floof.org
@storyworker @violetmadder
> “from whom am I to rent?”
Landlords, of course, in the same way that feudal peasants would have received the same answer to the same question.
I’m not telling you that you’re doing anything wrong. “The system in which we’re forced to live is unjust” doesn’t mean you’ve done anything wrong by renting. I too am a renter.
> “They have provided me more than housing - they have provided me a home, one where I have been able to dramatically rebuild what was a pretty awful life.”
No, they are using their control of a scarce resource to extract rents from you. Unless they’re renting to you at a loss, your rent is paying for the capital costs on the house—the mortgage, upkeep, etc. *You* finance their ownership of the house in which you live, with no ownership rights despite paying those capital costs.
You might also be paying them wages on top of buying them a house, if your rent is greater than those capital costs.
Passively accepting one’s role in an unjust status quo is a perfectly reasonable survival strategy, but it doesn’t make that status quo good or just.
Your landlord isn’t providing you with housing. You are providing your landlord with housing. If landlords did not hoard more housing than they could personally use to collect feudal rents from tenants like you, then housing costs would be dramatically lower, all else being equal.
Adding anaglyph 3D to BBC Micro Elite is proving quite the challenge; the game code is so optimised that each stage needs a new approach. But I now have 3D suns to add to the 3D ships, planets and stardust. They flicker a bit in-game, but the iconic Acornsoft box screenshot looks great!
Up next on the to-do list:
* Apply 3D to the Star Wars scroll-text in the in-game demo
* Add a bit of 3D to the scanner
* Try to improve planets, suns and explosion clouds to make the game more playable in 3D
It's turning out to be a bigger project than I anticipated... as per usual, I guess! 😂
#elite #bbcmicro #retrogaming #retrocomputing #8bit
I love it so much!
Firefox has made it SO EASY to switch to Firefox from Chrome, that you dont even lose your OPEN TABS.
Have you got 34 open tabs lol? And you lost uBlock ad-blocker today? (You did, you lost your ad blocker, because Google)
You dont even lose open Tabs! (And you get to install uBlock)
Fancy that.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switching-chrome-firefox
Firefox can automatically move bookmarks, passwords, history and other preferences from Chrome without deleting it or interfering with any of its settings.support.mozilla.org
🧵
Most people, when they think of Nazism, imagine a rigid dictatorship, in which Hitler gave strict orders to carry out a carefully engineered program of genocide.
They don't realize the degree to which Nazi functionaries improvised in an effort to curry favor w the Fuhrer by anticipating what they thought he might like to see.
IOW, they ramped up the violence b/c they believed they would be rewarded for it.
This is how "MASS DEPORTATION NOW" spirals out of control.
Hitler was not a "details" guy. He wasn't even a particularly hard worker.
What he was, though, was a "broad sketches" guy and a manic monologue guy.
Somebody who made HUGE and wildly unconventional pronouncements that excited curiosity and awe among a certain set of Germans, who then waited anxiously to see whether anyone might step forward to execute and put into concrete form the deviant ideas that peppered his speeches.
When people say "don't take Trump literally" or "he doesn't really mean what he says," that's completely beside the point.
It's what his speech unleashes in others.
It's the license he gives others to turn the crank, to up the ante, and to break conventions.
Trumpism is a permission structure.
It's an uncorking of violent animosities which have existed for a long time in our country.
Major tech companies are producing far more carbon emissions than they suggest in their sustainability reports.
They’re lobbying hard to rewrite the rules on how emissions are calculated to show net zero on paper, but not in practice.
https://www.ft.com/content/2d6fc319-2165-42fb-8de1-0edf1d765be3
#tech #climate #emissions #climatechange
I’m supremely annoyed that nearly all services now pin identity and authentication on an E-mail or Cell phone.
This does NOT stop illegitimate users. New E-mail and burner phones are easy to get.
It DOES however make legit users more vulnerable. Taking over someone’s Email account or phone number, even for a short period, may give an attacker easy access to take over your identity and accounts, sometimes in irreversible ways.
Authentication should be a Username, Password and TOTP. If you want to offer less secure/’passwordless/convenience’ options like email, phone, whatever, go right ahead. I can choose to NOT use those.
Don't mind me! Just hanging out overhead, waiting for someone cute to pounce!
Just walk right under here. I'm sure nothing will happen. >:3
Photo by np_sub.
meow meow
🟡🐾@astone40940 (tw)
⚪️🐾@lennyaa
#FursuitFriday #fursuit #kemonofursuit #kemono #furry #furryfandom #fursuiter #fursuiting #kemonosuit #fursuitphotography #furrycommunity #catfurry #catfursuit #fursuits
No one should be allowed to own a residence where they do not actually reside.
