'm being perfectly level headed, I'm just being a little snarky. At least equally snarky to your comment.

I just wanted to point out that nuance is possible with just a few additional words, but only if we choose to use nuance.

Well it's a good thing you did the work and spoke with every Jewish person in north America to be able to paint with such a broad brush. I guess all the people I've spoken with we're lying about their ethnicity.

In seriousness though, simply adding "many" or "a plurality of" is enough to add nuance to the discussion. Starting with the blanket "the Jews" isn't a good look.

I appreciate you taking the time to say that! Thank you. My favorite song by him is probably Desperados Under the Eaves, if you'd ever like to hear the best of his music.

Reminds me of what Warren Zevon had to say about rich people problems, off Preludes. It came out a few years after his death, and the back half of the album has snippets from some radio interview(s?) he did. Neat musings by a complex dude: he was creative genius in a lot of ways, and a titanic asshole in a lot of other ways (he asked his ex-wife to write his biography, and to not go easy on him - alcoholism, violence, absentee parenting...it's all there).

Anyway, that's a preface for the folks who don't know about him: he probably could have been a bigger financial success had he not been a disaster of a human, but maybe his dirty life and times gave him enough material to feed his creativity...who knows.

WZ: I was real lucky, because I always had some kind of work that came along - at the last minute, anyway.

I was always able to make some kind of living as a musician

I also never really got rich, and that might have been lucky too, ya know?

Interviewer: in what way?

WZ: Well, because the less time you spend with the issues of being rich

they're like the issues of being famous

they're not real issues

so they're not real life.

Interviewer: And it leaves more time to be creative?

WZ: There's more of an exchange - a human exchange of ideas and feelings to be had on the bus stop than over the phone with your accountant, and if you're rich you spend a lot of time on the phone with your accountant. it's necessary, I believe.

I know I'm happy and that means I must be lucky. That I know.

EDIT: this is not to say I wouldn't be grateful for more money, myself, but I chose the life of a biologist - in ecology and evolution, no less. I'm happy to make a living, and it's always a little shocking to see folks make double/triple what I do and say it's "not much these days". Those of us scraping by have a wildly different perspective, and I'd love to give folks a tour of what it looks like long-term.

To add to this: if the opposition party consistently shows up to vote, the dominant party gets nervous, and has to focus on the chance of losing. Not showing up means they've truly won.

It also shows the opposition party that they can and should invest the time in supporting that area, because there's people who haven't given up yet.

Also, the president isn't the only person on the ballot, and small races are where more radical third parties actually have a shot!

Also, if you bailed after driving the hovercraft, maybe you didn't get to Black Mesa East, or Ravenholm? IMHO that's where things really ramp up: story-wise (you meet more allies), and you get a better glimpse at the endgame. You get a neat tool to use (which also was mind-blowing in 2004, less so almost twenty years later), too.

If you don't dig it though, I wouldn't force it. I'm a fan of science fiction more than fantasy, so I've never finished a Dishonored game, but I love Prey. Just doesn't hook me the way I know it could...just not my particular vibe I guess, which I think is OK.