Today, it takes a family with both parents, or partners, working just to have enough money to pay a mortgage and two auto loans (none if they live in a city and are smart).

If they live in the city, they aren’t paying a mortgage and two auto loans. The money they’d spend on all three in the outer suburbs is instead going to a landlord.

I don’t know why everybody focuses so much on the top of the wing. Relative to ambient air, the pressure above the wing is slightly reduced, but the pressure below the wing is massively increased. That massive increase is far more important than the slight reduction above.

We know this, because simple, flat airfoils are capable of flight. Think: paper airplanes, simple balsa models, etc.

The shape of the airfoil is not actually very important for lift. You can make a brick produce plenty enough lift to maintain its altitude, if you can provide sufficient thrust and control it’s attitude.

The specific shape of the airfoil is primarily important for minimizing drag across a variety of speeds and angles of attack at various loadings. This is where the top surface of the wing becomes important. By maintaining the flow over the wing, drag is reduced, and controllability is maintained.

They will not understand that humans should be drawn with 2 arms

Hitler went to prison, and turned it to his advantage.

I want Trump to have a stroke while taking a dump, collapse, and ultimately drown on toilet water and his own, bloody excrement.

The human capacity for reason is greatly overrated. The overwhelming majority of conversation is regurgitated thought, which is exactly what LLMs are designed to do.

There are laws against selling fake drugs. Why does he think your product is a drug? Has it been represented to him as a drug by you or by someone with whom you are conspiring to sell fake drugs?

even then you don’t need this recurring manual registration mess.

There is no recurring manual registration. You only need to register once in your lifetime.

If you move, you have to update your ID within 60 days, and every time you update your ID, they update your voter registration automatically. (unless you decline).

That has been federal law since 1993, and is pretty much equivalent to European standards.

You really have to go out of your way to not be registered to vote.

Owner occupant credit/exemption. If you live in the home, you pay a much lower property tax than if you don’t live in the home.

This is used in Ohio as a “homestead exemption”. Elderly and disabled Ohioans pay a lower tax rate on their primary residence.

It is used in New York as the “STAR Credit”, to push part of the burden of school taxes from families to investors and businesses.

This is used in Montana as a Property Tax Rebate, where taxpayers can get some of their property taxes back on their primary residence. Montana has also been talking about implementing a “second home tax” which would increase the tax burden on properties that aren’t claimed as a primary residence.

A substantially similar program is used in Oakland as the Vacant Property Tax, which punishes landlords who hold property primarily for financial speculation rather than actual use.

These programs all operate in the same way I am describing. The only difference is that I would phase in a radical increase the effective tax on investors/landlords. I would increase the tax on investors and landlords of residential property so much that they find it more lucrative to switch their investment strategy to “lending” rather than “landlording”. Basically, the only rental arrangements that will continue to exist are 2-4 unit residences (where the landlord-owner lives in one of the units) and roommate agreements.

A “land contract” (sometimes called “contract for deed”) is a sort of “rent to own” agreement that is recorded with the county like a deed. For purposes of the tax exemption I am talking about, the occupant is considered an owner rather than a tenant.

A Land Contract is a type of seller-financing that is available to anyone, including the tenant on whom the landlord is already taking a financial risk. That former landlord is now collecting interest on a loan, rather than rent on a property.

But it’s very difficult for a lot of people.

It is, indeed, but the proper solution here is to lift them up to the bar, not lower the bar down to them.

Lack of ID prevents you from getting and keeping a job, attending school, accessing the banking system, getting a PO box, getting licenses. Being unable to vote is the least of your problems.

The proper solution is not to figure out how to make voting accessible to those without an ID. The proper solution is to get them an ID.

Yes, there are people who can’t obtain an ID card, for whatever reason. A European citizen who couldn’t obtain an ID card would have the exact same problems voting that an American citizen does. I don’t have a systemic solution for that. This would seem to be something that would need to be handled on a case-by-case basis, possibly involving the judicial system and a court order. It also doesn’t seem to be a particularly common problem. I’d bet all the money in my pockets that OP does, indeed, have some sort of ID card.

