#Tax-Friendly Environment

[yellow-yarrow]

kinda funny how cities skylines has this cutesy fun vibe but you are basically a dictator in it and the citizens ask for prisons and cops even if you build a perfect city while Frostpunk 2 has this stressfull dark mood but there is a council you have to convince to vote for your ideas and you can have things like equal pay for everyone, ubi, support for disabled people, etc

[technicallymysticaltidalwave]

Strategies for Establishing a Startup-Friendly Tax in Bangladesh

Learn how a startup-friendly tax regime can drive growth and innovation in Bangladesh. By easing tax burdens and providing incentives, this approach supports new businesses and fosters a favorable environment for entrepreneurs. Discover the potential benefits of adopting a tax policy that encourages investment and development, paving the way for a thriving startup ecosystem in the country.

[creative-business-solutions]

A Comprehensive Guide to Business Setup with Creative Business Solutions

In today's rapidly evolving global business landscape, establishing an offshore company has become a strategic choice for entrepreneurs and corporations looking to optimize operations, minimize tax liabilities, and leverage favorable regulatory environments. Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is a premier destination for such initiatives. With its business-friendly climate, strategic location, and robust legal framework, forming a company in RAK Mainland Company Formation offers significant advantages for businesses of all sizes.

[head-post]

German drivers paid for non-existent climate programmes of other countries

A scandal has erupted in Germany over the increased environmental tax on fuel, which car owners pay in favour of “climate” initiatives of other countries, Welt reports.

Control by the German authorities was inadequate, the requirements were very easy to circumvent, and the acceptance of certificates was allegedly falsified.

At issue are allegedly climate-friendly projects in which oil companies participate in order to meet climate protection requirements under the so-called greenhouse gas emission quota. The quota depends on how much harmful greenhouse gases the fuel sold by the companies produces. It is added to the price per litre at the pump, along with a tax on CO₂ emissions.

It has now emerged that most of the projects were falsified or simply didn’t exist. For example, German motorists allegedly paid €80 million for an alleged climate protection project in a Chinese Uighur province through a climate levy. An investigation revealed that the claimed site was just an abandoned chicken coop, ZDF’s Frontal magazine reported.

“Out of 75 projects that were counted in the German greenhouse gas quota, we found only one that is not suspicious,” Sandra Rostek, head of the bioenergy industry association, said at a technical discussion with industry representatives in the Bundestag, as reported by WELT.

The industry anticipates a damage of 4.5 billion euros

According to the association, the damage from the energy transition in Germany’s transport sector could amount to more than 4.5 billion euros. Money that German motorists paid at the petrol pump.

Dirk Messner, head of the Federal Environment Agency, complained that his agency had too few options in the review process. Forty projects were considered and four applications were subsequently cancelled. However, the agency was apparently dealing with a “web of fraud.”

This only came to light after bioenergy companies called detectives in China after receiving information from Chinese whistleblowers. There is now strong suspicion of fraud in 62 of the 75 cases, and insufficient information in a further twelve cases.

How eco-fraud works

In the case of certificate trading, the alleged producers only needed to provide the Federal Environmental Protection Agency with the coordinates of the alleged factory locations. These locations were checked only after complaints from the companies – with incredible results.

According to Welt, when the data was entered into Google Maps, it turned out that the specified locations were only in deserted areas in the Uygur Desert in northwest China.

In response to a question from ZDF, the oil company Shell, for example, said that independent inspection bodies have checked projects in China. So far, no signs of non-compliance have been found.

Read more HERE

[alexandererber-wealth]

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[reasonsforhope]

"Abby Allen has no problem with her neighbours peering over her luxuriant hedges to see what she is up to on her farm.

For years she has been carrying out ad hoc experiments with wildlife and farming techniques; in her lush Devon fields native cattle graze alongside 400-year-old hedgerows, with birds and butterflies enjoying the species-rich pasture.

Under the environmental land management scheme (ELMS), introduced by the government in 2021, those experiments were finally being funded. “We have a neighbour who has always been more of an intensive farmer,” she says, but he is now considering leaving fields unploughed to help the soil. “It genuinely is having such a huge impact in changing people’s mindsets who traditionally would never have thought about farming in this way.”

