Yep. Ever since I saw the garden in the back yard, which occupies about half of the back yard, I wanted to make a vegetable garden with raised beds, eventually enclosing it like a greenhouse in the long term.

I’ve been too busy and my money has been to scarce trying to pay enough to live here that I haven’t made any progress on achieving that goal. It really doesn’t help that lumber prices went though the roof around the time we moved in, so I can’t even really afford to buy the wood I would need to make the raised beds. And I don’t want like 6" or whatever raised beds. I’m thinking more like 3 ft. I don’t want to have to crawl on the ground or even really bend over to plant/tend/harvest whatever I plant. So it’s not going to be a small amount of wood that I’ll need.

Then I need to figure out how to find the time to attend to it, when I should plant/fertilize/harvest, how often I should tend to the plants etc… There’s a lot I don’t know about what it takes to maintain a veggie garden. I’ll get there eventually, or I’ll die trying.

I agree with you that subsidised housing should be owned/managed/maintained by the government, since it is supposed to be composed “of the people, by the people”.

I would worry that many slumlords would take issue with the government undercutting their business model, and conservative voters would rally around the idea that they “don’t want their tax dollars” paying for someone else’s housing. So getting the legislation in place to get this going may be difficult.

In addition, I suspect some conservative “leader” would come along and sell off the entire subsidized housing/management government system to the private sector, framing the whole thing as a “drain” on “the system” (meanwhile, public funds would likely benefit from the program, rather than the other way around). That way they can sell off property en masse to their real estate mogul buddies so they can hike rent and turn a profit (which would likely end up coming from public funds so that the housing can remain subsidized), achieving the opposite of what they said the change would accomplish…

I’ve been watching this circus long enough to be cynical about what the outcomes will be, both short term and long term.

And this is why we can’t have nice things.

Between “freeing” the slaves, only to aggressively rebrand them as criminals (eg, guilty of (verb) while black), and the wage slavery many of these companies are happy to engage in, everything has been pretty well cooked for a while.

If they brand you as a criminal and force you into a position of working as a slave, then your food, accommodations, and everything is provided for you. This is “classic” slavery where the slave owns nothing and the slaver provides everything, controlling what is, or isn’t allowed, provided, acceptable, etc.

If they don’t (or can’t) brand you as a criminal, unless you’re from a rich family, you end up as a wage slave, where you make just enough to scrape by, often sharing accommodations with others to afford the landlord’s rent, never owning property of your own or building any level of wealth through property ownership… You don’t make enough to have a vehicle worth anything, nor anything else of any significant value. You’re “free” to choose your slaver, and they let you pick which landlord you pay homage to… The main difference here is that you get to “pick” your oppressors, and now instead of the slaver providing everything for you (food, clothing, accommodation), you have to figure that out for yourself.

The difference is honestly quite small IMO. And when you look at it objectively, you find that a large majority of people are still in slavery in some form or another.

Look around you and realize that “middle class” is pretty much no longer a thing. You’re either poor and a wage slave, very poor and/or criminal and a literal slave, or you have enough money to be “independently wealthy” being a landlord or one of the slavers.

They’ve built a system that can only sustain most people at a level of poverty that affords then no ability to escape from that poverty, while the owners and shareholders, landlords, and bosses of the world, sit on their asses and collect the fruits of our labor.

That’s not a conservative upbringing/mentality… That’s a capitalist mentality.

The only thing I can really say about capitalists is that they’re some of the worst people I’ve ever known, and I’ve known a few of them.

Very religious people (usually conservatives) are generally quite kind and generous. If they follow their religious book, that tracks. Since most religions teach about tolerance, acceptance, and understanding. Like the legend Fred Rogers; May he rest in peace.

Usually very liberal people are about basic social services for everyone, and programmes that support DEI. They want everyone to be on an equal playing field and they want that playing field to be, at a minimum, allowing all people to independently be able to live, have reasonably good health, food to eat, and somewhere to live.

Meanwhile capitalists always focus on the money. Who is paying for all of this? They don’t want their money (via taxes) to go to people that are less than them. Anyone who makes less or has less is “losing”, and they’re “winning”. All capitalists want to be on top, and they don’t care who they have to trample to achieve that.

