No it isn’t. He compares himself to Adam once (“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel, whom thou drivest from joy for no misdeed”) but he never calls himself that. And frankly, considering how much Frankenstein and the monster hated each other I don’t think either of them would want to share a name.
True, but IMO his is the worst one and he’s supposed to be one of the normal ones but has a weirder vibe than most of the ones that are SUPPOSED to be all weird and futuristic.
Kinda like an emo Eminem with super strength but even weirder.
There’s the approach I have to fact-check things, I don’t know what other approach people have honestly. Look up fact-checking, debunking etc. on it. I know there are dozens to hundreds of pages that fact-check the parroted “PETA euthanizes too many dogs” claim. I honestly can’t believe people are still bringing this one up, I don’t know how it could possibly be on me to start digging up sources for you.
“Just look it up until a fringe source from an unknown media group ““debunks”” it, despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, then change your entire point of view from it” in other words: just google the opposite of what you said and go with that answer plz thx. Color me convinced! For the record: every fact check I looked up corroborated the obvious: PETA euthanizes pets at an obscene rate compared to even the most ruthless pounds in the us.
No, look up individual claims, look up the inverse of the claim, weigh the presented evidence against each other.
I.e., look up the mitigating factors here - was this an isolated case? Was it isolated to one state? Were animals from no-kill shelters dumped on the PETA-run shelter? What’s the actual funding of this shelter compared to PETA’s general operations? You know, ACTUAL THOROUGH ANALYSIS. Take the actual facts in question and put them properly in context instead of just swallowing literal animal ag industry propaganda coming out of groups like the Weston Price Foundation that have a vested interest in discrediting groups like PETA.
It’s like every time people post something false, and you know it’s false, you can’t just let them know, they expect you to spend the next two hours of your life pulling up all the sources to show them, again and again and again and again and again and again. I’ve had this exact same conversation dozens of times, I’m sick of it. Can you not just learn how to research for yourself? Can you not post the discredited claim in the first place so we don’t have to constantly play this game? Like, do the fact checking properly in the first place?
It’s like every time people post something false, and you know it’s false, you can’t just let them know, they expect you to spend the next two hours of your life pulling up all the sources to show them, again and again and again and again and again and again. I’ve had this exact same conversation dozens of times, I’m sick of it.
seems like you know how to avoid this, but you choose instead to get mad at people asking you to support your own claims.
Yes, start with the Wikipedia one, that actually begins to examine it critically and points out that this campaign against PETA was spearheaded by an animal industry lobbying group…
I’d just stop now. I just realized who you’re commenting with, and the guy just had a long-ass pissy argument. When I slowed down to show him evidence, he kept changing topics and then ragequit when it didn’t work.
Feel free to check my comment history (or his) for proof of this.
Can also check my comment history I’m just going to try and ignore dx1 although I don’t know how effective that’s going be considering he’s on every god dam comment winging and moaning
Sounds amazing m8 propa stuff if popeyes ever come to the uk I’ll.make sure to give it ago some other amercian fast food chains are coming over such as taco Bell I remember seeing that in a few places
It’s weird. I normally avoid chain on anything local-friendly. We have tons of chicken farms around (though, they mostly make eggs. A good friend of ours has meat chickens) Just something about Popeyes.
Also, fingers crossed for you gettin it. I’ll trade you all the great Indian food you have there in the UK, though!
EDIT: I’d say “fish and chips”, but I live on the ocean, so our seafood is comparable, if our cooking styles different)
Nailed it! My brother-in-law is a Scalloper. I thought scallops were gross until my now-wife cooked em for me. Like savory Marshmallow Filet Mignon of the Sea.
Now if only I wasn’t allergic to clam and lobster. Nothing like living in the lobster and chowder capital of the world with an allergy.
Ooo I love scallops my mom would do a pasta thing in a creamy seafoody sauce smiliar tasting sause to carbnora with scallops and prawns with some mushrooms thrown in there tastes quite nice
Your not missing out much when it comes to lobsters as lobsters taste exactly like prawns
I’m not sure if I’m allergic to Prawns or not, though. Ditto with crab. I have one of those “don’t mess with it”-tier allergies with Lobster, so I avoid everything that has the same lobster deliciousness.
But yeah. I tend to focus on the Scallop more (no sauce) because a good scallop has a very delicate flavor. My favorite way to eat it is a little butter and some cracker crumb crust. I mean, I LOVE a good authentic carbonara enough that I learned to make my own pasta and cook it. But I don’t think I could bring myself to put scallops in it. Maybe scallops for lunch and carbonara for dinner!
Just be careful. Proper carbonara (all egg, no cream) with home-made egg pasta gets INCREDIBLY rich. It’s definitely one of those “small plate” things at that point unless you want to brick-belly.
Which, sometimes, is alright. But the other times, I’ll use flour+water pasta, which is definitely not as big a jump up from dry as fresh egg pasta, but it’s still worth the extra steps.
