I don’t game much, but with the few games I do occasionally play I’ve had really good success at getting them to run on Linux under proton. It’s way better than it was even a few years ago.

That’s valid, but if it’s a dump I would have a hard time describing it as an asset, at least in the financial sense. But I suppose it could be if you’re willing to put in the work to fix it up.

Even if it’s not, houses appreciate 5% a year on average. Assuming average appreciation over 10 years that house is now worth ~163% of its original value. That means that the mortgage was taken out for ~61% of what a comparable house would go for today which assuming the same interest rate would be a fairly significant reduction in the monthly payment. You also have the potential to refinance to further reduce that monthly payment.

Or you could sell it and get that 10 years of equity + appreciation out in cash and that might be enough for a sizable down payment elsewhere.

TL;DR unless your parent’s place is a dump in a low demand area it’s an asset even if it isn’t paid off.

I didn’t go into tech for the money, but after several years of grinding I’m definitely at the point where I’m only still in it for the money. I don’t even want to think about computers outside of work anymore.

I’m the US, the EPA was created in the 1970’s. We definitely have less pollution (of certain types) today than we did in the past. Some notable examples of how disgustingly polluted American skies and waterways were in the past:

The skies of Pittsburgh, PA

the Cuyahoga River fire

Coal Production has also been declining

And then of course less visible examples like the Montreal Protocol stopping corporations from depleting the ozone layer.

My point is in terms of greenhouse gas production we are much higher than in the 60’s and 70’s, but we have massively improved in a lot of areas. Of course there is still room to improve.

I know how pitiful our rail networks are. I take Amtrak regularly. It’s faster to drive. It shouldn’t be, but it is. Obviously I’m not talking about today, but building improved rail infrastructure over the next decade is very realistic and a worthwhile investment. Unfortunately the investment Amtrak has gotten isn’t enough to modernize our rail network, and a lot of that money is being used to improve privately owned rail lines that Amtrak leases for their passenger service.

My point was that the US doesn’t have distances that are insurmountable that can only be traveled via plane. It’s an investment issue.

A lot of those flights could be replaced with high speed rail. Maybe not New York to LA, but a lot of people live in the cities in the northeast and travel between those cities would be very feasible at reasonable travel times with high speed rail.

Capitalist forces absolutely are not inevitable with scarcity. Native Americans lived in societies that have been described as primitive communism. Did they not have scarcity?

Further, mass murder is not a prerequisite for communism.

You really are not as informed on communist thought as you think you are. Nor are you very informed on the very real problems with the IMF or WTO saying that these organizations save countries from “communist policies” is so hysterically wrong that I can’t believe it’s an actual thought that someone had. This discussion clearly isn’t going anywhere because it’s like I’m talking to a brick wall. Have a nice life.

Social democracy does not fix every problem communism claims to because it preserves capitalism. Social democracy, but without capitalism is no longer social democracy. That is socialism. Believe it or not, communists are pro-socialism.

All of the Scandinavian social democracies that are supposedly the gold standard are former colonial powers. Colonial powers extract wealth from their colonies to the detriment of the indigenous inhabitants of the colony. This is referred to as primitive accumulation and is a direct precursor to capitalism. These nations built their wealth through colonialism and continue to maintain wealth through neocolonialism. This is really only unheard of or controversial if you have your head in the ground. Look up the WTO and the IMF and how they fuck over the global south at the benefit of wealthy nations if you’re interested in more information (spoilers: you’re not)

Where are your sources that all communists are fascists? Are the communists in the Philippines fighting their fascist government also fascists? What about in India? The list goes on. You’ll find that neither of these groups of communists are particularly fond of China by the way.

Communists are very aware that social democracy exists. Social democracy very famously split out of socialist thought. Originally social democracy was another term for socialism.

Communists take issue with the very real fact that social democracy preserves capitalism and thus the exploitation that comes with it. Social democracy simply exports that exploitation. Without the subjugation of the global south, social democracy could not exist. Just because you have exported that exploitation doesn’t mean it went away.

I wish you could buy a decent house for 500k in NYC…

I work in software and I haven’t touched windows in a very long time. Even back whenever I worked on FPGA development all of that software ram on Linux, so I think you’ll find that this is very field dependent.

You may already know this, but this depends on the focal length of the lens. For example, a 50mm focal length on a 35mm camera will represent objects in the background fairly accurately. Larger focal lengths have background compression, making their background look closer than it actually is. Focal lengths below 50mm will have the opposite effect, making backgrounds appear further away.

Some phones with multiple cameras have a 50mm (or similar) effective focal length lens as one of the options. Basically without knowing the focal length of the lens it’s hard to say how accurately the distance of the background is portrayed.

This is generally the thought process that Marxists have. The USSR definitely wasn’t perfect, but it is the first real example that the proletariat was capable of uniting and other throwing the capitalist system. The USSR is fantastic to study to try and determine why it failed. Similarly China is a great resource to study to understand how capitalism can be re-established from within the party.

Most modern communist groups actively engaging in an attempt at revolution were inspired by the Chinese revolution and the cultural revolution that came after it, but none of them are trying to recreate the USSR or China because as we can clearly see those states failed to maintain a socialist character.