Inga ️‍🏳️‍🌈 @[email protected]

Finally, just when I was thinking of starting to use Mastodon actively, got myself a new userpic, drawn by majestic Iasmin Omar Ata.

I'm in love with their style; if you are too, check out their website https://iasminomarata.com/; they also take commissions!

Unpopular opinion.
Just that someone opposes USA does not make them a good person.
Just that some ruler opposes USA does not mean they're not a dictator, does not mean they do not oppress their own people, and does not mean people don't have a right to rise against that dictator.

Not sure why it is unpopular. I thought it is so obvious that it should go without saying.

So true

So I've noticed this trend recently where they focus on heterosexual relationships in movies and TV series.

OK, I get it, this is a man-woman couple, political correctness and everything.
But why are you trying to shove it down my throat?
Why there are these long completely unnatural cringe-inducing scenes of them kissing?
Does it really matter for a plot that they are of different genders?
Does some conservative speech police force you to put heterosexual couples everywhere?

Capitalism and free markets during crisis:

* You need to have 2k$ to get tested even if you're in the risk group and don't want to infect others.

* Billionaires are purchasing expensive and scarce ICUs for their homes.

* Stock prices rally on the politician's claims that it's better to let 4% of people die than to face recession.

And a lot of other nice things specific to US flavor of modern-day slavery, such as being forced to work while sick in order to retain medical insurance.

I'm supporting free markets because they maintain exchange of information about preferences. For example, with UBI (as opposed to social housing) people can choose what homes they like more, and developers can adapt and build what people want.

Saying that we need free markets during emergency is an insanity. What information do these "economically right" people want to exchange? We as the humanity need to go through this crisis united. Capitalism and free markets are for the time of peace.

...but it didn't happen because of airbnb! Airbnb in my example is only responsible for the tiny fraction of all housing.

What drove the prices down was not that these homes moved from airbnb market to the long-term market. What drove the prices down was that this migration occured for all that tiny fraction **at once**, overwhelming the market.

If you close airbnb forever, it will, in the medium term, only increase supply less than 1%, not these short-lived 2x we're seeing now.

...Now, even if airbnb is tiny, and the number of airbnb homes is mere 1/130th of all long-term rental homes, what will happen if all airbnb hosts pour their homes into long-term rental market, at once (because there are no more airbnb guests because of covid-19)?

The supply on the long-term rental market will increase 2x. The prices will crash. It will be the tenant market. People will say airbnb kills cities. People will assume that's what rental price look like when there is no airbnb...

Some back of a napkin calculations regarding rent and airbnb.

Assume that the average long-term rental period is 5 years (that is, every home is on market once every 5 years, on average). Also assume that the average vacancy time is 2 weeks (taking into account that new tenants are often already found by the time old tenants move out). That means that, on average, 1/130th of all rental apartments is on market on any given day...

...But what if one of us lost their job and got a job offer from another city? We'd have to move and to rent something in another city. Meanwhile, our salary would not cover a rent plus mortgage. The only way for us to not get thrown out to the street (despite working hard for all these years, I remind you) would be to rent out our mortgaged home to cover at least part of the mortgage.

That's a perfectly plausible scenario.
Does that make us leeches?
What could we do to avoid being ones?

...so if we default on a loan, we'll have lost everything we "invested" at the moment of purchase, we'll have lost everything we have repaid, and we'll still have to pay 1.5x the original mortgage payment (which was already higher than the ordinary rent) AND pay for the rent!
Now, we were lucky. Our salary income was high enough to cover these increased mortgage payments. Had we been less lucky, we'd become homeless, despite working hard. Also, we could continue to live in that mortgaged home...

Some thoughts on that "all landlords are leeches" discourse.

Decade ago, we took a mortgage to purchase our home, so that we won't have to pay all our income to landlords. Long story short, some time later mortgage payments are 2x higher than they were originally, and our home is worth 0.5x our debt. Bank will not let us to sell our home because it won't cover the debt and without a home there is no collateral. If we default on a mortgage, home is sold for 0.3x the debt and we still owe 0.7x...

Every time I read any news from the Country of Men, I'm glad I emigrated.

Fear Of Missing Out? I have Fear Of Missing Toots.

And it's really at 1 day ago because even though you curate your following list, it's still more than some arbitrary hardcoded mastodon limit per day.

Yet another reason to stress/freak out:
When you don't have time to read the timeline so it's at 1 week ago, and then the laptop suddenly reboots on its own and you have to load everything again and the timeline won't go further than 1 day ago because the infinite timeline is not that infinite.
And all these toots everybody else sent during past week but not the past day are lost, forever.