Most of these houses are not in downtowns of big cities but in rural towns that are far away from everything. Not to mention, just because a unit is vacant that doesn’t mean it’s not being used.

No, you’re just wrong. You can’t twist reality to fit some niche ideological fantasy that you find sexy.

The reality is that statistics show that if we took all the vacant houses including all those that are inhabitable, under renovations, all the second, third, whatever homes, and we took all the investment properties as well and made them all immediately available, there would still NOT be enough houses to meet the current demand.

The reality is that we have very nonsensical and outdated zoning as well as restrictive construction process that strangle output. We need to reform our zoning laws and expedite construction to pump the market with many new housing units as possible to not just meet, but also exceed demand. That’s the only way to bring house prices down in a genuine way while also giving people homes that they actually want to live in places that they want to live in.

How many of these are actually habitable? I would assume a large portion are either too dilapidated or under renovations.

I very much doubt that nearly a third of the housing stock is vacant for no reason, especially when it’s a seller’s market. The statistics for people who own more than home or buildings with more than unit are not enough to explain the difference. I’m skeptical of these random no name authors on websites like medium.

I know people here want a sexy quick solution, but the reality is that this country’s housing stock is too small, too old, and is not keeping up with demand at all. The one and only solution is to reform zoning laws, expedite housing construction, and pump the market with so many new units that it not only meets demands, but exceeds to the point where prices fall and we have a buyer’s market.

Trump has been in politics for a decade now, and he already served a term as president. Not only that, but he has done just about every reprehensible thing you could possibly think of. I think we’ve officially reached a point where Trump’s base is truly a cult in the most literal sense.

Anybody who is capable of independent thought, whether they are leftist, progressive, liberal, centrist, conservative, far right, or even MAGA has already jumped off the bandwagon at some point or another in the past decade. The only people left in his base are the most purified loyalists and the slimiest opportunists. These two groups will never, ever turn on Trump no matter what happens. Even if Jesus himself came down from heaven and told them Trump was a bad guy, they will turn against Jesus and stand by Trump.

The point is that the idea that this scandal is doing anything at all to push his hardcore supporters away from him in November, 2025 is pure fiction. Trump could give his under aged trans lover a satanic themed abortion on live television, and his loyalist cult will not care whatsoever.

You’re talking out of your ass. The Alawites have literally never ruled Syria for as long as Syria has been a thing. Stop spreading misinformation.

I don’t think we necessarily disagree. Al Assad was a ruthless man who brought an era of terror to the country. However, at the same time, he’s been replaced by another ruthless man with a history that indicates he’ll also bring his own era of terror. In this sense, Syria isn’t exactly free, bur under new management.

Likewise, we can agree that the American invasion of Iraq was wrong and unjustifiable, but also acknowledge that Al Sharaa committing terrorist attacks is also wrong and unustifiable.

The main point here is that two wrongs don’t make a right, and the guy I’m replying to trying to justify terrorism is just morally represented.

I literally lived in Syria for. Some pretentious schmuck on Lemmy pretending they’re experts on a place they’ve never been to is rich.

The Alawites were marginalized under Assad. The government is not the one that does marginalization, it’s the general population. The majority of Syria is Sunni muslim and Arab, and anyone who isn’t that is seen as a kafur and not a real Syrian. This is why all the minorities (Druze, Kurds, Alawites, Assyrians, etc) took up arms and tried to get some level of autonomy. They knew that the moment Assad was gone, he’s going to replace by a government less secular yet just as ruthless and they’re going to pay the price… And guess what? That’s exactly what happened.

They got the literal Syrian branch of Al Qaeda as the new government and it’s leader as their new president. Al Sharaa is a well known terrorist, islamist, and he’s infamous for being one of the primary reasons why ISIS exists. The moment HTS took over, there dozens of reports of islamist fighters under the HTS, aka the Al Nusra front, who went on sprees massacring Alawites just for being Alawites. There are also reports of them them kidnapping and enslaving women, but that’s something you just want to conveniently ignore.

What did Al Sharaa do? Nothing! He did nothing. The islamists who committed these crimes are not being exiled or prosecuted and the victims are not being compensated, rescued, or given justice. There has no change in policy outside of Al Sharaa giving lip service to not piss of the west. In reality, he’s enabling these islamists which is why the violence against the Alawites and other minorities is still going on right now. Al Sharaa is literally using Sharia law to train new soldiers and police officers so he could have them enforce “morality”.

