1) Comparing with all home ownership is improper. The only part that matters is % of buying in the active market or constraining the active market. It only needs to be in certain market segments to have a big impact as well. By # of people and not the $ amount within a range; so if they did 100% of mansions it doesn't impact normal people much and if you counted that by # it would be relatively tiny % too. Rental stock is not everything. They also just sit on things too; also they flip and sell in various schemes.

2) Both the mega building corps had CEOs talking about not returning to pre-COVID building rates because the low construction rates boosted their profits; which they said openly. That is not buying, but simply limiting supply to drive up demand = profit.

3) Loans. tons of games around loans. they created the depression in 2008 doing complex fraud games with home loans. Nothing changed except aspects of the game. Huge amount of investment is around the "industry" of home loans/rents/management/building/supplies/insurance....

4) INDIRECT. Wallstreet has been waging a class war for generations and attacking anybody who points this out as "socialist" etc. Class war is older than civilization itself! It never stops. Even with equal demand, wages have been doing DOWN and only masked by technological advancement lowering some prices. It can't lower land prices; but it has taken a little out of construction cost (most savings go to the top, as they always do.) You can be poor and own a smart phone super computer. thank you technology. The richest generation in the USA could only afford 1 TV per house at it's peak. Easily fooling people into thinking things are better because they had more distraction tech; but in real $$$ they are poorer!! It hits when they need a house or healthcare or buy organic food or when gas prices rise a little (like now) then they feel some reality... but don't realize that they are paying for that record number of billionaires out of their pockets. Construction workers and trades can do well, they can have income that didn't get hit as hard by inflation; but they give up a bigger portion to the top than they should or used to. So you can't as easily afford a newly built house...

5) Climate change. resource demand is increasing. more disaster repairs than ever before. it's so bad insurance is pulling out of hard hit areas. Big chunk of investment is in the biggest defenders/creators of climate change. This one is a long term problem. Also indirect but also demand is hiding higher profits exploiting that demand. They will rob desperate people, nations etc. if they can.

Decades ago I tried to lobby officials and convince people we need solutions. It was utterly hopeless and people were not even ready to take measures to begin with.

They don't know what Identity is or Authentication or Certification or any of the specifics they should know to write laws. Not. that. interested. Certainly, in the USA we can't have government do anything productive and useful; that is forbidden by the libertarian morons.

Government can provide anonymous digital credentials of various sorts; including a simple rule that OS have an adult user group parents can keep their children out of; and any software should be able to probe if a user is a member of the adult group. ISPs need to be forbidden from any involvement.

A photo ID with embedded digital verification of it's validity and an adult and drinking status. no birthday, no identity. Somebody just checks your face as they always did but now they can use a phone app to catch fake IDs. The photo doesn't need to be detailed enough to be perfect - it has to be generic enough to not let you be face tracked from it. It is more tricky to use online, but building upon that for online age verification. Government walled off services that are secured stronger than the IRS was... you're a fool if you think private corps can be trusted. If you can't trust government to do this, then your country is incompetent and you have bigger problems... which is the case for the USA already.

None of this should be fool proof and only minimal protection for incompetent parents; because the real defense is competent parents.... so rare, that it seems hopeless to depend upon them. It doesn't help that we don't allow people much parenting time...

Also cancer makes for a great cover-story for a fatal STD... especially given his business, they certainly don't want that kind of death!

I can see the future:
How much more personable and "human" Mark has become in recent years he has really grown as a person, perhaps that MMA trainer or a therapist or his children have helped him grow as a person.

All along, it will be his personal Chat Bot that finally made him seem human. Maybe he'll eventually be able to go back to his home planet or area 51...

Already did... we will never see all the files. Nobody seems to realize the files are not comprehensive there is likely far more data they don't even have in the files. For example, tons of video cameras including special hidden ones but no recordings; except whatever Israel, Russia, or the NSA are holding onto (I'd bet Israel has the most, Russia second.) Why Israel? the guy had a former PM as a "client" and you don't mess with a head of a top spy network and not become their bitch.

It all comes down to wallstreet wrecking everything it takes over. They are a big factor in housing prices too. Hollywood is no different. You can be an upstart that maybe somehow makes it by miracle but you'll be assimilated into the system eventually.

State by State. some allow cameras instead of mirrors. some don't. Also this is commercial and can kill a lot of people and do a lot of damage so one would hope they don't try to just save the owners money.

The admin enters this info even in the current birthday setup! So the admin has to also update status changes. The OS only needs to record what humans enter into it and the PURPOSE is to know if somebody is a legal adult. That is ALL the info that is required for the feature. No more is required and adds more troubles.