The new nature payments scheme followed the UK’s exit from the EU, when the government decided to scrap the common agricultural payments scheme, which gave a flat subsidy dependent on the number of acres a farmer managed. In its place came ELMS, which pays farmers for things such as planting hedges, sowing wildflowers for birds to feed on and leaving corners of their land wild for nature.

But these schemes are now at threat of defunding, as the Labour government has refused to commit to the £2.4bn a year spending pot put in place by the previous Conservative government. With spending tight and the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, cutting back on infrastructure and hinting at tax rises, a cut to the ELMS scheme may be on her list.

However, government data released last week found the schemes were working to tentatively bring nature back to England’s farmland. Butterflies, bees and bats are among the wildlife being boosted by ELMS, with birds among the chief beneficiaries, particularly ones that largely feed on invertebrates. An average of 25% more breeding birds were found in areas utilising the eco-friendly schemes.

...there are also farmers who welcome the schemes. Allen says the ELMS has helped her farm provide data and funds to expand and improve the good things they were doing for nature. “Some of the money available around things like soil testing and monitoring – instead of us going ‘we think these are the right things to do and providing these benefits,’ we can now measure it. The exciting thing now is there is money available to measure and monitor and kind of prove that you’re doing the right things. And so then you can find appropriate funding to do more of that.”

Allen, who is in the Nature Friendly Farming Network, manages a network of farms in England, most of which are using the ELMS. This includes chicken farms where the poultry spend their life outside rather than in sheds and other regenerative livestock businesses...

Mark Spencer was an environment minister until 2024 when he lost his seat, but now spends more time in the fields admiring the fruits of his and his family’s labour. He says that a few years of nature-friendly agriculture has restored lapwings and owls.

“On the farm, I haven’t seen lapwings in any number for what feels like a whole generation. You know, as a kid, when I was in my early teens, you’d see lapwings. We used to call them peewits. We’d see them all the time, and they sort of disappeared.

“But then, me and my neighbours changed the way we did cropping, left space in the fields for them to nest, and suddenly they returned. You need to have a piece of land where you’re not having mechanical machinery go over it on a regular basis, because otherwise you destroy the nest. We’ve also got baby owls in our owl box now for the first time in 15 years. They look mega, to be honest, these little owls, little balls of fluff. It is rewarding.”"

-via The Guardian, August 23, 2024

[gothalokhabar]

करमैत्री वातावरण बन्दै 

भद्रपुर, २ मङ्सिर । झापामा खर्चको अनुपातमा राजस्व सङ्कलन बढी रहेको छ । गत आर्थिक वर्ष २०७८/७९ मा जिल्लामा खर्चभन्दा रु एक अर्ब ३१ करोड आठ लाख ६८ हजार बढी राजस्व सङ्कलन भएको कोष तथा लेखा नियन्त्रण कार्यालय झापाका कोष नियन्त्रक मधु पोखरेलले जानकारी दिनुभयो । गत आवमा झापामा रु २३ अर्ब ३८ करोड ९६ लाख ३० हजार राजस्व सङ्कलन र  रु २२ अर्ब सात करोड ८७ लाख ६२ हजार खर्च भएको उहाँले बताउनुभयो । “केही…

[seat-safety-switch]

In order to stay relatable, I like to figure out what the average person hates so I can hate it too. Taxes are always popular, but for some reason people get tired of listening to me when I start discussing the specific methodologies of estimating land value, and how it should really not include properties with several broken Mopars to be "valuable." So I have to figure out some alternatives. The weather, the local sports team, and weeds.

Weeds, you ask? Weeds, I reply. In my idyllic-if-you-squint neighbourhood, there is a secret battle being fought beneath all of our feet. Brave suburbanite warriors struggle valiantly to keep plants they don't want from growing in between the plants they do want. It doesn't help that the former plants are really good at growing, and the latter are simply not. Seems unfair to me, but so is a lot of life, so I got a book from the public library and started boning up on my weeds.

Friends, it turns out that you can bury yourself into an infinitely deep taxonomy of various plants that are distinguishable only by the slightest feature. And all of those plants are greatly undervalued by society. Just like owning Malaise Era Mopars. I was hooked. Suddenly, I found myself walking around my neighbourhood, stopping to gaze at the specific varieties of dandelion, thistle, weird lumpy thing, and Sow's Murderess that dotted the environs.

