Tag Archives: gender roles

Affordable Housing, Role Playing Games, Legal Wranglings, Inspiration, Tragedy, and Everything Since Friday

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This entry is part 65 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Yeah, apparently I’m skipping Friday updates more often than not. I should stop that. Actually stick to my own schedule.

One of the big topics that ended up being discussed today in the stream was the whole rich/poor divide and the idea of affordable housing… spawned by an article about a new building in NYC that’s going to have a separate entrance for it’s less privileged residents (who they agreed to take in so they could get a tax break, mind you).

The topic of “affordable housing” comes up frequently here in Maryland. Particular in Silver Spring. The issue is a little different than it is in places like NYC.

Here we have the problem of people building a lot of expensive housing that is then bought/rented by people who mostly work and play in DC. This leaves people who work in Silver Spring (which has a wide diversity of jobs and pay rates) unable to afford to live there (in some cases), pushing them farther out where public transportation is less viable, leading to a bit of a traffic problem and a bit of a parking problem (which leads to all sorts of other problems… like local businesses being able to do solid business because people can’t get to/part at them easily or actual residents not being able to find parking/get around easily during the day).

A number of members of the community here are very interested in trying to build and maintain an actual community. One that’s vibrant at all times during the day…. not just during rush hour. What’s been in place has been slowly slipping away as development has boomed and busted a few times. (Most of what’s being built are one or two bedroom apartments/condos… not conducive to people with families, encouraging more transient people who go elsewhere to put down actual roots.)

It’s an interesting situation. A problematic one. And one I know I haven’t come up with a good solution to (mainly because I’ve got some very mixed feelings about all the affordable housing solutions I have seen–some of which were laid out in the article that Nancy shared–but some of those concerns are at odds with my desire to have poor people actually treated as people, since I’ve seen that be one of the best ways to help someone get back on their feet).

Needless to say, a number of people disagree with me on a lot of those points.

I’m okay with that.

Like I said, I don’t have an answer, so the discussion obviously needs to keep going on somewhere.

Here’s the extra long feed (which contains a few interesting discussions or starting points, so you should check it out)…

Dead Rock Stars (If They Weren’t), Sharknado 2 (If You Want To), A New Ax (If You’ve Got Wood), Permatemping (If You’ve Kind of Got a Job), Rockin’ Fire (Just Because), and Other Things (Since There Are)

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This entry is part 12 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

For a while it was looking like today’s theme was going to be “Gender Stuff”… but then some cool science and some other strange stuff showed up.

The “Gender Stuff”, though is really interesting and, for those who don’t soak in the wide variety of gender issues that I do (again, I credit my fantastically diverse group of friends), some of this can be a real eye opener.

Of particular interest, I thought, was the article about how the “sexual aggressive” role in society switched from being attributed to women to being attributed to men. This is something that I think is sliding back in the other direction now. And, with more free and open discussion of such topics happening now than has happened before, I think we’re on track to finally ending up in a sensible place where people (regardless of self-identified or outright identifiable gender) will be able to directly and openly pursue however much sex they want without the majority of society casting them a sideways glance.

I think that would lead to the bulk of the population being happier. And, eventually, it would lead to better relationships all around, as people would no longer feel pressured into behaviors that don’t suit them.

Of course, I also think we’re still a generation or two away from that playing out. (Much like the shift I see in the Religion/Faith/Atheist mix, which I also think will end up more amiable in a generation or two… and, yes, there’s likely a pretty strong connection between those two trends, in my opinion.)