RickRussell_CA
@RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world
was RickRussellTX @ reddit
- Comment on In the US, is this actually the moment past the point of no return? 1 day ago:
I think the real answer is that we end up kind of like the UK – going from the worlds ultra-dominant superpower to a sort of slow regression to the mean, as China, India and others take the spotlight.
When you look at what China is doing with their Belt and Road Initiative, and their move to dominate the transportation infrastructure of developing nations – the US isn’t anywhere near equipped to counter that. We’re still in a cold war mentality thinking that we will dominate as the world’s police force.
Meanwhile, all the actual economies will be run by Chinese companies operating with state support.
- Comment on When a magazine goes out of print and/or out of business, do the original 'master files' for each issue still exist somewhere? 5 months ago:
Perhaps worth noting, there was a SCOTUS decision in the early 2000s (New York Times Co. v. Tasini) that held that freelance journalists whose contracts did not specifically include an electronic distribution clause were entitled to damages when those articles were subsequently released on the web and to electronic news services like Lexis/Nexis.
Big publications like the NYT came to settlements that allowed them to pay to redistribute the older articles (by paying the original authors), but smaller publications may not have such a settlement structure in place and may not be allowed to redistribute the original articles without additional permissions.
FYI, I have a copy of the Dragon Magazine Archive CD-ROM version that came out in 2001… only to immediately disappear off the market for this very reason!
- Comment on How do I breathe quietly through my nose? 10 months ago:
You stop explaining an apologizing.
- Comment on Has google stopped working for finding anything? 10 months ago:
“We need better training data for our AIs. Let’s introduce some random scramble into search results, and when users have to hunt through the list and pick what they actually wanted instead of the top result, we can use those data to train the AI how to respond to those words when they come up in AI prompts.”
– a Google exec, probably?
- Comment on These magic items COULDNT POSSIBLY help you on your quest-Wizards With Guns 10 months ago:
Do they have anything for somebody who is allergic to gnome skin? I’m asking for a friend.
- Comment on Is this an error in the application form or is it a violation of EEO laws? 11 months ago:
Of course anybody can break the rules if they choose.
- Comment on Is this an error in the application form or is it a violation of EEO laws? 11 months ago:
It’s not inadvertent. Businesses can collect aggregate statistics on race, disability, and veteran status as part of the application process. The responses are anonymized and not visible to hiring managers (except for veteran status, which may be used to provide a positive bias towards veterans for certain roles).
- Comment on My children will refer to me as father. 11 months ago:
Forgive me father for I have sinned
- Comment on What the actual f*** is this Rockstar? 11 months ago:
“Prove you’re human by chopping off a finger.”
- Comment on Choose wisely! 1 year ago:
9 you could sell to a paraplegic
- Comment on Does anyone feel like an actual adult? 1 year ago:
Relevant SMBC:
- Comment on Country music 1 year ago:
It was country music, back when it came out.
Now it would probably be called “Americana” or something.
- Comment on Xbox users call out Activision and Microsoft for "vomit inducing" full-screen Modern Warfare 3 ad 1 year ago:
Click the Win11 search bar…
- Comment on Is there a labour-friendly car company? 1 year ago:
- Comment on Is there a labour-friendly car company? 1 year ago:
Subarus seem to be overwhelmingly made in Subaru’s facilities in Gunma.
As far as I know, final assembly in the US and Canada is just finishing and installation of various options.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
The post they are responding to claims that female is “never” used as a noun. The claim was not restricted to the posted context.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Or using the term to refer to a genetic female, for example in a medical context.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 year ago:
Male and female are definitely nouns also.
- Comment on “I flew to Japan to visit "Michaelsoft Binbows" in person” 1 year ago:
Too many Mikes!
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
The renter does not determine the price when the alternative is to move elsewhere or live out of your car.
The renter is the person who pays the rent, not the person who can’t afford it.
You’re on the right track, though. Over-regulation, opposition to new construction, and opposition to multi-family construction are the reason buyers are willing to pay more and more in HCOL areas.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
True, there is a “frictional” effect on occupancy rate, that causes property to be idle for some time. I’m about to buy a house that was built by somebody else, but they decided they couldn’t afford it, and backed out, so it’s been sitting there new & idle for a couple of months.
