Here’s some ideas:

• Put limits on the amount of residential property that can be owned by investors in a given market. Something like “In order for an investor to purchase a residential property within this particular municipality, no more than 40% of existing residential housing can be owned by investors, excepting where A) The investor in question is an individual or family who intend to reside in the property and share it with one or more roommates or B) the investor in question is an individual or family who are moving out of a unit they already own intending to purchase another one and convert the original home into a rental property.” Alternatively "No more than 20% of the housing market in the municipality may be owned by entities who’s majority ownership A) resides outside of the municipality or B) who’s ownership possesses a combined net worth in excess of $10,000,000 (automatically adjusting for inflation over time), excepting newly constructed properties intended for sale.

• Reform property taxes to avoid squeezing out homeowners. I.E. Property taxes shall, in perpetuity, be assessed at the purchase price of the home when the current residents moved in. Meaning… If you’re a landlord, you don’t WANT your tenants to move out because then your property taxes will go up. Also “No insurance company may charge more for home owners or renters insurance than X percent of the current property tax rate.” And “No landlord shall charge more than X times the current property tax rate, where X is an adjustable number slightly higher than the current competitive market rate.”

• Pin a carbon tax on retail or office businesses in a given area to scale with whatever commute they require for workers who live far away. Make it high enough to strong arm business owners into paying (and charging enough) that they save money on higher pay rates for employees so they can afford to live locally in affluent areas and areas undergoing gentrification. I’m totally OK with employers being like “We prefer to hire local (or localish) because of this tax” to a perspective employee. I’m OK with it being high enough for business owners to feel it, and with business owners screaming about it as much as they want. Affluent residents want to fucking shop locally and they WILL, even if that means local retail has to raise their prices. If it puts you out of business, good. Someone else will show up to take your place and will treat their employees better.

Not that you would EVER see ANY of these ideas proposed in WSJ.

I grew up around the rich. They are short sighted idiots just like the rest of us, but with a whole lot more entitlement, self confidence and belief that things will work out fine (this matches their lived experience). They are just as prone to magical thinking and superstitious beliefs as anyone else, but NO ONE CAN TELL THEM THEY’RE WRONG. They lose touch with reality, because the human brain needs honest feedback from it’s community in order to calibrate it’s sense of reality and hardly anyone is honest with the rich to their faces.

The point is, there is no endgame. It would be better if there was. A BUNCH of the rich believe the End Times are nigh, a bunch more believe that capitalism and innovation will solve whatever environmental disasters industrial society is creating. I know of one multi billionaire (the mom of someone I went to high school with) who pays a Buddhist “holy man” a very generous salary to follow her around and be her full time spiritual advisor. IIRC, she thinks the enlightened will ascend to some higher plane of existence before the environmental apocalypse consumes the rest of us (she still funds various environmentalist causes). Meanwhile, Zuck and the other tech bros seriously think they’re playing Fallout IRL and Musk thinks we’re doomed unless we build a Mars colony.

It would better if there WERE a plan, or an end game or big conspiracy. We could maybe hold some actual people accountable for deliberately driving the planet into the ditch. But there’s not. Just a bunch of self serving, delusional idiots with wealth and power.

this.

Yes, but nothing real came of them. The US government has a long and well recorded history of spending money on pseudoscience, even well after it’s been debunked, as long as there are True Believers in the chain of command.

And the conspiracy theory community has a long and even more dramatic history of taking those mole hills and turning them into mountains (especially if grifters can sell books and / or T-shirts and / or weird copper sculptures that are supposed to “protect” you from it).

Look, I grew up with parents (and a wide community) who believed in psychic shit, crystal healing, telepathy, getting messages from the Akoshic record, what evs. It’s NOT real and also believing it is NOT harmless. You’re gonna find PLENTY of misinformation about what people “believe” but if you look into any of it, you’re going to discover that somewhere along the line someone channeled something or someone like David Icke or Garahm Hanremoved or Rudolph Steiner or Drunvalo Melchizedek or Raël is involved, or someone is selling tickets to their lecture or psychic seminar.

