iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

I'd love to see it broken down in terms of rent control which limits price shocks vs rent control which ensures rent-controlled rents increase more slowly than market rents. The latter seems certain to cause problems from first principles. ... yes, it'd be possible to do this myself ...

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SF's rent control has been a clear negative in terms of livability (60% of CPI -> long term distortion). But rent control which allows rents to appreciate at greater than inflation (e.g. 5% + CPI) seems more plausible -- limiting shocks but also limiting long-term divergence/distortion.

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People like you are the reason Israel exists. Bundism lost to Zionism because Jews have been persecuted across time and place. I don't mean your sins justify the pogroms in the West Bank -- but that your activism hurts Palestinians. Not that you care about them as anything other than a symbol, ofc

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Our (humans) powers of self-delusion are hard to understate -- so long as we're given acceptable lies. I have no sympathy for those who abdicated their civic responsibility and voted for Trump or abstained... ... OTOH there but for the grace of god go I. Consequences are often how we learn. :-(

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The frustrating thing is that you can find a correction somewhere on page 16-- the writers try to cover this. But it's not repeated ad nauseam. And if you read the headlines-- they're intended to mislead. This is why the NYT & WaPo are dead to me. Their editors have agency and a crystal clear bias.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

That's attacking a politician, rather than attacking all the voters. The rhetoric from the right is really surprisingly toxic. I don't mean just insulting or dismissive -- I mean incompatible with compromise and with multi-party democracy. (I sometimes listen to talk radio. It's ... illuminating.)

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From the modern right, every accusation is a confession...

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Reposted by Ed K

SpryOldLorax @spryoldlorax.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Most of my followers already know an understand this, but it never hurts to emphasize this and maybe those that share this post will reach people that need to grasp this very simple concept:

I think that if there is a single thing that
cis people should understand about
trans people is that we aren't trans
because we transition, we transition
because we are trans.

Stopping a trans person from
transitioning doesn't make them not
trans, it makes them miserable.

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I get lots which are from folks I've never donated to. I assume someone I did donate to sold my name & contact info. The worst is that they also like to text my wife, who isn't a US citizen (i.e. she cannot donate and has never done so) -- for whom this is both pointless and infuriating.

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IMO it's like the KDP's slogan in the early 1930s -- "after Hitler, our turn." It's easy to imagine politics as a seesaw with a natural center and fantasize that it will swing back your way after going hard enough to the other side. But there's no intrinsic center.

IMO it was correct that the House voted to impeach him -- even though it was unsuccessful, and may have backfired. There was a chance things could have gone differently (7 GOP senators voted to convict the second time). But now? Nope. Politicians still in the GQP caucus won't vote to convict.

Your posts illustrate the reason your movement is failing. (I take no pleasure in that, btw -- I'd rather have a successful leftist movement than one which is intentionally self-sabotaging.)

IOW: you're responsible for your own vote, and Nader is responsible for his participation in our democracy. He had a choice how to campaign in the 2000 election, and he choose chaos and harm.

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I was an example of a person who might have voted for him given his campaign positions, and if I hadn't paid attention to the details of what he said and just voted based on that feeling I would have. My vote belongs to me, and not voting for him was a better choice given the values he claimed.

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I was explaining why I agree with the OP: Nader has hurt the causes he claims to champion, and in doing so trashed his legacy (so far as I'm concerned). I never said you or anyone else's vote belongs to the Democratic party, which was the non sequitur portion. I just explained why/how I judge.

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I was registered Green -- because I believed in the principles the party expoused. But based on those principles and an honest evaluation of the candidates, I realized voting for Nader in 2000 would have hurt the things I cared about. Your response is a non sequitur.

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Biden's bill was the IRA. Claiming that there would only be success you'd credit Biden with if he fully solved the problem is a dishonest position -- you wouldn't apply the same test to others.

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My problem with Nader is that I listened to what he said in 2000 while campaigning, and what he said was dishonest or delusional or both. He did have an effect on the election, like many others. But his effect was the exact opposite of what he claimed it would be, and that was obvious in advance.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I listened to Nader in 2000 -- I was registered Green at the time (but not since). He was not a serious candidate, but it was a serious election. I knew Gore would win my state, but Nader was obviously going to hurt the causes he claimed, and I couldn't stomach the dishonesty or self-delusion.

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Most Western countries have rates of home ownership similar to ours (cf ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web... ). There are advantages to owning a home (obviously I think so or I wouldn't be willing to deal with the problems involved) -- but there are also advantages to renting.

ec.europa.eu

68% of people living in EU households own their home

In 2024, more than two-thirds (68%) of the population living in EU households owned their home, slightly down from 69% in 2023. The remaining 32% lived in rented housing, up from 31% in the previous y...

