No. Rent and mortgage are two different things. One is a fee for service and one is a loan.

If your home that you own doubles in market value and you decide to sell it, you pay off the mortgage (loan) and keep the profit (capital gain). If you are renting and the home is sold, you gain nothing.

If your home that you own burns down, you still owe the bank the money you borrowed for purchase (mortgage). If you are renting the home that burned down, you don’t owe anybody money. There is to service to pay a fee for anymore.

Like sure, fuck capitalism. But we don’t need to misrepresent how these systems work.

I’m not sure how much the kingdom was involved in Al Qaeda’s early years, unless you count American-Saudi-British funding of MAK/other Mujahideen during the soviet-afghan war. However, it’s clear Al Qaeda was already declaring against the kingdom a couple years before the USS Cole in '98. But sure I’d see Al Qaeda being a child of SA in a way similar to the KKK being a child of the US

You forgot the part where Saudi Arabia started courting American aid and literally expelled Bin Laden for being anti-American. That doesn’t make SA “the good guys” but it makes a huge difference in how your framing paints SA’s position and involvement with Al Qaeda during the 2000s. Their history is long and complicated, but during the war on terror, SA was much more aligned with the US against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden

You forgot the part where Saudi Arabia started courting American aid and literally expelled Bin Laden for being anti-American. That doesn’t make SA “the good guys” but it makes a huge difference in how your framing paints SA’s position and involvement with Al Qaeda during the 2000s. Their history is long and complicated, but during the war on terror, SA was much more aligned with the US against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden

It’s not that they throw a ball around really well, it’s that the NBA brings in over 10 billion in annual revenue because of these players. How much are you willing to pay someone to bring in that amount of money?

Of course, it makes perfect sense to describe Canadian products as North American, but OP asks about “American” RPGs. It would be strange to call Canadian Bacon “American food”.

BioWare is Canadian

Looking at it a different way, that would be like a photographer taking a photo of the sandwich and proclaiming “I’m an artist” or a director telling a chef what to make, telling a cinematographer/camera operator how to shoot it, and an editor how to cut it to create a short film of a sandwich and proclaiming “I’m an artist”. Art can be made from a series of creative and purposeful decisions that result in a piece of expression. It might not be good art, it might not be effortful art, it might even be unethically made art, but it’s not not-art.

You’re literally advocating for stereotyping people according to those immutable characteristics. Disgusting.

Nice try, but no. That’s really not what I was saying. The conversation is about how environmental context (culture, history, positionality) influences experiences and how individuals with different experiences can contribute uniquely.

I thought diversity was strength. Guess it’s instead “diversity specifically of the types I define is strength, provided it’s my unique definition of strength (read: intellectual homogeneity)”.

Diversity has its strengths and weaknesses depending on context. For example ethno nationalism can lead to powerful states of a kind, but as an ideology it is inherently oppressive and dehumanizing, so I’d argue it’s ethically wrong. Being a particular race or gender is never ethically wrong, but ideologies certainly can be.

More thinly-veiled bigotry, essentially saying that race and gender determine ideology. Gross.

Again, deliberately misinterpreting the statement. Nobody is talking about race/sex being deterministic of ideology and your little trap conflating social groups and individual identity is transparent and silly.

You fail troll.

1. Differences like race/sex being only “superficial” and therefore unimportant is a disingenuous strawman. These attributes are also associated with substantial differences in experience, epistemologies, and even ideologies (white feminists can differ in ideology from black and Asian feminists), all of which can productively contribute to more and better solutions than if those diversities were not present.

2. Ideological diversity while certainly beneficial, can also hamper collaboration. Especially when one ideology dehumanized or embodies an existential threat to other members of the team. Some shared ideology around shared humanity and collaboration is needed right. Relatedly, a single ideology amongst one group can also be a point of productive focus. For example anti-abortion movements or abolishing slavery.

3. The makeup of the best team for the best jobs depends on the project as well, whether it’s a political science textbook, a cross-cultural advertising campaign, or a piece of universal design. A team with some diversity along ideological, cultural, gendered lines while also sharing commonalities can be better equipped to tackle a range of problems by mitigating glaring gaps

4. I don’t know why you’re drawing this line between ideology, race, and gender. Shit is intersectional.

Here is your example. We have whole institutions dedicated to diversity of ideology. It’s called Academia. Diversity of ideology is the OG diversity. It’s the vanilla default status quo of diversity.

I don’t believe you.

“Don’t we try to categorize everything though”

That sounds like a you problem :P

Enter constructivist relativism

“Lmao no sympathy for anyone who buys expensive shoes”

^this you?

When you mature as a human being, whatever age that may be, you develop kindness through a willingness to understand and empathize with perspectives that conflict with your own. That doesn’t necessarily mean you have to accept it for yourself. For many people, clothing is not simply a means of pragmatic function. It’s also a source of self-expression, joy, and beauty. Now for me, $600 for a pair of sneakers is exorbitant and ridiculous no matter who designed it. But it’s not a product for me. And if someone with the means feels great buying and wearing them, I don’t see the harm. I don’t usually pay more than I have to for footwear, but I would pay a premium for certain kitchen tools I use all the time if I like the design, enjoy looking at it, and feel good using it. What I do sympathize with and would like to see reduced in harm is the consumerist culture that pressures people with less means into feeling like they have to have such things for fulfillment.

This framing makes it seem like Biden is going against the majority congressional sentiment, but he is not. The US congress, overall, is supportive of sending military support to Israel, as evidenced by their passing bills other aid bills, which is a slower process.

I mean there you go, Toyota’s are appliances. They have to look bland because their style has to remain inoffensive after decades on the road.

That being said, I’m impressed with how much style they’ve managed to put on the new Prius while still aiming for long-term fleet vehicle role. I also like what they’re trying to do with the BZ4 styling wise, even if it’s a compromised first gen product.

There’s also always the Supra and LC500 :3

I would too. Unfortunately I’m pretty sure most places that check even half those boxes still fail in the market. You often have to drag consumers kicking and screaming towards something more equitable and less exploitative, even when they’re the ones being exploited.

Because they are reacting to living under the oppressive structures of late capitalism. Having been raised in a capitalist world, they naturally overemphasize economic systems and their alternatives and make assumptions about government.

So when they communism theyusually mean communism + some equitable government or just they mean socialist democracy.

Funnily enough, you live pretty well in China these days if you’re a good little capitalist.

Yeah well there’s cooking as in purely functional preparation of nutrients, and then there’s cooking as in a process of caring for others by creating a worthwhile experience of food that is needed, engaging, and delicious. The downside is this experience usually has a time limit dependent on time and others’ availability (eating hot food together). It’s sad for such effort to go to waste. The alternative extreme to this kind of nurturing is abandoning the idea that family time over meals is worthwhile and just shitting out nutrient bricks so the children don’t starve. I don’t think anyone really wins in the long run with that.

But you have to save those girls for when you need to spew toxic abusive shit at them for daring to be present in a space you feel you have ownership over. /S

https://youtu.be/46ms4LAhdrE?si=iewRBXdPj07Mo7e0