Honestly, only if this is a roleplay community. We’re getting into the realms of crackpots and conspiracy theories here.

That sounds like pseudoscience to me.

On the other hand, there have been rather dramatic advances in brain / computer interfaces and using machine learning to interpret electrical signals from the human brain. The good news there is that every brain is different, the machines need to learn each brain individually (a model trained to pull dream images out of my brain will pull just gibberish out of yours).

So far, the researchers would need your close cooperation in order to train a machine to understand even a little bit of what’s going on in your mind. This tech is nowhere near being used for interrogation.

As a PHP developer, I’m in full support and look forward to contributing to what will be a vastly simpler and easier to use Linux kernel.

GURPS has entered the chat.

Frankly, that interface is dreadful.

I’ve had had to stop medication due to high blood pressure.

Yippeeeeeeee!

Gross.

They have the choice to negotiate or not, but if they choose war and lose, then their lot is to reckon with the consequences of their actions. Vae victus, as the Gauls said to the Romans.

You sir, are an asshole. You have no moral high ground here and in the face of starving civilians, your beliefs, attitudes and viewpoint ring of hollow and despicable demagoguery. Your soap box is built of boards of blood and suffering and we can ALL see it, pooling around your feet. You’re waving a sign that says “Good people of Earth, despise me, oppose me, ostracize me and disregard my words.”

It’s not OK. You have picked the wrong point of view and when you open your mouth or reach for your keyboard to dispense it, nothing will wash the resulting stench from you, because you’re standing on top of this and there is NO WAY to make that a good look. No amount of reasonableness, logic or polite discourse will put you on the right side or make you persuasive.

The side you support has already lost the moral debate and now it’s just the practical matter of what can be done about it, given the geopolitical and cultural realities surrounding it. The world will never forgive you for standing where you stand. Someday, you may realize you need to forgive yourself and when that happens, MAYBE we can have a different conversation.

Until then, farewell.

They have the choice to negotiate or not, but if they choose war and lose, then their lot is to reckon with the consequences of their actions. Vae victus, as the Gauls said to the Romans.

You sir, are an asshole. You have no moral high ground here and in the face of starving civilians, your beliefs, attitudes and viewpoint ring of hollow and despicable demagoguery. Your soap box is built of boards of blood and suffering and we can ALL see it, pooling around your feet. You’re waving a sign that says “Good people of Earth, despise me, oppose me, ostracize me and disregard my words.”

It’s not OK. You have picked the wrong point of view and when you open your mouth or reach for your keyboard to dispense it, nothing will wash the resulting stench from you, because you’re standing on top of this and there is NO WAY to make that a good look. No amount of reasonableness to put you on the right side or make you persuasive.

The side you support has already lost the moral debate and now it’s just the practical matter of what can be done about it, given the geopolitical and cultural realities surrounding it. The world will never forgive you for standing where you stand. Someday, you may realize you need to forgive yourself and when that happens, MAYBE we can have a different conversation.

Until then, farewell.

Such hostility my child. I can only pray that the Prophets will help you find peace.

Because her papers are PDFs and “Adobe does PDFs.” I was not part of this decision making process.

Meanwhile Boeing be like “Hold my beer…”

You want OpenWRT. They’re not too limited, but they’re not very powerful either. Fan controller? Probably. Pihole? You can probably hack that together, though I’ve never tried. Media server? Erm… not my first choice. Other stuff? Limited only by your imagination, time constraints and willingness to troubleshoot weird problems most people have never had before.

It depends. I run an instance with a whole two users and it costs me about $25 a month.

But if I let 200 users join, I would need beefier hardware and a higher bandwidth limit.

However running an instance like Beehaw is probably on the order of hundreds, not thousands of dollars a month.

Felipe’s Pizza Grotto

6th Level Conjuration

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: touch

Target: An empty dead end corridor in a dungeon or cave.

