You crave salt and fat because your body needs a little bit of these things to survive, but finding salt and fat out in nature is really really hard, so those cavemen that liked the taste of salty or fatty foods enough to make the extra effort to find those foods were more likely to survive to be your ancestors and you inherited that behaviour. That’s why you like McDonald’s, it’s full of the salt and fat that is hard to obtain if your diet consists of mostly roots and mushrooms and leaves.

McDonalds is bad for you because it’s unnaturally full of salt and fat. Far, far more than your body needs and far more than your cavemen ancestors would have eaten naturally. Especially if you eat McDonald’s often. Too much of anything turns that thing into a poison.

McDonald’s has only been around a generation or two. That’s not enough time for the people who crave McDonalds and eat too much of it to die off, leaving mostly people who don’t crave McDonalds to remain.

So what you are saying is it’s not the immigrants that are arriving that is the problem, it’s what happens to them once they are here?

Shocker.

Mains electricity is highly regulated because it can and regularly does kill people and start house fires.

“Selfish” would be a situation where sufficient community exists that cooperation is at all possible. I think most preppers will simply tell you that they are expecting and prepping for complete collapse. As in, like it or not, “every man for themselves” would come to them, not them seeking it out.

In other words, without arguing why a “every man for themselves” situation can’t or will never happen, the rest of your argument becomes irrelevant.

Now that question is fascinating. Haiti comes to mind as an example scenario. Are community-skills relevant in the face of roaming gangs and anarchy? I think that depends on how desperate these gangs are for immediate versus long term survival and planning. I’m also not sure Haiti is an exhaustive example of the types of societal collapse that are possible or likely.

The amortization length affects proportion of principle paid down, but it doesn’t eliminate it entirely. At the same interest rate, you end up having paid more in interest at maturity of a longer amortization, yes. In practice, this can be mostly mitigated by negotiating a lower rate, or negotiating and exercising prepayment privileges.

More importantly, with a mortgage, ownership of the property is yours entirely, from day one, not the lenders’. What you owe is cash, not the property. The property is merely collateral in the event of default of payment.

BTW, multi generational loan agreements are not new. They are somewhat common historically and in other places of the world. For the same reason that multigenerational housing is the historical norm.

Yes and no. A lot of people are misinformed. It’s easy to say not being misinformed is the responsibility of the individual, just like recycling plastic is the responsibility of the individual consumer. Reality is a bit more nuanced. Misinformed people often simply don’t have access to good information or critical thinking skills to not be duped. Many others are straight up vulnerable to manipulation, through fears etc.

Democracy only works if people are informed. I think the American system has failed catastrophically to inform ordinary people.

Governments are the product of the people. There is no divine or natural laws that triggers “an election”. A government is simply created from thin air when a group of people (any group of people) get together and say: fuck the old system, we are putting that in the trash and signing a new social contract.

Of course, there’s virtually never unanimity of agreement over this social contract in one geographic area, so that social contract is only as binding as the force used to put it in effect.

Realistically, 6 months+ of government shutdown in the US will likely cause a collapse of the USA as a single unified federal entity, since the federal government effectively rots. At that point, all bets are off. A fracture of the US is very possible.

Broadly speaking this is probably true. In a smaller context, though, there are tons of counter examples. The internet for example, from just 10 years ago, was unquestionably better. AI slop, bots, enshitification, social media and browser monoculture…

The anti science trend of MAGA over the last few years…

Etc. Regression does happen, and we should not take things for granted.

I hear they are a solution to the problem of increasing mileage/efficiency. I am no fan of Tesla, but we have to admit, there is some merit to that argument, however debatable the efficiency benefits are.

That’s not to say safety isn’t a serious issue. The biggest problem is the reliance on electronics. Now if someone can reinvent the design with a highly reliable mechanical system, with multiple redundancy.

Real life example of being blinded by “can we” instead of “should we”. This society needs a great deal of introspection.

Define “never”. Never in as in never in the history of 21st century America? Pretty tame assertion. Never in the anthropological sense? That would be completely farcical.

Looks like she is standing in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_des_Arts. So that is likely some kind of street art.

Why stop at appliances? By that logic, humans are nothing more than self-propelled heaters. The whole universe is nothing but shifting pockets of heat like the ripples of a pond bouncing back and forth until they all disappear.

Such nihilism.

Does this correlate with a map of pedestrian trips per capita? If yes, then this map isn’t so interesting.

Sounds like the Narcissist’s Prayer to me.

This is how the United States of America turns into the States of America.

Here’s the thing. Y’all sitting around waiting for the institutions to do their job. Y’all waiting for the institutions to do the right thing. But y’all institutions have been corrupted, so they ain’t gonna do anything. It’s up to you, the people to clean up house now, by sending a strong message. And it doesn’t take that much to take action. There is incredible power in the people and in collective action. But for now it is locked away in tepid comfort. That comfort won’t last though. It never does under tyranny.

Most of the shocking stuff you’ve heard about is just tweet-deep posturing. The real damage is caused by subtle changes to laws that no one is paying attention to.

Introspection is a lost art.

The plastic (including polyester fabrics) in your car was most likely derived from petroleum. The car parts were most likely shipped around during manufacturing using combustion engine vehicles. The energy to cast those car parts, probably some of it comes from non renewables. The labour to build the car almost surely comes from other people who consume gas (for example to drive to the EV factory)

That “100%” renewable energy? The installation and maintenance of it was/is almost certainly done with large industrial equipment and vehicles burning fossil fuels. (Similar issue with production of parts).

Look, I’m not saying you aren’t making positive choices by choosing renewable options. What I am saying is, while they are more renewable, they aren’t truly 100% renewable when you factor everything involved in it. Fossil fuels are so pervasive in society, it’s virtually impossible to both function in a modern society and not contribute to the consumption of fossil fuels.