Barbara Ehrenreich wrote a great book about this called Nickel and Dimed. She was a full time journalist and set out to get a job at a diner and find a place to live on the salary. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickel_and_Dimed

Matthew Desmond’s books Evicted and Poverty, By America are amazing, well researched, easily readable books about poverty in the US. I can’t recommend them enough. https://www.npr.org/2023/03/17/1158230630/poverty-by-america-book-review-matthew-desmond-evicted

Would still be a little difficult for people living in apartments. I always think about this when it comes to EVs, and owning “dumb” cars and maintaining them yourself, which I would like to do. My apartment complex has 3 or 4 EV chargers, which are assigned. So you would have to rent the apartment that comes with the EV spot, which I’m sure makes the rent go up by far more than it’s worth. And no way is there room to work on your own car within the assigned spaces. No guest parking either. I guess it’s just more stuff to add to the “cycle of poverty” list

Sadly war sucks ass.

Don’t try to justify the mass murder of innocent, injured and sick civilians, including children and infants. There’s literally nothing that excuses dropping bombs on hospitals. And schools. And trucks full of refugees. And people’s homes. And ambulances.

It is interesting how the same US political ideology that supports this mass murder of children are, generally, also the ones who consider zygotes to be children and criminalize pregnant women for having miscarriages. But I digress.

The point is, it’s all a bullshit power play, don’t let it distract you from your own humanity.

There’s definitely no possibility that Israel does stuff like that and then blames it on its enemies to justify its actions. No way.

To be clear, if some criminal has human hostages you’re fine if the building they are in is torched?

“IDF says…”

Of course. What reason would they have to lie? /s

Maybe we should wait until there’s been a more neutral investigation before deciding it’s one hundred percent true.

What I never understand about major news stories is that so many people take everything they see at face value and then consider it indisputable fact. When there’s an international war going on, no one thinks that just maybe we’re only getting a fraction of reality communicated to us? That it must be the worst game of telephone in terms of accuracy? But then if someone even suggests that maybe there’s more to the story, they’re conspiracy theorists or they get told what “side” they’re on.

We should all be at least somewhat discerning. There’s so many different actors with interests in this war. We have no idea what else could be going on that we will never, ever hear about, nor how much spin is being put on the stuff we do hear about.

When did this all or nothing way of thinking start in American culture? Has it always been like this and I’m just now noticing it, or is it much more prevalent now because it’s a side effect of a lack of critical thinking skills

Obligatory fuck psypost. The most click bait, sensationalized headlines for small sample correlational studies that almost always have a divisive basis, like “democrats are better at x than republicans,” or “men are better at x than women” or some shit. I got so sick of seeing it on the front page of reddit every single day because there were ten different subs reposting the same articles.

Just because it’s expected at this point doesn’t make it acceptable.