No, just a shitty kettle.

Shakespeare invented literature, so clearly there’s no value in teaching anything from before him…

Bloody shoppers!

There are many reasons why renting is better for some people and buying is better for others.

Renting gives you the flexibility to just up sticks and leave at a known notice period. You don’t have to worry about the boiler breaking, or mould/damp, or the roof coming off (or like I’m about to have to deal with, a fence panel getting blown away in a storm) because your contact with the landlord says they’ll fix that for you.

There should absolutely be that choice available.

The problem, at least in the UK and probably elsewhere, is that renting is just SO expensive that it’s not possible to rent and save money, meaning that if your goal is to buy, you can’t because you can’t raise the deposit, even if paying a mortgage on a similar sized property would actually be cheaper on a monthly basis.

Sure, you read stories about people who are wonderful landlords, they don’t raise rents, or at least, by less than market rates, they’re quick to fix any problems the tenants have, all that good stuff.

Equally, you read stories about people who are basically renting from Satan and all the things I mentioned above take months or years to get fixed, if ever. (Slumlords are definitely people who should be put up against the wall and shot come the revolution)

I’m assuming the vast majority are somewhere in the middle.

But the fact that you’ll probably rent for at least some of your life shouldn’t drain all your money into someone else’s mortgage. As I said in that other post, housing of some form should be a basic human right. And the fact that individuals or companies can buy many houses and leave them empty because they can afford to have rents set so high that most people can’t afford them? That’s just wrong.

Hah. I meant socially, not that it happened by accident!

To be clear, I wasn’t trying to say ALL rental housing should be subsidised, just that there should be a healthy supply available for local councils to make available to people who need it based on whatever criteria they set for that.

Even when I was renting, I’d earn too much to qualify. People with young children would take priory over single people. That sort of thing.

It’s not a perfect system, but it’s better than companies gaming the system to maximise profits at the expense of the most vulnerable.

Yes. The ability to have a place to live should be a basic human right and therefore be affordable.

If that means the government* subsidises it for the low income families (as in owns them and rents them at below market value), so be it.

We used to have “council houses” in the UK for exactly this purpose, but in the 70s, Thatcher came up with a “right to buy” (at a decent discount) and then made two mistakes - there were no restrictions after buying to stop you selling to anyone else, and there was no building of replacement stock after they were sold. So the result 50 years later is that there are nowhere near enough council houses any more, and a lot of the old ones are privately owned and being rented out at market rates, which are (depending on the area) very expensive.

*local or national, I don’t really care which

I’m certainly not, but having seen claims you can replace the SSD with a bigger one, I can imagine a lot of people might try it…

My boss told me verbally “don’t call your colleague a fascist by email or anything else that leaves a record”, so that was nice of him.

Apparently it’s literally in the standardised tests… that’s what’s causing the problems! 😉

You can’t eat the brain.

Shouldn’t

With those massive green eyes I’m just imagining it’s Gir, so the answer is going to be “I LIKE WAFFLES!”

To demonstrate the lack of a “clear mandate”.

Yes, Trump will win if he gets one more vote than Biden, but the more he loses the popular vote by, the more justification people have for protesting.

So if he wins on electoral college votes but loses the popular vote by a landslide, at least it shows what The People are actually thinking.

I’ll take a personal day. Maybe I’ll watch, maybe I’ll just slob on the sofa, we’ll see…

Yeah, don’t trust your most critical passwords to a browser when you can instead use a dedicated bit of software designed for saving passwords securely and which will also work on your phone and any other browser you may care to use.

It would almost be funny if not for the whole “fate of American democracy” thing.

Sure, the Democrats are Doctor Evil and his minions. But the Republicans are literally Hitler and the nazis.

Vote accordingly.

Because they think they’re helping stand on other people’s necks, and that’s just fine in their book.

Then they act all surprised with the “I never thought the leopards would eat my face!” when it happens.

It’s an older meme, sir, but it checks out.

Not sure why you’re downvoted for that. I’m a meat eater, and I’ll admit veganism seems more ethical. But it’s too inconvenient to give up meat, so I don’t. And having vegans around reminds me that I could be doing more to make the world a better place. So guilt.

Probably helped by the fact that none of the vegans I know are preachy about it, so I can’t just assume they’re all assholes either.

I’ve seen stories about this. If it’s so hot it makes someone else ill, but you can eat it, you’re fine. If you maliciously make it too hot for anyone, that’s apparently unacceptable.