I suppose the factual disagreement here is the extent to which American preference for suburban life is a natural preference or an artificial one (i.e. one created or exacerbated by bad zoning/planning)

You shouldn't avoid saying true things out of a
concern that others might use those truths to promote political views you don't agree with, but I don't think that applies here anyway: materialism is not a threat to Liberalism.

My liberalism and support for human rights has nothing to do with whether LLMs can achieve consciousness or what human consciousness is.

Even if we could conclusively prove that human thinking is mechanistic and reducible to physics, or that consciousness is an illusion, I'd still be a liberal.

Whatever we think about dualism, materialism, philosophical zombies, and similar... the idea that any stance on philosophy of mind is 'inherently fascist' is a bit odd... you can't predict people's politics from their stance on philosophy of mind?

That's not to say that we should all give up YouTube though, just that I worry that we're repeating the plastic straw problem: we're focusing on the things that would be easiest to give up rather than the things that will actually make a difference andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sh...

That whole section is odd: reads more like a memo to employees to convince them that the funds spent on rebranding was a good idea rather than information put together for prospective students?

Not sure if this is true anymore?

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/wi...

The topic is the WFA, who gets it, and who doesn't get it.

I don't think it's whataboutery to note that very wealthy pensioners will get WFA, but low-income working families with children won't get it (despite working families having a higher poverty rate than pensioners).

I think there are advantages to a universal benefit system that doesn't means test, but if we're giving cash welfare to rich pensioners, we should be giving it to poor working familiws with children as well (i.e. A UBI)

Do you think that working families should get help with heating homes in winter?

Would you accept the same tax rationale for giving it to working families with over £70k income?

A key fact here is that working families have a higher poverty rate than pensioners.

Do you think that WFA should be given to pensioners with a combined income of over £70k?

(sorry, that's phrased incorrectly: Two pensioners living together with a combined income of less than £70k but with their income split exactly evenly between them would get the WFA allowance).

An income of less than £35k is the criteria for receiving winter fuel allowance.

This is per person btw, not per household. Two pensioners with a combined income of less than £70k would also get winter fuel allowance.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/wi...

The reason AirBnB affects prices is because it decreases supply in some housing markets (residents looking to buy/rent) and increases supply in other housing markets (short-term lets). This benefits people looking for short-term lets, but disadvantages residents. Very obviously a supply issue!