I remember Vancouver area, all of it, spiking very fast and very hard a decade before the pandemic. I haven’t kept up with the market in a couple years though, maybe it’s gotten better?

The affordable housing is the more pressing problem.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/africa/top-stories/putin-s-party-sparks-outrage-by-gifting-meat-grinders-to-mothers-of-soldiers-killed-in-ukraine/ar-AA1AC2Xk

Thanks, conservative Christians, for decades of public instruction in abstinence only, for cultural supremacy of purity culture (I’m thinking specifically of the early 90s/00s where churches were all teaching the same curriculum and so many of the hottest celebrities all said they were waiting for marriage).

Knowing nothing about how relationships should work, how to navigate emotional problems effectively, or what red flags to look out for has sure made relationships and communities stronger, all across the country.

What ticks my off is that I have the stupid Safeway card and the stupid Kroger card. But now there’s more deals, better deals if I do a digital coupon requiring the app on my phone, too. It’s not enough to know about all the regular items in my home, from celery to toilet paper, but they also must need to hoover up all my digital into as well? Dude, just buy it from Meta or whichever jerks have it all. Half-price grapes ain’t the right price.

Fair warning to everyone, it’s an older doc (2006ish), but very worth watching. And I liked, later, going and watching the movies that it uses as examples to talk about issues. I’m especially thinking of “But I’m a Cheerleader”, but there are lots.

As has been well documented time and again, Texas textbooks are not neutral sources of information (podcast for anyone interested). Taking real books out of the library, controlling the content of textbooks, getting rid of Internet access specifically because it could introduce thought to children… Home of the free, my friends. Free speech absolutism.

Crocheting is an inexpensive, versatile hobby that could absolutely result in art that you could sell online. Seriously, with a bit of string and a funny stick, and you can make lil stuffies, hats, scarves, etc. You can make cute ones, nerdy stuff, appeal to different fandoms/online communities. If you create a decent inventory, perhaps a local place by you would also feature your products for a cut.

I’ve seen cool button making machines for relatively inexpensive ($60~), but then you would need to have access to a printer and ink, so overall that’s a more expensive project. But that’s another option to think about as well.

Just was at the grocery store. Was joking around with cashier, he and the bag boy talked about the ad playing over the loudspeakers about avocados from Mexico. They seemed nice. He finishes ringing me up and I groan. He says he’s really looking forward to prices coming down in the next four years. I started laughing at him, saying that’s not how tariffs work and that we’re all fucked.

What a wonderful day in the neighborhood.

Designed by tokidoki 😑 what even is this timeline.

My local favorite is apple slices+bacon, it’s the best.

When I went to price it out at the store, the line for a dumb phone was going to cost $30/mo more than a smart phone. It was dumb.

A lot of them are raised to be that way though. One of the big pushes in a lot of Christian circles, for example, is the push to raise kids believing in complementarianism instead of egalitarianism–simply put, that god created men and women to have different roles, and that men just so happen to be in the role of leadership. Combine that with extreme purity culture (at times involving courtship instead of dating, for example) and a fervor to push for big families, and you get a bunch of grown ups looking up after 5, 10 years in a marriage going, “wait, I was promised happiness, why am I so miserable?” Divorce is a huge tool to help. We need to give people, especially women and children, a safe exit from high control spaces.

My small city is getting a new Christan Nationalism school next year. The neighbors aren’t thrilled that the adults will all be in armed to the teeth at this school in the middle of a decent neighborhood. One of my kid’s friends is going there next year, and told the class that her dad is draining her bank account for the tuition. For an elementary school year education.

Another fun fact: private schools don’t have to take all applicants, so they regularly turn away students with disabilities or special learning needs.

I pointed that out to friends of a friend visiting from Ohio, after they told me how their state did a great thing, making vouchers available to all families in the state. I pointed out how the public schools need the ‘regular’ kids to help subsidize the special services needed by other kids. When the non-special needs kids aren’t there, funding for the specialists gets too expensive for public schools to be able to maintain. The lady clearly didn’t know what to say to that, and after a minute she just said how their children’s private school was too small to be able to have specialists like that. Not sure how that invalidates my point about accessibility of education for all students… It was too sensitive an event to voice that I don’t think public money should be going to institutions that are tax exempt churches. If churches don’t want to pay taxes, their organizations shouldn’t have their hands out for the public coffers. Simple.

Yeah, black kids don’t need the help of white kids to succeed. They need their schools funded as if rich white children went to them though.

Also, school isn’t just about success, it’s about learning to live in a society, one which isn’t just a monoculture. Hard to learn to live together (for all kinds of races & identities) spending entire childhoods separated.

The organization that invited him, it says above, is the local chapter of Turning Point USA; TPUSA nationally is run by a fellow called Charlie Kirk. It’s overt ‘goal’ is to ‘promote freedom’, and it does this by making lists of professors who are liberal. These professors often then get death threats. Charlie Kirk is a christofascist, and if you’re not familiar with the organization or the person, you’re missing someone who reliably pushes Trump and culture war on the rest of us.

I’ve had female relatives mad when the churches they attended started letting women vote in church matters. So I’m guessing about like that. Self hate is such a warm little cocoon once you cut off the parts of yourself that it demands.

But if everyone is naked, the poor boys will be distracted. I mean, they already veer off course when shoulders are out. I guess the only appropriate solution is to not have the girls at (naked) school. /s

There’s a Venn diagram somewhere of the states denying food aid for children and states rolling back child labor protections. From the linked article “State child labor law changes are part of a broader, troubling agenda to boost corporate profits and increase economic desperation of low-income families and children” and “While FGA lobbies for the erosion of child labor protections in states like Arkansas, Iowa, and Missouri, they are simultaneously working to limit access to anti-poverty programs like SNAP and Medicaid, block expansion of Medicaid eligibility, and promote the defunding of public education through expansion of school vouchers in the same states. Taken together, FGA’s priorities represent a radical, multilayered assault on the same low-income families whose economically desperate children are most vulnerable to recruitment by unscrupulous employers for jobs involving long hours, low wages, and hazardous conditions that harm their education, health, and well-being.”

So literally the plan is: Make em super hungry, exploit them for cheap labor while they’re young, tell em anyone who’s still hungry is a lazy leach who deserves to starve.

I loved how small she sounded at the end of questioning by the first guy. Then the chud in the back-right corner has to jump on and say “oh since Jesus is God, he wrote the ten commandments, don’t you just feel the luuuv in them” and totally tried to give her back face after the questioning. But as the first rep said, the bill, as it’s written, is arrogant and idolatrous. But she just wants to “keep it clean”, and ignore every other piece of history that shows the coalition that formed to create the US.