Me at home: Illinois is a debt-ridden trash state
Me away: Chicago, IL is the foundation of modern excellence. The bean is iconic. Our citizens thrive. Our rats can cook. We are the backbone of this nation. Debt point is valid. Others' lives r empty, having never known portillos
The simplest reason that old stuff generally looks better is that they literally hadn't invented bad materials yet.
Every house had tile, because there was no such thing as a plastic shower surround.
We tend to forget how little of this was really a choice.
Every parent really does need to be telling every other parent that you gotta not give em a phone till high school and have a game plan for limiting short form online video. That really is the entire ball game right now. A lot of people don’t know
Everyone thought pope was a terrible job but apparently they just needed someone from a country where people don’t think they’ll die from working 40 hours a week.
Chicago is asking residents to reduce water use to help prevent flooding & almost everyone in article comments are saying they’re gonna water their lawns/take even longer showers, etc.
I don’t know how we combat this “I’d rather ruin everything than consider others” mentality.
Though transferring these lands to states sounds good in principle (local control etc), the reason such people are arguing for this outcome is that individual states would be easier to target and overwhelm with lobbyists and strongarm into a megasale. They could also target states one at a time, preventing a national countermovement from arising.
>Federal public land is just barren scrubland?
-Sagebrush scrub steppe is an iconically North American biome. It has thousands of plant and animal species in it, it makes us who we are. The smell after a rain is like nothing in the world, it is uniquely American. And it is yours! It serves the entire country by regulating soil and water systems, and provides habitat for the largest herds of elk, deer, and antelope in America. It's what your ancestors saw when they came out here in wagon trains to cut civilization out of the vines.
-Federal land managers are innovating close relationships with private industry (oil & gas, mining) to prevent species like the sagegrouse from being listed under strict conservation laws like the ESA.
-Robust, capitalistic competition occurs between private companies for leasing rights. This means big oil & gas companies and small family ranching outfits can operate on this land, and pay YOU the owner direct into the U.S. treasury. You can still go access BLM land throughout America because you own it, not the government.
-They've recovered countless species from endemic cutthroats in Nevada, to the desert tortoise of Arizona and California, to Colorado cactus species, and list is long.
@IERenergy@SenMikeLee You should be ashamed of yourselves. Public land is America’s best idea. I’m begging supposedly conservative organizations to conserve just one thing. The real estate lobby, foreign cash buyers, and investment funds probably love this article.
EFFECTIVE TODAY I no longer require the advice or counsel of the Lake Manassas Home Owners Assoc. Board. My mandate is firm,I know what is needed for the good of the suburb. You may go home..I will trouble you no further. I am the Board.
BLOCK PARTY ON FRIDAY! Lemonade & Pepsi
I do not believe the fertility crisis is, at its core, about economic factors.
Out of my 20 or so closest friends from Harvard, only two of us have kids at 30. These are all people in top 1-5% of income for their age bracket, extremely privileged wrt job security.
They aren’t having kids, and it’s not because they are worried they can’t afford them. They are simply doing other things. They are traveling Europe, or flying to Vegas to see concerts, or focusing on their careers/personal interests/hobbies. They have too much they want to do “before kids”, so they are waiting.
A lot of people in my peer group stuck in a kind of statis, trying to extend their 20s infinitely. “Millennials think they are still teenagers,” as Logo puts it.
So I see the fertility crisis as more of a spiritual issue. People lack the desire to start families. And why would they when way, way more cultural weight is placed on things like personal growth and career achievement and “having fun”. It’s not high status to be a parent, in the way becoming a founder or a doctor or earning a PhD is.
Economic uncertainty has always and will always exist. That’s not going to be what raises fertility rates.
Fertility rates will go up when raising children becomes the default first priority, not a second or third priority that you “get to” after a bunch of personal achievements. This requires a fundamentally different cultural narrative that reorients people around a project that is bigger than themselves.