And yet, despite my greater knowledge, success in social interaction still refused to come. In fact, I now have even greater friction with local by-law, because it turns out they really don't like it when you argue that your property isn't "overgrown with weeds" but instead temporarily colonized by a variety of pollinator-friendly invasive species that the city themselves put there a hundred years ago. I made the lawn-control lady so mad that she drove into a lamp post peeling out of my driveway.

There is good news, though. What was left of her city-allocated Dakota provided a pretty decent 5.2 for my stricken Valiant, and doing the swap immediately raptured me back from caring about all those dumb plants. Thanks, hyperfixation.

[macabresymphonies]

You know, recently I came across the idea that Sam will become an antagonist and honestly? Kind of makes sense I would really be excited for it to turn this direction.

EP 10 was kinda mushy for Sam and Alice, but there are few elements that make me think Sam might turn towards whatever the evil, eldritch side is this season:

Alice constantly remarks how weak Sam is, calling him "a shrimp" or "noodle arms". I'm not implying Alice is doing it maliciously, but it definitely brings our attention towards Sam being physically weak while also being weak of character (as in, he's easily overpowered in the office environment, yet to see how he is in everyday life)

Alice definitely seems like Sam's "bond", but there is SO much drama brewing between him liking Celia, Alice still having feelings for him and Celia (low key) flirting with Alice (while Celia's energy towards Sam seems more friendly), it might end up with Celia "choosing" Alice over Sam (while Alice herself not really reciprocating those feelings for Celia), which plays well into next point

Sam seems to have some type of insecurity about being "chosen". It's quite a common insecurity to have, one where you feel you're always the last option, the "backup friend", never the first choice in something. The institute didn't choose him, Alice had to refer him for the job implying that without it he wouldn't get it and if the "love triangle" sorts itself out like I mentioned before, it also hammers on that "not the first choice" insecurity.

It would directly mirror Jon's arc. Jon never "wanted" to become an avatar, actively avoiding it and only giving in either against his own will, under a lot of duress/emotional trigger or due to not understanding his own powers. Sam on the other hand would be somebody who actively sought out the powers, gave in and "thrived" in them. Wouldn't be the first time we saw somebody "thriving" more as an avatar (or protocol equivalent of one) and with how it seems to work in protocol (items that do not directly corrupt or bind you to them, but are just dangerous or taxing to use) I could easily see an arc where Sam gives in to this power.

Wouldn't be the first time Jonathan Sims turns cinammon roll unhinged (looks at Martin post-change), but this time going all the way.

[kogratorm]

QSMP's Candidates Statements (Translated)

From QuackityToo June 19th Stream.

DISCLAIMER: My native language is Brazilian Portuguese, not Spanish nor English. Due to that and the differences in language expression, I made some changes/paraphrases while translating to accommodate the context, but the overall understanding remains 98% loyal to each candidate’s speech.

BadBoyHalo

BBH proposes that he is the only person capable of carrying out the necessary decisions that the president of Quesadilla Island must take. He believes he is the only one who has the courage to make the difficult decisions necessary to keep the island safe and sound for the residents and prevent a dictator from taking power, all while protecting the eggs.

Foolish

Foolish is excited about the opportunity that the island has provided. He says he wants to enjoy and make the most of the situation because it's not every day that you end up on a crazy island with a diverse population speaking a variety of languages. Some people would prefer to get out of here [Quesadilla] as soon as possible, but he wants to make friends with everyone and enjoy everything the island has to offer.

Etoiles

Etoiles stated that he is charismatic, generous, and that the only negativity he carries is for himself and never for others. Etoiles sets out to explore the island in order to better understand the environment of where they are; he will visit as many dungeons as he needs to get a better understanding of the island.

Baghera

Baghera stated that she has her head screwed on the right way and wishes only the best for the islanders. She values communication and maintains positive relationships with everyone. Baghera believes she is capable of dealing with any fervor or rash situations that may arise. Quesadilla Island is where she was introduced to motherhood, and as a result, she has a specific goal. The place that gave her family and friends is one she must protect at all costs.

Felps

Felps work(ed) as a shipping officer, bus driver, artist, and gardener. What he wants to do is make everyone happy by giving more rights to eggs, noodles, and pasta.

Forever

Forever stated that he is one of the most active players on the island, and as such, he will always be there to protect the people's interests. As a professional Minecraft player, he has many ideas for community projects. Forever describes Richarlyson as one of the happiest things that has happened to him, as well as meeting all of the island's inhabitants (despite the fact that the French make a lot of noise at the egg hotel), given how everyone is very friendly and entertaining.

