True but learning is hard work.

And fuck, I hated homework.

This happens with everyone. Remember the “blue dog democrats?”

Once power is to be had, everyone wants their piece of it for their provincial agenda. And when a party is on the defensive, they all band together to survive.

This is frankly one of the healthy checks and balances that keeps any one group from achieving hegemony.

If the whole country went overwhelmingly red or blue for any period of time, we’d see a third party emerge to destabilize it. Exactly as happened with Perot after the Reagan Dynasty.

Look everybody, it’s a dick punching an asshole! Anal sex in the chambers of congress should be illegal!

They have nothing to advocate for because they got everything they wanted a long time ago with the dismantling of the public trust and all the tax cuts. Killing Roe was a lark they only did for PR value but hey they got that too.

I wish people would realize that US politics isn’t a marketplace of ideas. It’s not about competing philosophies. There are some dug in motherfuckers who live only to consolidate their own power and wealth further and further.

It’s impossible to win a debate with an opponent who doesn’t even put forth an argument. Something something you just get dirty wrestling a pig and the pig enjoys the romp.

In a word: we can take our country and future from these assholes, or let them keep it. They don’t share.

It’s an outrage 100 different ways, but one of those is: this is an amazing job that a person could do SO much with. Policy is intensely interesting and massively important. There’s a huge variety of issues and so much to learn and fix.

For someone to seriously propose themselves for the job without having the decency to know what they even want to do with it… it’s just insulting.

Ironically, doing research is the best way to be right. What people want is to feel right without having to think very hard. Feelings don’t really require energy in the same way that thinking does.

You may right that there are exceptions. It is simple to craft legislation in such a way that it only applies to large companies. Or foreign companies. Or gives the niche guys 20 more years to comply. This isn’t moral philosophy where things need to be absolute. It’s trade regulation. It can be applied however it needs to be. But do we see Republicants introducing specific revisions like this? No.

Let’s say we’re right about that but there are actually two smallish American companies that would be hurt by this. It’s easy to modify a law so that it applies only above a certain threshold. It’s also perfectly okay to favor domestic companies and fuck over foreign ones, if that’s the issue.

Republicants…

Carbon negative when applied to soil. Making it is still a carbon releasing combustion process

EDIT okay I’m wrong they are including the production in their calculations.

I know sand is actually a precious resource when you really learn about how much concrete we make and what kinds of sand there are and which are needed for concrete.

But still, it’s strange to think that this exotic bean which will only grow in certain climates can actually be easier to get than fucking sand.

A biochar of spent coffee grounds.

Not coffee grounds.

If you don’t know what biochar is, it’s high carbon material that’s left over after burning organic matter (think:wood) slowly under low-oxygen conditions.

Biochar requires energy and emitting gases.

It seems unfair to say that we’re saving on CO2 and methane from decomposition without also counting the cost of the biochar combustion.

small business fan manufacturers

Is this really a thing? Small businesses that manufacture fans?

A doctor has access to totally different electronic information services than the average jackass on Facebook, if you didn’t know. Lawyers and journalists have their own versions of this too. So yeah, any doctor has better info than any private individual.

More importantly, they have well-informed judgment about how to consume those statistics, quality them, and apply them. This is quite important as the average Facebook jackass is bombarded by deliberately misleading information which they need to think critically about unraveling.

That is neither accurate nor the point.

I think you’re missing that she is a pediatrician and not just a “doctor.” Pediatricians administer a big majority of vaccines and care for the patients receiving them. They probably do learn a hell of a lot more about them than, say, an oncologist who spends all their time treating cancer in old people. And they see the effects of them up close in the field. Any doctor is constantly researching and staying up to date. A pediatrician worth their salt is very well educated on all relevant studies even if they didn’t conduct those studies with their own two hands. I reject the notion that you need to conduct the studies to know the science: that’s a ludicrous bar for us to set.

Yes, that too.

+1 to everything you said

Agreed. It’s what’s called a cheap shot.

It’s kind of an obvious joke about the border and immigration. The storm made landfall in Mexico and is now moving into the US. Conservatives think Biden just lets everyone in Mexico come over the border, so that’s the joke. Meanwhile liberals are laughing because they take it literally and think conservatives believe a storm can be detained. Come on folks. You need to be able to get a joke that was crafted for someone else or you are really stuck in your perspective.

I can’t speak to other markets but in California, the housing bubble is in part supported by investment from around the world. Chinese and Russian nouveau rich are buying homes in CA because it’s a safe place to keep their money relative to their other options. They might even just leave them empty and watch them appreciate. It’s disgusting, when people are struggling like hell just to live.

Perhaps the state could regulate this and ban international purchases or empty homes but I highly doubt it since the horse has left the barn decades ago and this would deeply impact many rich people, and those people have influence. It would also tank the home values of many average Americans, which would be deeply unpopular as many of those folks are banking on taking that value with them to Mexico or Ecuador to retire on. So this regulation would be bad for the rich and unpopular at large. It would help the young and the poor, the two chronically underrepresented groups.

So unless we can change the entire world order, I don’t see this wholly going away. Can we make it better? I think so. We need more supply, and it needs to be high density and low cost. Those are not insurmountable. But right now, private developers and the government don’t have what it takes to do anything.

I know someone who works for a low income housing non profit and they manage 8 big apartment buildings that their non profit built or bought and they operate them as homes for low income people. They are funded by philanthropists large and small as well as some public money.

If we could find a way to direct more money to such things, we could make a real impact. Perhaps a wealth tax that goes directly to such housing.

But even then, it’s like MediCal - it will only help those in abject poverty. It wont help my cousin who is making $125k and still can’t afford to buy a home. Middle class will never get help, basically, and this is why you see them moving elsewhere.