fun fact about me: When I was 6 years old I sent so much hate mail to the president (the second Bush) that the mail carrier had to tell my mom I needed to stop before we got FBI’d

I was COMPLETELY unaware of the US political scene or why the adults in my life hated Bush, but I knew I hated him because he let people shoot wolves from helicopters and that’s mean and shitty

I also had a poor grasp on how stamps worked, so given that I wasn’t allowed to continually throw money away by putting stamps on my presidential hate mail, a lot of the times I just drew squares with little pictures inside on the corner.

Love, love, love reading more proof that everyone should encourage the children in their lives to write to elected officials--it teaches them about citizenship and can also be very funny.

When I taught second grade, one of the options for students who had finished their work was to write a letter to the president. I would send all of the letters in a big envelope at the end of every month.

Watching my students get more and more frustrated with him (and concerned about his wellbeing) was not the result I'd hoped for when I came up with the idea, but it was kind of hilarious.

See, Obama had a standard packet with information and activities about his dog he'd send in response to letters from very young citizens...and of course his office sent one back to our class every single time we sent mail.

So eventually all of the letters looked something like this:

Dear President Obama,

I am writing about the environment. I am sad that the Great Barrier Reef is hurt. Also the Amazon Rainforest. Can you help? PLEASE DON'T WRITE BACK TO TELL ME ABOUT YOUR DOG AGAIN. WE ALREADY KNOW ALL ABOUT BO. WE COMPLETED THE MAZE AND COLORED HIM IN. It is good that you love your pet a lot. But try to remember the environment. It is also important.

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second the trump mugshot drops im putting it on a tshirt and making a bajillion dollars

Here's the thing: imagine if we fixed the housing market, so that the price of housing only increased to match inflation. That would be great, right? Except, homeowners typically spend $2000-$10000 per year on maintenance. So homeownership would go from an investment to an endless money pit, just like renting. The idea of a house as an investment, a house as a way to build wealth, requires that housing prices increase faster than inflation forever, which means that the burden of housing costs on working people must keep increasing forever, and the number of homeless people must keep increasing forever.


The housing crisis isn't just a result of greedy landlords and investors. It's an inevitable result of social policies that encourage people to treat their houses as in investment. Because once a homeowner internalizes the idea that their financial future depends on housing prices going up, they start favoring policies (such as NIMBYism) that make housing prices go up.


Conversely, if we want to end homelessness for good, we need to accept that housing is someone we'll all have to continuously pour resources into, because buildings are complex physical objects that break a lot.

The reason I say this is because every time I read an article about the housing crisis, they always say something along the lines of “The housing crisis has robbed people of the opportunity to build wealth via homeownership!” without acknowledging that the housing crisis is what created the opportunity to build wealth via homeownership

i am going to do it

ah! ah ooh hoo oh ah ah

it a litle bit cold

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Painted Desert, Arizona (2000)

1995 Honda Civic VX

No one cares when I do it

boy-ngo

tumblr in 2020:

  • posts on your dashboard are ranked by how much the ceo personally likes them
  • a widget on everyone’s blogs that publically displays their top five search terms
  • images disabled altogether
  • they ban you if you have a custom theme
  • app crashes at a speed imperceptible to the human eye
  • you can buy little outfits for the “t” logo with real money
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