"just case the textbook anti-PETA rhetoric comes into the thread…
This is why people hate PETA.
Yes, PETA does some crazy shit, but as with many things there are two sides to the story which is difficult to see when you get bombarded by anti-PETA stuff as is common on e.g. Reddit.
Anti-PETA efforts by the meat industry:
Sites like www.petakillsanimals.com are run by the Center for Organizational Research and Education, which is a lobbying platform for the fast food, meat, alcohol and tobacco industries. They also target the humane society, even John Oliver did a piece on them and their founder Richard Berman. That’s just one outlet for their misinformation-campains, they are also cited in lots of blogs and “news articles” as well, so it’s not always very obvious.
They are the driving power behind all the misinformation and PETA-hate that is spread around. PETA is actually doing a lot for animal rights, that’s why they are such a big target for smear campaigns:
<span style="color:#323232;">[Their biggest victories] (https://www.peta.org/about-peta/milestones/)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">[All victories sorted by recent] (https://www.peta.org/about-peta/victories/) (several per week!)
</span><span style="color:#323232;">
</span><span style="color:#323232;">See also http://www.petakillsanimalsscam.com/
</span>
PETA and their kill-shelters:
PETA kills animals because unfortunately there are no better places for them. Blame the puppy mills and irresponsible short term owners that give up their pets a few days or weeks after getting them because they had no idea what they got themselves into. Those people create more pets than there are places for them, so instead of having them become strays and further add to the problem, PETA put down those they can’t adopt out. Because PETA accepts all animals, even those that other shelters turn away in order to not sully their adoption numbers, PETA shelters end up with many more “hopeless” animals. See more here.
The case of the mistaken dog (and how PETA doesn’t steal and murder pets):
A farmer asked PETA to euthanise a pack of stray dogs that were aggressive and violent towards the farmer’s cows. Upon arrival, PETA found the pack of stray dogs, took them to the shelter and put them down, as a free service. Unfortunately it turned out, that one of the presumed stray dogs was a pet-chihuaha called Maya, that was not sitting on the porch, as often claimed, but running freely with the stray pack, without leash or collar or supervision. PETA fucked up, because they didn’t wait the 5 day grace period to give the owners time to look for and collect their pet. That’s why they had to pay a fine and apologized for it. www.whypetaeuthanizes.com/maya.html
The monkey selfie:
The monkey took the picture himself btw, the photographer just left the camera lying around. I am not saying the monkey should be copyright holder and it’s an open-shut case, but it does raise the question about the photographer having ownership over something that was voluntarily and independently created by an animal. What if a painter would leave his brushes lying around and an animal would create a painting? The artist actually sees it the same way and settled for a compromise with PETA followed by a joint statement. This was a landmark case in copyright law.
PETA equating milk to racism:
White supremacists actually use milk to demonstrate their superiority over “inferior” (their words, obviously) lactose intolerant ethnicities. That’s the reason behind their campaign on the issue.
Final thoughts (I promise):
PETA does a good job at raising issues and are one of the most successfull organisations to fight for animal rights. The granting of rights is the only real way to protect animals from unneccessary cruelty. Animal welfare will always be arbitrary, both in what species are worthy of protection, and the extent of protection they are worthy of. You cannot consider yourself an animal lover without recognizing the importance of that.
Sometimes PETA (intentionally?) overshoot, that happens when you try to move the border of current perceptions (i.e. animals are objects to be used for food, clothes, entertainment). I am not here to defend their tone or (lack of) tact, and there are a number of (sometimes downright stupid) PETA-campaigns I disagree with. I’m not trying to convice you to become their friend, but at least judge them for what they are doing, not for what they are said to do.
Most of the criticism of PETA you read on Reddit comes straight from the mouths of the Center for Organizational Research and Education (CORE), formerly known as the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF). It’s basically a corporate propaganda organization with donors like Tyson Foods, Wendy’s, and Coca-Cola. They also run campaigns claiming obesity isn’t that major of a problem and that you can eat 10 times as much mercury from fish as experts recommend. The vast majority of the animals PETA euthanizes are suffering and are brought to PETA’s shelter by their owners specifically to be put out of their misery, but the CCF distorts that into “PETA is stealing people’s pets off the streets” and Reddit gobbles it up.
The media also knows that PETA is an easy target. Years ago I read an article in one of the British tabloids (the Sun or the Mirror) with a headline something like, “PETA blasts child’s bunny wedding!” But if you actually read the article, what happened is a kid dressed up some bunnies in wedding outfits, the “journalist” reached out to PETA and asked them to comment, and PETA said something like, “we don’t support dressing rabbits in costumes because it may be stressful for them.” And that was the end of the story, but that wouldn’t get clicks so they distorted the headline to make it sound like PETA was protesting or attacking the kid on their own accord.
For the record, I think there are perfectly legitimate criticisms of PETA, like the sexist imagery they use in some of their ad campaigns and their welfarist (as opposed to abolitionist) approach to advocacy. It just gets to me that so many redditors claim to be rational and free-thinking but then read literal corporate propaganda about PETA and swallow it whole without a second thought.
