They might not mind the subpar housing, but they would for sure mind the lack of food pantries and medical services in the places the empty housing exists. If it’s not dying rural town that completely lacks those things, it’s sprawling suburb or vacation community that requires a car to access them.

Homeless people, on average, contribute less to society than housed people, on average. Generally multiple societal structural failures and bad luck are major contributions to a person ending up homeless, but their own genetic- and nuture-driven characteristics play a role, too, and having a higher physical and mental disability burden than the average human is common.

Also, living remotely often means subsistence is a major part of how people get on, and subsistence is an intensely knowledge- and skill-based task highly specific to locale. Hunting in rural Alaska is not immediately transferable to hunting in Greenland, and dumping someone in rural Montana is not going to poof make them an expert gatherer.

My husband and I told family what we wanted for occasions was a gift in our name to charity X. We picked one each year that takes online donations and sends cards “Person donated to us in your name!” They went along the first two years, they didn’t donate the third year, and my husband and I stopped announcing charities after that and we all went along happily without gifting.

I, a vagina-haver, had no idea until a Catholic friend in college mentioned NFP. The secular Fertility Awareness resources I ended up finding all supported my impression this isn’t widely known. That was twenty years ago, though, maybe young people these days are more body-aware?

Agree it isn’t really gross, I think it’s cool, but it seemed gross-adjacent enough I could get away with sharing in this thread.

When fertile, women have significantly increased mucus volume in their vaginas.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervix

Several hundred glands in the endocervix produce 20–60 mg of cervical mucus a day, increasing to 600 mg around the time of ovulation.

Our noses have erectile tissue.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nasal_concha

Conchae are lined by pseudostratified columnar, ciliated respiratory epithelium with a thick, vascular, and erectile glandular tissue layer.

Sometimes regular stimulation is enough. I saw one case where a man took on an orphaned infant where there wasn’t even any animal milk available to hack together formula, and the starving infant attempting to get milk out of his nipple every hour for multiple days was enough to get the one breast to start making milk, and the infant lived thanks to it.

The need for suckling to stimulate milk production is a catch-22 for women who don’t make enough milk. They have to supplement with formula to prevent “failure to thrive”, but the infant spending some of its sucking time on a bottle instead of a breast reduces their supply even more, so then they have to feed even more formula… There are devices that run a tube to the nipple so the infant can get formula from the tube while at the same time stimulating breast milk production, and they work, but look like a huge pain.

Inflation depends on the resource people are chasing after and the timeline of the cash infusion. Most resources can be provisioned at greater quantity without price increases if given enough time (years to decades). If everyone poof had double their normal income, and immediately tried to spend it all, there would be supply chain constraints and inflation, sure. Any UI scheme would need to have a gradual rollout to avoid that.

Not everywhere. Shockingly to many, cities with higher rates of apartment construction have falling rents.

https://www.redfin.com/news/rental-tracker-may-2025/

“Apartment construction in America has been hovering near a 50-year high, and even though renter demand is strong, it’s not keeping pace with supply,” said Redfin Senior Economist Sheharyar Bokhari. “Many units are sitting vacant for months, which means renters have power to negotiate concessions and landlords have less leeway to keep rents high.”

Overall job loss is not what happened the last thirty-odd times the federal minimum wage was raised, or any of the times individual states raised minimum wage, but go ahead and believe it will happen the next time for sure.

What has happened is the newly higher-paid employees spend that money, and the new demand creates new jobs, enough to offset the losses from the old employers deciding to manage with a smaller staff. As long as the size of the increase is in the same range as all the previous ones, there’s every reason to believe the effect would be the same.

I wish the federal congress would just do several years of catch-up increases, then tie it to inflation so we can stop arguing about it.

The stock holders are the owners. The owners can in theory direct the board of people representing their interests to do whatever, but generally stock owners want the board to do things they believe will make the value of the stock go up. Like any average owner of a private company, just we all get to watch since it’s a public company.

Do you think he might like the warmth? Parrot feet don’t have the feather insulation owl feet have, and I believe their circulation actually restricts to barely keep feet above freezing and save most warmth for their torso. Sounds uncomfortable.

I think I saw a clip of an Australian doing that with a chicken.

Military (who can’t refuse orders), retiree scabs (presumably lucratively paid), and those who can’t afford to go without a paycheck to support the strike (was ~10% of the controllers in 1981).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981_Professional_Air_Traffic_Controllers_Organization_strike

On Monday, August 3rd, 1981, over 13,000 ATCs went on strike. By the morning, the strike had stopped over 50% of flights; this number rose to 70% later in that day… ATC towers were staffed by non-striking ATCs, along with military personnel and retired ATCs who agreed to return to work. Ultimately, the government action was effective at defeating the union. Only 1,300 of the striking workers were able to retain their jobs, and none of them attained their demands.

4th north, east 4th north, and south 4th east. Did I find them all?

Not the Americans, no. The bases employ a lot of German civilians, and Germany is covering (as a loan to the US) the paychecks owed to the German employees.

Interesting, I hadn’t heard about that elsewhere. It looks like it’s not for US military personnel, only the civilian local employees at the base. https://www.stripes.com/theaters/europe/2025-10-22/germany-covers-federal-worker-paychecks-19507712.html

State officials said they had urged the German finance ministry to step in and ensure payment of the wages owed to Germans employed at the assorted U.S. military bases within its territory…

The ministry is preparing approximately $50 million in emergency funding to ensure workers are paid on time, German news outlet Tagesschau reported Wednesday.

…A union statement Monday said that the current shutdown, which began Oct. 1, differs from previous ones, when German staffers employed by the U.S. received pay in accordance with German labor law and the NATO Status of Forces Agreement.

“What is new is that the current U.S. administration is apparently unwilling to comply with German laws,” the Ver.di statement said. Rheinland-Pfalz officials said Germany expects to be reimbursed once the U.S. government reopens.

Debt is less risky to a country than a person in the sense of “if you owe the bank a million dollars, you have a problem; if you owe the bank a billion dollars, the bank has a problem”. Smaller countries with less attractive debt definitely have problems associated with excessive national debt. US debt is especially resilient because the next-most-attractive national debt is much less attractive, so it can fall a long ways before switching investments makes sense. But it can’t fall forever - there is competition - and the complexities of the market mean we can’t predict exactly what actions would be the final straw to trigger that shift, so even flirting in that direction is hugely risky.

Even short of the US falling out of most-attractive-debt status, there are bad things that happen as it becomes seen as more risky, tied to the way that risk perception drives up interest rates on Treasury bonds. Higher long-term interest rates make the national debt go up faster, accelerating the risk of full-on loss of most attractive status. They also benchmark all other interest rates in the economy, making all kinds of business investments less viable and thus stifling the innovation needed to keep the economy delivering for its people.

Voter enthusiasm is correlated with turnout. Less enthused Republican or independent Hispanics are more likely to stay home on election day.

Agree those who voted for Trump last election are unlikely to switch to voting Democrat, but if they stay home that makes the path to a Democrat victory more viable. And for that, polls like this are a helpful data point.

Yes, I am in favor of the label having a column for the whole can, but also not all cans are the same size, for example Coke has at least four different sizes of cans: https://travel67.com/2013/12/12/coca-cola-serving-sizes-and-an-unusual-pricing-system/

Is having two columns of information (one for the whole package, one standard size to compare to other varieties) offensive to people?