hifreq

I appreciate it, thank you.

Benefits in a very broad sense. This includes both e.g. SF General Assistance payments and things like cleaning the streets from syringes, urine and poop on a weekly basis.

The fundamental reason and ground for these morals will remain in fairy tales. You don't see how divisive and fragile that is? This is fundamentally wrong, even if it used to work effectively.

Surely there is another way? Stronger families, philosophy, sports, education? Humanism over religion - the only truly universal approach.

You are so stuck in your bubble that can't even imagine that societies exist today without a massive homelessness problem. Societies that do not have a "supportive loving community" but that combine individual responsibility with strong social services.

> There is absolutely no logistical or material reason that we can’t do this

Yes there is. What you and other "progressives" fail to acknowledge is that for every well meaning supportive and loving member of society there are two people who will use them and their resources endlessly until they drop dead. If your plan is to wait until we change human nature - then good luck.

Want to see a preview? Socialize with families of alcoholics, drug addicts, psychopaths, etc. Look how their "loving and supportive" families are destroyed by one person who abuses them with no end in sight.

Stop fantasizing about changing human nature. The future where we all meditate in peace like that advanced society in Fantastic Planet won't happen any time soon. The more likely future is that we will completely stagnate and fail to resolve any societal issues because we treat people like they are lost babies that just need a supportive and loving community to be found.

Yes, and we can solve drug addiction directly by giving people drugs.

What is free housing? Free as in indefinitely free with no strings attached? Free utilities, free services, free food, perhaps free transportation? Free furniture, free healthcare, free drugs, free clothes, free HOA?

Do you think the violent addicts everyone complains about just need a house, and starting from day one they will become productive members of society?

Agree with all your points. We just need the people in power to recognize and act on that, instead of pandering to the extreme vocal minority and throwing money at an industry that has no incentive to make itself more efficient and effective.

That's where I disagree with this approach. IMO sending over fully rendered views just because some state changed is antithetical to the UI needs. UI is the state that users interact with.

Ha, well, yes. But despite sounding so anti-religious and pro individual responsibility, I am not only optimistic, I am always inspired and heartened by us, humans. I believe, we are capable of incredible breakthroughs and are growing as a whole. Untangling from centuries of brutal religious domination will take time, and we will struggle, and sometimes fail. But eventually we will grow out of the need to find purpose in submission, and will thrive as more aware and realized beings.

I am not surprised by that in the slightest, and I agree that most people struggle with that, myself included. It is THE struggle of our lives.

Being told as a child that if you take drugs you will go to hell is not a meaningful alternative. Not for incredibly complex thinking beings that we are.

Submitting to Jesus, being a part of the "right" religious group is not a benefit to the human race as a whole. It's poison, promoted by power hungry maniacs.

I mean, they anticipated the effect of eating shellfish and allowing women to speak up in Whatever X:YY, is this going to end the world as we know it as well?

Finding purpose and our place in the world is our individual responsibility. Don't confuse it with the lies of eternal heaven at the cost of total submission in this life that your religion is promoting.

I am mentioning Steam as an example of an ecosystem that offers exclusive apps on different devices. The fact that I can install Steam on a Mac is sort of irrelevant considering that I can't play the games that are offered through Steam on my Mac. Many indie games are offered only on Steam, so it's a monopoly in this sense.

Thanks for the summary. All of that confirms that the shelters are not full, they are underutilized. I am opposed to the idea that we just need to pump more money into this issue, which then gets distributed among "case managers".

E.g. we have invested $62M in case managers to handle 2100 approved cases? With the program's annual budget being $365M? This shows a ridiculous level of bloat and corruption. Do we need to spend $30K per case, considering that this doesn't cover the shelter expense?

I am not opposed helping people in need, I am opposed the idea that we just need to spend more money. And then next year a little bit more. More taxes, more case managers, more street cleaning teams, more safe injection sites. None of that is solving homelessness, all of that is contributing to making the homeless industry bigger.

> You're acting like people aren't emotionally attached to their home cities.

Respectfully, you misplace the responsibility. When people go through a rough breakup, we don't call for the person experiencing attachment anxiety to be housed with their ex just because it would make things easier for one party at least temporarily. Life is full of hard moments and challenging choices. The fact that something is hard doesn't mean giving up is the healthiest path that the society should encourage.

Talk to people who work in social services. The fact is, visibly homeless (street homeless, most often addicted people) are in this situation not because they have tried everything else and have no choices. They don't seek employment and often refuse help. They are not part of a community (unless you consider other homeless people they randomly ended up living close to their true community).

As usual, the discussion about homeless is kind of pointless without clarifying which segment we are talking about. Homeless families with children, disabled non-addicts, etc are not someone I include in this discussion, and I never see them living on the street.

Our maturing world (not just the US) is starting to recognize that religion is BS. We can't go back to relying on religion for keeping our bad instincts at bay. The influence of religion is and has been low in many European countries for decades, which did not result in an increase in homelessness we are seeing in the US.

Social programs, education, keeping corporations in check - these are meaningful alternatives to the idea that we need to bring Jesus back to control the population.

I get that. I disagree with the idea that to stop that we need Jesus.