I don’t do gish gallops, so I’m just going to address this:
PETA kills animals because unfortunately there are no better places for them.
That is bullshit. There are no kill shelters all over the country. There’s one in my town. They didn’t even euthanize after they were overwhelmed when we had a huge storm that destroyed structures. They just found people who would foster while they could rehome as much as they could. PETA doesn’t do that.
British journalist Mehdi Hasan suggests using these three steps to beat the Gish gallop:
Because there are too many falsehoods to address, it is wise to choose one as an example. Choose the weakest, dumbest, most ludicrous argument that your opponent has presented and tear this argument to shreds (also known as the weak point rebuttal).
Do not budge from the issue. Don’t move on until you have decisively destroyed the nonsense and clearly made your point.
Call it out: name the strategy. “This is a strategy called the ‘Gish Gallop’. Do not be fooled by the flood of nonsense you have just heard.”
Its also just totally a false equivalency. Lets entertain for a moment the fact that Peta is an imperfect organization that doesn’t always do the right thing. Okay and? The industry they protest exploits not just animals, but Children and Workers. Its carbon footprint is playing an instrumental role in destroying the biosphere. But sure, PETA is imperfect so I guess we’ll all just keep eating meat.
I think that’s the problem. So many people are unaware of the difference between vegans, militant vegans, and peta-assholes. The second and third are the hardest to differentiate (and they are different)
When you can someone to start ranting about depopulation intervention and driving food species to extinction, then you found the PETA (also the PITA)
not really. peta militancy helps no one. you arent going to make people eat less meat by being assholes and shame people for eating meat. Peta would have better results is they just advocated for people to eat less meat and be more conscious about where there food in general comes from as well as advocating for proper animal care and awareness. They are never going to stop people from eating meat and they seem to refuse to accept that.
I am saying in PETAs case, they would catch more flys with honey, rather than vinegar. I don’t believe that making fun of people and making them feel bad about a system that isn’t transparent is the way to go. Compassion and education in this case, would work best. imo. Small incremental steps - not wholesale instant change.
Leave the dirty work to the ALF. Which I also support. :)
It’s why you keep calling the early bird people at 8pm for work stuff and giving them shit for not working late until they get the message that them calling you at 8am is just as annoying.
It’s biology. When winter comes and we switch daylight saving times again, I wake up an hour earlier according to the clock while walking up at the same sun time the entire year.
Sometimes you can have great success using the wires that are already in your walls, provided it’s in good nick and isn’t isolated. Try a powerline adaptor.
Otherwise, do like i did and run a 50m cable halfway around the house.
I run a 20m from my landline Box to my Router. In the hallway I route it behind the furniture. On doors I router it along the frame with transparent Self-adhesive cable older I got of Amazon.
I drilled holes in the ceiling of my rented house to run cable through the attic and down into separate rooms. Never heard anything. Don’t need a big hole so it’s easy to patch when they come through for nail holes and such which are expected.
Protips for diy renters: you can buy conduit baseboards. They’re baseboards that have a void behind them for cabling. If you’re good with tools, you can remove the existing baseboards and put those on. When you leave, either replace the original baseboards or just pull the wires out and leave them there…
What I did was use cup hooks to put wire along the top of walls. A small step stool helped me get up to the ceiling line, put a nail partway in to get a “pilot” hole, then screwed in the cup hook… did one hook every 18-24 inches about 2 inches from the ceiling. With larger cup hooks, I easily fit 4 ethernet lines in. I also got some wall mount wire conduit to go down the wall to my router. For doors and such, vertical wall mounted conduit to the hinge, under the door at the hinge, then back up the wall on the other side to the ceiling to continue (or along baseboards to the device). I only had trouble with the vertical conduit (I only had one) when I left since it was attached with mounting tape.
My way was pretty clean, never had to look out for cables on the floor, I didn’t really notice them at all, and all the important stuff was wired.
If you’re just going between neighboring rooms (eg. Your router is in one bedroom and you want to get to the bedroom next to it), look for telephone/cable TV hookups. If there appears to be one on both sides of the wall in the same spot, open it up, there’s a good chance the wiring box for those lines goes straight through the wall. If you want a more professional look to it, buy keystones and use a short bit of wire to link two together, and just put them on either side of the wall using Keystone faceplates… so you can just pass the cable through the wall…
There’s also MoCA if you have coax in every room. Look it up, it’s great.
There’s a ton more I could say on this, I’m a big believer and advocate for ethernet over WiFi, because after spending a long time working on WiFi professionally, I’ve realized that all wifi sucks. My mantra is “wire when you can, wireless when you have to”. If it’s feasible to run a wire, do it. For mobile and non-stationary devices, wireless since those move around and it’s impractical or impossible to put ethernet everywhere it could be.
