A dozen stores that operated solely to drop the base price of top selling groceries by 25% would not compete with Gristedes, or Whole Foods, or even Target, but it would eat the already thin margins of small independent grocers/bodegas who supply 80% of NYCs retail food, resulting in… food deserts.

It’s not a socialist model, nor non-profit, nor even what Mamdani is proposing, it’s a company town monopoly complete with non-transferable credits. It can run heavily-subsidized stores relying on centralized logistics for <900,000 Americans living on bases at any given time. This does not scale.

Is that a military base commissary? I feel like this might not be the best case study for the point you’re making.

I don’t think it’ll work, but also it’s not a bad idea on merit, just depends on where. Cleveland? Charlotte? Sure. But the market in NYC is super saturated with low-margin small businesses who couldn’t compete with artificially deflated prices. A city-run support network might get better results.

Maybe if we tell him that he has recurring cameo role?

I was sincerely moved by the characters throughout the book, but really confused by the ending. Then, thinking about it days later, I broke down crying over how emotionally rich it actually was. To say that it is heartbreaking would be an understatement (in a good way! Please read it!)

Unlike Brandon, he seems to have a pretty robust group of experienced people around him and providing critical support across constituencies. That being said, is he freshman material? Absolutely.

Oh 100% Fred was calling the shots and isn’t that great. I guess my point is that the show didn’t cross lines in a way I wasn’t already familiar with, but projected a sense of place and people that I really related to from afar, and then my hopeful expectations were exceeded? If that makes sense? 🫣

Do Portlanders not count Carrie?
Just for me, as someone who grew up on the other side of the country and related to the people it portrayed, it didn’t strike me as mean-spirited, and sincerely made me feel a sense of longing. But I’m from MA, we compliment each other with insults, I may be biased.

Idk it made me want to go to Portland even more. It made it feel like people took art, expression, community, and social justice seriously and strongly enough to make memorable characters, but also like it can laugh at itself for the same. A lot of the one-step-too-far humor almost seems sweet now.

All of them are suddenly able to breathe and talk with masks, how curious

The children of these women and their inevitably abusive husbands are gonna be maladjusted and angry in a fresh yet familiar way, can’t wait

I somehow found them again in a Cumbies whilst high - for they do not appear when sober - and even with all the giddy anticipation and nostalgia coursing through my veins, they revealed me to have become a spoiled insufferable child who cannot accept eating cheese-flavored cardboard and liking it.

We’re planning a tour with the man himself. There’s a special water feature in in the basement that he might appreciate.

Hm yeah… guess we’re done for then. 12.5 million Americans and I better start packing our bags I suppose.

3.5% is statistically enough to mount effective, sustained resistance to, say, an occupation. Need not be armed resistance, and it’s decentralized. The military is only 0.4% of pop and TFG openly disrespects them. The FBI were never the good guys, but they’re not dumb, and Kash is. It’s not nothing.

Roughly the same as actual police training, tbf