roscoe
@roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
- Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 3 hours ago:
Yes, those tankies are twisted, bring unable to support communism without making excuses for a brutal dictator.
So surely you must appreciate someone capable of criticizing that brutal dictator without smearing communism in the process, right?
Why would you see a conversation abouta brutal dictator and jump in to talk about how he was a communist? Don’t you think it might be people like you that encourage tankies to reflexively disagree with any criticism of Stalin?
If you can’t have a conversation about Stalin’s crimes without someone erroneously bringing communism into it maybe that’s why frustrated communists often defend the indefensible.
- Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 3 hours ago:
Well, have a nice day then. I genuinely hope you find something you do care about today.
- Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 3 hours ago:
And yet, here this person is, not incorrectly using Stalin to say communism is bad. He is criticizing Stalin on his merits, or lack thereof, and not using one person to disparage communism.
You are one tying Stalin’s crimes to communism.
- Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 3 hours ago:
Then why bring communism into a critique of a dictator concerning his methods of control.
- Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 6 hours ago:
How would you determine what the individuals collectively decide?
- Comment on YSK Joseph Stalin created the Great Terror. He started killing people randomly including artists, generals, doctors, diplomats, government officials. Everyone was terrified. 17 hours ago:
But he wasn’t criticizing communism, or advocating for capitalism. He was criticizing a dictator and saying he prefers democracy.
Unless you think communism can’t exist outside of a brutal dictatorship.
- Comment on Even if you develop the worst type of dementia imaginable, please find a way to always remember the events of 11/13/25. 2 days ago:
You just made me see the cap on the pole for the first time.
- Comment on Can't tell if L take or W take 3 days ago:
I’ve got a lot of play in my life and the woman almost always made the first move. Because I’m the kind of idiot where a woman can come sit in my lap and stroke my inner thigh and I’ll think “hmmm, I wonder if she might be interested in me.”
If a woman has never hit on you, I’ve got bad news for you dawg (assuming you want a woman to hit on you).
- Comment on Trump's Big Beautiful Bill 3 days ago:
One of the Epstein emails talks about pics of Trump blowing Bubba and the speculation is that Clinton is Bubba.
- Comment on They Wylin' 4 days ago:
The use of the definite article “the” is important.
He didn’t ask if Putin “has pictures” like you and I might if we were joking about some hypothetical blackmail material we don’t actually know exists, he asked if Putin “has the pictures.”
- Comment on They Wylin' 4 days ago:
uBlock Origin for Firefox?
- Comment on Mathematics disproves Matrix theory, says reality isn’t simulation 2 weeks ago:
From our perspective, sure. But we wouldn’t know if it was stopped and started running again, or if it was reverted to a previous state.
- Comment on After police used Flock cameras to accuse a Denver woman of theft, she had to prove her own innocence 2 weeks ago:
WTF? Do I have to allow shit in my car and phone to start tracking me to provide evidence in my favor when some ai decides it has “tracked” me? The only reason this lady got out of it without getting a lawyer and going to court is she allowed all the bullshit in her phone and car that I block. And if she didn’t have it, what would have happened in court?
- Comment on Ok, boomer 3 weeks ago:
Maintenance cost such, but even that has a silver lining when you own. It’s yours. When your fridge breaks in a rental you’re not out any money, but they just bring by another jank landlord special. I redid my kitchen with Thermador, not the top of the top, but pretty far up there. That cost quite a bit but it’s mine and my kitchen is far better than anything I had renting.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 3 weeks ago:
That too, last year before I finished my mortgage my neighbor was paying week over double my mortgage, property taxes, and maintenance costs combined.
- Comment on Ok, boomer 3 weeks ago:
The value of a paid off home is not the equity, that’s just numbers on a paper until you die and your heirs sell. The value is in living for peanuts for the rest of your life.
My house is paid off. My monthly housing costs are $735 for property tax that can’t increase more than 2% year due to California law. My neighbor two doors down with the same floor plan rents for $6500/month. That difference will only increase for the next 40 (I hope) years until I die.
- Comment on Relooted - Game made by South Africans has been bombarded by right-wingers 1 month ago:
Holy shit! That might be the dumbest arguement I’ve ever heard. I might have heard worse, but nothing is coming to mind.
- Comment on A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over? 1 month ago:
Not surprised, I just clicked on the first inflation calculator that came up. I think it was the BLS CPI calculator.
And I only did it in dollars from December of '21 until now. Converting back to shillings, either in '21 or Dickensian times, before bringing it forward to today could result in a big difference due to the charging exchange rate between the pound and the dollar.
- Comment on A ‘demoralizing' trend has computer science grads out of work — even minimum wage jobs. Are 6-figure tech careers over? 1 month ago:
That was from December of '21. It would be $15.69 now.
- Comment on If autism is a spectrum, does that mean everyone is on the spectrum? 2 months ago:
It is though. Our eyes just aren’t good at seeing unsaturated orange.
- Comment on There is no good reason why there is still homelessness and poverty 2 months ago:
The fuck you on about?
The Wikipedia article starts with two paragraphs accurately defining the term, then in the third paragraph above the drop-downs mentions the criticisms. Then two drop-down sections, Solutions and Criticisms, are almost entirely given over to all the ways various people have rufuted this.
