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mastodon - Link to source
Contains disturbing video

Sensitive content

reshared this

mastodon - Link to source

Oregon's Housing Crisis is the fault of "Investors" driving up prices, not a shortage of housing:

From the OR Capital Chronicle:

There is no large crisis in the raw amount or supply of housing. The crisis lies in its price.

In this current decade, Oregon’s population increased only slightly, from about 4.2 million at the decade’s start, to about 4.3 million now, and there’s been no mass destruction of housing. . . .

Legislative Republicans this April complained that in the last three years only about 43,000 building permits for residences had been issued in the state, well below the governor’s plan for 108,000. But the state’s number of households rose by about the same amount during that time. The new construction that happened should, in theory, have been enough to keep up with it.

In 2023 (the most recent year available), Oregon had about 1.75 million “households” with the average household comprising 2.4 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That same year, the Census counted in the state 1.88 million “housing units” — over 100,000 more housing units than the number of households — including “a house, an apartment, a group of rooms, or a single room occupied or intended for occupancy as separate living quarters.” It doesn’t include some other residential places, such as trailer and mobile home parks.

The upshot is that Oregon, like most states, has more residential units than households.

And there is no crisis for people of sufficient means. Anyone who can afford to plunk down a half-million or so (which includes many existing homeowners, in or out of state) will not have much trouble finding a house. People below that level, a large part of the population, may find that a house (or in some places apartment rentals, too) are simply out of reach.

The problem with Oregon’s housing crisis is affordability. The median house value in Oregon (which reflects purchase prices) as of May was $540,300, according to online real estate market platform Zillow. One home-buying calculator estimates that if a purchaser puts down 18% for the home — the median downpayment of home buyers in the U.S., according to the National Association of Realtors — they would need to have more than $97,000 saved, and earn more than $120,000 per year to afford their mortgage payments. That means fewer than a fifth of Oregon households could afford a median-priced house based on income. (Sales by owners of currently owned houses could expand that number.)

Despite the limited pool of buyers, prices have climbed and stayed high.

Why?

Oregon’s notably strict laws on land use are often mentioned as a cause of the problem. They may contribute to it, but many other states — such as next-door Idaho — have far fewer building restrictions but still have house pricing problems as bad, or worse, as Oregon’s.

High priced homes can be more profitable for builders and developers, so they build more of them.

But the key explanation for why so many more houses are purchased, compared to the number of local residents who can buy, seems to be that relatively wealthy investors — individuals and especially businesses — are buying large numbers of houses and apartments in Oregon, and around the country.

Many national studies have found as much.

Redfin News, which tracks home sales nationally, said last August that investor home buying has been rising steadily in recent years — about 3% annually — and bought one of every six U.S. homes that sold — purchasing $43 billion worth of properties — and one of every four low-priced homes that sold.

Redfin found that during the 2nd quarter of 2024 in Portland, 13% of homes sold (valued at $511,419,529) were bought by investors, an amount rising in recent years. Many homes are then flipped and resold for still higher prices. All of that activity places upward pressure on sales prices of other homes as well.

A variety of buyers have been among the mass purchasers. Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley has for several years focused on the role of hedge funds in home buys, and with U.S. Rep. Adam Smith, a Democrat from Washington, introduced in 2023 the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act.

Merkley called hedgefunds, “a contributing factor that has made it more difficult for middle-class Americans to become homeowners and is contributing to America’s twin crises of housing unaffordability and wealth inequality.”

Others have disagreed about how large a role the finance organizations have played. But someone can afford to buy all those houses — in many cases well beyond the asking price — and less-wealthy wage earners cannot compete.

That would be a real and pertinent, albeit sensitive, topic for the new state agency to address. Until someone does, the housing shortage for most Oregonians will go on.

#Housing #Houselessness #Capitalism

oregoncapitalchronicle.com/202…

in reply to emeritrix

snac - Link to source

cy

I don't care whose fault it is. Use eminent domain to claim unused residences for public housing projects. The investors will flee the state in droves; good. Rent control, welfare, and public housing. That's all we have to talk about.

Alternatively we can talk about murdering people who make life hard just because you don't have a permanent residence, though I'll need a drool bib if that's the topic of conversation.

mastodon - Link to source

Activists say the City University of New York is escalating its repression against Palestine activism by suspending a student leader and terminating the positions of four faculty members who have been active in protesting Israel's genocide in Gaza.

mondoweiss.net/2025/07/cuny-su…

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza
@palestine @israel


CUNY suspends student activist leader, fires four faculty members in escalation of repression against

Activists say the City University of New York is escalating its repression against Palestine activism by suspending a student leader and terminating the positions of four faculty members who have been active in protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Billie Estrine (Mondoweiss)

Sozan reshared this.

mastodon - Link to source

MAGA Don speaks

whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/0…

A statement summarizing the end of USG $$ going to illegal aliens. In brief
- HHS restricting 13 programs
- Education ending free tuition
- Agriculture ending food assistance
- Labor ending grants & assistance
- Justice ending access to benefits

I've seen a few MDM outlet reports - they only mention HHS.


Taxpayer-Funded Benefits Are for American Citizens — Not Illegals – The White House

Today, at the direction of President Donald J. Trump, the Administration is taking the biggest step in more than 30 years to protect taxpayer-funded
The White House

mastodon - Link to source

Apparently Libre Office is free and contains no AI.

#AI #Microsoft #LibreOffice

I don't know who needs to hear this but Microsoft 365 went up from about $70 to about $100 this year because they added Al. If you go to cancel before it auto renews, it gives you the option to switch to the about $70 “Personal Classic” 365. If this reaches one person who needed to know, I will have done my good deed today.

mastodon - Link to source

#AI is a tool used by #police to launder accountability.