Mike

Mike promised to restore order to Quesadilla Island, his favorite aspect of the island being the islanders themselves. He would forbid the use of waystones, which would improve the island's dynamics by forcing players to build paths between their bases, allowing them to finally implement a railroad train system.

Cellbit

Cellbit has had prior work experience as a tribute (HG), murderer, prisoner, and detective. He claimed to be Roier's husband, capable of making eloquent arguments and pose intricate inquiries in various scenarios and circumstances. In summary, he believes he is a good president for the Island's future, both for introducing new creative ideas and new narratives to other content creators, as well as for protecting the eggs. His husband, son, and friends are his most valuable things on the island.

Gegg

I swear this isn’t bad translated; it is literally what has been said.

Gegg said he's a businessman, going door to door Gegging. He's a Geggwar criminal. He is an influencer of the family lifestyle. Gegg changes the world. What Gegg likes most about Quesadilla Island is the humidity, the damp places and caves. Gegg promises you freedom. Gegg promises the truth. Gegg promises you power. Gegg promises the abolition of all government rules, taxes and any existing laws. The government establishment holds us, so Gegg will release us. Just one geggrule: believe in Gegg, because Gegg believes in you.

El Quackity

His speech is about his character as well as the election scenario (from the perspective of a Content Creator, not a character). I decided to put it all together because it was somewhat scrambled and also because it was an important reminder for the community.

According to ElQuackity, there is a lack of organization and order. He believes that in the ideal scenario, this can be resolved. He believes that his candidacy in this work and position is critical, and that it will be the best possible. One thing to be clear about it: during his campaign, he will do whatever it takes to ensure that the people have a good president. Thus, he reminds and states that this election event isn’t predetermined, scripted, or planned, and there is no pre-written ending. Elections will be decided by the votes of creators, the efforts of creators, and the votes of the community. He warns that if If he decides to kill a candidate or an egg because it suits his political campaign, he will do so. And, if another candidate decides to kill him for their own benefit, it will be done. No one (except the creators) can say anything to encourage another narrative. We, as a community, need to understand that none of the creators will truly hate each other if one decides to attack the other or kill the other for their own campaign benefit. He encourages the community to support their favorite candidate, but if a creator decides to do something bad to another creator within the game at any time, those who send hate towards creators for actions taken by players in game will be rightfully banned and restricted from all QSMP chat streams. It is, after all, a game. It's a block game. The decisions made within the game will be made by the creators themselves. If the creators ever have a disagreement, it will be solved in private DMs. And nothing bad will ever happen because all the QSMP members are adults who understand that this is all for entertainment purposes. The QSMP Elections ARE for entertainment purposes ONLY.

[mbta-unofficial]

If your city is a Brand, it’s already too late

Long post time. What is it that drives gentrification? Also, what is gentrification? Is it when a city gets blue hair and pronouns? No, it probably already had those.

Gentrification is the result of concentration of wealth in the hands of business owners, including landlords, over and above the hands of residents.

Let’s start with rent. Rent, like any good, is priced according to the laws of supply and demand. Supply of available rental housing is primarily determined by construction costs and estimated return on investment for new construction, and property management costs and estimated return on investment for existing units.

Breaking that down a bit, the higher construction costs get the higher the rent needs to be to break even on new construction. Construction costs include labor (which can always go down but you want it high for moral and practical reasons), materials (highly variable depending on the project) and bureaucratic costs. A bureaucratic cost is a cost that is based on how projects fit into the legal and practical environment, and are usually non-negotiable. Dig Safe, a program which requires three days of surveying local records before breaking ground, is an example where the function is to prevent crews from flattening a neighborhood by puncturing a gas main. Environmental Impact Statements, Fire Codes, Habitability Guidelines, and other regulations increase costs to projects. These programs are good and need to exist, but do stop smaller projects from happening at all because the capital investment required just to actually break ground on a new house might cost as much as the land and materials put together at which point you might as well build another 120$/sqft luxury midrise.