Idk why you’re dickriding for a terrorist like him so hard, but this is not the hill to die on. The marginalized minorities in the country are not the problem, that’s a fascistic way of thinking. The cold hard reality is that Al Sharaa is and always has been a jihadist, and this violence is just a part of his ideology.

It definitely didn’t. Most data indicates that voters were concerned about the economy above all else. They blamed the incumbent president because he’s the one in office, and then went out and voted for the other party. When his successor promised to do the same thing, that’s when you knew the Democrats were cooked

This doesn’t change the fact that this is not the reason why Harris lost. Again, most people don’t care about this regardless. It’s really a lot more simple than that. People saw prices go up, they blamed the incumbent president for it, then voted for the other party. This is something backed by virtually every poll where they ranked the economy as the single biggest concern for the average voter.

Yes, you fucking can. The fuck? He’s a Syrian from Syria who left his country to go to Iraq for the sole purpose of joining Al Qaeda, which was already a well established terrorist organization that’s renowned for it’s evil attacks at that time, and started plotting ways to kill American soldiers. In what world is that justifiable? I’m an Iraqi myself and this guy is a terrorist. Being against the US invasion doesn’t mean you start supporting actual terrorists, that’s just stupid.

Al Sharaa words mean absolutely nothing. This guy is literally one of the reasons why ISIS exists and he was involved in actual terrorist attacks, and he’s still an islamist now. Taking his words at face value is like taking the Taliban talking about human rights before the US left Afghanistan seriously, it’s an idiotic take.

I don’t know what propaganda you’ve been snorting but trying to frame the Alawites which have always been marginalized group in Syria subject to constant discrimination and violence as the aggressors is just victim blaming. Trying to pretend that there’s some connection to Israel, doesn’t change the facts, it just means you have no idea what you’re talking about.

They’re flying out of an Israeli airport

The amount of people who care about what goes on in the Middle East is comically low. I find that the people who think that the world revolves around Gaza are people who don’t go out that much. Your average American just went through a pandemic that caused a lot of inflation and economic instability. The prices for just about everything go up, and people blamed Biden for it because he was the incumbent president even though most of it wasn’t his fault. It’s really as simple as that.

Have you ever tried using photoshop? It’s harder and more intensive than it looks. There’s a reason why fake nudes exploded in popularity only after deepfake AI sites became a thing. You literally only need to find a website and upload a picture to get a deepfake nude. For photoshop, you got to download video editing software, learn to use it, and then actually do the work. Like seriously, people in this thread live in some alternate world. Lemmy is such a bubble.

It feels like TMZ made a Twitter clone.

This is the most accurate description of Threads I’ve ever seen

I hate to break it to you, but this is a phenomenon happening all over the world, it’s not unique to any single society or culture. Not to mention that you don’t even have a real proposal in mind. Your grand solution here is demonize boys and wag your finger at their parents, if you think that’s going to achieve anything then you’re really are out of touch.

If all you care about is wagging your finger to feed your weird moral superiority complex, go ahead. However, I don’t have any interest in that. I want to see real, pragmatic, and tangible steps being taken to ensure that we get real results. The reality is that we have a new technology that’s completely unregulated, and this lack of regulation is causing this tech to be utilized in ways that shouldn’t be allowed. Deepfake websites shouldn’t be allowed to operate legally, and kids shouldn’t be able to access them so easily. Will a ban stop everyone? Of course not, however, it will greatly decrease the amount of people seeking because it’s not longer convenient to do so That’s how we can prevent situation like this one.

It’s bad even for social media standards.

You sound completely out of touch.

If you bothered to read the rest of the comment instead of just the first two sentences, you’ll see that I explained exactly why this an idiotic idea that won’t achieve anything. You have to actually be brain dead to think that finger wagging to a bunch of teenagers is going to result in anything, not to mention that you can’t control how parents will raise their kids nor can you control the knowledge parents have of this tech. This is something that can ONLY be solved through legislation.

A very big issue with our education system is that there’s no nuance in it. The way the system is set up makes it so that schools are incentivized to compete with each other to please the district, and the district to please the state. That’s how they get their funding. What this leads to is schools putting their best interests ahead of their students. If schools prioritized the students, they would’ve taken the context of the story and punished the bully and not the victim. However, since they prioritize themselves, they tried to keep the story under wraps to avoid bad PR, and expelled her regardless of context so they can distant themselves and save their image.

If it’s not CSAM then it should be