Well, and isn’t there also a third dimension, where common, every day people who may not work in the industry but consume things created by the industry also look the other way because cheap is always better? (Thus business managers pressure contractors because they want to be able to win the bid from a consumer who…

I live next to 2 houses that are left to rot, lived in by raccoons. There must be tax benefits to landlords/banks that make it more profitable to let a building become a blight. These were rental houses. The landlord could have had $1750 a month from the 2 of them without doing much work, but he let them fall into…

I agree that this was a great story. I was spellbound. And I want to thank the author for doing the work she does. Most of us look away. We either didn’t know (or care) in the first place or we found it too hard to look. Hope hurts and sometimes it’s easier to despair. The NYT has an article about the rise in…

That’s always our hope. I’ll tell you, the absolute worst people in the world, though, are the foster parents who end up abusing the kids they take in. I mean, a natural parent doing so is bad enough, but a foster parent made a deliberate decision to take in an already-hurt kid; when they then turn around and hurt…

This was the best damn thing I’ve read here in ages.

I’m an immigration attorney. I’m constantly telling my clients that they may have the law on their side, but the government has the power. And most of them don’t have the money or the resources to fight, no matter how right they are, or how just their cause.

Oof. This hit me so hard today. I started out pissed off about the bank because I am still in the middle of a three year fight (with lawyers! paid for by insurance companies!) with a loan servicing company that let the property next door to my house rot. I estimate that it has cost me over $50,000 dealing with the…

Best thing I’ve read on a Gawker site in quite a while.

There’s only one species of guinea pig? They do bond with each other, but not, like, as mated for life? If you put a bunch together they are promiscuous. I had two brothers, and when one died the remaining one was goddamned Eeyore for three months til I got him a new friend. This seems like an unnecessarily mean thing…

oh, the things we do for grant money...

Maybe they are one and the same!

Sadly, I’d like to think that’s what he was doing, as he was indeed found in an elevator :(

You don’t find their policy of disfellowshipping/shunning people who violate their rules hurtful to families? Or how they covered up instances of sex abuse (much like the Catholic Church) an issue? As an ex-JW, I can certainly tell you the effect they had on my life has not been good. What that cult has taken away…

As someone who escaped that damned cult, that would make me so angry. I hope he didn’t leave those people one red cent. The worst years of my life were spent with them. My sister and I were so hoping he had gotten out before he died. She said it perfectly, “He didn’t deserve to die a Jehovah’s Witness.”

Michigan is beautiful. Vacationing near the lakes is lovely, living in Michigan is awful.

What an ignorant snob you are.

Have you seen the area around Sleeping Bear Dunes? I’d have a house there if I could afford it!

Fuck you though. Traverse City t-bags just about every other summer vacation destination in America, ditto most of the L. Michigan and Superior shores. Look for my middle finger next time you fly over, knob.

So you can say ‘WANNA COME VACATION IN THE MITTEN?!’

i mean