daskeit @daskeit@mastodon.social

it's been a while, howdy.

People are like "you like boardgames? What is the fun in learning all those complex and arbitrary rules? You could go out and meet people instead."

Heck, you ever tried socializing? Talk about complex and arbitrary rules. And people won't give you even a crappy manual.

twitter users: hmm, should i really give this post a "like"? is that really on-brand for me? will i continue to gain a following if i like posts such as this one? hm

me: boosts a toot before i finish opening the CW

In seriousness, I think this is actually an underappreciated element of anti-fascism.

A core element of fascist ideology is the idea that there was once a perfect, ideal past, that we through our degeneracy let slip away. The fascist promises to bring us back to it by being a stern ruler who will punish us for our sins.

So it's important to help people understand that there was NEVER a perfect, ideal past. There was just people and their various screw-ups. And people now are fundamentally the same as people then. The clothes change, the rituals change, but people are people.

The main reason I recommend everybody study at least a little history is that it really brings home that the past was just completely fucking awful

When a nation replaces labor rights and a social safety net with speculation on housing, it pits the living conditions of everyone who doesn't have a home against everyone who does. A country whose residents' dignified retirement depends on house prices going up is a country whose government is committing to making shelter more expensive.

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

10/

The people who bought and held onto their homes through the housing bubble considered themselves to be genius investors, even though their "strategy" consisted of "living somewhere, while forces they didn't understand drove trillions into the housing market and inflated the price of every home."

Housing is a uniquely dangerous form of speculation, because shelter is a primary human right, and being unsheltered is catastrophic.

9/

Prices are falling: 74% more homes were relisted at lower prices in May than in Apr. The collapse is (unsurprisingly) worst in the cities that inflated the most during the bubble: Austin, Phoenix, Sacramento, Riverside, Denver and Raleigh.

The original sin here is to conceive of homes as assets first, and human rights second. Asset bubbles are hugely destructive, but they don't *have* to implicate shelter. That was a policy choice, and once again, we're learning that it was the wrong one.

24/

The only humans who think "no" means "I'll ask again as soon as I feel like it and as often as I want" are toddlers, creeps and, apparently, some software shops.

Trying to raise Mao from the dead so I can show him my rent bill

Found a good Tumblr post.

Jupiter