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Yes and no. HOAs can be a PITA and petty and I err on the side of less governance but some people are recalcitrant, stubborn and just set in their ways. It's a damned if you do and damned if you don't.

HOAs are usually clear in their rules, so if you want to live in a predictable neighborhood you can choose to live in one. IF you want more laisses faire neighborhoods you can pick one that does not have an HOA.


> HOAs can be a PITA and petty and I err on the side of less governance but some people are recalcitrant, stubborn and just set in their ways.

Recalcitrant about what? About using their own private property in a way they want (that doesn't violate city/state law)? Well yes, they sure should be. It needs to be illegal for any HOA to have any say about that.


Except when most of the city lives in an HOA, it is very difficult to convince the city to spend money in public works.

Less public spending => lower taxes => less money for public spending


Logic doesn’t make sense - it’s less for cities or counties to worry about because code enforcement and upkeep is outsourced to a certain extent

Unless we find Utopia some day, the economic system does not matter. People will have to work whether they be nomads, fishermen or fisherwomen, live in Neoliberal economies, live in Socialist economies, Communist economies or a loaner in the jungle. People have to produce: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" as they say. It's expected people who have the ability to produce to produce. It's not Wall-E land where you get plugged in and can veg out to your heart's content. We have the same phenomenon in the non-political animal kingdom. You hold your weight or you're out. We have little more ruth as a species... but not that much more because it's hard to afford more --you see even if we evenly spread the wealth from billionaires evenly, it would not amount to much for each individual -just over a thousand dollars per person and it would be a one-time thing.

Does it get state and federal funding? If it does, it should conform. If it's private and does not get funding, then I guess it can continue doing what it does...

They count students paying with federal grants and loans, so yes.

A quick reminder that the First Amendment of the Unites States Constitution bars the Federal government from forcing private institutions to participate in chosen political speech. The question of whether you get funding from the Federal Government should not matter, since it's the Federal Government that's constitutionally constrained from doing this.

Of course if we're no longer in a place where the rule of law applies, then sentences like "if it's private and does not get funding..." hardly matter.


Yes. It receives federal grant funding for its faculty. Students receive federal loans for tuition. And international students can receive visas to attend it.

I don’t doubt this is the case in modern times but I doubt they have spied on the poor since the beginning of time since there was little reason to spy on powerless illiterates. They spied on known enemies or rivals sure but not on the masses since there was little reason to do so. It was also costly to do so.

Maybe not "spying" per se, but oppressors have always kept enough tabs on the oppressed to keep them oppressed for as long as possible, often without the oppressed knowing exactly how. Maybe "spying" after all.

I think it helped that things were more tribal back then. Enemies could sack and pillage if opportunity presented itself. That presented peasants/commoners/etc. a disincentive to defect. It's not like an outsider would be friendly to a defector in most cases. This provided a bond to the local warlord/chieftain/etc. Essentially it was a fear-factor to not defect because things would be worse. Plus, these people had few possessions. They basically only had their labor and the clothes on their backs. They had very little power. A population that had tenuous leadership would soon be easy pickings for a neighboring rival to swoop in and potentially make things worse.

Smudges are off-putting... but, there are times when it would be very convenient to be able to scroll or click on a touchscreen. There are times when presenting when a touchscreen would be preferred over a mouse or touchpad. It's not often, but they are nice to have.

And, in regards to smudges, I mean, just don't use the touchscreen unless you have to and problem avoided.

Antiglare can be a thing but that can be avoided by avoiding string lighting behind you.


There's still the issue of accidentally triggering things (when e.g. adjusting the screen) and sometimes you don't have control of your surrounding lighting. I'd still prefer touch to be entirely optional.

ICE doesn’t do law enforcement against citizens. It does affect citizens tangentially but not directly. ICE will not come after citizens for crimes. That would be regular local police, state police or FBI/ATF, etc. ICE is immigration enforcement. Some people may not like that especially illegal residents but it would be a poor way to affect citizens like fascists or communists did.


You haven't been paying attention.