What do you want, a big flashing red banner at the top that says “This Concept is Bullshit”? I don’t think you understand how Wikipedia works.
- Comment on Car community shenanigans dump (open post) 2 months ago:
I don’t know how the Mercedes ones work or what type of fridge he has, but BMWs just have a door light and a filter goes over it for “M”, “BMW”, the roundel, etc., and my fridge just has a light.
I assumed he found you could put the filter from the car on the fridge light with a minimum of fucking around.
But you’re right, the more time and effort spent on this, the stupider it becomes.
- Comment on Car community shenanigans dump (open post) 2 months ago:
I get where you’re coming from, I’m logo free to the maximum extent practical, but a fridge is inside your house. If i wanted an “M” projection on my fridge light (I definitely don’t, but if I did), I wouldn’t consider that providing free advertising.
- Comment on Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says 2 months ago:
My grandparents house built just after ww2 had, what was for a long time, a standard two car garage. Enough room for two land yachts from the 70s, lawn care implements and various other stuff and you could still open the car doors all the way and walk around. My parents’ house built in the 70s was the same. It’s more recent construction in built up areas where they are shrinking. They’ve been getting smaller as developers try to cram more liveable sqft on smaller amounts of land.
- Comment on Americans’ junk-filled garages are hurting EV adoption, study says 2 months ago:
You’re right, being poor is expensive, but that doesn’t really apply to charging a vehicle.
The term “being poor is expensive” is generally applied to situations where you don’t have the money to pay for something upfront (a quality product, bulk purchases, preventative maintenance, preventative healthcare, down payment on a house) so you have to spend smaller amounts of money repeatedly and/or have a large unavoidable cost as a result (multiple cheap products that wear out, multiple small purchases with a higher per unit price, a blown engine, a root canal, rent), which can cost a lot more over time.
The electric bill is post-paid, not up front. Not being able to set aside the “$10 every few days” to pay the higher bill at the end of the month with money left over is just poor money management.
That being said, the higher purchase cost of electric vehicles preventing poor people from taking advantage of lower operating costs that would more than offset the higher purchase price after some number of years is an example of it being expensive to be poor.
- Comment on YOU HAVE NO POWER HERE 2 months ago:
It’s been a while, so correct me if I’m wrong; but isn’t the gift moving on to something else after a mortal life? If I recall correctly, elves are stuck in the physical world forever. Even when they die don’t they just go to some limnal place for a while then come back?
- Comment on YSK There's a campaign to replace the distorted Mercator world map with the fairer Equal-Earth projection 2 months ago:
It’s almost two entire sections. With just a little of North America, Asia, and Antarctica. No other body is water or land mass comes anywhere near that.
And if you still don’t think that’s vast enough, maybe a lifetime of bad projections have given you a distorted view of the Pacific’s size. Mercator and Mercator like projections definitely make the Pacific look much too large near the poles.
- Comment on This boomer couple would be hit with $700,000 tax bill if they sold their mansion 3 months ago:
Everyone in here is ripping these people and ignoring their actual situation and the problem it creates for all of us.
If their profit is that high, they bought decades ago, when the price of a home like this was in the reach of a normal high paid professional. Decades later after raising kids, paying for college, and saving normally, they might not be wealthy, or even rich in cash and investments. This house might be a large majority of their net worth. And guess what? Anywhere they want to move is going to have had the same crazy inflation as their current home. Why would they sell when, after taxes, any place they buy with what’s left will be a major step down.
And for their specific example, 55-plus communities usually sell for much less per sqft because they come with huge HOA fees to fund all their amenities. Generally people expect to pay these fees with the difference between the sale of their old home and the new one. They might not be able to afford the HOA fees after taxes.
They’ve got two choices: They can sell and either make up the taxes with their savings drastically reducing their standard of living (if they’re even able to do that, don’t forget if they take 700k out of a 401k all at once they’ll get wrecked in taxes that year) or move somewhere shittier with the after tax proceeds. Or stay in their too large home, keeping it off the market.
Empty nesters staying in their family homes keeps them off the market driving up the costs for young families and everyone else in the market as a whole.
As far as a solution goes, I’m not a fan of a larger exemption. I would advocate a special account for home sale profits, kind of like an HSA or a 529, that could only be used tax free for qualified expenses like purchasing a home, property taxes, and HOAs. But anything that encourages older people to leave their too-large homes for something more suitable would help the market for everyone.
If you can’t get past “boo hoo rich people problems,” cut the numbers in half, or more. The problem persists. In California a profit in excess of 500k (250k for a single person) after decades of living in a modest family home is not at all rare. Many normal people who are not rich by any stretch find themselves in this situation.
My MiL was in this exact situation (selling and moving to a 55-plus community), and she is not rich. To make the numbers work I had to make her investments higher risk/higher reward than they should be for her age to allow for larger withdrawals. Luckily she has my wife and I to make up the difference if it goes tits-up, but not everyone has that luxury.
- Comment on If everyone spontaneously became the same race the world would realize that the rich are the real problem 3 months ago:
Fucking Gauls.
- Comment on Everything is a problem 3 months ago:
I recently renovated and said fuck no to all the smart home shit. Just the idea of having to troubleshoot the WiFi because my kitchen light won’t turn on drives me into a rage.