Bassman1805

joined 2 years ago
[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 4 points 9 hours ago

Per that last bit, I'm guessing they never had a lawyer present. Would make any of those fabricated statements null and void, if the constitution meant anything.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

A relative of mine just had a baby, and her mom came from out-of country to meet her grandchild and help mom and dad in those first crazy weeks with a newborn.

But when she told CBP that she was "coming to help her daughter with the new baby" she got detailed and questioned for 2 hours. Eventually they let her through but they were really trying to pin her coming to work illegally on a tourism visa.

If you or a loved one are in a similar situation, just say you're "visiting family". Apparently it's a legal gray area in this shithole to help your child take care of a newborn.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world -1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

"Before won the primary" is a different reality from the one we live in. Even if you remove the superdelegates and only look at the ones decided by popular vote, Hillary won that primary.

I wanted president Bernie Sanders and voted as such. But I actually live in THIS reality and don't waste my energy whatabouting if an election had gone differently.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

The target audience of The Art of War was not soldiers or even officers. It was nobles who would step out of their gilded halls and just fuck everything up with stupid decisions that no moderately experienced military man would even dream of.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

Valve is Augustus Caesar: a benevolent dictator doing great things for their people. I'm afraid of what will happen when Gaben retires, how long will it take before we find gaming's Nero?

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 17 points 2 weeks ago

I don't know if you mean turn Lemmy fans into lemmy fans, or lemmy fans into Lemmy fans. But either way, I'm for it.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Joke's on me, I still have to use windows at work!

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Bill Nye kind of is a dick though.

Some people are really warm in acute person-to-person interactions, but lack the chronic empathy to spread long-term kindness. See "southern hospitality" clashing with who those areas vote for.

Others have a well-oriented moral compass but are just really abrasive in person. That's Bill Nye. I've met him and he's not like, super mean but he's got a bit of a holier-than-thou (or rather, smarter-than-you) complex.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 2 points 2 weeks ago

Cool how you used the quote markdown for a bunch of stuff I didn't say.

My argument is "The banks have a ton of capital. They are willing to grant lower classes access to that capital, as long as the bank is able to make some profit from it. If the bank cannot profit, they will just sit on that wealth and lower classes will lose the only access to such capital that they currently have."

Like I said, the fact that many borderline necessities in the US require access to capital beyond one's individual means, is a real problem but separate from this argument.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Nobody with financial sense is taking out a 16.9% loan on a car. 5% is pretty typical right now for people with a decent credit history.

Whether or not that's reasonable, is certainly up for discussion.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 9 points 2 weeks ago

Definitely shop around, but sometimes the dealership does have an actual competitive offer. Especially if you threaten to use external financing (and have the pre approval in hand), they might knock down their interest rate to save the deal, as the loan is where the money actually is.

[–] Bassman1805@lemmy.world 16 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (6 children)

You pay for the ability to access capital you do not currently have. Nobody owes you thousands of dollars with which to but a car. If you want to buy a car with money you don't have, then you have to give the bank something in return. That something almost always is "more money than we initially lent you, over the course of the loan period" and if you shut that down, banks just won't give loans anymore. Suddenly poor and middle class people have lost their biggest tool for accessing capital.

Lack of public transport is a separate problem. The US has dropped the ball across the board there. Only a handful of cities have any reasonable public transport and even those systems are old and often shitty.

Education being so expensive that it needs to be financed, is a separate problem. Education is too important to leave to the free market, letting our system metastacize to this extent is the result of decades of compounding failures.

16.9% interest is predatory, but "interest above inflation" is necessary if you want banks to do anything besides hoard money.

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