We have a remedy for this: Provisional ballots. Cast your vote now, and resolve any clusterfuck with registration later.

That’s called privilege. You literally don’t realize what a burden it is for some people to comply with voter registration requirements, because your life is such that it’s easy for you.

The “privilege” you are talking about is the exact same privilege the parent comment assumed:

I just have to show up with my ID, doesn’t matter if it’s for the EU parliament or the local city senate.

The “privilege” you are talking about is “having an ID card”. Every time you obtain, renew, replace, update, or otherwise contact the state bureau handling ID cards (usually, the DMV), they are required, under federal law, to update your voter registration unless you specifically decline.

The European standard is “get an ID card, show up and vote”. We implemented the European standard back in 1993.

What I’m describing has been federal law for over 30 years. The European criticism about ID cards is nonsensical. Every time you obtain, renew, or amend your drivers license or ID, you update your voter registration.

Remember the context of my comment: I am replying to European criticism of registration. The European approach is for everyone to obtain a government issued ID card and present it at the polling station. The NVRA already does this. We have already adopted the European solution to this problem.

It’s overblown. It’s mostly propaganda.

I just have to show up with my ID

My ID is good for 5 years, and I am required to update it within 60 days of changing residences. Every time I’ve renewed or updated it, they have asked me if I wanted to register or update my voter registration. My registration is updated every time I vote, and I don’t get de-registered unless I skip voting for about a decade straight, without re-registering when I renew my ID card.

ALL of the problems with voter registration are about people who either can’t or won’t get or renew their ID card. Every time you read about voter registration issues in the US, you should imagine going to your polling station without a current ID card.

being hit with a tax that basically kills any chance of renting out something.

That is exactly what should happen. It should be practically impossible for an owner to “rent” a property for enough to justify doing it. Landlords should be heavily pressured to convert tenants to buyers.

“Renting” should be confined to commercial activities, not residences. You want to rent out space for a shop, warehouse, office, factory, no problem. This is only for residential property that you are not living in. It should not be economically feasible to rent out such property as an investor, because that practice strips tenants of equity and is the leading factor driving people into poverty.

Go ahead and use your property to generate an income, but do it by charging interest on a loan, not rent.

The entire concept of rent needs to die in a fire. It is inherently exploitative. There is no way to redeem it.

Rent needs to be replaced with “private mortgages” or other approaches that return equity to the occupant.

Individuals that need the flexibility of temporary, short-term housing can use “land contracts” rather than exploitive rental agreements. Land Contracts have fixed payments for the life of the agreement: no annual rent hikes. The occupant is considered an “owner” rather than a “tenant”, but only begins gaining equity after three years. The occupant is free to walk away before three years, or renegotiate after.

How do we eliminate renting? We make it less lucrative than other investment options. We increase the tax rate on residential properties to be extremely high. But, we also create a tax exemption for owner-occupants, so your effective tax rate is actually lower on your own home. Landlords are forced to choose between a small return on a rental, or a larger return on a private mortgage or land contract.

With that simple change, landlords will be fighting tooth and nail to convert “tenants” into “buyers”, so they don’t have to pay the excess taxes.

Beyond renting, with this change, lenders are motivated to work with borrowers rather than resort to foreclosure. As soon as the bank initiates foreclosure proceedings, they are on the hook for the increased tax rate.

Hmm. Seems like combat aircraft never get hit in the engines, nose, cockpit, or aft fuselage. We could save some weight by stripping the armor out of those areas…

A few Nazis and KKK apologists convinced a shit-ton of marketers, influencers, Karens, and other predatory users to leave.

On balance, Nazis and Klukkers didn’t make it any worse than it was.

I agree with everything except the “got even worse” part. It was always a steaming turd.

The reality is that Xitter isn’t actually any shittier than Twitter was. It’s not any better, of course. But it’s certainly not any worse.

The ol’ choke and stroke