Property management costs for existing units are largely dependent on age and wear. A unit with no occupant is going to depreciate little, and may also appreciate in value. Depreciation and appreciation here are sort of unintuitive because they can happen at the same time. Imagine an old luxury sports car with a high resale price. Driving depreciates the value because it’s literal condition is poorer, even as the resale value goes up over time. The appreciation needs to beat both inflation and the value of depreciation for it to go up in real value. For companies with large capital holdings however, losses such as through the upkeep of empty apartment buildings are useful to a point because they reduce these organizations’s tax burdens. A company that makes a killing on the stock market only has to pay taxes if they keep it: if they buy houses they then don’t rent, they can claim they “lost” their stock market earnings with “bad investments” and then pay no tax while saving the real estate to rent later. Again, this favors the largest possible projects and the largest possible operators because small companies can be killed by an unprofitable quarter or 4 while large ones explicitly benefit from unprofitability in reducing their tax burden.

Expected ROI is the final piece of this, which affects both new and existing units. Every private developer and landlord wants to make as much money as they can, unless they are explicitly are renting as a service. An example of renting as a service would be families, who will rent to each other at favorable rates or for free, privileging people with large and/or wealthy families that are friendly with each other. Now, ROI is also subject to supply and demand. Everyone wants to build 120$/sqft luxury apartments but once everybody does nobody can sell/rent for those prices without setting a price floor and waiting for buyers to catch up. If you are a small developer, you can’t afford to do this. Your expenses will eat you alive. If you are a big developer, though, those expenses are offsetting the gains you make and serving to reduce you tax bill. Units at prices nobody can pay are effectively furloughed, meaning off the market, and, so long as they remain cheap to maintain, will remain that way, artificially restricting supply. It doesn’t matter if it’s for sale or not when it’s at a price you can’t afford. (Sidebar, anyone who tells you that the minimum wage depresses hiring because it artificially restricts demand is lying to you. It’s not strictly false, but like the above it’s a multi-variable equation and blanket statements about cost of labor are aimed at killing wages.)

What this alludes to also is a need for greater income equality. In order for rental to be a competitive option with furlough, not only does the price of furlough have to be increased, the real value of wages have to be increased in order to create opportunities for people to splurge. This is a twofold strategy, of both increasing the rewards of putting units on the market and increasing the costs of keeping them off. If real wages barely cover cost of living, or don’t cover cost of living, nobody can realistically spend more real wages on rent regardless of the percentage of their income it is. (Real wages here refers to the political power implied by dollar wages. A dollar is really worth whatever it can be exchanged for, whether that is a candy bar or a square inch of a 144$/sqft condo) The real value of everything except time and land are also constantly going down because of constant improvements in manufacturing. The cost in acres of land and hours of labor of a pound of beef, a bolt of cloth, or a pint of beer have dropped dramatically in the last century. Unfortunately, land is one of the few things that remains in marxist terms uncommodifiable, because it cannot be fully abstracted from the physical properties that make it valuable and we can’t make more of it just by making a better machine. This means that as the real value of things goes down because of supply and demand, the value of land only goes up because the supply is hard capped. If the value of everything under capitalism must go down because of increased production, while the value of capitalist assets must go up, or the system collapses, it makes sense that land would become a fixed point in that equation, the marxist speed of light observable from all reference points. The best approximation of land as commodity is, what else, apartments, which make available as living space the empty air above us. Because production never stops, the value of everything but land must go down. Therefore, as time passes, the price of land, and hence the price of housing, must tend upwards. Therefore, in order for housing to remain affordable, real wages must grow. This is the opposite of what is currently happening, as real wages have gone down for decades.

This income inequality which is one facet of capitalism is not new. For as long as people have lived in urban areas there have been issues between the abject class, the working class, the ruling class, and the professional class, a four part distinction I will seriously argue for in opposition to a lot of marxist theorists. The ruling and working classes ought to be familiar, or at least self explanatory. However, the other two classes I identify, the professionals and the abject, are useful to this analysis because they fill both a racial gap in the primarily marxist analysis I put forward and identify the two most likely groups to rent, which is to say the worker who works to produce but owns without governing and the professional who works to govern but does not own. The ruling class both governs and owns, but its court is full of courtiers who are there to push various agendas from within the rule of law without per se producing. Likewise, the working class pensioner exists in opposition to the abject who is denied the opportunity or the resources to be productive explicitly as a means to manufacture a threat against which inter-class solidarity between the workers and the rulers is developed. The textbook nazi conspiracy theory about “elites” doing a great racial replacement picks out perfectly what I mean by both the racial character of the professional and the abject and their utilization to foster solidarity between your plumber uncle and Elon Musk. This is relevant to both the broad theme of gentrification and the narrow theme of rent because gentrification is a wedge issue that divides the working class and the professional class far more than its impact on any other. The working class’ disidentification with doctors, lawyers, PMCs and other yuppie types, as well as the professional class’ disidentification with union politics, illegalism, and radicalism in general is brought to firecrackers in virtually any conversation about gentrification which seems in passing to be more about tapas bars than about real politics. Likewise, these groups shared distrust of and disdain for the abject, who are explicitly labeled by the state as constitutionally guilty, is the basis for the very broken windows policing strategy that empties neighborhoods of minorities regardless of class. The Rent is Too Damn High, and excluding homeless people from the “working” working class is a big part of how we got here specifically because the interests of small time owners and small time government functionaries, carried to their conclusions, are necessarily self defeating. These two groups eliminate the presence of the abject from their spaces at their own financial peril.

