"ESA survey showed" -- not exactly an unbiased report

Yes! I hated that on reddit. I would sometimes have a cool thing to add, but because the thread was 8 hours old and had a thousand comments already, virtually no one would see it. There were some exceptions: on TV episode discussions sometimes they'd use new/contest mode default sorting for the thread and you didn't feel like you were shouting into a void.

Honestly there's not that much one can do, but I will:

• Hope Trump is thrown in prison
• Vote straight ticket Democrat
• Hope another Jan. 6 doesn't occur
• Try not to lose my shit when idiots say stuff like "both parties are equally bad"

I live in a solid blue state, so my national-level votes don't do much (though I'll cast them anyway).

In past years I've thrown a few hundred dollars at close senate and house races. In 2020 I volunteered for a phone/text bank sort of deal to make sure people were registered to vote.

a dwarf

MIDI controller - I love how it put the keys on the front bumper 😂

Samurai warrior in 1970s New York City disco; this one has me rolling... 🤣

1980s arcade if it were in 19th century Victorian England

Rate it? Rate it what? 5/7?

If all you consume is news and social media -- which have incentives to show the most extreme views, events, and content -- you're going to have a distorted picture of the world as a 100% awful, dangerous place.

But most of the time, in most parts of the world, most people are just living their lives. I live in the Portland, OR area and you would have thought by the news coverage of the 2020 George Floyd riots that the city was burning to the ground; in reality, the disruptions were limited to a few square blocks downtown. The majority of the city went on like usual.

There's a lot more nuance to things about the US, too, than those outside realize.

People do fight back, every day. Our courts are prosecuting Trump. The House Speaker loony you mention in the thread came about only after a long, drawn out debate; the Republican Party is incredibly divided and ineffectual right now. Roe vs. Wade fell, but many blue states strengthened protections. Mass shootings get a lot of press, but they affect a vanishingly small part of the population.

Obviously there are problems and not everything is fine. And we have to be vigilant. But this sentiment among people -- especially certain Europeans I've noticed -- that the US is just a pure dumpster fire is a wild exaggeration by people addicted to screen time.

The housing market isn't going to crash. We're at the highest mortgage rates in 23 years and it's STILL a sellers' market. The fact is, inventory being incredibly low + home buying being desirable for many == no reason for a crash. Even the Great Recession only resulted in a temporary price dip.

I know a lot of millennials and zoomers would LIKE for there to be a crash because they think it would let them afford a home. This is a false belief, though: if there were a major crash, it would likely be accompanied by a recession in the labor market too, so there goes your ability to pay for the house.

Also, it's not black and white. If house prices and interest rates cooled off, it would let me (a homeowner) refinance my mortgage.

Morever, there are benefits to home ownership outside of equity / profiting off a sale:

• Tax benefits (I can deduct my mortgage interest and property taxes; can't do that with a rental)
• Do what I want with my house -- customize, upgrade, etc.
• No landlord to tell me what I can or can't do, or kick me out
• For complicated reasons, there aren't many detached house rentals in my area, so owning a house means no loud, obnoxious apartment living -- this is the BIG one for me

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/housing-market-crash-experts-191734802.html---

helps to boost posts from less active communities to the top

Nice!! This and the instance-blocking are welcome changes.

People would riot. GOG would have a massive influx of traffic.