The sheer amount of engineering, FCC regulations, and wizardry that goes into making 802.11 fast is insane. It feels weird seeing so much data get shoved through radio waves which are still subject to only one transmission at a time which is why we have stuff like CSMA/CA and MIMO
802.15.4a/ab/ac, seems even weirder, given what we’ve become used to with AM/FM signaling modes.
After the usual “Huh, that seems like a clever way to send signals” reaction, a closer perusal of the tech & its established industrial capabilities, reveals Surface penetrating radar for machine vision & medical imaging, P2P, P2MP, local file-exchange, low-power low-latency streaming, greater range than bluetooth, greater interference resistance than WiFi, & reduced airtime per Mb, at lower emission power than a hair dryer or cellphone.
Gee, I wonder why it got forcibly channeled into exclusively device-to-device location pings, with no direct radio access or firmware, available to devs?
Seriously, go look at what the military, industrial, security, & medical sectors have already been doing with UWB, then look at the specs for the compact chipsets & SOCs released since 2017, & then look at what BMW, Apple, Google, & Samsung are doing with it. Oh yay, Airtags. I mean, they do work, but they’re about 1/1000th of what the U1 could do, if app devs had access to the radio instead of being gatekept behind the FindMy device-to-device services.
Even plain old wifi is fascinating in terms of signaling, they use ofdm, or orthogonal frequency division multiplexing to encode data. The whole concept is crazy.
To summarize, the waveform (sine wave) is measured by degrees from zero, where 90 is the peak, 180 is when it crosses the middle line again, 270 is the trough, and at 360 it returns to zero. What OFDM does is interrupt the normal sine wave and jump from 90 to 180 to encode bits.
What gets crazier is that this is divided into dozens of different positions that represent different bit encodings. Then they go more crazy and run… I think it’s 10 by 2mhz wide carriers, all doing this same thing (for a 20mhz wide channel width) to encode more data into the bandwidth.
Then they get more crazy and implement AM on top of it, so you get high power OFDM and low power OFDM divisions that can do upwards of double the symbols on the same carrier.
The wizardry to make all this work is insane, and the fact that we’ve mastered it to the point where we can sell wifi cards for something like $20 USD just kind of blows my mind. This is crazy to me!
It’s never really about identifying anything, recaptcha cares way more about data it has on you to determine if you’re a human or not. If you’ve ever tried to google search with a VPN or Tor it makes it really fuckin annoying
Ironically they’re a cybercriminal’s best friend since if they layer multiple of them together on your site they can annoy online enforcers (and in the case of scrapers, keep out) who might otherwise shut the site down.
They don’t work so well Against targeted attacks but many searches when finding infringing sites are just searches for sites that are infringing.
I love how most of the Lemmy instances are hosted on European servers, yet Europeans still don't have enough population, money, or influence to change the status quo.
US politics does not belong in World News, yet the upvote counts say otherwise. Europeans need to step up the game and encourage more other Europeans to join Kbin/Lemmy. This will never be fixed without the numbers.
Google News is the worst. If you use it to get a quick snapshot of what’s going on in the world you won’t find anything outside America. You have to change your region to Germany or Britain to get actual results.
Google tells me there’s like 332 million people in the US and like 750 million in Europe. I get that they’re different countries, but different states here might as well be.
Are there posts Europeans make that I’m just not seeing (beyond complaints like this one), or is there something else that keeps them from posting and upvoting the content they apparently want to see in places like world news?
Possible I missed something, but nothing I see in the world news rules about posting in languages that aren’t English. My (admittedly small) point is that nothing prevents Europeans dominating these spaces apart apparent apathy and disinterest.
but nothing I see in the world news rules about posting in languages that aren’t English
Isn’t it pretty obvious? If literally any European posted news in their native language, outside of the Brits and the Irish, it would be literally incomprehensible to 80-90% of the continent.
Not to mention ^(proceeds^ ^to^ ^mention)^ the problem that we don’t care about each other’s internal politics and don’t know enough about their context to follow them. People might follow the EU topics and the large-scale shitfests such as Brexit, French protests and of course the Russo-Ukrainian war. But that’s it.
E.g. I just realised that my country borders six other countries and I can’t name the current PM/president of two of them. (for somewhat excusable reasons, but regardless of that it’s not a good look)
At the risk of digging myself an ever deeper hole, then…why complain? I wouldn’t ask, but I see this complaint like every few weeks or so. If it literally can’t be a thing because of how Europe is, why blame America?
We do enough like real stupid shit people can be mad at us about. This one doesn’t seem like it’s on us.
Good question, though this was my first comment in the chain, I personally wasn’t complaining (yet).
To be honest, I’ve just checked the “Top Day” sorting of /c/[email protected], and the news are all about non-USA topics. So in hindsight I guess OP was just doing the usual “lol self-centred Americans” dunking. It is a fact that American news have pushed out the other countries’ news from the default news sub on reddit and here (or more likely the system was just replicated on Lemmy by default during the migration), so it’s a sort of folklore reaction… :D
I’m probably just approaching this wrong overall. I think it’d be interesting to see more non-US posts in places like world news, and it’s not that hard for me to run non-English posts through a translator to get the gist of them.