There are exceptions of course, on every one of these groups. For example, Bill Gates who donates a lot of money for good causes. He still has plenty of money, but honestly, he gives away a lot. By no means do I mean to imply that any billionaire is good; in this case Bill is just using the wealth he has to do good. He’s clearly someone that made a lot of money doing capitalism things, and yet he believes in helping others.

The capitalists I have met are some of the most argumentative, vocal, and toxic people I’ve ever met.

Good on you for getting away from that mentality and finding enjoyment.

Thank you kind stranger. I will look into it.

The only heartbreaking part is that before we moved in there were perennial flowers planted along the edge of the garden, I guess it was a flower garden for the previous owners, and I’m not sure I can save them before I go scorched earth on the rest of the area.

My current grass is patchy, I’m certain there’s little or no nitrogen. I’ve been meaning to pick up a small bag of clover seeds and at least augment my lawn with them to make it a bit more green at least.

I’m fortunate that I was able to get a battery electric mower for my home shortly after moving in. So there’s no inconvenient gas fetching and mixing, just a pair of bigass fuck off batteries that live on the charger between mows.

The real problem is that we have a garden in the back that I want to set up as a vegetable garden and I just haven’t had time to do the work and it’s currently over run with weeds. I’ll get to it eventually. I’m planning on killing everything currently in the garden with some kind of weed killer, not sure what yet exactly, but I’ve seen some places recommend a soap/brine mix that seems effective. Then cover it with that black landscaping/gardening fabric so shit doesn’t grow for a while, if that’s successful, build raised beds and fill them with fresh, untainted soil and grow veggies there… It’s going to be a project and I have no idea how I’m going to find time or money to do it, but the way things are going, I can’t afford not to do it.

Anyways. Thanks for coming to my Ted talk. I guess?

Frick. I moved into a house from being in apartments for many years and I have to say, lawn and Garden work, suuuuucccckkksss.

I hate it. I have too much to do to deal with your… Growth.

Can I replace my lawn with an emo lawn so it cuts itself?

I know a lot of people have summer cabins and whatnot, so I wouldn’t want to really crank up the costs until you have 3+.

I figure anyone rich enough for three homes for themselves can afford the extra costs, and anyone looking to buy a home as an income property will get fuckered.

At least, that’s the idea.

If someone wants to buy one home for themselves and one to rent out, that’s acceptable losses IMO. It at least limits how many homes are going to become rentals.

But I’m being silly. I’m addressing the underlying issue of people buying up all the affordable housing so they can rent it out at a premium… That’s not what the government wants to do. They want to give money to their construction contractor buddies, who can give a small discount to their property management buddies who will buy up all the homes and rent them out.

Everyone wins in this situation… You know, except the poors.

But who cares about the Poor’s. They only pay for everything through taxes because the rich can afford to dodge all the taxes they would otherwise have to pay, and we have no wealth tax, so they’re getting away Scot free, and the rest of the population is left footing the bill.

Let me say this, as an “elder” millennial. This isn’t the first time government puppets have touted some plan for affordable housing.

You know what I’ve seen throughout all of those adorable housing plans? Prices going up, property sizes shrinking, materials becoming cheaper and less durable, houses becoming less unique.

So you “get to” buy a smaller home, that looks like every other home, that was built poorly and will need repairs sooner, and for all of this, you get to pay more for the “privilege”.

I hope I’m wrong, but I’ve heard this song before.

The only way you will ever get an affordable home is when someone you know, who owns a home, dies, and leaves it to you in their will.

If that happens to anyone, my advice: take it, keep it, fix it, and never leave it. You’ll only fuck yourself over if you do. I don’t care how much the house is “worth” on the market. Never sell. It’s literally the only way you’ll own a home outright, without killing yourself with working overtime to afford it.

Politicians keep saying “affordable housing” then have zero scruples about selling a large portion of whatever housing they make, at bargain basement prices, to landlords.

I’ve seen this play before.

