I didn’t think you were, I was more saying that the loss of many of those jobs that had been outsourced in the pursuit of cheap stuff means that, even if Trump’s proposed tariffs were effective at bringing those jobs back, it might not matter because they would still cost more than most residents of the US would be able to afford. At least, with current working conditions, many of these goods would simply cost more than people would be willing to pay, as we’ve been collectively conditioned to want as much stuff as possible, as cheap as possible. Domestic production of so many goods would require a drastic shift in consumer habits to even have a chance at being viable in the long term, but they absolutely couldn’t do the sort of volume that places like China has and be able to sell at a profit, barring the implementation of Chinese-style working conditions.

Even if they’re assembled in the US, do those US brands have entirely domestic supply chains? If they need to import raw materials for manufacturing their products, I doubt many CEOs are just going to take the loss on margin in the name of patriotism.

nor the desire to build their own shit

I would say that we’ve also largely lost the means to afford stuff built here, in large part as a consequence of our endless pursuit of cheap crap while scraping the bottom of the barrel with outsourcing. Even if you want to buy domestically-made goods, since we’ve lost so many of those good union jobs, especially in manufacturing, we no longer have the means to pay what it costs to make such a product with American workers. Especially if people intend to continue with their current consumerist trends.

I’m making $20/hour at the moment. If I want to buy American, union-made shoes, it’ll run me $400 a pair, on the lower end. I think it’s pretty reasonable to have a pair of work boots, a pair of regular shoes for wearing out and about, and a pair of dress shoes, which at that low end will run me 37.5% of my monthly gross pay. Now do the same for domestically produced clothing, and you’ve probably run up a bill of several month’s pay, just to have enough outfits to last you a single week, leaving aside coats, seasonal clothing, or formal attire. We’re either going to have to sharply curtail our purchasing and focus on buying a smaller amount of goods meant to last as long as possibly, or the sadly more likely scenario, we’ll see the establishment of domestic sweatshops to fuel the consumerist impulses of what remains of the middle class and up. Whether we’ll just go even more insane in our treatment of the poor here, or use prison labor and undocumented migrants “pending” deportation in these sweatshops remains to be seen, but Americans have demonstrated we shortsightedly value our ability to accumulate cheap trash over anything else.

I’d love to be proven wrong, and see a growth of strong unions and domestic production leading to a resurgence in American craftsmanship again, but the current environment is less than amenable to this outcome, to put it mildly.

Part of this seems like it’s attributable to changes in lifestyle and material conditions of younger people, relative to their parents. Different aesthetics might mean their parents’ stuff looks incredibly gaudy to them, and doesn’t go with anything else in their apartment. My parents’ home is larger than any place I can reasonably expect to be able to afford, so I also don’t want their big dining room table that I’d have to pay for storage on for years before I can afford a space that it will immediately fill all of. Even if it’s a nice piece of furniture, that’s just a pain in the neck to go through, all for something I might never get to use.

On the topic of collections, boomers just fundamentally ignore key parts of collectibility. First, old collectables only became so valuable precisely because people weren’t obsessively hording and caring for everything with the intent of selling it down the line. Old Superman comics are rare and valuable due to people who bought them at the time they first came out largely treating them as disposable. They didn’t assume they were anything special that merited being held on to and cared for, so they didn’t. When everyone and their dog buys up commemorative plate sets, or Beanie Babies, or whatever other collectable grift boomers fell for, and they take great care of them, they don’t generally see their value do anything but decrease. The supply doesn’t get significantly reduced, and everyone else can see that they didn’t pan out as the collectable investments they were billed as, so who would want them?

That said, even for collections of items of genuine worth, you mostly need to hope that whoever you’re looking to give it to is as into whatever hobby as you are. If I were planning on having kids, I think it would be pretty unreasonable to expect them to know what to do with my fountain pen collection, unless they were into them as well. Otherwise, it’s just a ton of fussy pens that seem to have a fair number of duplicates that are really only distinguished by knowledge I couldn’t expect them to take the time to go gathering. Then, it’s still a big pain to actually identify things, make sales listings and sell them off. Hell, I have the knowledge, and even I find it annoying to do so.

