Before we get started, PLEASE, no political agenda harping, shit posting, trolling, etc. This is something that is on a sharp increase right now in the Bay Area and I'm genuinely wanting to hear other people's thoughts and opinions on this.

The homeless camps have officially reached an out of control level. There is no denying this. Trash and used hypodermic needles litter the streets. Drug use and sales is seen on street corners near the camps. I personally have seen residents of the camps painting graffiti in broad day light. There are unsafe cooking set ups causing explosions and fires putting residents at risk and leaving charred remains for weeks at a time. Cite: https://evilleeye.com/news-commentary/public-safety/explosion-home-depot-homeless-encampment-rattles-emeryville-west-oakland-neighbors/

What is going on here? How come cities are not cleaning this stuff up? I realize that if the city did conduct some massive eviction/clean up, the residents would just move somewhere else. But what about the trash? Can't that be cleaned up? In many places, I've seen it up to the ankles of people walking around in the camps.

I truly don't know what the non-camp residents are suppose to do? Do we just turn a blind eye and let the trash pile up? Or do we demand action to keep our streets clean and safe?

I am not American but it seems to me that it is an incredibly broken system that 7 judges can essentially halt an entire country's progress. They decided that corporations have rights like a person, they can decide if gay marriage is legal, they can decide basically anything if they wanted as I understand it.

So why does this even exist? Surely such gigantic decisions should be left to a parliament or something.

The USA in particular has one of the lowest voter turnouts and the lowest registration levels of most developed countries.

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/21/u-s-voter-turnout-trails-most-developed-countries/

In 2016 only 61% of eligible citizens voted and only 70% were registered.

https://www.census.gov/data/tables/time-series/demo/voting-and-registration/p20-580.html

And that was a good year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout#Trends_of_decreasing_turnout_since_the_1980s

I'm a bit behind the news cycle, but I saw the first images of the families being separated on the news last night. I'm aghast. I'm just so utterly confused. Not addressing the issue of immigration or even the splitting up of families...

We don't fucking lock people in cages.

(Sidepoint: I know prisons exist, but this is a very different situation.)

I live in the US.

I used to play music every day. I used to skate almost every day. I used to surf TWO times a day. I used to write songs and poetry. I used to contemplate the cosmos and reality and come up with fun projects with friends. I used to garden. I used to spend more time with my pets.

Now I work.

I work and stress so hard that I wear myself out, drink too much to "help me sleep", still stay up stressing about my job - how I can improve my standing, and stress about needing to do side projects to supplement my income AND stress that I don't do any of the fun things I used to do.

This is all to be able to afford a living space and ensure that if a disaster (personal or natural) happens I won't be completely screwed.

Any friends that did have loans are still paying them off. I have been fortunate enough (and diligent enough) to pay off all my loans, but I had to ditch my hopes and dreams.

Will I ever be able to afford a decent house in a metropolitan area? No. Will I ever do the things that used to make be happy? I don't see how. Will I ever be truly happy? I have no idea.

Is anyone else in this situation? What are you doing to mitigate? Moving to a more affordable area (leaving friends and family)? Are you learning a new trade to up your financial standing? Are you as bummed out as I am that we have to work so hard just for a mediocre standard of living?

Just the fact that it's even happening is amazing to me. There are cute Trump/Kim impersonators out and about, performances, Dennis Rodman is present, it feels really really exciting... i just don't even have words for how wonderful this will be if it ends up how I am imagining - not just for the USA, but for North Korea, South Korea, and the whole world.

It's better to be friends.

Also, I really hope the USA establishes an embassy in Singapore. That would be such an easy win.

edit: i found some relevant links:

• https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/white-house/trump-kim-handshake-summit-history
• live feed: https://www.c-span.org/video/?446916-1/us-north-korea-summit-underway-singapore

edit: for those curious about the significance of Dennis Rodman, here's a CNN interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS494th_Js4

In case you don't live in the US and don't know, it is very common for health insurance to be tied to employment.

I've held four jobs over the last twelve months. Health insurance has been the most frustrating part of it. I'm married, I have kids. I don't want to go months without health insurance. My wife is self-employed so no employer subsidized insurance for her. We live comfortably so no option for government subsidized insurance.

The cheapest plan with insanely high annual "deductible" of something like $10,000 (the money you have to pay before insurance will pay) I can get independently is around $1000 / month. For comparison, with my current employer, my part of the insurance is around $440 month with a $3000 / year deductible.

During the past year I've four different insurance companies, one of them paid entirely out of my own pocket, no coverage for dental care for a while, no coverage for eye care for a while. Really WTF? Why are teeth and eyes so different from other medical care?

I'm now three weeks into my current position, insurance coverage with this employer began on the first of the month (so after about one week of working) — another gripe, the waiting periods to start coverage; my position before this had me working six weeks before coverage began; this time I had no idea when it would begin until I spoke to HR on my first day. I finally got my new insurance cards yesterday.

So today I decided to try to cancel my out-of-pocket coverage. I have until the sixteenth to cancel for this month. Haha, no. I can't. Not only are the human operators not working today (which granted is a Saturday), but the website is shut down for the weekend. I can't make any changes until Monday.

If the cost to me was the same, or close, I'd just buy my own insurance all the time instead of dealing with the hassles of constant change. But the costs are no-where near close. And I've got college tuition costs coming up very soon, so it's not like I'll have money to spare.

I feel like health insurance in the US is the worst of all possible worlds.

One of the more looming stories over the American political climate these days that takes over pretty much everything else is the special investigation into the Trump campaign and potential collusion with Russian attempts to influence the US presidential election of 2016. There is a lot of information in the public domain about this story, including most recently Mueller seeking a revision of Paul Manafort's home confinement release after alleging that Manafort attempted to contact potential witnesses to conceal evidence relating to the various charges he faces.

You can find a decent overview of most of the publicly available information on the related wikipedia page.

So let's try to wrangle with all that public information. Please list, vet, and weigh the evidence you think is most important when it comes to the Special Investigation of the Trump campaign. Does it look like collusion with Russian electioneering happened or is this story mostly about finding incidental crimes of sloppy political first timers? What role do you think Russia played or tried to play in the 2016 election based on this publicly available evidence? What evidence would you like to see before making a judgment?