PhlubbaDubba

joined 1 year ago
[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 2 points 5 hours ago (4 children)

See that could be pretty easily achieved without eminent domain.

If you announced the program you'd probably have cities bidding against each other to host this department or that.

You'd probably have to create whole new departments just to appease cities and states that ended up not getting offices that you want to keep political capital with.

Establishing a Department of Language Accomodation in Queens would probably be the safe bet to test this kind of shenaniganery with.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 5 points 5 hours ago

TBF even Leninism is a stark departure from what MLs believe.

If you look at the original plans for the Soviet Union, Lenin was basically planning a Syndicalist Representative-Democracy. Problem was that Lenin got too bogged down in crushing any chance that said democracy would vote against itself, and then Stalin just decided to go full corporate town with it.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 2 points 6 hours ago

Either all those YouTubers collected the check from Raid without even touching the thing or they make up 99% of the playerbase at this point and it's basically their best kept secret social club.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 8 points 6 hours ago

Conspiracy Theorist culture has been coopted by the evangelical right in the wake of shit like Watergate and Iran-Contra making a non-interfered-with conspiracy theorist culture seem too dangerous to the right to be allowed to persist.

Evidence being that if you go far enough down the rabbit holes of the looney theories we all like to make fun of, you'll inevitably find some evangelical nut preaching about how it has to be that way either because they believe it says so in the bible or because they believe it's a sign of the rapture which is surely happening within their lifetime, or often both.

It's like the most dangerous kind of conservative appropriation of counterculture narrative.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 5 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

That'd have some pretty dark implications for the recent assassination attempts then.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 15 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

It's one of those things that mostly works because there aren't many rich people.

Since crimes committed by rich folks are mostly white collar, they're rarely a danger to society if let back onto the streets.

It's one of those statistical solutions that doesn't really do enough thinking about why the statistics shake out that way.

That said, there is a gradient, rich folks can make bail for petty offenses but for violent ones judges may be inclined to just deny bail purely because the rich prick would be able to post it easily and the crime they're accused of warrants not letting them back out.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 1 points 6 hours ago (6 children)

Probably only if that city was a new planned capitol like the CBC has suggested be developed on the Republican River.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 14 points 6 hours ago

See I could see this working if it weren't for the sheer number of data points you'd need to collect consistently to create a trainable model.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 5 points 6 hours ago

Nah, number of properties is a pretty fucking good metric.

Being a "bad" landlord isn't the issue, the issue is taking properties off the housing market for rent collection, and driving up prices for everyone else in the process.

There are more empty units in this country than unhoused people to fill them, this housing crisis is one built entirely out of artificial scarcity created by letting speculators buy up supply basically for the purpose of scalping them to poor people who can't say no to the product.

It's the same kind of "market efficiency" that has ballooned medical costs, who can afford to compare costs on a kidney transplant? Nobody. Who can afford to shop around and wait on houses? Unless you're very lucky in today's economy, also nobody.

Housing does not abide the same market rules as designer T-shirts. Necessity goods will inherently have a hostage effect on the customers where you could in theory charge any price and just make the disinfortuned eat shit for it.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 4 points 6 hours ago

I was thinking more non-occupancy just meaning "that you don't live in yourself", so that would mean filling your rentals with tenants doesn't save you from the tax.

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 2 points 6 hours ago

Chicky Hopping Baby T-Rexes Cannon!

[–] PhlubbaDubba@lemm.ee 33 points 18 hours ago (4 children)

Most likely the weight difference would be the biggest issue here.

Same reason why to scale bug wings wouldn't let you fly, that square cube law can lead to some very unfun conclusions where big beasties are concerned.

Or some absolutely terrifying ones in Shin Godzilla's case.

 

A big theme I feel this version addresses is (well earned IMO) mistrust in the government and justice system.

I believe multi-seat STAR and sortitionate judiciary benches will go a decent way towards as many people feeling like electoral outcomes are fair and that they have at least one representative they feel they can trust as a confidant as possible, and that as many people can trust that federal cases are being tried without any judicial activism playing into seating and jurisdiction selection.

I also believe a dual-parliamentary system will go a long way towards removing the "do or die" feelings towards each election since now there isn't a single big boss at the top who can wildly swerve the direction of the nation based on the whims of whichever camp was more dissuaded from turning out that cycle.

 

To review from my previous post,

  • 7 Stripes for 7 Articles instead of 13 for 13 colonies.

  • 27 Stars for 27 Amendments instead of 50 for 50 states.

  • Colors borrowed from Plains Nations cardinal direction colors as a way to include land recognition in the design.

I originally tried using The Statue of Liberty's Torch as a visual divider between both sides, but some folks opined that it was a bit too hard to discern, so instead I leaned a bit more into the land recognition aspect and borrowed a Northeastern Nations bit of iconography, the broken arrow being a symbol of peace, and a two arrow exchange representing war.

Decided to pull a Venice and include a peacetime and wartime variant of the flag just to be quirky:P.

 

Instead of 13 stripes and 50 stars for colonies and states, this flag features 7 stripes and 27 stars for Articles of the Constitution and ensuing Amendments to it. I feel like mere territorial growth doesn't tell the story of America's development as a society and republic as well as tracking the changes to its constitution. Especially the voting rights amendments.

Colors borrow from the cardinal direction colors used by Indigenous American nations, (black and blue are interchangeable depending on which nation your speaking to). This was done to bake some land recognition into the flag.

Lastly the torch of Lady Liberty is included both to visually distinct the flag from the original stars and stripes, but also to signify America's status as a nation of immigrants. 99% of all Americans today either are an immigrant themselves or have an ancestor within living memory who was one, and Lady Liberty became a sort of patron saint of such folks by being the first sight a lot of people saw coming to America for the first time, not to mention how she's technically an immigrant herself having been gifted from france.

 

Felt like we could all use some throwback humor.

 

The man regularly outwits far more supposedly cognizant opponents including Batman and Lex Luthor, who are canonically recognized as two of thr smartest people on the entire planet.

Edit: I'm not saying insane people are stupid, I'm saying that Joker's mental illnesses are pretty obviously behavioral, they don't affect his perception of reality. He's perfectly capable of understanding what he's doing and how it's wrong, in fact his character almost doesn't work if he doesn't, he just thinks that it's all hilarious anyways. That's why I said he's not insane, he just pretends to be, because he'd be fit to stand criminal trial as fully competent and cognizant of his actions.

 
 
 

(The light from the takeoff event is just now reaching their planet from Earth all those lightyears away)

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