Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great book about this called Nickel and Dimed. She was a full time journalist and set out to get a job at a diner and find a place to live on the salary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

Matthew Desmond’s books Evicted and Poverty, By America are amazing, well researched, easily readable books about poverty in the US. I can’t recommend them enough. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1158230630/poverty-by-america-book-review-matthew-desmond-evicted

Would still be a little difficult for people living in apartments. I always think about this when it comes to EVs, and owning “dumb” cars and maintaining them yourself, which I would like to do. My apartment complex has 3 or 4 EV chargers, which are assigned. So you would have to rent the apartment that comes with the EV spot, which I’m sure makes the rent go up by far more than it’s worth. And no way is there room to work on your own car within the assigned spaces. No guest parking either. I guess it’s just more stuff to add to the “cycle of poverty” list

Sociologist Matthew Desmond has an amazing book called Evicted that talks about criminal act evictions and profiles people who have been the target of them. The book follows very low income renters in Milwaukee through years of their struggles to find and keep housing. It also follows individual landlords from the same neighborhoods. It’s technically an academic subject and is impeccably researched (the notes section in the back could be its own book) but it reads like a novel. It won a Pulitzer iirc.

He also just published Poverty, By America last year. I’ve only just started it, but it’s just as readable. He explains overly-complicated regulations and social services red tape in a way that’s concise and easy to understand, and he illustrates their consequences through his interviews with real people. His books should be required reading for every American.

This just happened to me so I came here to see if it had happened to anyone else. Should have known it wasn’t a problem on my end.

Sadly war sucks ass.

Don’t try to justify the mass murder of innocent, injured and sick civilians, including children and infants. There’s literally nothing that excuses dropping bombs on hospitals. And schools. And trucks full of refugees. And people’s homes. And ambulances.

It is interesting how the same US political ideology that supports this mass murder of children are, generally, also the ones who consider zygotes to be children and criminalize pregnant women for having miscarriages. But I digress.

The point is, it’s all a bullshit power play, don’t let it distract you from your own humanity.

There’s definitely no possibility that Israel does stuff like that and then blames it on its enemies to justify its actions. No way.

eliminate the reason why it exists.

Well I think everybody knows exactly how to do that then, and it’s the exact opposite of what’s happening right now.

It’s almost like Israel and it’s supporters are shocked that a resistance movement formed in response to them murdering civilians and destroying homes of innocent families. Maybe it’s not the moral response, but no one can claim to be surprised by it.

To be clear, if some criminal has human hostages you’re fine if the building they are in is torched?

“IDF says…”

Of course. What reason would they have to lie? /s

Maybe we should wait until there’s been a more neutral investigation before deciding it’s one hundred percent true.

What I never understand about major news stories is that so many people take everything they see at face value and then consider it indisputable fact. When there’s an international war going on, no one thinks that just maybe we’re only getting a fraction of reality communicated to us? That it must be the worst game of telephone in terms of accuracy? But then if someone even suggests that maybe there’s more to the story, they’re conspiracy theorists or they get told what “side” they’re on.

We should all be at least somewhat discerning. There’s so many different actors with interests in this war. We have no idea what else could be going on that we will never, ever hear about, nor how much spin is being put on the stuff we do hear about.

What it’s like being a TA

When did this all or nothing way of thinking start in American culture? Has it always been like this and I’m just now noticing it, or is it much more prevalent now because it’s a side effect of a lack of critical thinking skills

Obligatory fuck psypost. The most click bait, sensationalized headlines for small sample correlational studies that almost always have a divisive basis, like “democrats are better at x than republicans,” or “men are better at x than women” or some shit. I got so sick of seeing it on the front page of reddit every single day because there were ten different subs reposting the same articles.

“Nothing happens in god’s world by mistake.” “God never gives you more than you can handle.” Etc etc.

When 1 in 6 women has been sexually assaulted in their lives (and many men and NB folks), that’s a really fucked up thing to say. You never know what someone’s been through, and I’ve personally been through a lot of awful things. I guess it helps some people to tell themselves this kind of shit, but it is impossible to me to think of any kind of meaning that would make being a victim of violent crime “positive” or “worth it” or “a learning experience” blah blah blah. I think the term for that is “toxic positivity.”

So either “everything happens for a reason” is utter bullshit, or god is a sadistic fucking asshole.