Oh, I wasn’t trying to say you were against therapy, I apologize. I mostly meant the self-improvement thing. I agree with everything else you said.

"People are saying that the reason that incels struggle to find relationships and sex is because their standards are too high, and what we were able to demonstrate here is, compared to our group of men that weren’t incel, actually their minimum mate preferences were a lot lower. " the article and the study are more interesting than the headline

I’m gonna take issue with that last point because one of the easiest ways to identify an incel is how much they watch Joe Rogan, Jordan Peterson, or Andrew Tate. All of which built their brand by preaching self-help tips (fucking awful self-help tips and always laced with violent hateful rhetoric but still). I think they desperately want to improve but they’ve built up so much internal constraint and flawed ideology that no advice catered to that toxic mindset is going to be effective at what they really want to accomplish. What they actually need is a real mental health professional to lead them to identifying and breaking down those ideologies and frameworks for themselves. But therapy is for Betas and real Alphas are hyper independent or whatever.

Your mortgage isn’t an option for me (or any renters) though. I get to choose between current rate+price mortgages and current rent prices. Median rent in my county is $1,250. The cheapest non-manufactured home listed on Zillow in my county with the lowest APR advertised (assuming a credit score of 760+) would have a mortgage payment of $1,642. That’s without any of the HOI, taxes, commissions, maintenance, PMI, HOA, or other associated costs.

I’ll take a stab. This is all conjecture though so pinch of salt, yada yada. Basically, it’s a mix of two or three things.

First, after record breaking inflation in the U.S., the real price of goods/luxuries went up. If everyone bought the exact same thing they bought on black friday last year, we would still have spent more money this year. If you account for our absurd annual inflation this year, “up 7.5%” does not sound very impressive at all.

Second, the economy and general luxury shopping are not necessarily positively correlated. For example, I feel really gloomy about the prospect of ever owning a home. Since I’m just renting, I have more disposable income for luxury shopping. The same could be true for any large purchases like cars, moving out of state, starting businesses, etc. We aren’t reinvesting our money in our economic systems as heavily so it follows that we have more spending cash (not a lot more, but I would certainly have less if I had a mortgage right now).

Third, budgetary reasons. If people do have less money then it follows that a spur of the moment purchase like a new TV would not be made so hastily throughout the year. Or even specifically held off on until the annual sale. It could be that we didn’t get our usual luxuries and are compensating by getting them at a discounted price. It may also just be emotional spending on ourselves, which many people do as a response to feeling ‘gloomy’ in a consumer-first culture, despite that actively making the problem worse.

I thought I was being financially responsible by getting my car with a 4 year repayment instead of 7 at 1%. But because of all the inflation that happened right after I would be making money on that loan right now. :'( oh well, you can’t plan for extremes

I’d maybe even add a ban for in-home use around children under a child abuse clause. Very hard to enforce of course but I can think of some meaningful ways to make it not worth the risk for most people.

I’m also quite biased in the opposite direction. I just quit (4 months) vaping and have had some strong opinions that my own stupid choices should be mine alone. I draw a hard line when my choices become your consequences.

But frankly, us both being biased in opposite directions and still agreeing on potentially meaningful bans just tells me that it should be easier to get done in a way that might actually be effective.

One thing that concerns me is how a ban might impact the homeless population. It’s already basically illegal to be homeless in many places and the rates of smokers among the homeless is probably significantly higher. It could end up being yet another thing enforcement uses to harass people.

I assume you would prefer to see stricter legislation/enforcement about smoking in public versus outright sales bans, correct? I can totally get on board with that.

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Ngl bro it sounds like you just really wish your teachers did porn… which like, same, but even I have the frame of mind to know that that isn’t a healthy teaching situation.

What a horrifying reality.

I disagree with you but upvote for engaging. People are really bad about using that as a disagree button.

I agree that raising minimum wage won’t help, but I still think it needs to be done. For as long as our shitty treasury targets a 3% YoY inflation rate (and esp when it goes way over that), the minimum wage needs to keep pace. Personally, I’d greatly prefer that we lower our target inflation rate but that’s a totally different discussion.

I don’t think it forces them to increase the cost of the delivery fee, I think it gives them an excuse too. They always want to. To anyone that has used meal deliveries, we know that it is wildly overpriced as is, to the point where it’s downright foolish to use any of them. They can try to increase their prices if they feel ‘forced’ to (read:want to maintain profit margins), but the fact of the matter is they’ve already done the math to maximize profit and determined that fees any higher will result in fewer customers and less profit. That will shift a little as the upfront cost of providing the service does, but they simply can’t go much higher without losing more customers than it’s worth. I hope I’m wrong though, because if it does force them to go much higher then the entire delivery ecosystem of apps will collapse and that would be a good thing.

I don’t know the answer to the affordability crisis either but I do know that meal deliveries are not part of that crisis. It is an extremely overpriced luxury service. They are about as worried about being affordable as Apple and Cadillac are. Frankly, I’m rooting for their downfall.

Hell yeah! Let’s stimulate the DIY gun&ammo community guys!

what? I was talking about this specific basement in the rockies, it’s already an outlier. top level comment was using it to demonstrate what airbnb should be which is all I was agreeing with. I totally agree you too, that the majority of airbnbs are just hotels with no regulation and that we need to fix that. that’s just not what we are talking about here.

Just for the record I tried to find common ground with them in dms to avoid spamming the top comment thread with off topic comments and they are actually just trolling. I believe there is merit in deconstructing these trolls that seem like reasonably misinformed people at a glance. Too many folk will read it without thinking critically and carry on the stupid into real life. Very good trolling though, it seemed really genuine for a while. So good job, Satan, I guess.

It gets sticky with the semantics but I don’t think any reasonable person would call me a landlord for renting out my apartment for a week while I take a trip. Sure they are technically landlords but a host to short term tenets is not the same level of responsibility or cost. The contracts are different, the rights are different, and few people comfortable with short term tenets would be willing or able to accommodate long term tenets. That said, it shouldn’t be more cost effective to run a 24/7/365 airbnb versus renting the same property to a long term tenet. Like all things it can’t be explained so simply as “ban airbnb”. If that’s the real problem you want to solve then I think a good start would be at property taxes for properties without long term residents (landlord and tenets alike). But there’s absolutely nothing wrong with renting out spare rooms at will and that shouldn’t be discouraged or taxed as anything other than income, in my humble opinion.

Everyone who has a bit more room than they currently use has a moral obligation to be a landlord? to have flatmates during retirement? or should they be compelled to sell part of their lifelong home outright? Who sets that price, who retains rights to what, who pays for the renovations required to get separate utilities run? Do I get to evict them if I decide to use the space for a workshop or library as I pick up retirement hobbies? If the goal is to get people efficiently crammed into affordable living spaces, why on earth would you not just support affordable housing developments instead? It’s better for the quality of life of everyone involved, is actually feasible, and they can be built taller, cheaper, safer, and better for the environment if you include a light rail or bus line. Why do we need to drag people down in order to lift up others? Why can’t we all go up?

This is the most wise thing I’ve read today. We all know it, but it needs to be said more.

If we really want to split some hairs, some waste products don’t even need to be radioactive to be weaponized. Depleted uranium ammunition makes for excellent armor penetrating rounds and comes (primarily) from the enrichment process of uranium for use in reactors.

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