That alone would change all KINDS of things.
Furthermore, no one should be allowed to own a business where they do not bizz!
@Daojoan@mastodon.social
Another interesting proposal I've heard, and quite like is: corporations are not allowed to buy homes. Ever.
They can own them if they build them (which is necessary for organisations that build social housing, for example), but if they sell, they have to sell to people. A bank may come to own a house when the original owner can't pay the mortgage anymore, but if the bank wants to sell the house, they have to sell it to a person. Other than that, any corporation that wants to own houses, has to build them themselves thereby expanding the housing supply, instead of shrinking it by buying existing houses.
@argv minus one @Joan Westenberg Everyone? I sure hope not!
I didn't look at the details, but it sounded to me like he wanted to recreate the subprime mortgage crisis.
@violetmadder @storyworker @shamogan
Yes, I agree. All I’ve tried to convey is that “not wanting to purchase and own a home under capitalism” is not the same as “not wanting a permanent home in the abstract,” and the latter doesn’t somehow justify rentierism.
For example, if you’re not physically capable of maintaining a house and rent instead, you’re paying a landlord rents and probably a salary to hire a worker to perform maintenance. This is not something a landlord is necessary for; the landlord is still just inserted into a transaction between you and a maintenance worker.
There’s a whole universe of mechanisms by which people could live without permanent homes and still not rely on rentier landlords.
(and property taxes are also artificial scarcity)
@iwein@mas.to
@iwein
Private ownership is artificial scarcity.
Aside from any property taxes or cadastral registry, the cost of ownership is effectively zero.
Owning something for someone else is not a service.
@storyworker @iwein @violetmadder
But even if we take the very narrow view of profit as income over operating expenditures, all rent is profit. The operating expenditure of ownership is effectively zero.
@HeavenlyPossum at low scale the costs of ownership are not negligible, and if we remove the speculative value, as we should imo, then owning something for someone else is a service with an associated fair price.
I think the root causes are not the ownership itself, but:
1. Human rights to shelter are not guaranteed properly,
2. Artificial scarcity and unfair prices are allowed.
If the private ownership would be limited, the service of owning shelters should be provided still.
@storyworker @violetmadder @iwein
Even if landlords are operating “at cost,” they are probably acquiring equity.
If they’re not even acquiring equity, they’re probably just really bad at landlording.
But they are profiting from your rent. That’s what rent is.
Even without Capitalism I think it's valid to not want to own a house. It's not just financial and cognitove cost. There is a lot of physical required to maintain a home, and not all are physically capable of that work.
@shamogan @storyworker @violetmadder
I quite explicitly said in this thread that not wanting to own a home makes plenty of sense under capitalism, because it entails all sorts of financial and cognitive costs.
That doesn’t mean that being housed intrinsically accrues these costs, and it also doesn’t mean that rentierism somehow becomes good.
I think the point you may be missing here is that not everyone has the desire to own a home. Home ownership is a lot of responsibility and work that not all may be willing or capable of doing. Home ownership also typically implies that you plan to stay somewhere long term. Should people not be allowed to live nomadically? I'm all for abolishing rentirism, but we also need to consider and plan for how to house non-home owners during our pursuit to get there.
@violetmadder @storyworker
It is your business because it is your home and you are financing its costs through your rent while accruing no ownership over it.
@violetmadder @storyworker
Yes, I am making the claim that “the universe provided it” is a nicely poetical metaphor but it doesn’t change the reality of how houses are built or financed.
Are you telling me that no one built your house and no one pays for it?
@violetmadder @storyworker
Your claim is false. “The universe” did not provide you with a roof over your head. It did not suddenly appear. It did not congeal through magic. It did not accrete through natural processes. Someone made it (a builder) and someone financed it (you).
Landlords merely interject themselves into that process to collect rents—a toll, a private tax—off your need for housing.
@violetmadder @storyworker
The universe did not give you a roof over your head. A builder constructed it and you are financing its costs and upkeep.
@storyworker @violetmadder
Medieval serfs were also taught to believe that their feudal lord had provided them the homes that those serfs had built and the farms that those serfs worked.
@storyworker @violetmadder
I am not describing a labyrinth of words and concepts. You are purchasing housing for your landlord, and possibly paying them a salary in the process.
That doesn’t mean you can’t feel gratitude that you are housed. I am immensely grateful that I am housed. That doesn’t mean you can’t have a positive interpersonal relationship with your landlord. I’m not questioning your personal experience.
I would like people to be able to see things for how they really are, and landlording really is a feudal holdover.