Eh. Depending on where those parts were sourced…

There’s no evidence for anything on the macro scale for UBI since it’s never been done on a societal scale.

Social Security is UBI on a societal scale. And there is, if anything, a negative correlation between resident on SS and home resale value.

UBI would further increase home prices

There is no evidence of this

I still don’t see how UBI wouldn’t result in inflation of some sort

Inflation isn’t just driven by the bottom dollar of the poorest spender. If the US surplus production + imports exceeds the demand created by UBI, prices would fall rather than rise. If US consumption diminished overall while UBI rolled out, inflation would fall. If the national economy raises taxes on the wealthy while it increases spending on the poor, you won’t see inflation. You’ll see resource reallocation.

I might point you to parts of the country that lack consumer infrastructure - food deserts, being the most prominent example. A neighborhood without a grocery store will experience higher cost to access basic food and food services than a neighborhood with one. UBI expands the incentive to build supermarkets in high-population low-income neighborhoods. The net result of new infrastructure in underdeveloped communities would (somewhat paradoxically) drive prices down, in the same way the advent of Big Box Retailers in major metro areas reduced consumer goods prices during the 80s/90s.

Capital improvements to areas with large populations of people with money to spend can generate a profit on the improvement while still reducing the cost of living for individual inhabitants.

Ask anyone who has moved from a rural underdeveloped neighborhood to a highly developed urban one, and you’ll find out the appeal is often lower overall living costs relative to wages - shorter commutes, cheaper goods and utilities, more public amenities. UBI can have the same impact on large low-income communities.

I give it another two weeks before CBS runs an hour long special explaining how the Iranians bombed their own girl’s school.

Anarchist: “I want to stop that guy, by any means necessary”

Third Guy: “Wait, seriously? Like you’re actually going to attack the fascist?”

Anarchist: “Not right away, no. First I’m going to pass out these flyers and ask people to consider changing how they view fundamental machinery of the economy. Then I’m going to try and rally people to do some good old fashioned electoral politics, while offering mutual aid to my friends and neighbors. Then I’m working to raise money for people suffering genocide abroad. Then I’m volunteering my time and talents to form an independent party structure that can operate outside the bounds of the corporately captured two-party system. And at some point down the line, a faction within my new party may engage in armed training and activism in an effort to protect the lives and livelihoods of our friends and neighbors.”

Third Guy: “That’s a lot of words, but I heard you’re going to use guns at the end, so I think you’re scary. What about you, Mr Fascist? What are you going to do?”

Fascist: BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM “FUCK YOU, YOU PIECES OF SHIT! I’LL KILL YOU ALL!”

Anyone stupid enough to be paying more than $0 deserves to get rooked.

Who is going to remove it? Trump’s friend Tim Cook? Trump’s friend Jeff Bezos? Trump’s friend Sundar Pichai? Or Trump’s friend Satya Nadella?

allowed public school districts to set aside non-instructional time

I mean, this right here seems to be the root of the problem. Schools that are pegged to standardized testing performance metrics have zero incentive to squander student time in non-test prep activities.

This isn’t just a problem with this dipshit’s “school prayer” bill. It cuts into the entire curriculum. Everything from independent study to sports to artistic expression to club activities are sacrificed on the alter of test-taking efficiency.

Get under the hood of most of these districts and you’ll find them boiling over with Christian Nationalists. But because the economic structure of the schools rewards high state mandated test scores and penalizes anything that might increase tardiness, there’s a huge counterweight to this policy already in place by these same Christian conservatives.

Much like the gerrymandering, the Republican strategy backfired

Insane to think gerrymandering backfired in Texas. The state has run out of room to draw safe districts. They are not in any way suffering from a district schema that squeezes a 65/35 state legislative majority out of a 53/47 partisan split.

We’re just at the limit of how much juice you can get squeezing this lemon.

This is a very Baby’s First Econ 101 view of the relationship between renters and rentees. Following the logic, you’d think landlords would enthusiastically support a higher minimum wage, bigger social welfare packages, less student debt, and more immigration. After all - on paper - this all leads to higher rents.

But, in practice, higher personal incomes unlock a whole host of options that landlords don’t like. Chief among them, UBI instantly gives everyone in the country a minimum level of credit-worthiness. And landlords primarily trade on their tenants’ inability to borrow money to buy a house.

Even more broadly, landlords don’t like competition. And another option all these policies opens up is locally managed community housing. Lumpen proles with a minimum income can exchange and pool their buying power in all sorts of ways that create backdoors in the economy landlords can’t rent-seek. Young people aren’t obligated to take low wage jobs, older people aren’t bound up in the workforce past their most productive years, and skilled professionals can do business directly with the community rather than getting gated behind state-run contractors or monopoly vendors.

None of that is to describe UBI as a panacea. But diluting the money supply and universalizing access to currency in a market economy has immediate and long-term tangible benefits that aren’t just subsumed by higher rents.

At an absolute bare minimum (and baring state-sanctioned thievery which remains in the cards) a landlord has to give you something to get that UBI. For someone with nothing, this is an immediate and obvious improvement in standard of living.

What, no Microslop?

No way this runs on Windows. It’s Linux or bust.

They trained a tiny patch of neurons to respond to low-voltage electric impulses. The cells don’t know they’re playing Doom. They don’t have any kind of social context or even video feedback.

Imagine if I stuck you in a sensory deprivation chamber, handed you an NES controller, and asked you to hit the buttons. Then, periodically, I said “Yes” or “No” based on the buttons you pressed. And when I pulled you out of the tube at the end of an hour, I told you “the yes and no messages were intended to encourage you to correctly navigate Mario through the first level of the original game.” What if, instead of Mario, I’d been telling you how to play Street Fighter?

It doesn’t matter if its Doom. They likely picked Doom because the I/O is so rudimentary that you can install the game on practically anything. The cellular matter has no idea what it’s doing beyond the “Yes/No” signaling.

Person: “Vegans won’t shut up about being vegan”

Vegan: embarrassed sigh

Person: “They’re constantly telling me about it.”

Vegan: hiding behind something

Person: “I just don’t get it! They’ve got leather clothes. Where do they think wool comes from? Protein is nutrious! Are they too good for eggs?!”

Vegan: Slinking out the back door

Built to Fail: The story of 21st century consumer technology.

where they spoke about the “high-tech arsenal of the United States” during the operation in Iran, they used video of the Ukrainian interceptor drone STING from the manufacturer “Wild Hornets”.

Was genuinely skeptical of this being a pure Ukrainian invention, given how much tech has been crossing the border from the NATO states. But… fuck me, I can’t find anything to suggest this isn’t 100% home grown. I’m sure if you got your hands on the tech specs, you’d find some kind of cross-over (not like Ukrainians invented VR googles or remote telemetry and I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if folks outside Ukraine were involved in the design). Past that…

I do wonder how secure this technology is, if its something you can gin up with a 3D printer. Like, are there Sting specs out in the wild at this point? Or is this something they keep under lock and key?

I think it did place limits on imperialist behavior

:-/