What do you mean? If you mean interfering with officers carrying out their duties, then yes, people do get arrested for that. But you would get arrested for interfering with any law enforcement. People do get to protest but they do not get the right to protest violently nor do they get a right to interfere with law enforcement just because they disagree with the law.

Just like if you want to protest eminent domain but officers come in to move out protesters getting in the way of construction. People will get arrested. You can protest peacefully. You cannot interfere with official acts or be violent.



ICE will (and already are to an extent) come after anyone who looks like trouble. If they want to superficially follow the law, they beat people up and release them after 23 hours after "discovering" the person is a citizen. Then, repeat as many times as necessary.

Since nobody actually knows who ICE is, it can devolve pretty easily from there. The most pedestrian would be protection money to avoid detention, from citizens and non-citizens, it doesn't matter.


What does the national guard do against citizens?

Kind of the same role they played during the civil rights struggle. They are there to bolster law enforcement when local law enforcement may be overwhelmed enforcing federal law.

Trump has actively talked about denaturalizing his enemies [1]. You would be technically correct that he's not going after citizens, but that's only because he'll declare everyone he doesn't like antifa and thus not worthy of citizenship.

A move, I should point out, that the Nazis did to the Jews and Communists.

[1] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/27/trum...


The Nazis and Communists also didn't come after 'citizens' at first:

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


Probably the same stick all admins have: the threat of letting the DOJ pursue anti-monopolistic behavior. If they "behave" the DOJ lets them continue in their ways. If they don't they allow the possibility of getting the giants split up.

I think op means, I wonder what it means to "behave" in this context. I wonder what is actually being pursued?

What's funny is that they only see the threat to their livelihoods that's where their concern lies.

But... do they protect their human animators from CGI? Or using cheaper foreign filming locations to cut costs?

It's all a continuum but they didn't care about it till it came for them. Nothing else on the continuum mattered... So, yeah, I won t shed a tear for them as they shed no tears for other parts of their production being replaced by different technologies over time.


While not common, it used to be a thing to see kids suspended and sometimes kicked out of school for being troublemakers.

There has to be consequences and pushback for kids who cannot help themselves but interrupt class and make trouble inside the hallways and outside the school grounds.


In a way it was more mature in the sense of what makes the world go round.

Without money data centers and infrastructure don’t happen.

So now instead of microtransactions we get plastered with ads ad nauseam.


We the consumers are the ones who paid the infra with our monthly teleco bill.

It really doesn’t pay for the billions in infra, maintenance and personnel. You’d have to pay quite a bit more.

In my country 45.6 million homes pay each month around +30€ to have fiber to the home.

That is around 162 billion a year in cash flow.

The biggest provider operational costs are aroud 37B. For everything, not only fiber. And controls 50% of the FTTH market.

I mean is quick maths but looks like it does pay for it.


I think microtransaction methods still exist using cryptocurrencies. They were going to be difficult without crypto anyway, because of the hurdles that the stubborn national authorities put up in the way of an international payment system.

Microstransactions are a massive on iOS and android using “non-crypto” currency and have been for many years.

Micro transactions work fine. If there was any real demand on the web, browsers would incorporate them seamlessly.

But people don’t want to pay even a single cent for a 10 minute article.


I definitely would, if payments in 10s of cents was possible.

But we only get full on subscription that are at least few euros per month and those are annoying to manage and it's quite complicated to evaluate the value beforehand (unlike say a traditional magazine that you can buy as a single issue to test before subbing).

And when you find one-time payments, they are usually high price (around 3€ minimum seems to be the usual) and worse than that, you rarely can own the stuff. You purchase "access" with a license and no way to really save the thing as your own, making the whole thing a bit of a joke, and piracy the only truly sane solution.


I don't think that is true.

A seamless ubiquitous interface and accounting system for penny sized transactions hasn't been introduced anywhere I am aware of.

It would need to be incredibly convenient, easy, reliable, secure, private. With flexible permissioning (subscription list, ok to pay list, etc.) so people were not hammered by "Do you want to pay?" popups all the live long day.


Brave tries. Maybe one day this will be the solution along with Kagi.

Payment Request API is a thing and it looks kinda nice, except apparently nobody cares about it.

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