Sundown towns… were all-white municipalities or neighborhoods in the United States… The term came into use because of signs that directed “colored people” to leave town by sundown.

The towns of Minden and Gardnerville in Nevada had an ordinance from 1917 to 1974 that required Native Americans to leave the towns by 6:30 p.m. each day. A whistle, later a siren, was sounded at 6 p.m. daily, alerting Native Americans to leave by sundown. In 2021, the state of Nevada passed a law prohibiting the appropriation of Native American imagery by the mascots of schools, and the sounding of sirens that were once associated with sundown ordinances. Despite this law, Minden continued to play its siren for two more years, claiming that it was a nightly tribute to first responders.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundown_town

The lines get really blurry.

Manufacturers pay grocery stores shelving fees, both to be stocked in that store at all and for specific locations (eye level shelving is prime real estate). That the toothpaste is on the shelf there at all for you to see it and decide to try it… is basically due to a paid advertisement.

Bakeries often put signs about openings or events at the end of the block. Do you think that should be banned, too? What about a billboard in their own parking lot?

There is some awareness effect, too. If I like burgers and see a listing for a new burger place in my neighborhood, learning about a potential new place I’d like to include in my going-out rotation feels like a win. If I need a home repair and see a neighbor with a yard sign for a local contractor, that’s helpful in compiling a list of potential companies to check out.

Wikipedia says /ˈkwɒkə/ which I think was your original pronunciation.

The allies fought together in WWII because the axis attacked them. The genocide not only had nothing to do with it, war decisions were explicitly made to leave intact the concentration camp system (for example not bombing railroads that took people to the camps) because any whiff of supporting Jews would have damaged political support for the war. The people in the camps were only freed at the very end of the war.

The allies were the same countries that crippled Germany’s economy after WWI, leaving its society vulnerable to the demagogery of Hitler. I don’t believe they can be black-and-white described as “the good guys”.

…since gross vacancy rate is a measure of all vacant properties — including vacation properties — states with several popular tourist destinations, like Florida and Hawaii, will always register slightly higher rates. The Census Bureau notes that the largest category of vacant housing in the United States is classified as “seasonal, recreational, or occasional use.” In over one-fifth of US counties, these seasonal units made up at least 50% of the vacant housing stock.

Is the movement now to ban vacation homes?

Also note that California, with the worst housing crisis, has one of the lowest vacancy rates, while Maine, Alaska, and Hawaii have among the highest rates. There’s not a housing shortage on average, there’s a housing shortage in the places people want to live - which largely means the places where they can get jobs.

A lot of US benefits have “benefit cliffs” where making $1 more substantially reduces or even completely disqualifies a person from programs like SNAP (food stamps) or childcare subsidies or Medicaid. https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs

It’s not surprising people whose families are directly affected by, or who know people affected by, benefit cliffs think the lawmakers set up taxes the same way.

they’ve been shrinking as we evolved changed our diet

No genetic changes (evolution) happened. If as children we ate only very tough meat and lots of chewy vegetables - no bread or rice or potato softness - our same genetics would result in much larger adult jaws.

Fair, thanks for replying. I suspect I am much more worried about deteriorating conditions than you, and that different risk/benefit weighting leads me to different conclusions, but it’s helpful to hear other lines of thinking.

Also, your serious replies prompted me to comment-stalk you a little, and led me to a few interesting conversations the lemmy algorithm had not otherwise shown me, so thanks for that, too!

A quick internet search suggests 36 weeks (eight months), which is well into the third trimester, is the most common start of restrictions, and many airlines will accept a doctor’s note the woman is low risk even past that. It was a 2008 election blip when the media got ahold of Sarah Palin flying while in labor because she wanted her special-needs baby delivered by the medical team that had prepared for him, which suggests even the written restrictions in airline policy are not consistently enforced.

Medical cost-to-value and care availability in the US is horrible. The baby steps toward lesser horrid like not allowing denial of insurance due to preexisting conditions barely scratch the surface.

If you are comfortable sharing (I know conversations on the internet can go unproductively negative fast, and engagement is often not worthwhile), do you expect to see costs like medical and grocery get better while Trump is President? If so, are you expecting to see that benefit this year, or for it to take a few years?

It would require a lot of housing density for everyone to own four dwellings (and would kill rent demand well and good), but I wouldn’t call it infeasible. For everyone to have a quarter acre lawn and a 2,000 square foot house that shares no walls with neighbors? With those additional requirements having everyone own four is infeasible, sure, but a belief that’s the only dwelling worth owning is how we have throttled our housing supply in the first place.

Are you envisioning the government being a major landlord, like in Singapore? It seems to work really well for that country, but Americans seem uncomfortable with the idea of government housing.

A responsible landlord is “doing” arrangements for property maintenance and handling all tax and other legal requirements, and my hard feelings are towards slumlords who let dwellings become unsafe, or property flippers who kick all the renters out and build new dwellings to sell to more wealthy buyers.

But also, isn’t the hate for landlords equally applicable to banks and other financial institutions that hold mortgages? They really are earning money by no other responsibility than having the capital available at the start.

We’re all operating on the same human operating system, yes. Would be nice if we could figure out how to sand down some of the sharp corners, though.

I sometimes come across a dead baby pigeon inside my work building, a large manufacturing structure many pigeons find their way into. Presumably the death is from falling out of the kind of nest in OP’s image.

I enjoyed your analysis, and appreciate the time you spent on it!

Grafted apple trees are often a flavorful top connected to a weak root. Weak root = smaller trees that can be planted closer together and are easier to pick. If you plant apple seeds, you will probably get a ginormous tree with fruit only useful for cider making (a la Johnny Appleseed’s business model) because they don’t taste good either fresh or in baked goods.

Could depend on what’s in the local tap water (mineral content as well as pH), in addition to lighting as weeeeum mentioned. I have some scallions on my planted aquarium (no fish, but I lightly fertilize for the plants) with a grow light, and I can harvest one of the four plants once a week. So even with active grow light and fertilizer, the once a month per plant statement seems right. Also note I started with seven plants, all from the same store-bought bunch, but three of them died over the first couple of months.

It’s important for vote counts to to be independently checked. Having who voted publicly available means an investigative journalist can prove the county clerk’s claim that dead people voted and so they can’t certify the election is false. Or catch attempts at fraud. Both as a double-check on government in the case of officials who are lying or have acquired false beliefs, or as outside help if the issue isn’t caught internally due to under-resoucing.