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IKEA has furnished and is renting out a 10 m2 apartment in central Tokyo for about a dollar per month. It's clearly a gimmick of sorts as the furniture in the apartment are worth a lot more then that. Still looking at the pictures it looks like living in a nicely furnished prison cell, that is also very high (floor to ceiling). Any takers for such compact living? I dont think climbing around on ladders to get around is for me.
It seems very futuristic though; it is a staple of sci-fi to pack people like sardines in a can (Ripley's apartment in aliens, 5th element etc., etc.)
https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/25/business/ikea-japan-tokyo-tiny-apartment-scli-intl/index.html
https://www.ikea.com/jp/ja/campaigns/ca00-tiny-homes-pub616dcf20
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No self-made man ever did such a good job that some woman didn't
want to make some alterations.
-- Kim Hubbard
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @07:20PM (19 children)
So why are people so stupid that they buy a large house and fill it with inanimate trophies to stop feeling the barren, soul-crushing emptiness? Something's missing in this picture.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @08:20PM
My "big" house is filled with children. Quit projecting.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday November 28 2021, @09:04PM (17 children)
What AC said. It's hard to raise children in a home less than 1000 sq ft. 'Specially in a city, where sending them out to play is likely to result in being run over, or shot in a gang war.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @09:56PM
That's why we have juve, for the urban kids. Keeps them out of trouble.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 28 2021, @11:04PM (15 children)
Is this an American "freedoms" thing?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 29 2021, @02:22AM (14 children)
Well, yes, actually it is. Just elect Democrats, who push the socialist agenda, while at the same time disarming honest citizens, all while defunding the police and declining to prosecute criminals. It doesn't take long for gang warfare to become the norm. Gang leaders are treated like etrepreneurs in the enlightened world we live in.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @06:54AM (3 children)
Ummm, what is an,
etrepreneur? Does this have something to do with Trepanation? Or is is just yet again another failure by the Miniscule Runaway to comprehend Langue Française? So near New Orleans, but so far from culture and education, that is our Runaway. Arkansas for lever! Or something.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @02:02PM
Scroll down to the next comment. A more intelligent person than yourself managed to understand the misspelling of a word. Try harder, troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @02:38PM (1 child)
This is a blog comment, not a dissertation. If your thinking is so robotic that you can't even interpret a simple typo you need to upgrade your brain's spell correction software.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @10:11PM
Because the parent
is super not-robotic-totally-reasonable.
Republicans, delicate stupid snowflakes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by engblom on Monday November 29 2021, @08:23AM (9 children)
I am not an American, nor do I live in USA. However, comparing to most of the world the US Democrats are hardly socialist at all. In most European countries they would be considered a right wing party, while the Republicans would be considered an ultra right wing party. Regarding "socialist" agenda, the only way to get down crime is to take care of the citizens. I know this from my own country. With proper health care and social security nobody needs to go robbing or selling drugs when someone gets unemployed, ill, etc. It is not a coincidence that no other country in the whole world is having as much of their population in prison as the US (639 per 100 000 according to Wikipedia). Drugs are illegal in my country but still we have very few in prison (53 per 100 000).
With proper social security for the citizens you do not need to defend yourself anymore. I do not lock my car and I usually leave the door to our house unlocked and I have never had anything stolen and nobody has ever tried to rob me. Also as crime goes down you need less polices to handle the crime.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by engblom on Monday November 29 2021, @09:06AM
I also want to add one thing more about costs: it is expensive to take people through the legal system before they are judged, it is expensive to keep people in prison and it is expensive to have a big police force. Also people sitting in prison do not have any real income they could pay taxes on. Consider this if you think it is too expensive to take care of people. In the long run a good social system will save money.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 29 2021, @01:58PM (4 children)
I see how citizens are taken care of in Europe. That's interesting and all, but I also see how criminals are taken care of in Europe. THAT is what we've been doing all wrong for ~100 years.
I've mentioned several times that we criminalize everything. How 'bout Eric Garner, who the police officially say was arrested for selling single cigarettes on the streets of NYC. I mean, come on, do Euros arrest and prosecute people for selling crap on the street? License or no license, what would it matter if someone bought packs of cigarettes, and sold the pack one cigarette at a time? Maybe if he stole the cigarettes from a warehouse, and the city and state never got their tax cut on the smokes. But Garner purchased his smokes from stores where taxes were paid.
Marijuana. Millions of people have been sent to prison for long terms for stupid marijuana offenses. I mean, literally millions of people. With the 'three strikes and you're out' system introduced by Clinton and Biden, relatively innocent kids could be caught the third time for marijuana possession, and be sentenced to life without parole.
I'm sure that you can see, we don't need what you call "proper care" of citizens to end that classroom-to-prison railroad. Stop locking people up for bullshit, and let them get on with life.
At the same time, we're far too lenient on real criminals. Every day, we read about dangerous criminals being treated like children who poked a sister with an elbow. That Brooks character who killed six and injured another fifty? He had tried to run his ex girl friend over, and injured her, only weeks before driving through a crowd of people.