Maybe we could address this, in part, by normalizing expanding options a bit for inheritance. If my hypothetical kids aren’t going to know how to make heads or tails of my pen collection, but I’ve got a younger friend who is just as into the hobby as I am, it would be nice if I could just leave them that specific collection, without having to worry it’ll kick off some acrimonious squabbling. Failing that, have parents indicate who they trust to sell an item for a fair price if nobody wants it. You can take it and think about it, but if it’s just not for you, you’ve got a trusted source to sell it off for you, so you (hopefully) don’t have to go through an ordeal trying to find someone to sell it for you that will give you a fair shake.

Parks and libraries, sure, but the rest pretty much all cost money around me. Art spaces are largely monetized, outside of maybe a free night a week, for a limited amount of time before closing that doesn’t include access to all exhibits. Community/rec centers host events and charge money for most of them now, since I guess younger generations aren’t becoming members in large enough numbers to make things self-sustaining otherwise. Churches have the disadvantage of being churches. Sure, you can technically hang out in them for free, so long as you don’t mind constant religious services, which kind of comes with the territory on that one.

I can’t remember another recent candidate in the US that not only wasn’t super pro-Taiwan, but said the US should just hang them out to dry if the PRC were to invade the island. They probably like that side of him.

Plus, an incredibly vain, greedy and self-confident idiot is not the hardest of targets to get to do what you want.

They may be idealists that don’t reflect a use case I think is reasonable to expect of the average user, but I would also say that it’s very important to have them there, constantly agitating for more and better. They certainly don’t manage to land on achieving all their goals, but they also prevent a more compromising, “I just need to use my stuff now, not in 10 years when you figure out a FOSS implementation” stance from being used to slowly bring even more things further away from FOSS principles in the name of pragmatism.

Yes, you used to be able to walk into a role that took anyone who could turn up and learn, but technological and economic demands mean that its no longer viable.

Economic demands, sure, but I would argue that is more a result of policy than anything insurmountable. Technologically, not at all. I’m guessing you’re in NZ, based on your username, and I won’t pretend to be able to speak for conditions there, but I would say a great many of the jobs in the US demanding a degree do not actually require them. I’m not saying that we should completely eliminate degree requirements, but companies should be expected to pay the costs of training. There are so many jobs out there that require little more than basic computer skills, learning to use whatever specialty software they make use of, and the workflows of the particular job site. A university education is overkill to teach basic computer literacy, and the other two often wind up things that you will only learn upon beginning the job. For many others, an associate’s or some form of professional certification is probably enough to really get you up to speed on the essential knowledge to work in many industries.

Proper apprenticeships are not terribly common here, and along with trades as career paths, have suffered from decades of anti-union agitation. Outside of areas with strong unions, trades can be shockingly poorly paid. I see more people just not going to university because they don’t see much point to it, as degree inflation essentially means they need to get a Masters or PhD to even stand out now, and they don’t see themselves doing that. If I wind up working with the same people who got degrees in the fields I have any interest or proficiency in, what’s the point of taking on that debt and doing all that work, only to find myself in the same situation I’m in without a degree?

Meanwhile, universities here will implement austerity measures that result in even more tenuous employment and abysmal pay for professors, yet they seem to have no end of money for ballooning administrative costs, sports teams/facilities and insanely overpaid executives. They always have money for everything except education and research, and reveal their priorities in how they spend their money and where they cut back. Making job training and profit the focus of higher education has simply undermined the institution as a whole, here.

This strikes me more as a result of the push for everyone to attend university, and the perversion of higher education’s function to be almost purely vocational at the undergrad level. Now, companies no longer seem to offer any proper internal training for the majority of roles, preferring to just require a college degree, any degree, and say, “Eh, this person got a BA in Medieval Tibetan science fiction, they should be able to figure it out.” Positions that my father was hired for in the 80s and 90s that he excelled in offered 3-6 month training periods, and were accepting pretty much any candidate who showed an interest in learning and could pass an interview. These same positions now want a BA, internships and multiple references to be considered, and have eliminated the training programs offered, assuming new hires will either know how to do the role already, or figure it out as they go.

