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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2024

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  • I’m not in a particularly desirable area… I’m also not in the US though.

    A bug reason why the only desirable areas tend to be walkable in the US is just because there are so few.

    If you promoted widespread walkable city-design, then prices will become more accessible to everyone. Even the poorest areas lf my city are super walkable, even moreso than many of the richer areas.





  • They’ve been building big public housing since the 1920s. I live next to a lot of it and it’s quite high quality and really pleasant.

    Lots of cities/countries has massive public housing (the UK being a great example post WW2) but Vienna is more of an exception in that they didn’t follow the trend in the 70s-90s of privatization and stopping investment (although it did slow down at one point).

    They were the same way about their tram system, where they kept it rather than ripping it out like most places. Now everyone else wishes they so had a tram network or is trying to rebuild one.

    That being said, rents are rising here too, but they are much more reasonable to begin with. I was living in London previously, and now we spend about 30-40% less for a place over twice the size and in a nicer location. Plus finding a place was muuuuuch easier, since it’s noticeably less competitive.










  • I remember just after all this kicked off last October there was an interview with an ex hamas guy (who is now an anti-extremism researcher) about what their plan was with all of this.

    He mentioned how their plan had always been to force a reaction from Israel and then use social media to build support among specifically both the Muslim diaspora and progressive non-muslims in Europe/NA.

    The worse it gets in Gaza, the better it is for Hamas. Their support in Gaza goes up, and they gain additional support abroad, while Israel loses support. Win/win/win



  • I went through a pretty big libertarian phase way back in my late teens.

    Not the ‘deregulate everything’ type, but rather more of a ‘everyone’s place in society is governed by the choices they make’ social-darwinist sort of angle.

    Once I got out and experienced real life more (and learned about all the little nuances behind everything) I realized just how wrong I was.

    Nowadays I’m a big leftist/socialist


  • To be fair, before Trump took over the party, the Republicans were generally considered to be in a death spiral.

    The prevailing idea was that the party just didn’t have a future. Their brand was this basically an unappealing mix of boring religious people and self-professed ‘sensible’, common-sense stewards of the status quo. Looking at demographic trends at the time, they were trending towards irrelevance.

    Then Trump took over and brought back the enthusiasm. They also started to court minority votes (Hispanics, Blacks) which tend to be very socially conservative. At the same time, the democrats slipped into the ‘boring status quo protectors’ role.

    Hopefully the Dems wake up, but it might take a while.