In addition to class, there is also a specific historical movement that is crucial to the understanding of gentrification as it exists, which is the movement of factories in search of cheap labor. The United States is not a good place to find cheap urban labor. You build a factory and suddenly everyone complains about air quality and labor violations and you can’t just kill them because everyone has lawyers. You kill one (us citizen) organizer and the NLRB is trying to get you in court for intimidation. What’s the country come to? But a shipping container costs a quarter cent per mile and the goods aren’t perishable so you go to Guangzhou or Cape Town where you can kill union bosses in peace. But for the American city, that’s a loss of what once made land prime real estate. What jobs can replace the insatiable demand for labor that a 24 hour paper mill once produced? Service labor, which crucially is site specific and therefore not outsourceable, is what the US has predominantly turned to. (and arms manufacturing which is not outsourced for very different reasons) However, service labor is only in demand if there is already a stable population that can be served, which requires a constant influx of capital holders in demand of service. This is why Airbnb exists and is hollowing out rental availability, why Boston as a college town is the way it is, and why there are in fact so many damn tapas bars. Fred Salveucci talked about being able to go north of the expressway in the 70s and being able to get a plate of mac and beans for half a buck. I went looking for a 5$ slice of pizza on my lunch break today around Government Center and found two places that were boarded up and ended up spending 20$ at Chilacates. Cities are being slowly turned into Cancun, complete with the fences to keep out the homeless.

What can be done about this? Obviously the factors we’ve discussed that favor consolidation of housing are mostly either contained within a gordion’s knot of tax policy or intrinsic to capitalism/goods as commodities. But, given that we narrow our objectives to making the rent lower, some obvious weaknesses jump out: increasing the cost of vacancy forces units out of furlough, because companies are no longer able to justify the losses, and increasing real wages increases the availability of capital for workers to spend on rent. These are the prongs I talked about earlier.

Legal means to pursue each prong exist. Both a minimum wage and a maximum wage, depending on their implementation, can potentially increase real wages, and vacancy taxes directly increase the costs of vacancy. The government can also ignore the market and directly mandate maximum rents within certain parameters. This tends to decrease the long term supply of housing for the reasons discussed at the outset, given that if the revenues from house building don’t cover the costs of building, less gets built. However, any political movement that exists exclusively within the white lines of the law fails to genuinely threaten change. Landlords, like bosses, break the law constantly with the impunity that a lawyer provides them against consequence. This is why a healthy dose of illegalism is an important part of any effective political movement. The most direct action one can take is property occupation, or squatting. Squatter’s rights are nearly non-existent in the United States. The most leeway that any state grants to any unknown persons occupying a dwelling is 60 days notice to vacate the property, and there are states that allow no notice evictions or lack statutes governing squatting at all. Every single state regards the occupation of owned property as trespassing, meaning most kinds of squatting are prosecutable offenses. However, squatting, even temporarily in ways that don’t expose the squatter to liability provided they don’t get caught, can seriously impact the value of properties. You have heard of rent lowering gunshots. This is the serious version of that. At the same time, illegal action needs legal defense, both in terms of non-compliance with police to protect those willing to take illegal actions from arrest and in terms of legal, 1st amendment protected disruption to keep focus on the issue. The most effective movements have a radical wing and a institutionalist wing who do not acknowledge each other but share the same tactics and objectives.