While I think that anyone who in interested in doing so should have the right to pursue higher education, I think the push for everyone to do so is probably misguided, ultimately doing a disservice to most students, and to the idea of tertiary education as a whole. There are many people who don’t have any particular interest in pursuing further studies beyond, “I would like to get a job and not die starving in a gutter, please.” They aren’t really going to benefit from a university education aimed at pursuing knowledge for its own sake, and this sort of curriculum also doesn’t necessarily serve the increasing demand of universities to be fancy vocational institutes, so the course work gets dumbed down and everyone gets a subpar experience. Of course, students are going to be disengaged if they didn’t really have any interest in rigorous study of a field to begin with, but have arrived at their chosen major by function of either how easy it is to get a degree (and thus, tick another box in HR software), or what the expected return on their investment in tuition will be.

In my opinion, rather than pushing for everyone to attend university, we ought to demand more of our primary and secondary educational institutes (though, in the US, we should probably have them properly functioning at their currently inadequate level first, I suppose), and stop letting companies off load the costs of job training upon applicants. Bring back more paid apprenticeships, in-house training, and stop stigmatizing anything but white-collar employment in an office or high-prestige fields, such as medicine and law. I’d also like to see companies required to list specific degree requirements, rather than simply having an exclusionary requirement for a degree, any degree, in their job postings. If a job requires advanced mathematics, sure, require a BS in Maths, or science fields that have a heavy emphasis on the same. If the degree requirement can be met with a BS in Zoology, a BA in Criminal Justice, or an “Oh, shit, this guy knows this ancient software our business relies on!” without any degree, I think it should be eliminated as a requirement. And that’s not a hypothetical situation, but reflects my coworker, my boss and myself respectively, in my previous job at a pharmaceutical plant.

Pipe dreams, I know, but we should hardly be surprised that students are not as engaged when society has fundamentally altered the meaning of obtaining a degree at the university level, obliging many who otherwise had little interest, if any, to sign up for tertiary education as a bare minimum to possibly live somewhat comfortable lives.

Eh, non-voters in some states could help Trump win, but it’s hardly a universal thing. My bigger issue with this sort of rhetoric is that criticizing absolutely reprehensible policies advanced by the Democrats does not equal endorsing Trump, as many Zionist shills here like to claim. I want to be able to unreservedly back Democratic candidates in the upcoming elections, but “enables and supports genocide and the massacre of civilian men, women and children,” is one hell of a reservation to make your voters have.

Outdoors, where you can put some distance between yourself and them?

Sure, if it’s one person. Where I used to live, the nearest park would have multiple groups engaged in loudness wars, each upping their volume in response to the others, so nobody could enjoy the park. Public spaces shouldn’t be held hostage by assholes who don’t understand how to behave in public, to the detriment of everyone else.

As far as what to do, it would be nice if the existing rules would be enforced that prohibit this behavior, but people cry racism for being told off for bringing a massive speaker to blast merengue and dembow in the park and somehow find support, rather than people asking why they’re blasting any type of music in the park to begin with.

I guess it probably depends on where you’re going. I went to the UK earlier this year, and my experience was mostly painless. Landed in Manchester, and they basically had self-checkout customs. I scanned my passport and looked at a camera once, and that was it. It was actually more of a hassle and more invasive coming back home and getting back into the country.

The democrats are currently pressuring Israel and pushing back politically

Saying “Hey, bud, don’t do x, is I’ll be real mad at you,” and then going “Gee, you did what I told you not to. Well, here’s a few billion dollars more weapons for you, so you can keep doing what I publicly asked you not to do.” is not pressuring them, it’s attempting to give plausible deniability to people who feel bad about supporting a blatantly genocidal state, and to fool the folks who take soundbites in the news at face value.

Current Democratic pressure amounts to fuck all outside of a handful of legislators who are demonized by the centrist and right wing factions of the party. To say otherwise is to either deny reality, or else willfully misrepresent it.

At a national level, I think some of it just comes down to resentment at popular policies being blocked, largely because of lawmakers from southern and midwestern states. I’d also wager context plays a part in this. Sure, NY has its share of rural Republican voters, but our dumbfuck GOP voters mostly manage to just mess things up for our own urban areas, appropriating funds from the MTA budget to build bridges to nowhere in their home districts so they can point and cry about those god-damned socialists in NYC not even being able to manage the budget for a single agency (that they actively work to undermine) so they can further gut public services.

