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   That Would Be Telling (thatwouldbetelling@shitposter.world)'s status on Tuesday, 11-Nov-2025 01:47:04 JST That Would Be Telling

   in reply to

   @EvilSandmich @Humpleupagus @Twig @graf Here's an countering analysis I'm currently thinking about:

   Adam Townsend @adamscrabble

   I disagree @Cernovich

   May I respectfully offer a rebuttal from my own experiences 🙏

   People today love to wax nostalgic about the good 'ole days of buying a home 'cheap'...

   because they never had to endure the economy back then, when homes were 'cheap'. They only see how it all worked out, that the home is now worth multiples more but neglect 'how it got there'.

   I am 59.

   The first home I bought in the 1992, I had to put down 20% of the home amount and I was paying around 9% interest rate (!!!) and i was underwater in the loan for over a decade.

   Further, the generation of home owners that preceded me had 10%+ interest rate on their mortgages - so the homes 'my generation' was buying from was releasing the prior owners from a huge burden, they thanked us profusely and they would say "free at last" and turn to their loved ones and say "we finally did it"

   [Prime rate was 21.5% in December 1980, BTW, necessary to prevent the 1960-70's inflation from going hyper.]

   Refinancing boom didn't become a thing until late late 1990's

   • and we were refinancing FROM 9% TO 6%
   • then in mid 2000's we refinanced down to around 4%
   • then in mid 2010's down to around 3.5%

   a 50 year mortgage is a slam dunk, and with a low down payment, WOW 🤩 if i were a first time home owner i would take it so fast your head would spin, you truly can't go wrong.

   I think it's inaccurate to look at the duration "you wont pay it off till your 90 years old" because that doesn't anticipate intrinsic appreciation of the underlying asset

   nor the leverage it creates for future investments, nor the opportunities for resale.

   (ten years ago if someone borrowed money from a bank to buy bitcoin, it worked out well. In fact, I borrowed a bunch of money to buy stock in Administaff (now called Insperity $NSP) when it was $2 a share around 2002, it went to $40+.

   Only in retrosepct do I 'look smart' from holding that risk.

   Debt is not a new invention, nor is it a bad thing.

   It's what allows people to improve their economic situation and create generational wealth.

   Mortgages and home ownership is what created the American middle class and, i can say with authority from living in NYC and the boroughs, that it is also the immigrant success story.

   People come to America:

   a. get crappy jobs

   b. scrape up money to buy a home (something almost totally unobtainable for most people in the countries they are immigrating from, also most of those cultures they are leaving don't permit/tolerate women to work, so it's also the first time that a woman can become somewhat independent, plan and contribute for a future, have her own friends, pick up her kids from school, etc)

   c. They put their kids through school

   d. after a decade+ they sell their home to the next generation of immigrants and upper middle class aspirants

   e. Move to the burbs

   Lending:

   It is also my experience having been a significant investor in one of the largest preferred SBA 7(a) and 504 lenders, that people always anticipate arbitraging their loans.

   How can people get wealthy if they are deprived of the opportunities to hold risk, and this mechanism is expressed thru 'debt'.

   🚨 After the Great Financial Crisis of mid 2000s the credit markets got WRECKED and credit worthiness evaluations excluded most prospective first time home owners. A lot of the 'lack of home ownership' that we are seeing now, is largely because of that - the problems from the credit markets from the generation before that now doesn't have the liquidity from having a home.

   In order to resolve bank's unwillingness to lend, and to stimulate the appetite for lending to risky borrowers and to improve the debt's secondary and tertiary markets, we desperately need 50 year paper.

   H/t to our friend @pulte and others for making this possible.

   And thank you also Mike, you're awesome

   https://x.com/adamscrabble/status/1987542048568664100

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   Pottery by Osa (potterybyosa@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 25-Oct-2025 02:43:39 JST Pottery by Osa

   "Make a list of all the things that are pleasurable in your life and then make an art form out of one of them."

   I'm leading a virtual workshop tomorrow encouraging people to take advantage of the grounding and therapeutic qualities of clay at low cost, from home.

   In the making portion of the workshop, I will be sharing the perspective of dancer and ceramicists #PaulusBerensohn who elevated the simple #PinchPot to works of art.

   https://youtu.be/92YYT9sYZi0

   #art #inspiration #pottery #clay

3. Embed this notice
   Cory Doctorow (pluralistic@mamot.fr)'s status on Tuesday, 14-Jan-2025 02:19:55 JST Cory Doctorow

   in reply to

   The last time an American president signed a consumer privacy law was 1988, when Reagan signed the Video Privacy Protection Act and ensured that Americans would never have to worry that video-store clerks where telling the newspapers what VHS cassettes they took home.

   In the years since, Congress has enacted exactly *zero* consumer privacy laws. None. This has allowed the out-of-control, unregulated data broker sector to metastasize into a cancer on the American people.

   46/