This is probably a terrible place to express it, and I’m probably being obtuse, but I want to see that in addition to posts like this complaint. I would read that. I would upvote that.
I dunno. As a Euro, I think World news (on Lemmy) is more or less fine as it is. The most important events in the world will be covered in English, and the texts will be formed in an appropriate way - as I’ve said previously it can be difficult to grasp the specific national context for many events, and a good news article will compensate. E. g. if a country has chosen a new president, a foreigner first has to learn if the country has a presidential or parliamentary system, or the info won’t be understood properly.
I guess one could pick out the articles in their native language with more context, or add some context themselves?
OP’s gif literally talks about ‘world news’, that’s why I focused on that sub. The division between ‘news’ (=American news) and ‘world news’ (=non-American) has been established on reddit probably like a decade ago because American news indeed used to overwhelm the rest; today there’s not much of a point to complain or act surprised about this “system”, considering that almost everyone is used to it.
As someone who lived in Europe for a bit, it seems like one reason for that is that, no matter who wins, the swings are smaller. No matter who wins in the elections, there don’t tend to be dramatic policy shifts. European politics often have multiple parties, with some parties containing complete nutters, but because those nutters are not in the main parties, the main parties are more similar.
In addition the US is the only remaining superpower, so US politics has a big impact on every European country, probably not as much as all their neighbors combined, but maybe more than any one of those neighbors on their own.
Yeah I don’t know any Americans that don’t do this. Like I get it, I don’t like us either, but going from Colorado to Texas is more jarring to me than going from France to Germany.
going from Colorado to Texas is more jarring to me than going from France to Germany.
Yes, going from “foreign place where I don’t speak the language” to “foreign place where I don’t speak the language” isn’t jarring because it’s all very foreign. But, the differences between France and Germany are objectively huge compared to the differences between Colorado and Texas.
…I do speak the language in one of the two, but thanks for the shitty assumption. That it’s more jarring for me between two states is my own subjective opinion. It’s almost like there’s more to culture than language.
Do you think every region in European countries is the same? There is more of a difference between Bavaria and the rest of Germany than most US states.
Different states in the early 1800s might be like different European countries are today. But, today, states have a lot less power, and people generally think of themselves as American first.
In addition, European countries speak different languages. That severely limits the common ground you share with neighbouring countries.
Yeah, European countries have histories going back a thousand years or more. While there’s going to be some shared history in border regions (often they swapped back and forth between countries depending on who was strong and who was weak), there’s a lot of differences between them that are pretty deep seated.
If those countries shared a common language the cultures would tend to blend over time. When they speak different languages that process is a lot slower.
IMO the differences between major US cities are smaller than the differences between any given city and the rural areas surrounding that city.
Europeans still don’t have enough population, money, or influence to change the status quo.
English is the issue. There are only about 80M people who speak English as a first language in Europe, out of 0.8 billion or so. Yeah, plenty of people who are relatively fluent in English participate in English social media, but many also spend a lot of time in social media in their own language, something English-speakers never see.
The Fediverse has a pretty big German-speaking population, but not as much French, Italian, Spanish, etc. I don’t know where they are – probably Facebook / Instagram.
Technically that’s misgendering by the part of whoever write the things. God made man and woman in their image, so they are neither. It should be a They. Even more so if you consider his 3-part existence.
Your know, I guess experiences vary widely, but the landlords I know don’t fit all the hate. For instance, one of my employees decided to rent her house instead of selling it when her family needed a bigger one. They’ve been renting to the same family for a decade or more without ever raising the rent. The family could not afford to buy any house, let alone the one they’re in, so renting allows them to live in a kind of place they couldn’t afford otherwise. My employee has let them skip rent a few times when times were hard.
I know a few similar stories. Maybe it’s different with people who own apartment buildings or whatever, but I just don’t see being a landlord as inherently bad. Like anything else, you can do it ethically or unethically.
Yeah, for sure - I live in southern California, which has about as high a cost of real estate as you’re going to find, but that isn’t caused by landlords. I mean, if you bought a new car and were selling your old one, you’d probably sell it for whatever the market would pay, right? Maybe if you’re really well off you’d just give it to someone, but most of us are going to sell for the going rate. It’s the same with houses. If I can easily get $500k for my house, I’m not going to list it for $400k just to be nice - I could use the money.
Do people feel like it’s inherently more laudable to sell their house than to rent it? It seems like, as long as they’re not gouging, they’re doing more of a service by renting to people who can’t afford to buy, and also covering all the costs of repairs and risk of damage that renters don’t have to worry about.
I just don’t get the hate broadly, though the management company who ran my daughter’s apartment complex were assholes.
I work in a real estate adjacent field, part of the housing issue IS very much because of big companies and people just buying up all the houses to rent them for passive income.
