I agree with this take, and recently I actually read this article that criticizes how server centric fedi is as a whole. If it's hard and expensive for a layperson to self host, but you need to have an account associated with a specific server, then you're going to end up with a system where you're under the whims of a instance owner still. Not to mention the whole pick a server step severely hurts our adoption rates.

I like the idea of having an account just being a public and private key pair. Theoretically you could make one client side, use it to sign your messages, and servers could verify the signature and distribute your post without needing to have an explicit account for you. You could send every message to a random instance and it'd still work. You wouldn't have to worry about links to the "wrong instance" and you wouldn't have to attach your identity to a instance that might shut down or be bought by a bad person. The server would be essentially irrelevant.

I honestly think that philosophy is fine. Before the major social media sites all came about, the Internet was filled with much smaller communities that didn't need to be profitable or scalable - they could be run by an individual as a hobby project. I think returning to that (possibly with the use of federation so these small communities still have a good amount of content) could keep things free, ad free, and privacy conscious

Housing prices increase faster than inflation. Why do you think that is? Certainly not because housing is seen as an investment vehicle where corporations buy as much as they can just to rent out, increasing the demand and therefore price of housing beyond what the market rate would have otherwise been.

I think it's clear that landlords are making money (and even if they're not, they're at least gaining equity which will eventually make the whole thing profitable), with most of that profit coming from the mere act of owning the property and withholding it from those who need it in order to survive unless they pay - which is inherently coercive in nature, and a fork of violence against the working class performed by the owning class. Sure, there's a nominal amount of effort fees and effort, and I'm not going to knock property management, since that is actual work, but landlords primarily get their money from rent seeking (that is, however much they charge beyond their expenses).

I think the US would be a massively better place to live in if we massively taxed housing owned by corporations, or at least any properties owned by a single entity surpassing 1 or 2. The goal is to make it not profitable and not appealing as an investment, such that black rock et al see fit to unload most of all of their properties. The housing prices would and should crash, and finally be affordable again. The government might even buy a lot of them up and expand our socialized housing. Sure that last point might not be "fair" to existing home owners, but consider they are hy definition already well off enough to afford their own home and bought their homes during the time when it was still seen as an "investment" that by definition means it comes with some amount of risk. At least going forward, housing would no longer be a vehicle for investment and well on its way to becoming a human right, like it should be.

Good point, I guess we should just let the homes remain empty and the homeless on the streets?

I get that having your home squatted in sucks, and if you were only out for a week long vacation and come back to a break in then you have my sympathy, but the message here is ultimately pointing out that houses have been commodified and turned into vehicles for investing by the rich, rather than a right like they should be. We have more empty homes than homeless people, and that simply isn't just.

The "paradox of tolerance" has never legitimately stumped anyone. The initial act of intolerance broke the social contract, thus removing their right to tolerance themselves.

You've set up a false dichotomy. There are reasons to dislike AI besides capitalist propaganda. For example, moral concerns with training on data without explicit approval

This comic reminds me of a classic argument used for leftist policies, unrelated to ayn rand though. Under capitalism, technological advancements are harmful to the working class because companies are likely to keep pay and hours the same, and just scale up production and/or lay off surplus labor force.

Under a system where the workers own the means of production, those same advancements could go towards lowering the hours of the employees without lowering their pay, or if they decide to scale up production then it would mean more profit that the company could decide democratically what to do with, making it likely to result in pay increases for the workers. Point is it wouldn't just go into the hands of the capitalist class, but rather stay under control of those who labored for it.

Yeah, I'd never vote for the Republican party but holy shit I'm going to pressure the DNC to give us a non geriatric candidate every moment I can. I will criticize the failures of the Democratic party so loudly and publicly because that's the only (non violent) way to get them to change. We need a better candidate, a better party, and a better country. I'd encourage everyone to send a message by telling polls they're uncommitted.

Both China and Russia have also called for cease fire. Stop justifying us spending ungodly amounts of money to bomb children. The US is actively engaging in arming a genocide despite the majority of its population supporting a cease fire. It's not complicated, it's clearly Biden supporting the industrial military complex over his own constituents. This horrific act is all for some rich assholes to become slightly more rich. It's unjustifiable.

I use jellyfin on my TV too. No kodi needed

I'm big on urbanism and walkable cities and absolutely don't mind people who don't want to live in cities. We don't tend to argue rural areas shouldn't exist, but rather point out that suburban areas have a lot of problems and are way more common than they should be, when looking at demand for mixed use development, walkable cities, etc.

For what it's worth, for most of human existence rural towns existed without need for cars, so there's still some truth to the idea that America has been rebuilt for the car, even in rural areas. There's a variety of explanations out there for why and how they worked, but one I'm a fan of is how many rural towns would organize around a central "main street", and keep the houses near it while the rest of their land spread outward. That way food, entertainment, and neighbors were all still easily accessible despite the large average amount of land.

And tbh, even setting that aside, I don't think many urbanists actually have an issue with rural areas. The movement really focuses on suburbia. A lot of the problems stem from suburbs being spread out like rural areas, but with city level amenities, without paying the amount of taxes to get those amenities that far out. Most notably, paved roads are extremely expensive to maintain and gas taxes are not high enough to pay for it. But to some extent most services suburbs get are going to be subsidized by those living in a nearby city, because it's just so much cheaper to provide those services when everyone lives closer together. And besides the subsidization, suburbs (unlike both cities and rural towns) just have a lot of qualities to them that make them bad for the environment and unpleasant and dangerous to live in - I understand not wanting to live in a city, but no one thinks hour long commutes through rush hour traffic is a positive.

The genre is pretty popular, although you'll sometimes see it referred to as idle or clicker games.