When there is a lot of economic dislocation, or major demographic changes, that frictional rate of idle property may spike up (e.g. in the wake of the 2008 recession/real estate bubble, when some owners decided they would rather wait for recovery than find a buyer at a huge discount), but it’s a transient effect.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
If the first time buyer cannot afford a house, it means another buyer showed up with a higher offer. It doesn’t really matter who owns the house.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
The “investors” are the buyers/customers, and they aren’t reselling these houses–they’re renting them out.
Renting them out is still selling them, just another kind of selling. The company can only charge rent if there is a renter willing to pay. Again, the buyer determines price – if rent is too high, there will be no renters.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
You can’t afford steak, you eat chicken, you can’t afford that, you eat beans. You can’t afford that, you’re in trouble.
I didn’t create the system, man. I get it, it’s hell to be poor. But corporations buying and flipping homes doesn’t have much to do with the plight of people who can’t afford studio apartments. If somebody else is ready to pay a higher rent than you are for the same apartment, they’re gonna get it. Doesn’t matter whether the landlord is a friendly grandma or a faceless megacorp, nobody is gonna willingly sell something for less.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
I’m not saying I like it, that’s just how it is. As a consumer of housing, like anything else, when you can’t afford what you want you have to get something less.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
Or leave the area for lower prices somewhere else.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
With respect, you’re missing the point.
Sellers don’t determine price. Buyers do. “Investors” (big, small, whatever) are selling homes at those prices (or renting, or VRBOing) because there are customers ready to buy the next available unit. If customers aren’t willing to buy at that price, then the seller will lower the price. Or never build the big house in the first place. Or never renovate. Who would spend money on an investment when nobody will buy it?
They can only sell for those prices because buyers are ready to buy.
Economists have a concept of “economic value”. Regardless of price, “economic value” it what the next buyer is willing to pay for an item RIGHT NOW. People have a lot of weird ideas about what the “value” of something is, and they’ll include all sorts of non-monetary factors because they think value is a feeling or concept of utility that particularly applies to them. They value “walkability” or “views” or “quaint antique design”, or whatever.
But inasmuch as “value” has any objective meaning, the best one economists have managed to come up with is economic value – the price that a unit of something will sell for at this very moment. And I humbly suggest that the economic value of housing in your area something is determined entirely by the buyer: the person or entity that is willing to buy the next available unit of housing.
- Comment on So many expensive homes 1 year ago:
I feel like this article didn’t do a great job of answering the question. They didn’t really determine whether big corporations are buying homes, they determined that investors are buying homes. The actual text:
According to data reported by the PEW Trust and originally gathered by CoreLogic, as of 2022, investment companies take up about a quarter of the single-family home market. Specifically,investor purchases accounted for 22% of all American homes in 2022.
Those two statements are not equivalent. “Investor” could be a single individual buying a home with the intent of offering it as a vacation rental when not in use. It could be somebody who bought a duplex and rents the other unit out until their parents retire. It could be a house flipper who does 1 house at a time – each time registering an “investor purchase”.
Even “corporation” doesn’t really mean anything; a “corporation” could be an LLC with one employee, the owner.
And even when big corporations buy single-family homes, it’s not clear to me that this has a lasting economic impact. It sounds like a lot of these investment companies are renting the the homes or flipping them. Ultimately, demand is still demand. Somebody has to be there to buy or rent the home for these investments to make sense, so the any price increase resulting from this investment activity is some kind of external, artificial pressure. It’s a real representation of economic value, it is a price that occupants are able to pay.
- Comment on M*A*S*H in space? 1 year ago:
I could totally see the Federation getting involved in a war with the best intentions, believing that they need to act to prevent a powerful, implacable faction from gaining the upper hand and tipping the balance of power across many star systems & potentially exterminating/enslaving multiple less advanced civilizations, say along a Federation border.
And the whole thing starts going sideways, and the Feds won’t commit fully to the effort but a dedicated faction of true believers keeps it going on a shoestring.
- Comment on Would it make sense for a person in a "privileged class" to move from a red state? 1 year ago:
I made the move 15 years ago.
I’m certainly glad to be in a society that isn’t hostile to females, LGBTQ, etc.
Does it affect my day-to-day? Eh, probably not. I certainly could live in a regressive state without any personal risk or penalty.
