I’m surprised they can get insurance at all after all that has happened.

Forest fires are no joke.

Prepare. Stay informed. Listen to the authorities.

If they tell you to leave your home and evacuate, leave.

Use it to hire most of the best minds to be found with the sole purpose of creating an expansive infrastructure to provide regular people the means to organize as one.

The undertaking would be staggering. Reviewing all the known history of man, considering all the languages, cultures, failures and successes.

Researching and combining all known technologies.

All to set the groundwork for a global union of human kind to be able to collectively counteract the disease that is the upper most classes.

After much daydreaming on the subject. I think this is the way of long term existential survival for the human race.

TL;DR: Basically, the Star Trek federation.

Ok, so not really bright, but visible. I smell the plot to a bank heist movie.

And blinded by security cameras?

Seriously, wouldn’t being able to see infrared basically make you see night vision cameras like they are street lights?

I would argue it was time for the entire world to do this unanimously, the moment the first hospital was hit.

Apparently wiping out a civilization is ok if the right “interests” are in play.

The idea of autonomous super robot people doing all the hard work for us sounds great, until you remember that it will all be built on foundations of profit.

It doesn’t really matter how brilliant the engineers are if the corporate manager is forcefully cutting corners.

Who do you think gets the blame when things go wrong though?

Strategy.

No, your half-baked, half-plan you stole from an intern, is not only not good, the last guy tried it and we are still trying to fix that mess.

I’m not sure if it really counts as a buzzword though.

I think you are confusing Nazism with genuine concern. Careful with that. Hating people for opposing views is more dangerously close to what you so easily accuse me of, and your tiny tough guy attempt to mask your own bigotry just highlights that you may need to reflect a little.

To my previous point, not somehow mitigating the easily duped portion of our formerly democratic systems is a big part of what’s driving the Nazi ideals back into popularity. As long as untamed propaganda is allowed into the thoughts of the weak minded, the rest of us face an uphill battle.

If you read my previous statement about this again. You’ll notice that I didn’t say anyone should be controlled. Whether we bring facts back into law and punish those who spread lies, or bolster education to teach people how to spot the lies, it doesn’t really matter. But splitting hairs over how I said it won’t change that it is a problem.

Trying to deflect, blame or sidestep that is playing right into the MAGA/Nazi mindset. Division of the people and spooky non-issues to rally fear in the populace is what gives them control.

It’s the right idea, but too narrow of a demographic. It’s not the old people that seem to be the problem. At least not only them. It’s the uneducated or intellect impaired that should be reined in. The ones that are just smart enough to use Facebook, but would struggle to understand the concept of the Dunning–Kruger effect

The amount of younger people that are sucked in hook, line, sinker, rod, boat, trailer and truck is staggering.

It’s like they decided that reality didn’t work for them, so let’s just ignore it in favour of “insert discriminatory slogan or catchphrase here”.

It’s bonkers.

Yes.

The pay rate of the lowest paid worker of any company or institution should be somehow legally and directly tied to the pay rate of the highest paid executive.

If the executive wants to make more money and gets a raise, then so do the workers.

Not sure if anyone else mentioned this, but you can just redirect traffic on your local LAN with an ad blocker like pihole ( I currently use adguardhome podman instance )

Basically, it rewrites any calls to your outside domain from within your local network, back to your local web server. As long as the site is setup with the certificate there, you’re good.

Then setup a nginx reverse proxy and you’re golden. Regular site outside LAN, internal site inside LAN.

Edit: spelling

I can’t fathom how many people are out there stressed to the max over money right now. Knowing how much it stresses me when it’s tight makes me sad it has come to this for everyone.

Not to bring politics into this, but I don’t think any of the current governmental systems or powers are equipped or willing to tackle this.

“Based on the most recent Statistics Canada data, that’s a wide range anywhere from $52,875 to $141,000.”

And

“Her definition of “middle class” is simply having enough money to survive for two weeks without a paycheque. Right now, her family doesn’t meet that threshold. “

TIL I am both upper class and maybe still middle class. That can’t be right.

My household makes more than the threshold, but only misses the definition because we drive junkers that are 10+ years old with no payments. One vehicle payment and I’m not sure what we would need to start cutting. Food?

We mortgaged a lot less for a house than most because of when we bought it too. So anyone doing it now would be in over their head.

Knowing what struggles we have, which obviously aren’t as bad, how in the hell is anyone else making it work?

Being middle class growing up was not having the nicer boat or nicer motorcycle, like the uppity crowd had.

This seems like the system is trying to keep these numbers low, so the people getting hit the hardest can at least say they are not “low class”.

We collectively need to rethink the classes to just “rich” and “not rich”. That’s the only ones that matter anymore in my opinion.

Anyone that can live a stable life without worrying constantly about the cost of everyday items should be middle class.

Any household that can thrive without the need to work is rich.

I hear you and agree, but part of me wonders if that is solely because they were always nasty people, or they are actually reacting to the awful way they get treated.

They are already probably dealing with failing health, burying most of their friends, not understanding most of what is going on in the world, feeling left behind, etc.

In their shoes I’m not sure if I could be very cheerful myself. Maybe I’ll get the opportunity to find out and hopefully I’ll not be one of the ones you mention, but who knows.

Most of us are tired from all the crap of the world already, imagine 30-40 more years of that on top of the things I just mentioned.

Absolutely, which is why cooperative corporate structure appealed to me. Everyone has there same stake in it and still maintains their own separate lives. Only things that are agreed upon as shareable would be shared.

Like bulk food, equipment, etc.

TL;DR: capitalism.

I’ve put some thought into this and I don’t have a good answer other than because of how society is designed to keep us from doing it now.

Evolutionarily speaking, we are designed to thrive in smaller communities. It’s only in the more recent part of humanity that we seem to have moved away from that. I mean, there were still cities a long time ago, but within them were what could be thought of as smaller communities.

I myself am of European descent, but currently live in a place where there is a thriving native community and realizing that I sometimes have envy of some of their ways of life is what got me thinking.

For instance, in western society becoming elderly is almost seen as a problem, like a burden that needs to be “dealt” with. For them it is a station of respect and reverence. If an Elder walks down the street, they are taught to show respect and pay heed to their wisdom and guidance. If the rest of us are lucky, we can get a seniors discount at select stores by declaring they we are among the needy.

I’ve even went as far as researching communal living, intentional communities and cooperative housing, but I keep chickening out when it comes time to pull anything into action.

The idea of finding 4-6 like-minded families to share resources with and use our individual talents and skills to help each other really appeals to me. It makes sense to build resilience against harder times.

But to answer your question, smaller communities helping each other is against the capitalist ideal and is/will be thwarted at any scale by corporations and corporate influenced governments alike at every turn. So I guess that’s the most likely reason.

Yet.

It’s the old “I don’t necessarily agree with what you are saying, but I would defend to the death your right to say it” ideal, and I’m 100% down for it.