Components: V

Duration: Four hours or until everyone in the party is stuffed and can’t possibly eat another bite, or until it’s clear they aren’t going to order and the maitre d looses patience with them, or until the maitre d is destroyed or dispelled. Whichever comes first.

Classes: Wizard, Sorcerer

Carrying all those rations around in the dungeon is hard, plus good luck finding a safe, peaceful place to sit and eat them. Felipe’s Pizza Grotto can only be cast in an underground environment, in a “dead end”.

The stone walls in a 40ft by 40ft area shift and morph, becoming a pleasant dining establishment. The tantalizing smells of garlic, cheese, spiced meats and baking bread waft through the space. Small marble fountains, statues and potted plants appear, along with tasteful oil paintings on the walls. A counter appears, behind which is a fully stocked kitchen with a wood fired pizza oven, and a wine cabinet. A number of tables will appear, scattered around the space and stools will pop into existence in front of the counter. The whole space is lit with small glass oil lamps and candles. A stone wall with a stout wooden door appears, blocking off the passageway. A maitre d appears blocking the door, asking all who approach if they have a reservation. Any the caster designates will be allowed to enter, all others will be turned away (the maitre d has the stats of a Spectral Guardian).

If the caster and anyone accompanying them do not sit at a table on their own, the maitre d will attempt to show them to a table and will become agitated if they don’t cooperate. They will become hostile and berate any characters who have not taken a seat within 5 minutes of entering the grotto.

Once the characters sit down, a waiter will appear with menus, listing every delicacy you would expect to find in a high class restaurant of the sort that serves dishes involving bread, cheese, pasta and garlicky tomato sauce. However, the menu primarily features specialty and build your own pizzas and the waiter will look down their nose and act snooty toward anyone who orders anything else (appetizers, wine, dinner salad and desserts are all acceptable, I recommend the garlic knots and the minestrone soup personally). The waiter will not engage in combat and will disappear if attacked (however, this draws the ire of the maitre d, as does any other interference with the grotto’s operations).

Once all characters have placed orders, the various utensils behind the counter spring to life, acting as if wielded by invisible chefs. The pizza ovens flair to life, ingredients appear and are chopped by levitating knives. Dry pasta flies into pots of magically boiling water. Pizza dough hurls itself into the air and spins around, coming down in a classic, flat round shape, before levitating spoons begin ladling tomato sauce onto it and hovering cheese graters cover it in fresh mozzarella, Parmesan and provolone.

When the food is ready, the waiter will supervise a group of levitating delivery trays and serve it to the characters in the grotto. Each character will receive exactly what they ordered and the execution, preparation and presentation will be flawless, the finest chefs in all the land would find no fault with it.

As the characters are eating, both the waiter and the maitre d will repeatedly stop by their table to ask how their food is tasting and if they need anything else. The waiter will refill water and wine glasses and bread baskets. When everyone seems to be slowing down, the waiter will ask if anyone saved room for dessert and will recommend the cheese cake. Any complaints will be handled with a mix of professionalism and haughtiness worthy of food service professionals who KNOW their food is top notch, but also want their customers to leave satisfied.

If any character is lingering over their food or failing to eat it, the maitre d and the waiter will become agitated and start pestering them, asking if their meal is to their liking or they can get them anything else. If this goes on for too long, they will glare at the whole party impatiently, while unoccupied chairs levitate up and stack themselves on tables and hovering brooms start sweeping the floor. The fire in the pizza oven will go out, and the waiter will begin pointedly snuffing the candles and asking anyone lingering over their meal if they need a to-go box. Once the spell ends, the grotto vanishes and the cavern returns to normal. Food in to-go boxes persists, but is cold, disappointing and somehow less nourishing than when eaten in the grotto.

At the GMs option, characters leaving the grotto may be fatigued from the sheer amount of food they have consumed, and may be required to make constitution saves in order continue their exploration of the dungeon prior to resting.

What about Dave’s Famous Bread?

The spell I want is my personal favorite restaurant Felipe’s Pizza Grotto. I’m pretty sure I know exactly what that one does.