Sure, it’s not ideal, but at least we’re (mostly) only hurting ourselves. GOP Congress-men and -women from southern and midwestern states collectively hold the rest of the nation hostage through their disproportionate impact on the Senate. Whether it’s climate change, student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare, packing the Supreme Court, or any of numerous other issues, these states hold others with vastly larger populations hostage, impeding broadly popular policies in a profoundly anti-democratic fashion.

It may not be fair to the non-GOP voters in those states, it may be misdirected resentment, but I don’t think it’s all that difficult to understand why people from majority Democrat, northern states might be kind of tired of the south and midwest’s collective shit at this point. If the GOP-leaning demographics in those states could either be dropped into a volcano, or, failing this, soundly beaten at the ballot, it would go a long way towards addressing this stereotype

Also, not everyone that is good at a job has the personality to be in management. I’ve found myself in several management roles before I realized I absolutely hate being responsible for other peoples’ work and am just not cut out for it.

A combination of factors made it happen. First up, you had low turnout. Only 20.5% of voters actually voted in that election, the lowest of the past 30 years.

Aside from that, Adams had strong support amongst voters of color. For people who don’t live and/or work in these communities, it can seem like voting against their interests and be surprising, but non-white voters are not a monolithic block. Quite often, majority black or Hispanic neighborhoods in the Bronx can prove more conservative than many people might expect, for example, particularly on social issues. A lot of my older co-workers from Latin America at the time, along with my mother-in-law, didn’t view BLM protests as legitimate actions to begin with, and just thought of them as troublemakers looking to break stuff and loot. The “tough on crime to raise quality of life” message was really powerful for many of the people I know, and they took it completely uncritically. There’s also a ton of super religious folks that won’t support Democrats over things like LGBTQ+ rights, abortion, and other culture war GOP talking points. I can’t really speak to the Black community, but if you learn Spanish, there’s also just a ton of casual racism, sexism and homophobia that would probably shock people.

In addition to conservative social inclinations, lots of these folks are not what you would describe as well-informed. My elderly Ecuadorian, Dominican and Peruvian co-workers at that time were constantly buying into totally baseless conspiracies they got sent on WhatsApp. That and the 2020 presidential election cycle was super frustrating at home, as my mother-in-law would religiously watch the news on Univision, where they would trot out “scandals” and conspiracies that had been disproven weeks earlier and abandoned in the English-media, but Univision knew they could get away with airing for the significant portion of their audience with limited or no English. I even remember watching the news with her, my wife and her sister, who are both fluent in English, and the three of us getting upset that an interview in which we could hear the original English statements were being translated entirely inaccurately.

When I have an option not to, I don’t. Unfortunately, the way health insurance works here, I often don’t have an option. With the insurance I had through my previous job, basically as soon as I requested a second refill, the pharmacy benefits would go “Hey, we won’t cover this anymore, unless you switch to 90-day refills via CVS Caremark.” At some points last year, that could easily have been $500-$1,000/month more for me to pay for my meds in order to keep getting them at the pharmacy two blocks away, and I just didn’t have it. Instead of going there and having pretty much all my prescriptions filled in an hour or less, I got to enjoy Caremark not letting me refill until the last minute, then encountering shipping delays with medications I really shouldn’t have been abruptly missing doses of.

Even if English is your first language, it’s not always easy to maintain your composure when talking about a topic you’re emotionally invested in or under a lot of stress about. I would take a different stance about a driver that drops f bombs every other word, but this prudishness about occasional profanity is silly.

It just says he was injured, which could happen if you were in close proximity to someone wearing one of the pagers. News here showed one of the explosions occurring in a grocery store, with plenty of people nearby, for example.

Both the Catholic school I attended Kindergarten through 2nd grade at and the public middle school I attended in suburban NY had blacktop as the main rec area during lunches and other such breaks, so it’s not just a CA thing, I guess. Neither school was in a very build up area, either. The Catholic school in particular had plenty of land they could have had us play on that wasn’t the parking lot. Had I stayed there for all my schooling, they were even known for sending students into the marsh out behind the school to catch their own frogs for the full experience of preserving something in formaldehyde and dissecting it during high school biology labs.