I don’t care if people have 2 or 3 houses but when they own 8 or 9 or hundreds then yea we have an issue.
Yeah, I agree a hundred percent. In every business, it’s possible to be predatory. Big companies are doing some really shitty things, and we should try to figure out how to stop that.
But some people are saying that being a landlord is inherently unethical - the moment someone rents a property, they’re a vile leach. I just think that’s wrong.
I’m a land lord, did exactly what people say we all did. 15 years ago I bought two 200k homes for 30k each… they are an income plan for my kids so they don’t have to necessarily worry about taking a better paying job instead of something they want to do. Probably a little naive now. But I run the houses at a bare minimum profit just so the government won’t come after me due running a loss on my taxes. I have raised rent only enough to do that. I pay for a property management firm to take care of the properties so that the tenants have 24 hour response to issues. I’ve had the same tenants for 12 years in both properties. Every 4 years or so I have one of the rooms that the tenants want renovated. It’s a right off so doesn’t costa fortune ava the house gets slowly updated. Not every landlord is an asshole. Some of us play the long game without screwing people. But I realize that I am part of the problem. I am part of the reason for less supply in the market. But selling my properties will make my children’s lives less secure and I’m not willing to do that. So i do partially deserve some of the blame.
I don’t see you having any blame. Supply and demand for housing includes everything, including rentals. You would be part of the problem if you bought those places and left them empty as vacation spots or something. You didn’t, you’re supplying them to people who I’m guessing wouldn’t be able to buy them themselves. You’re not driving up the cost of housing. I’d argue that, since you’re charging less than you could, you’re actually lowering it.
He literally is driving up the cost of housing. Rental markets are quite seperate to the actual housing market and people who own 3 houses, drive up the cost of buying a house. There is a good chance they can’t afford to rent, yes, but only because of people like him buying housing they dint need to make a profit, they can afford the rent, so they would also He able to afford the mortgage for it if given the chance.
they can afford the rent, so they would also He able to afford the mortgage for it if given the chance.
Have you purchased a house? Because this part is simply not true. You have to have a percentage of the cost up front. The more you have, the smaller the payments. Lots of folks who are renting out places put a lot down so the mortgage payments (and what they charge for rent) are much smaller than a first-time buyer can afford. Then you have the cost of property tax, maintenance, and repairs that the renter isn’t liable for.
Not for myself, but yes, I have. And that’s kind of my point. You have these arbitrary barriers to entry on home ownership that are designed to keep poor people out, since the can’t afford these costs upfront, and can’t save for them because they are either paying their landlords mortgage instead, or are paying money directly to the bank/asset manager/ whoever owns their rental. So it’s in the banks best interest to not give them a mortgage.
And a mortgage plus maintainable and tax and everything else will be cheaper than renting, because if it wasn’t landlords wouldn’t be making money, so would raise rent
I think “designed to keep poor people out” is way off. People selling a product want nothing more than for other people to buy their product. The sellers of the house aren’t the ones setting the mortgage details - they have nothing to do with it, they just want to sell the house.
But few people can afford to buy a house outright, so they have to borrow money. The bigger the percentage of the purchase price you have to borrow, the more the payments are going to be. That’s not to punish poor people, it’s because they’re putting up their money so you can buy something, in return for them making a profit on their money.
And a mortgage plus maintainable and tax and everything else will be cheaper than renting, because if it wasn’t landlords wouldn’t be making money, so would raise rent
You’re still not getting it. Let’s say I want to live in a house that costs $600k, but I don’t have it. If I were to find a lender who would finance the whole thing (doubtful), the mortgage payments would probably be around $3k a month, and I can’t afford that either. But let’s say you have $300k to put down, so only have to finance another $300k, and your payments are more like $1500 a month, which I can afford. I pay you the amount that covers your mortgage, you end up paying property tax and other costs, but my rent is going into your property. If I live there for three years, you’ve gotten $54k in equity, even if the house’s value itself didn’t go up any, for just the cost of taxes and maintenance. Meanwhile, I got to live in a house that I flat out couldn’t afford.
I was not blaming the people selling the house, I was blaming the banks for putting an arbitrary down payment on getting a mortgage to keep poor people out of home ownership, which benefits the banks as they are all heavily involved in property investment so benefit from more people renting either by directly being the landlords or simply from the increased housing demand from landlords wanting to buy as many properties as possible, thus driving up housing prices, which drives up mortgages and makes them more money.
Like you say, the banks male their money from interest on the loan, so the 20k down-payment they require is an arbitrary barrier to entry.