“According to the EFF, Draft One "seems deliberately designed to avoid audits that could provide any accountability to the public." In one video from a roundtable discussion the EFF reviewed, an Axon senior principal product manager for generative AI touted Draft One's disappearing drafts as a feature, explaining, "we don’t store the original draft and that’s by design and that’s really because the last thing we want to do is create more disclosure headaches for our customers and our attorney’s offices."

The EFF interpreted this to mean that "the last thing" that Axon wants "is for cops to have to provide that data to anyone (say, a judge, defense attorney or civil liberties non-profit)."”

arstechnica.com/tech-policy/20…

“Cops’ favorite AI tool automatically deletes evidence of when AI was used”


Cops’ favorite AI tool automatically deletes evidence of when AI was used

AI police tool is designed to avoid accountability, watchdog says.
Ashley Belanger (Ars Technica)

mastodon - Link to source

700% of zero is? 😎 Besides, the claim of a 700% increase in assaults on #ICE agents are incidents like👇 and no charges filed.

"A grandmother planning to document ICE arrests at the #SanDiego courthouse instead became the story Tuesday after video of her own arrest began circulating.

An ICE agent accused the woman of pushing her. After she spent hours in custody, she denied that to NBC 7 on Wednesday."

ICE handcuffs grandmother, a US citizen, at #immigration court – NBC
nbcsandiego.com/news/local/ice…


ICE handcuffs 71-year-old grandmother, a U.S. citizen, at San Diego immigration court

An ICE agent accused the woman of pushing her. After she spent hours in custody, she denied that to NBC San Diego on Wednesday.
Joey Safchik (NBC San Diego)
in reply to Faelyn

mastodon - Link to source

heretical_i

@Faelyn Documenting ICE snatching people at immigration hearings.

Ps. I'm 72. Disarm one of those thugs and Id have him on the ground in 4 seconds. Size irrelevant. Theyre punks without their weapons. Also note they got a Woman ICE thug to bump the Victim (perhaps to avoid sex harrassment grope claims albeit the ICE woman is probably a lonely butch dyke) then claimed she assaulted the assaulter. Old cop trick.

in reply to Hoss “Cyber Jester” Delgado

pleroma - Link to source

nine2fivestudio

@Hoss I've been rewatching it lately. It has aged extremely well almost in a Calvin & Hobbes kind of way, and it really captures the essence of mid-to-late 20th Century Americana. Antonucci was a genius with a great writing team, and knew when and how to favor funny visuals and surreal slapstick over ivory tower jokes (and vice versa).

mastodon - Link to source
“When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%.” metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early…

Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity

METR (metr.org)

mastodon - Link to source

Groundbreaking discovery at 'underwater Stonehenge' in Lake Michigan rewrites human history

The 9,000-year-old site lies 40 feet below the surface of Grand Traverse Bay and features large stones arranged in a line culminating in a hexagon, near a boulder bearing an animal carving of a mastodon, an Ice Age species that went extinct more than 11,000 years ago.

Experts believe the relief served as a time marker, dating the structure to around 7000BC.
dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ar…

image/jpeg

Groundbreaking discovery at 'underwater Stonehenge' in Lake Michigan rewrites human history

A mysterious, Stonehenge-like structure beneath Lake Michigan has revealed new clues that could reshape our understanding of early human history in North America.
Osheen Yadav (Daily Mail)

ActivityPub - Link to source

🔥 Constitutional Money Act Signed as Law in Missouri

💰 Gold & silver: legal tender
🚫 State capital‑gains tax: exempt
🇺🇸 State enforcement of federal confiscation schemes: banned

BIG Step for Real, Sound Money👇
blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/…

Missouri Constitutional Money Act Signed as Law | Tenth Amendment Center

Today, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe signed the Constitutional Money Act into law. The new law officially recognizes gold and silver as legal tender, exempts both from state capital gains taxation, and bars state enforcement of any federal confiscatio…
Mike Maharrey (Tenth Amendment Center)
in reply to xianc78

mastodon - Link to source

beard ひげ

@xianc78 @Mr_NutterButter yeah easyrpg is basically rm2003 with enhancements. I like the visual style a lot but I'm not sure if it would work well for a tactics game. I'll have to look into it when the time comes. Who knows, maybe something else is out there that's better. I know there is a specific "tactics rpg maker" too. That project is ~5 years away though so yeah, who knows.

mastodon - Link to source

The new version of Mastodon server has an optional admin feature where referrers can be sent when people click links. Enable it for large servers.

Here’s it in action - when people on my Mastodon server click links to my blog, I can see they’re from Mastodon. Other publishers can too. It will drive the importance of Mastodon as a platform. Almost all my traffic is under “direct”, which I strongly suspect is Mastodon servers without the feature enabled.

in reply to Kevin Beaumont

mastodon - Link to source

David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)

Is there anything added to the referrer that lets you aggregate them, or do you have to know that these domains are Mastodon instances? It would be nice if there were a simple regex that you could teach analytics tools to search for to find. For example, putting ?fediverse=mastodon (or ?fediverse=gotosocial, or whatever) on the end of the referrer URLs (not sure if browsers strip GET parameters from referrers these days).
in reply to 🏳️‍🌈🤘 Blain Smith

mastodon - Link to source

Lance R. Vick

@blainsmith

Thanks! Good to know at least someone has done it for 0-10

For strictly the ability to communicate with parents when away from home, I suspect a handheld HAM radio or Meshtastic messenger is a possible option. Or just wifi messaging via a tablet that can only do that.

I don't have (or want) a smartphone or to have my family dependent on Google, Apple, or cellular carrier ecosystems, so alternative distance communication for kids away from home will be a need.

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