If you are housed, you need to be willing to protect and support homeless people because they are your front line. Start or join an Occupy movement, where they are your peers in occupying a public space illegally in a way that is too public to prosecute. Give to people on the street, and smash anti-homeless architecture if nobody is watching. Be willing to distract cops if you see someone doing something dodgy so they can get away. Remember that following the law is a tactic, and so is breaking it.

The case for this being on my transit blog is arguably weak, but I felt compelled after a particularly hateful experience looking at facebook memes about homeless people on the T. You should want those people there. You should want those people breaking down the doors of luxury apartments and setting up shop. You should want them keeping your city safe because the cops you hire to separate you from them will train their guns on you next.

And for gods sake, don’t let your city become a brand. Branding is marketing. Branding is clean, and bloodless, and a gloved hand around your throat that leaves no fingerprints.

[balkanradfem]

I'm so torn about this issue. City maintenance crew has replaced street lamps around my building. They did it so fast too, I never saw the construction, I only noticed this morning that outside looks completely different, that it's darker now.

The lamps we had emitted warm, yellow, glowing light, and they were whimsy and interesting, they made the street look good! They were nice round lamps with the tops shaded, so they looked like glowing half-circles, and the nice orange-yellow light would make the entire street look homely. Few of them were tangled in tree branches, and I would linger around them in the evenings, watching the light make the leaves glow, imagining I was in Narnia.

New lamps... have none of that. They're bare, tall spike-looking things, with a horizontal shelf that emits white light straight down. The street looks slightly dystopian, corporate, like they put the absolute minimum effort in making sure there's some kind of light. None of the whimsy, none of the detail, no Narnia here. It looks like a corporate parking lot.

However.. the new lamps emit much less light. And they're much efficiently shaded, so less light is being cast up. Which means, the streets are darker, and more importantly, the sky is darker. That means less light-pollution being emitted into the atmosphere. Which means, I can sometimes catch a glimpse of a star. I can stop being annoyed at how light it is outside during all hours of the night. I love darkness in the night, I hate that we need to have lamps glowing the entire time. I like less light. I like less light pollution. One could argue that this is the move in the right direction, and the city is causing less light pollution with this change, so this could potentially be good for the environment.

But it's not that simple! If they went and took down all the yellow, whimsy, fully functional lamps, and made new, minimalistic, boring corporate lamps, they had to take out new materials, they had to mine that from the earth, they had to spend an enormous amount of energy, labour, resources, to make and purchase these new lamps. That means the city is using tax money and resources, and natural minerals in order to replace already functional lamps. Were they really doing a good thing, doing all this just to miminize light pollutin in the city?

And let's say they did this differently; if we assume a city lamp doesn't last forever, and they would have eventually broken down or stopped working, what if they phased them out one by one, replaced each one as it became defective, instead of taking them all out and once and replacing it with the new ones? Wouldn't that have been a more economical, environmentally-friendly thing to do?

And the thing is, I'm not sure this city is actually worried about the light pollution as much as I am, because every damn holiday they're blasting lights from all direction. Every december they're having all the bridges showered in light, they're having giant glowing figures placed around everywhere, they're wrapping every damn building in so much lights, all the trees are having light globes hanging from them, it's a nightmare, and I hate it. And then they're having all this additional holidays and celebrations where they throw fireworks (I'm not even joking they have fireworks 8 times a year) and putting lights everywhere. It's supposed to be for 'tourism'. If they were trying to reduce the light pollution, that clownery would be the first thing to go. I don't think they replaced the lamps to reduce the light pollution.

But then this is my point, why did they do this? If they're trying to make the city look nicer for tourists, why would they tear out beautiful whimsy lamps that made the place look human and nice? If they're trying to reduce the amount of energy spent yearly for the illumination of the city, why not stop overdoing the holiday lights? Who is benefiting from this? I need some answers.

[mariacallous]

Both parties have spoken about the need to focus on children and families during this year’s election cycle. In fact, it has been a talking point for decades in both Democratic and Republican party platforms. Support for children and families is key to the future health of a nation.

Despite this professed commitment, however, approximately 23.6 million young children (0-5 years) in America are at risk of not meeting their developmental potential, draining the country of much-needed human capital. Analyses of the U.S. federal budget indicate very limited investment in children. Overall, data from 2018 to 2024 shows that the share of federal spending on children ranged from 9.71% in fiscal year (FY) 2018 to 12.16% in 2024, with a dip to 7.48% in 2020. Focusing on children under age three, however, indicates a 1.52% federal budget spending in FY 2024. This represented a sliver of the total budget and a decline from an allotment of 1.66% in FY 2023. While the increase in overall spending on children in fiscal year 2024 is welcome news, it falls woefully short of meeting the needs of America’s children and families and is concerning when compared with funding in peer nations around the world.