No, I get it, you’re just making up a scenario that doesn’t really happen. Like sure a landlord could in theory pay half the price of a house just to reduce mortgage costs so they can rent it out at half the market rate AND pay property tax and maintenance out of pocket, out of thr kindness of their golden hearts. They could also just buy the house outright and let you live in it for free and just make their profit off of the increase in house value. But obviously they won’t. The landlord is going to charge you market rate for that 600k house which will almost certainly be more than 3k, because why wouldnt they? And even if they did, are the going to rent directly to you? Or are they going to advertise it and get a slew of offers of people wanting to live in a house for half price and so someone a little bit richer than you will offer them, say 1,750 for the house, because of supply and demand. And the vast majority of people aren’t trying to live in houses they can’t afford, they are just trying to live.
And even then, it’s still not ethical, you’re still exploring people for profit for their basic needs without adding any value to the system.
This is very much the problem with the Canadian real estate bubble. People are paying rental prices now that absolutely could have paid for a house 5 years ago. But now they are paying a dangerously high portion of their income. The problem is that their rental prices that they pay now wouldn’t make the payments on the house today.
How the heck did you find not one but two 200k houses for 30k? Or are you saying you bought them for 30k and now they’re worth 200k? Either way holy balls I wish I could do either of those lol
This shows one of the most common things landlords tell themselves to justify it.
But I run the houses at a bare minimum profit
You tell yourself this, to make you feel better, but you don’t acknowledge that almost all the money your tenants pay you is profit, since they are paying for the mortgage. Even if you rented at 0 immediate profit, for the entire time until you paid off the houses, you would have actually made 1.2million in profit, since you now own 2 houses at 600k each.
And those families, instead of paying a mortgage and ending with hundreds of thousands of dollars in equity, that they could refinance, or use to buy a better house or leave as inheritance for their kids, now have nothing, as all that money has gone to you.
There is no such thing as an ethical landlord. Even the “”“good”“” ones are still exploring people’s basic need for shelter to make them rich.
If you really wanted to be a “good” landlord offer those families the chance to buy the house with the 15 years of down payments they already made to you to start it off. But as you said they’re an “income plan” for your kids I don’t think you would do that.
I mean, I get what you’re saying. And perhaps if my financial situation was better I could consider the option to offer the houses to the tenants. But as you suspect I will not trade my children’s financial security just to be charitable. The rent I charge is 30%-40% below market value. I suspect if you were in my position you wouldn’t be so inclined to give away your wealth either.
I was in your position, when my grandparents died I inherited a house, that people encouraged me to rent out. Instead I sold it and invested the money (specifically into a green energy fund.) As that way I still have my financial security, without being a landlord.
Because to start with, I invested and risked my own money a much less bubbled deal estate market with a significant amount of my available capital. You invested someone else’s money. I took all the risk, and you want me to give away all the profits from that risk. Even your “green” investments take advantage of workers, buy off shore parts, cost people their jobs. Why don’t you donate all your profits to those people. Your entire argument is so steeped in hypocrisy that it’s hard to even know if you’re not just a troll.
No. I invested my own money? Idk where you’re getting this idea from?
I took all the risk
I took much more of a risk than you. Real Estate is typically more stable than stocks.
and you want me to give away all the profits from that risk.
If you want to be ethical, yes.
Even your “green” investments take advantage of workers
In the sense that there is no ethical consumption under capitalism. But that argument is just whattaboutism.
Why don’t you donate all your profits to those people.
Because investing in those sectors is beneficial to them, it helps those companies raise funds, which benefits both the workers of those companies as well as promotes green energy which benefits all of us. Landlordism detracts value from the market.
Your entire argument is so steeped in hypocrisy that it’s hard to even know if you’re not just a troll.
I guess its easier to say this, so you can dismiss whatever I have to say so you dont have to go through the process of introspecting on your life and your choices to think about if you’re actually doing the right thing, and maybe even coming to the conclusion you arent and needing to change your behaviour. That sounds like a lot of effort so its easier to just assume everything you do is right and just and anyone that criticises you is wrong by default. That way you get to keep living your life however you like without worrying about silly little things like morality.
This is getting old. Regardless you said you inherited a house, fwiw. You live how you want. I live in the way I want. I admit my part in Canada’s housing crisis. But I couldn’t sell my children’s future for moral high ground. You come across as sanctimonious. You speak from an imagined high ground with the assumption that you know what is good for everyone. That’s your right. So you do you. Have a good one.
I was just pointing out you could secure a future for your children without being a landlord. But like I said. Its obvious you dont give a shit. So just dont act like you do.
My last land lord raised rent by 2.5x after the first year. When we moved out he kept the full security deposit because “the inside of the oven was dirty”
Idk I feel like there’s also something to be said to have the freedom to just buy another house after saving a bit. It sounds so easy, but most families would have to sell their house in order to upsize.
Never moved but my mom was in credit unions and the trade in of the house was pretty common. In all fairness, there were many “multiple apartment complex owners” at that same CU, they were notably colder and exclusively about numbers (i.e. throwing a fit and sending another appraiser to their barely functional building to get a dozen k).