This is a simple boolean flip and adult status is permanent no matter how childish somebody behaves; it does not need to be automated. As if an admin can't use automation on a linux system... The admin should be able to handle location and context - the OS can't. The flag for users in different groups and locations can be managed by external humans or tools.

An 18 year old student is for all practical purposes still a child in the school system and can remain flagged - maybe they SHOULD BE given policies of schools and computer usage so an automatic update to 18 could actually violate policy; therefore, you don't always want it to be automatic.

The trick they've been grappling with perfecting the compass... is yes they want vague questions because your interpretation of the words is a KEY part of the design of the test! It's very well thought out by smart people over a long period of time. The smarter the design, the fewer questions are needed.

Glad to help! It used to be my Sig... but now my Sig is highly relevant. check it out. Here is a well made music video which tries to inform on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

The general landscape in the USA is a diagonal line that today is about 4,4 up to Mussolini which is as far as anybody who was professionally ranked on the chart to the top right. They removed him for the most part because Trump came in tied, in 2016 he was a little to the left. Hitler BTW, is more middle, close to the Dems on the X, but all the way at the top on the Y - higher than anybody but Stalin. The problem is they aim to educate and promote thinking so Jesus or Hitler etc getting too close to current leaders will scare away the people who are most in need of a reality check.

Anyhow, the range of left/right has been shifting mostly in a line on the chart over the last 20 years of me tracking their rankings. They don't rank FDR and older people who clearly would be outside today's range. Even within 1 politician running for president you can see a shift in both parties. BTW, Jesus was ranked around (-3,0) to (-2,-2) so you are probably better than most American Christians... see how they had to remove that?

Me, I'm super sick of tribalism. I had no tribe; all my life it stands out more clearly for me. Extremes and tribal problems are amplified by technology. Info age made people more ignorant, as I predicted. Mass communication and social media made people anti-social with poor communication... pretty much ask yourself if any new tech's optimistic promises are not actually going to be the opposite of the hype. Remember 70-80% have optimism bias; likely yourself.

No, I don't think the USA has been in this situation before. In general, history rhymes so yes... but in depth, it doesn't ever repeat; it's a tough subjective call to make. People used to be more center so those historic similarities came from the center now there is a huge fascist shift; not the weak Republicans who loved it just as much back last time but generally kept quiet -- and none got punished for treason which set the groundwork for the gradual creep towards fascism ever since.

Surefire way to spot fascists: their very strong hate of antifa and communists. Racism is the Nazi franchise's contribution which was borrowed heavily from the USA actually.

this is better than previous leadership's announcements. things are improving some over there...

Somebody needs to organize a group to raise funds and organize a way out of Poettering's over reach and over complication of the OS.

I'm fine with a standardized birthdate... and more standard conventions!
I object to the simplistic thoughtlessness of this. A full DATE shouldn't be required! somebody needs to design this with some thought!

Privacy is not served with a date. I suppose at least he didn't make it a timestamp right?? or could we have that level of detail?? that would allow some serious fingerprinting...

An "adult" boolean is enough for everybody. Doesn't reveal personal info; pro-actively protects it if you leave out standardized birthdate by not having a standard option for that. non-standard options can be used for the exceptions. Yes, "adult" differs in definition but that is up to your administrator and country to decide. You want more? maybe standardize birth year. I don't want software looking up my birthday. Most my systems lack my full name if possible.

It's been migrating upper right for generations.

https://politicalcompass.org/

I've tracked that polisci website (it's not American) for 20 years and seen the migration happening; confirming what I've observed myself. Also, I'm not inside either American bubble despite being here all my life. FYI, they had Jesus mapped by experts twice on that site and had to take it down... neither time was he even close to America's political "spectrum;" which really shouldn't be a shock.

1) Those made up numbers are not verified.
2) They agreed to sign a contract and pay him 14 million per year not long ago.
3) They paid him less in the beginning year and could have at least tried to go back to that. If trends were so bad, then why did they increase pay so much?
4) They did not even try to renegotiate his contract or the other staff.
5) Top rated show in timeslot. for broadcast. Yes, Faux News has higher and their show is mindless crap... but they have a virtual monopoly on stupid while the rest have to divide the audience over the rest. The Faux News people I know, seem like they don't even know how to change the channel; just turn it on/off.

Needs to gift something gold fast! Or should have done it first: Nvidia just met with Trump 1st and he allowed them to sell their 2nd best stuff to China (which in some cases is better; even so, it's not that many months behind... just buy some more since they are cheaper anyhow.)