The result of this checkered pattern of investment is that America ranks last among OECD countries in providing family care and leave, has one of the lowest pre-K enrollment rates with no current universal system in place, last in family-friendly policies, and ranks near the bottom of 41 advanced countries on a series of child wellness markers.

To be fair, the U.S. has taken small steps forward for young children through the Child Tax Credit (CTC), a minor increase in access to licensed childcare centers, an increase in some states for pre-K and family leave. However, these policies offer a piecemeal approach to supporting young children from birth to five years and families and do not offer countrywide, comprehensive coverage. Implementation of many of these initiatives is left to states with uneven consequences. The ultimate result? Child poverty in the U.S. is among the worst in the industrialized nations, and many children in families with fewer resources—who are disproportionately Black and Brown —trail behind their peers from more affluent environments in mental and physical health, education outcomes, and more.

Our wavering commitment to children and families in terms of actionable, comprehensive policies that support children from birth to five years and their families leaves some wondering whether America really cares about its children despite the rhetoric.

This policy brief points to six key areas of investment in which bipartisan action can bring America in line with other nations and make a marked difference in the lives of millions of young children 0-5 years and their families.

We propose bipartisan investment to 1) increase high quality childcare options; 2) increase the availability of quality pre-K; 3) increase programs to mitigate poverty; 4) establish a federal paid family leave policy; 5) increase support for infant and child mental health; and 6) establish a permanent national level body to coordinate multi-sectoral supports for children.

[evil-au-of-the-sun]

Proper doll care

So sadly I've seen doll collectors post pictures of their dolls and the shocking amount of doll mistreatment on this site is astronomical. You should know what you're getting into when you decide to adopt a doll but it seems people have completely forgotten their husbandry. Not to worry, I'm here to set the record straight. So hopefully y'all can stop mistreating your dolls.

Enclosure - Dolls don't require a lot of space we all know that but that doesn't mean space isn't a plus. Dolls like imagining they're walking around empty space around them, not providing them with an opportunity to imagine this can be detrimental to their health.

Enrichment - Now I'm not naming any names but I've seen some of you just leaving your dolls standing around thinking that's enough. Well guess what? Surviving is not thriving. Dolls should have at least one enriching accessory PER DOLL. Dolls are surprisingly territorial, don't make them share accessories just because you wanted to cheap out.

Socialization - On the topic of owning multiple dolls. Most people just throw their new dolls on the shelf and don't think much about it. This is quite rude as even though dolls are known to be friendly creatures that get along with their own kind. They should be given a chance to introduce themselves like they do in the wild. This isn't even difficult just let your current dolls stare face to face at your new doll for around a minute. Caution! If your new doll falls over, that means they weren't accepted by your other dolls. You should give them a separate enclosure and bring them to meet the others in a controlled environment once a day until there are no more signs of skirmish.

Socializing with your dolls - As previously mentioned, dolls are quite social creatures. Even though the need for socialization can be curbed by buying multiple dolls, human interaction is crucial. Dolls see us as dolls, just a different breed. So if you ignore your doll, they can feel like they're rejected by their own packmate which can be taxing on their mental wellbeing.

These are most of the caveats that new doll owners ignore these days. I hope this helped and I hope some of y'all will stop mistreating your dolls, again not naming names but y'all know who you are. :)

[beautiful-basque-country]

There's something I wanted to ask, but not necessarily related to your blog. In Spanish TV shows and movies I see, they always say "President" and never make any reference to any king or monarchy. Is it against the law to mention the royal family in any tv show?

Kaixo anon!

You just haven't watched enough Spanish TV, anon, because the royal family is discussed every other day. There are TV series, documentaries, debates, and not in all of them they are painted in a positive light....

Last news I remember was that Princess Leonor used the official jet to bring her friends from Wales for New Year's Eve celebration and back to Wales. Of course tax payers payed for the gas of this very sensible and 100% environment-friendly use of a jet that is supposedly limited to bring the king or the president in their official trips 🙄.