If the choice is between using HTML in JS (e.g. JSX) vs using JS in HTML (essentially, that's what HTMX is), my choice is unequivocally the former. Ignoring some very basic use cases, UI apps are all about state and interactivity. HTMX can somewhat handle interactivity (very awkwardly in my opinion), it offers nothing over React in terms of state management.

> America has not filled that with anything else

That's not an issue that America has to solve (i.e. the government or the society). It's an individual need that every individual is responsible for.

Up to you mate. Just don't blame the society for your choices.

In my bubble I switched everyone to Signal. I acknowledge that this is an anecdote and don't propose this as a solution. However, complaining about features in different apps is even less of a solution.

There are many other examples of failed policies that increased financial pressure on taxpayers but did not result in an overall improvement in the homeless situation.

E.g. what is the outcome of CA Proposition 2 that passed in 2018?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_California_Proposition_2

Available shelter space, housing vacancies:

https://www.kqed.org/news/11668623/why-do-thousands-of-l-a-s...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/san-f...

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/top-stories/story/2020-...

> wages are the lowest they have been in decades

This is an endless argument. Why can't a person with 0 skills rent an apartment in San Francisco? Some wages are very low. If you can't afford rent in one of the most expensive cities on the planet, move to a cheaper place, don't become homeless in SF.

Do you want me to solve this for you? Here you go:

- Find a job in Wallmart in Fresno (if you insist on staying in CA): https://careers.walmart.com/us/jobs/0619201885FE-cashier-fro... (Cashier, $16-$26 an hour)

- Find a cheap rental in Fresno: e.g. this studio is $800 https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/719-W-Hammond-Ave-Fresno-...

- Sign up for free health insurance: https://www.coveredca.com/

> Basically what unemployment rate tells us is that USA has enough jobs for people who want to work. It says nothing about people who have given up looking.

That's a fair point. If people are not seeking work but claim benefits indefinitely, doesn't this require a different solution than blaming the society and expecting taxpayers to take care of that?

While I agree that the reduction in the role of religion in the US is partially to blame for the increase in severe cases of drug addition, the idea that we need to bring religion back essentially to control people is extremely patronizing. Basically, we are saying that some people are too stupid to live productively if they are not controlled by fairy tales.

This is the same approach as we are seeing in the "far left" bubble in the context of this issue: street drug addicts have no responsibilities and agency, the society has to accommodate their every whim, including ignoring all illegal activities they are engaged in.

Until we acknowledge that benefits come with responsibilities we are not going to solve this.

This assessment contradicts all evidence we have on the homelessness in the US. Unemployment rate is very low in the US, shelters are very often half-empty. Drug-addicts and homeless people refuse help (unless it's cash or free drugs).

The idea that we just need to invest more and more into this extremely corrupt industry has no merit.

I agree with you. The problem is that we conflate SMS and iMessage usage in the Messages app. Most people do use Messages for SMS-like messages (meaning not for exclusive iMessage features). E.g. looking at my message list: at least 40% of messages I receive are alerts, payment confirmations, appointment reminders, etc. These are SMS messages in terms of their purpose, even if some have the blue bubble and whatnot. Messages is a popular app in the US, but what we need to look at is how popular it is for specifically iMessage-exclusive features, not as an SMS client.

I never said it doesn't.

> I can't play thousands of Steam games on my Mac

This is the point I am making. There are certain apps and features that are exclusive to certain devices. I can 't play the vast majority of Steam games on my Mac. Should Steam (and all game companies involved, including Valve) be forced to enable support for MacOS for all their games because Mac users have FOMO?

> I get that, as a convenience, you’d want one location for all your messaging needs. For an alternative view, I like the separation that multiple apps provide.

Wait wait... now I am totally confused. I don't mind the separation of my messaging needs. In fact, I use Messages only for SMS (or SMS-like) messages, and WhatsApp and Signal for everything else.

> What I am against is the pitchforks and bullshit reasoning around why this is anti-consumer/trust. The whole polemic is just bullshit.

That is what I am saying :) All this debate about bubble colors, anti-consumerism, monopolies, etc is a waste of time, we have much bigger problems to deal with.

WhatsApp has ~100M users in the US. FB Messenger has ~140M. I would argue that Messages has a far lower number once you exclude pure SMS usage.

> therefore discussed is iMessage, which categorically is not SMS/MMS

That's not the reality though, correct? When I send a message to a friend using the Messages app it's being sent as an iMessage if both of us use an iPhone. I don't care what the format is, my intention is to send an SMS. So you can't use this as evidence of popularity of iMessages.

Just looking at my message list: at least 40% of my messages are alerts, reminders, payment confirmations, etc. Are you saying in Europe people get those via Signal?

I do live in the US. All my friends are on Signal and WhatsApp.

There are 140M FB Messenger users in the US, more than iPhone users.

This discussion is baffling to me. People buy devices that have exclusive content and features all the time. PS5 has a ton of exclusive games. So sometimes a group of friends is divided: some people have Xbox, others have PS5. Also some have no console at all. And some people will make fun of others, some people will get bullied because of that. This issue will not magically go away if we force Apple to "equalize" the chat bubble color. Some teenagers will still get bullied.