I wasn’t the one who said that part. I just wanted to correct the simplified math with some real world numbers that put into perspective how much wealth just being able to get a mortgage sets one up for

Actually its the inverse. Borrower A is borrowing the equivalent of $105 and borrower B is borrowing the equivalent of $125 and after 5 years the amount they borrowed is equivalent to $160.

Let’s put this into more real terms. Lets say 30 years ago borrower C got a $100k mortgage at a 6% interest rate. Ignoring everything else that often gets lumped into “the house payment” (insurance, property taxes, HOA/condo association fees, closing fees, etc.) their monthly mortgage payment would be $599.55 for the entire lifetime of that mortgage. That $100k in 1995 dollars that was borrowed would be about $210k when adjusted for inflation. Those 360 payments would also conveniently equal out to roughly $215k meaning they effectively were loaned the money for free over the timescale, and that loan payment of $600 in 1995 is still a loan payment of $600 in 2025 despite the fact that that $600 in 1995 dollars is equivalent to about $1200 today.

Basically with inflation, property ownership ensures a roughly decreasing cost of living over a lifetime and property has a tendency to gain value faster than a dollar does, so ultimately being able to get a mortgage creates wealth for the individual by stabilizing costs that would otherwise grow indefinitely and they gain an asset that generally increases in value.

I read an article forever ago about a place in Tibet that wasn’t on the grid and had pedal chargers for some laptops at a computer cafe

I was just thinking it was a missed opportunity for a What We Do In The Shadows reference, but on the other hand the only other people I know who watch it are gay so maybe it would just go over Fox’s audience’s heads

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it. I wish every democrat was as much of an insane leftwing socialist as republicans make them out to be

When I was a young adult I bought my first car with a loan because my girlfriend at the time relied on her parents old van which had the engine die (I very recently learned this was due to off label oil change practices her ex told her to do when he worked at the Walmart auto dept)

Anyways since I had basically no credit history, I ended up with a 22% interest loan on my car! I didn’t know what I was looking at in the paperwork and the sketchy dealership my BIL insisted we go to flat out was “joking” "oh you don’t want to read that. Just sign here!’

Once I had a chance to look at what I signed I quickly opened a bank account and got that loan refinanced down to an 8% interest rate. I also learned that it had some extended service plans added on that I didn’t know about which didn’t cover anything that wasn’t already covered by the manufacturer warranty.

Later on I went back to college, pulled equity out of the car and refinanced it again down to a 4% interest rate, then a few months later I totaled it hitting a deer.

I kinda forgot what my point was in sharing this story but here we are I guess

Brb buying some onion rings

I’ve phrased it before as “I don’t know if I’m bi-curious or just horny”

solutions need to look like “40% fewer cars on the road” sorts of things if we want to actually accomplish anything at all.

I think the worst part with this is that this can be achieved overnight be mandating remote work for office workers. We already know exactly what the impacts of remote work are because the entire white collar workforce went remote 5 years ago. Let’s do that ASAP because the only people who don’t benefit from remote work are commercial real estate investors

My imagined legislation would impose a new commute tax on businesses with office workers working in office. This tax would be proportional to the number of office workers, and would be introduced alongside a new tax incentive for remote office workers. If the office worker is permitted to work remotely 4 workdays a week the tax break effectively zeros out the commute tax cost for that worker. 3 days a week reduces the commute tax break by 3/4 for that worker, etc. Force shitty bosses to pay for their anti-worker RTO plans. The tax income would be directly applied to road and public transit infrastructure since the significantly reduced rush hour traffic would change traffic patterns and we all know how road maintenance has been struggling for funding on recent decades

Some newer diesel engines have features where they can reduce down to only running a single cylinder when parked/idling to keep the electrics running as expected to greatly reduce fuel consumption and emissions while idling which might help as that trickles into fleets

But yeah in reality these service trucks should be smaller electric vehicles for local delivery, or even better they should be electric trains pulling power directly from the grid. Heck I’ll even take diesel electric trucks with a pantograph to use power from an overhead wire instead of burning Diesel while in cities. Imagine if our roads had big networks of overhead wire to power trucks and buses from! Imagine if every hill on a highway had a section of overhead wire for trucks to power themselves off of while climbing. Realistically every transit mix will require some amount of trucks and buses so we might as well minimize their impact while we imagine a better world

It would be hilarious if Trump’s, Israel’s and Iran’s actions end up triggering significant climate action out of the sheer cost of continuing to burn oil. The last fuel crisis in the 70s actually caused significant amounts of research into alternatives and some interesting electric vehicles were actually released during that time

You laugh but several members of Congress bought stocks in defense contractors shortly before this military operation

Meh, skill issue

This comment is already 60% of the way to being a Conksat post

Idk what pushback you’re talking about,

Y’know what, I didn’t look at usernames and assumed. That’s my bad. Sorry!

Ohhhh you meant grocery delivery not restaurant delivery. I think that’s the source of a lot of the pushback on your comment. Grocery delivery can absolutely make a ton of sense, especially when it’s only a fee of like $10-20 on what could be 2 weeks worth of groceries (basically a 5-10% increase in person trip cost)

Personally I don’t do grocery delivery because often what I like and what I look for isn’t the same as what the shopper usually buys or looks for, and when they substitute it might not be something that makes sense. But I’ve been tempted before on particularly busy weeks or even just as a money saving strategy to avoid getting extra items that aren’t needed and/or for comparison shopping (I’m much, much more price sensitive when online shopping compared to in-person)

Given the extremely high cost of eating out compared to buying some frozen shit/random stuff for quick lazy meals at the grocery store I don’t think that makes financial sense. On the other hand I’m not going to fault people for choosing to eat out/eat delivery because they like it and can afford it

Honestly I kinda prefer that. I always found SimCity too difficult to progress in for my taste

I actually had played Cities in Motion and Cities in Motion II before Cities Skylines was released. The first Cities in Motion is actually really well done, the second one feels too much like a city builder that doesn’t want to be a city builder

The big difference between any Sim City game and Cities Skylines is Cities Skylines has an extremely in-depth traffic simulation that actually punishes bad road design and encourages non-car modes of transit. Meanwhile Sim City always made nods to traffic, it never bothered with actual per person routing where you can focus on tweaking a single intersection for hours trying to get it to flow nicely