Yeah, there are honestly a lot of reasons to rent instead of buy. One of the main ones is uncertainty about the market. Lots of times people think that the prices in an area are inflated and likely to come down. If you buy, you risk taking a big loss. The landlord, in that case, is the one with the risk. Similarly, if you don’t plan to stay in an area for several years, it can be more trouble (and even cost) than it’s worth. I’ve also known people who simply don’t want to be bothered with the upkeep, even if they can afford to buy. There’s a real freedom in being able to just pick up the phone when anything isn’t working, there’s a leak, or whatever.
Doesn’t matter either way. My landlord is an asshole who never fixes anything he says he will (even things he’s legally supposed to.) Can’t use the law against him because he’s allowed to raise the rent any time he wants with a few simple changes to our lease.
I’ve never had a good landlord. Most of them are greedy trash.
The explanation depends on how deep or philosophical you want to go on this conversation, but basically you are exploiting someone’s basic need for shelter for massive profit, keeping trapped in the poverty cycle as they are having to pay rent to the landlord to pay their mortgage for them and so is much harder to save for their own house. As well as reducing supply of housing on the market, thus increasing prices and making it more innacessible.
Like imagine a group of a few wealthy people buying a town’s supply of food then selling it back to the hungry residents at a 300% markup. They don’t grow it, they don’t transport it, cook it or chsnge it, they don’t do anything that ads value, just buy it and sell it at a higher price, to the people that would have otherwise bought it for themselves. Do you consider that ethical?
Like imagine a group of a few wealthy people buying a town’s supply of food then selling it back to the hungry residents at a 300% markup.
Okay, that’s clearly exploitative and unethical, but that’s not inherently what landlords do. Anyone who sells products or services can do it in a way that’s fair or is unfair. The mere act of selling something itself isn’t unethical. Look at the conversations we have about drug companies. I don’t think anyone argues that drug companies shouldn’t be able to sell medication, or even make some profit for their research investments. The problem is when they price their drugs way above what’s reasonable just because they know people are going to have to pay it.
Renting out a house isn’t different from renting out anything else. You go on vacation and you need a car while there, but you don’t want to buy one for a short time, so you rent one. The rental agency used their money to buy the car, then they rent it to you for something you’re willing to pay for a week, and they make a profit from all the people who rent the car over its life. You both win. Why is it any different with a house?
The problem is when they price their drugs way above what’s reasonable just because they know people are going to have to pay it.
This is exactly the problem with landlords. The argument for landlords being that some people can’t afford to own a home becomes a bit moot when landlords buy up all the houses and rent them back at unaffordable prices.
Why is it any different with a house?
Because you rent a car for, like you said, a vacation. That’s like renting a hotel room. You rent a home to live in. If you could afford a mortgage, you’d buy a home. But landlords basically go “hey, the bank doesn’t think you make enough money to make regular payments, so make those payments to me instead.”
This is exactly the problem with landlords. The argument for landlords being that some people can’t afford to own a home becomes a bit moot when landlords buy up all the houses and rent them back at unaffordable prices.
72.5% of single-unit rental properties are owned by individuals, while 69.5% of properties with 25 or more units are owned by for-profit businesses.
I don’t mean to minimize it as a problem - it’s a big one - but the vast majority of rental house landlords aren’t big corporations buying up all the available places and jacking up prices, it’s individual’s who decided to rent their place out instead of selling it.
The problem most people have is their credit, not the mortgage payments. Both my mortgages (I’m not a landlord, but I do airbnb 3 months out of the year) are $1500/month, and most people pay that and more just for rent.
Nevermind the fact that some people are eligible to buy a home, but think they won’t qualify so they dont try. I was in that group with a credit score of 680, which is acceptable for the first time home owners program. I was accepted, and now I own 2 homes.
Drug companies produce the actual drugs though. They are creating value by making the drug and the money they make from selling it is their reward for creating value. Landlords do not build the house, so they do not create value.
And renting a car is different because its not something you need to simply survive and less importantly we don’t have a car shortage. And also you typically don’t rent a house just for a week most people rent houses for years and years until they can afford to buy a house, at which point their landlord has made 10s or maybe even hundreds of thousands off of them, while doing little work and adding no value. Like I’m not arguing against hotels or even renting in general, I’m against landlording for private homes, because its inherently unethical, just like buying all the food in a supermarket and selling it to the same supermarket customers at a markup to make profit for no work.
I guess we just disagree. I’ve said why I think they can be providing a useful service and create a win/win situation, but you don’t see it that way. Good discussing with you.
By this reasoning, farming for anyone other than yourself is also inherently immoral.
Farmers exploit someone’s basic need for food for massive profit, keeping people trapped in the rental cycle as they are having to pay for food from the farmer to pay their business loan for them and so is much harder to save for their own farm.
I was just going to have a discussion about housing, but something in what you said made me curious about something else- Hopefully this isn’t too personal of a question, but do you make many friends with that sort of approach to conversation?
No. I’m exercising my Musk-given right of ultimate free speech and will continue calling it Twitter, just because I feel like it. Musk would be proud of me standing up against censorship. Oh wait…
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