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Housing affordability is a real issue, but the spike in ownership the aughts was due to bad policies, and wanting to repeat those makes no sense. I have an album I call the joys of home ownership, illustrating only a tiny fraction of the things that can go wrong. Not everyone actually wants this.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

So Trump's hand-picked board agrees that he is unable to faithfully execute the laws -- i.e. he is unable to fulfill his oath of office.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I figured that was purpose of lesbian bars... (A couple I know like MANGO!, but that's here in San Francisco. And my own experience is from decades ago anyway...)

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Reposted by Ed K

Michael Paulauski♨️ @mike10010100.com · 23/09/2026

In fact, it turns out you *lose* leverage when the people likeliest to listen to you are replaced by people who will absolutely not!

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"fighting to impeach Trump is literally the least they could do" -- only if you mean fighting to win a majority. Anything which interferes with winning in swing districts is self-defeating. Without a large majority, investigations could be useful but impeachment would fail as it did last time.

I have the account you responded to muted. FWIW

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Brett Kavanaugh’s Imaginary Immigration Stops Opinion Gets More Embarrassing Every Day

Unpopular opinion: Kavanaugh should be praised for his explanation of "Kavanaugh stops". They were always a fantasy disconnected from reality, but a concurrence laying out those details allows courts to determine when the decision obviously doesn't apply. ballsandstrikes.org/law-politics... IANAL

ballsandstrikes.org

The fact that ICE officers do not allow wrongfully detained people to “promptly go free” is a surprise to only one man in America.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Influence operations are now easy to implement. I used to find social media helpful as a way to get exposed to other opinions But if those opinions are mostly propaganda ... it is impossible to emphasize enough: propaganda works, including on people who think it doesn't.

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I think it's self-interest (when something similar but more mild was tried against Fox, other networks stood with Fox). But there's a good argument for self-interest as motivation for pro-social activities and stances.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Canadians should absolutely protect themselves from the batshit insanity going on here in the US.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

America's reputation is mixed at best. But the idea that we are seen as worse than Al Qaeda is not tethered to any coherent analysis nor is it a common opinion inside or outside the USA. And no, IDGAF that Piker hedged it with "pound for pound". How quickly people forget the Yazidi genocide.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

OP was clear that inflation remains high; but it's still nothing like it was in the 70s. Anyway, here is diesel adjusted for inflation, from www.macrotrends.net/4394/us-dies... Certainly it's approaching a relative high, but this is not the first time nor will it be the last.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

When I see people advocating for riots as a political strategy, I can't help but think of US history like this. (Riots have often been used by the reactionary right as an excuse to seize power or do things they wanted to do already -- such as massacres.)

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

How long have you been campaigning for LGBTQ+ rights? I can't claim back to Stonewall -- but I have since the 90s. People saying that the party that has crappy and indifferent politicians is the same as the one with malevolent folks who want us dead -- those aren't your allies.

Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 15/09/2026

In 2021, the Democratic party had a trifecta nationally. But then the GQP took the House in 2022, and the Senate & Presidency in 2024. The places where trans folks are most under attack are the places where the GQP took power. I'm not ignoring what happened in the past 5 years.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

You have read about what things were like before Stonewall, right? And how things were in the 80s? And the 90s? The 00s? Choosing a data point 5 years back and ignoring the rest of our history is a strategy for engagement or voter suppression but not education or political organizing.

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Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

And as you'd expect if you assumed partisan intent -- Leon county is more Democratic and more Black than the average county in Florida. ( ballotpedia.org/Leon_County,... and dos.fl.gov/elections/da... )

ballotpedia.org

Leon County, Florida, elections, 2026

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I think pretending that voters made choices other than what they did make you either intending to cause evil or the most idiotic of the useful idiots. Except that you respond more like a bot, so I guess I'm describing the person who gave you instructions for how to post.

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And before you give me some BS about how the problem is unreliable candidates, I'll remind you of Fetterman, who was the preferred candidate for folks who didn't want a center left politician -- and is quite a disappointment. The answer is: lack of supermajority and bad electoral choices by voters.

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Remember when I mentioned Manchin and Sinema? Calling them Democrats is a stretch. The House also has its share of Democrats who are conservative. There's no excuse for Sinema (which is why she only served one term), but Manchin was the left most candidate possible from WV.

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The House flipped to Republican in 2022; the Senate stayed narrowly on the Democratic side (over-performing polls) -- but that's only by including Manchin and Sinema. Blaming Democrats for Republican legislative activity paints you as ignorant or deceptive. (Or both.)

You are either a useful idiot, or a chaos agent working to help the reactionary right.

Ed K @edk.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

He would have won except for the fact that more voters voted for the other candidate. So -- nah. I get that he has folks who think he walks on water, but he's a politician with strengths and weaknesses, and most of us Democrats wanted a different candidate.

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At 4% -- those may be nutters or they may be people who misclicked or lied about being Democrats.