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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • I am of the opinion that most “supply” issues are due to investors. Except in certain geographic areas we do not have a shortage of actual physical housing. What we have is a shortage of available housing at a mixed pricepoints for purchase.

    All housing that investors purchase for rentals removes it from the supply.

    Traditionally investors have sought out entry level housing for rent. They invest in building rental complexes. They make all cash purchases and then rent it out to people who otherwise would have been first-time homebuyers. Investors used to be the low end offer. Blatant price fixing has increased rent outrageously. Now investors are the high end offer and removing supply constantly.

    With AirB&B, the middle and even upper range market that traditionally has had less investor competition is now a major target. This has led to price wars for investment purposes on previously safe segments.

    The first solution to the housing supply is simple: taxing income from rent so that selling the property is financially more lucrative. It will have to include a prohibition against rental increases to cover the taxes as well.

    The second is to mandate zoning and new construction to match the market needs not the needs of the investors.

    Last would be to create a program where builders who focus on entry level housing receive incentives from governments (also include hefty penalty for substandard construction).


  • I did a little assassin creed run this summer. Started with Unity and went to Odyssey.

    Unity by far has the best story-line. The game mechanics are also more focused on being an assassin, not a brawler. Sneak and stab, drop smoke and disappear when you get in trouble.

    Syndicate - they changed the focus to more brawling. However the mechanics were pretty bad and the storyline was predictable and stupid to say the least. You can still play the assasin for most of it if you want.

    Origins - They went all out into brawling with this one. Complicated all of the controls. Easiest way to make it through the game is as an archer. The story lines are dull and some are just plain weird. The offer you tons of different options in gear but only a few are worth keeping. Not much chance to actually assainate anyone. Lots of weird half baked stuff like the naval warfare in the story line but nowhere else.

    Odyssey - it’s basically the same as origins. They spent more time fleshing out the mechanics. Added in a ton of options but you only use a few. Added in a ton more brawling combat and very little assassination. In many instances trying to play as an assassin is just not possible. The combat is often broken. Beating the bosses is all the same. Spam arrows while dodging until they weaken, get a hit in and run away- repeat. Save often because the game crashes regularly.

    Yes I played all the way through and beat the main quests and side quest on all of them.


  • I have been attempting to use Linux for 20 years now. It has found its niche used for me over the years. For example when my kids were toddlers they had a old machine that defaulted to PBSkids. Before that I used it to run a gaming server.

    Currently I have a old laptop that I dual boot with win 10 and whatever Linux distro I feel like trying at the moment.

    The win 10 on the laptop barely meets the minimum hardware requirements and takes 10 minutes to load.

    I have tried a few different distros and always had a few issues with the setup. All sorts of different ones - screen orientation, WiFi connection, printer hell, keyboard layout etc. Takes me days to fix the bugs or give up.

    Mint takes 2 minutes to load and so far is working seamlessly. It’s apt manager is the easiest I have used in a Linux distro. It found my network printer automatically. It runs smoother than windows 7 did on my laptop.

    With Microsoft ending win 10 for the shitty win 11, I imagine many people are looking for alternatives. If Mint continues to work to make setup and usage easy, it will gain market share rapidly. It’s not all the way there yet, but it’s a hell of a lot better than before.









  • From what I have seen, unhappy marriages are very common in highly religious/conservative groups.

    Most of these groups have stupid “No Sex before marriage” rules. So two horny young adults (teenagers in some cases) get married quickly. Pregnancy follows immediately and they start being parents before they are fully mature.

    Fast forward 5-6 years later and they don’t even like each other anymore. The smart ones do the adult decision and divorce.

    Way too many of them live misery constantly bickering while claiming to be “happily married” because “divorce is a sin”. They then spend most of their time complaining about their spouses. The kids of course have all sorts of baggage from growing up in the toxic environment.




  • Jobs was his own worst enemy for a while on the compatibility issue.

    New OS launches- all your old programs don’t work on it.

    Want to use a floppy to transfer files between a Dos/Win and a Mac? Nope, not compatible. When USB drives started coming out they dropped all support for floppy drives, even in machines with them installed.

    Constant driver issues with all sorts of things. Many never got resolved. To be fair the market share for Mac’s was so tiny, offering support for them didn’t make business sense.

    Want to play a game? Good luck. The majority of games didn’t work on Mac. Same reason as the drivers.

    As for stability issues, for a while I ran a computer lab for a college 50:50 win/Mac machines. They both crashed about equally as often.