How about this, if any one person owns more than two “single family” dwellings, their property tax on the third property is 1000% increased… And add a zero for every additional property.

It won’t fix the problem, but it will sure as shit make it harder for a handful of people to own a nontrivial percentage of the residences in a city.

Last time I checked, people didn’t found their core belief system around whether prisoners of war existed or not.

Even so, there’s tangible proof of him being there, by his physical body being there, when it happened. This can be proven by science. Obviously that’s not able to be proven after he was released from the camp, and yes, we have to take the scribbles on a page to know it happened.

I will give you that.

For anything that is a universal truth, like gravity, chemistry, the properties of light, electricity, and all the principles behind electronics engineering, etc… All of that is provable. Lived experiences, history, sure. We have to accept that what we’re reading is true or not. But that’s a choice.

Science, which defines pretty much everything that’s happening, why is happening, and how it can happen, is immutable.

The idea of “God” has no basis more reliable than someone’s report of it happening. For something so universal/omnipotent, the fact that the only “evidence” that it happened is in a book, yet this God has a plan for you right now, but you can’t know it because God won’t tell you, nor do anything outside of what physics/Science says can/will happen, isn’t evidence of the existence of such a deity, regardless of what someone calls “God”.

All other things that exist, the forces that act on those things, and all of the possible outcomes of that thing existing can be proven by science. God cannot be proven, by science or otherwise.

Even history, to some extent, can be proven, because the evidence still exists. You can visit auschwitz, and see where history happened from WW2. You can see the damage from bombs and gunfire in structures that were standing when conflicts happened. There’s still evidence for a lot of that. And again, the same cannot be said for any book about any deity.

Personally, I would argue that taxing them is helping the economy.

Basically, even with only a 2% wealth tax, that’s money that would otherwise just sit in some account as shares or something that would only serve to make the wealthy more wealthy.

By moving the funds to the people by way of taxes, the money can be utilized for social programs, like housing and healthcare for the poor for example. Which would then give those people an easier path to sobriety (if needed), a “fixed address” so they can enroll in job training or simply get a job, since most jobs require you to have a fixed address for seemingly no good reason…

My point is, the money could be used to enhance the lives of all citizens. Rather than just people like that asshole.

These people have the same revenue as a small country, so I can see where they’re coming from.

I still think we should use their bodies as fertilizer.

We should mulch them. I’m not into cannibalism.

I would eat the resulting food from using their decaying biomarker as fertilizer tho.

a lot of things.

🤔

Science doesn’t work that way. There’s provable and repeatable experiments and proofs that you can independently verify.

Last time I checked most things that aren’t metaphysical (like philosophy), have some relationship with science, and therefore, only requires that you go through the motions to prove it yourself by creating your own reproduction of an test/experiment/proof…

Lol. As a non-American, I appreciate your very accurate and quite humorous post.

As much as I support the people of America, this isn’t my problem to solve. If you come to me with literally anything I can do from here to help you, I’ll do it.

But don’t lump me in with you by saying “everyone”.

Hi. I’m a sysadmin as part of my day job.

I’m here to tell you that there’s a local group policy that will, with almost 100% certainty, override the policies set by active directory.

The issue is that you need to be a local admin to change those settings. If your IT department was smart enough (or dumb enough, depending on your perspective) to give you local admin, then it’s possible to go in and change settings that will give you control again.

There’s more settings than I can reasonably put into a Lemmy message, but I’m certain you can use your favorite search engine to find “local group policy settings for Windows update” and adjust them to your liking.

There’s a lot of nuance when it comes to this stuff, and I can’t guarantee the outcome. No matter what, good luck with it.

Willful ignorance.

They put in effort to understand as little as they can.

Maybe that’s a personality quirk, maybe their brain don’t work right, who the hell knows. But they try to know only as much as they have to in order to do the job.

I would, but I don’t give any shits about them.

I would suggest it to my sales team to pursue it, but I couldn’t be arsed to bother.

They want to be dumb, cool.

You won’t find me coming to the defense of either large structured religions nor to the defense of the sun god, or his celestial counterparts.

It’s all Hocus pokus.