Yeah, we have a broken system, but I don't think it's broken in the way you think. Or, not as badly broken in the ways you think.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @03:22PM (3 children)
Much of the problem is that U.S. criminalizes things for the wrong reasons. They do it to protect the profit margins of large corporations that sell competing products. That's partly why the FDA bans so many dietary supplements (though, granted, many of those dietary supplements are unproven, it should be MY choice to determine what I want to take), that's why they ban so many substances after the patents expire, that's why the FDA prohibits consumers from directly buying drugs from other countries like Canada, etc... The FDA works for big pharma. That's why drug prices are so high here in the U.S.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @03:30PM (2 children)
Not to mention all of the cumbersome licensing that's required for every little thing you want to do in states like California. It's almost impossible to make a living without obtaining and maintaining all of these expensive licenses and keeping the licensing bureaus and trade schools funded at our expense. While much of it is good there is a social cost to it so we need to make sure we aren't going overboard either.
For instance, in California you must pay a fee to renew your drivers license every four years. In other states it's ten years or so. It's just for the DMV to collect more money.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 29 2021, @08:32PM (1 child)
For most of my life, it's been two years, or four years, at the licensee's option. In more recent years, it seems that six years is optional, I've never seen 10 years. It would take more internet searches than I'm willing to do to prove either way.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 30 2021, @10:17PM
When I looked it up for Nevada it's once every eight years. For Arizona I guess it's every 12 years?
"ARIZONA: Licenses expire on the 65th birthday, and until then drivers only need new photos every 12 years — making Arizona unique in how long a license can last."
https://www.myimprov.com/arizona-drivers-license-does-expire/ [myimprov.com]
I know I've seen the driver's licenses of people from these surrounding states and was surprised at how far into the future some of them expire compared to California (based on the expiration dates printed on the licenses).
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @05:06PM (1 child)
I'm not sure what country you come from but something that works in a small tight knit mono-cultured country with strict borders may not be transferable to a larger multi-cultured country with loose borders (and not just country borders, state borders as well). A European country is about the size of a U.S. state and the problem is that something that may work in one location that doesn't work in another would result in people from that other location (ie: another state or neighborhood) spilling over their crimes into the location where it works (ie: the criminals from one neighborhood stealing from those of another). Smaller European countries have the luxury of better locking out people from neighboring areas out of their country because they have more autonomy and control of how to handle their smaller spaces to work in. European countries have much stricter border controls than the U.S. and they confine much greater uniform control over a much smaller area. Different U.S. states and counties and cities may handle crime differently and even if your state or location handles it well if a neighboring state or location doesn't the result might be that people from a neighboring location might creep into your location and commit crimes. An entire country confined to a small location can better block those people from entering, a neighborhood, city, or state may have a lot more difficulty controlling for that.
Even in the U.S. there are good neighborhoods and bad ones. Certain neighborhoods may be good, for instance, because they have limited ways to enter and exit so someone that enters can be blocked off from making an easy getaway because the cops can easily block the exit paths (ie: no nearby freeways). Lots of factors contribute to crime rates in various neighborhoods such as how roads are laid out and how easy it is for someone to stop in the middle of the road, grab something from, say, a business area, and get away.
Not sure I believe the genetics part of it (I think it's mostly cultural, many people from Africa that come to the U.S. are very hard working and honest and are often more successful than the whites) but here is a comment I read somewhere.
"The genetics and culture of Europeans. Northern European crime rates globally are nearly identical. White crime levels on north america are about the same as those in Australia,. New Zealand and northern Europe among st white people And for example the same applies to black crime levels throughout the west, the same in Europe as in north america etc. The same applies to other ethnic groups. For example Chinese inside and outside of China"
I disagree with this. Statistically if you look at people from any race that come from dual parent families they are just about as successful as any group of people from dual parent families. African Americans from dual parent families are just about as successful as whites from dual parent families. Whites from single parent families are just about as unsuccessful and prone to becoming criminals as African Americans from single parent families.
I think culture plays a much larger role and what works for European countries may not work for Americans because a strong social net to fall on would result in certain people taking advantage, having more children that don't work, resulting in more single parent family structures and more crime and more people abusing the social net which would place an undue burden on everyone else.
A one size fits all doesn't work. We need to better target the underlying issues. Perhaps a strong social net is a good thing but it won't work unless we figure out how to target people's problems on the individual level as well. A strong social net doesn't work if too many people would take advantage of it and it doesn't work if you have too many people that would still become criminals and drug addicts regardless. It starts at the home, we need both good government on the larger scale but we also need good people/citizens on the smaller scale (governments are composed of citizens).
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 29 2021, @05:13PM
(same poster)
Also, I hear in some European countries like Serbia, everyone is assigned a psychologist. I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing (depending on the psychologist and what they push, we don't want some woke, single parent promoting, psychologists).
In the U.S. seeing a psychologist is almost taboo. It suggests there is something wrong with you. The thing is we all have issues to some extent and assigning everyone a professional psychologist that they are assigned to periodically visit, similar to a periodic general practitioner for a general checkup, just to talk without necessarily being labeled insane or having mental issues (which could have ramifications on you professionally) or requiring everyone to take meds (something pharma would love to push, so we need to be careful of that) could be a good thing. But it needs to be done carefully as well.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 29 2021, @10:33PM
Most of Europe is not "most of the world". I think the centuries of European migration to the US, perhaps combined with the complete failure of Fascism in Europe and the moderately greater success of commerce and industry in the US led to a strong ideological dichotomy between the two regions.