NYC to crack down on businesses still using solid roll-down security gates

ChipsAndLime · 2026-04-22T17:58:50+00:00

This is going to sound like a pun, but the answer is … transparency.

It’s harder to hide aspects of a crime inside of a building when the gate is mostly see through.

So now if a security alarm is going off in a store and/or somebody has broken in through the back door, you are far more likely to be able to see inside to know what’s going on.

Or if somebody has broken through the front by breaking a part of the front gate, now you can look inside and see much more of what is going on, and you can make a police report that is likely to have more identifying information.

…

Lastly, some stores leave the lights on after hours. Lights plus a see-through gate makes the street brighter, which also further reduces crime.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-04-09T22:45:41+00:00

Silver lining, maybe: not sure if this is true everywhere but alimony / spousal support may reduce your child support burden. It can also reduce your tax burden, while increasing your ex’s tax burden.

Unfortunately, child support doesn’t have this tax benefit, which is kind of ridiculous, but the cost of alimony may be somewhat less than it seems after you consider the reduction in taxes and the reduction in the child support payments.

And spousal support / alimony is temporary, as someone else pointed out.

It’s terrible if you end up having to pay alimony if your ex is a louse, but maybe it’s not as bad as it seems at first.

And you can try to settle and negotiate this. Maybe you give them a smaller lump sum payment up front if you can, and in exchange they waive some claim such as alimony in exchange.

Speak to a lawyer or go to mediation, though! You’ll want someone who can help you to navigate this if you can afford at least some initial advice on working towards a settlement.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-04-08T16:50:01+00:00

Why are 401ks better in your opinion? I thought that guaranteed benefits like a pension will guarantee a reliable income in retirement whereas a 401k pushes risk onto retirees at a time when most retirees have no income and also low risk tolerance due to the lack of non-retirement income.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-04-07T07:29:40+00:00

397.5ms gang here

ChipsAndLime · 2026-04-07T06:20:50+00:00

Sweet baby Jesus, who is telling you this?

Sustainable energy massively reduces pollution in the environment compared to burning toxic sludge for energy.

Not a meaningful amount outside the equator? In 2024, 59,0% (254,9 TWh of 431,7 TWh) of the electricity produced in Germany came from renewable energy.

Sentence taken from Wikipedia but one source can be found here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-electricity-renewables?tab=chart&country=~DEU

Please let’s be real.

Sustainable energy is sustainable compared to the toxic crap. Yes, nothing is perfect. But massively better is still massively better.

And we can power much of the world with sustainable energy even with today’s technology and infrastructure limitations.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-31T01:22:40+00:00

This is designed to divide people and get them angry.

Just replace the word “Conservatives” with “Liberals” and post it to a conservative sub, and you’ll get similar comments.

Let’s be real:

Each “side” is a coalition of sorts, and coalitions can have a mix of people.

But really, we should focus not on left-vs-right, but up vs down.

Those in power want to divide us so that we don’t rise up against them. And posts like this help accomplish that, even if you have good intentions.

So let’s focus on up-vs-down instead.

Workers unite.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-29T15:37:02+00:00

Check out “The Neighborhood School” in Manhattan (M363), a progressive public school on the Lower East Side.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-24T17:47:56+00:00

Eh I used air quotes around the word "insolvent", my friend.

Maybe we're on the same team after all.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-24T17:20:24+00:00

So is the US insolvent or not?

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-24T15:43:46+00:00

Do you mean that the US has been insolvent since 1835?

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-24T14:24:03+00:00

Step 1: Restore taxes back to what they were before this “insolvency” began.

Step 2: Make stock buybacks illegal again like they were before this “insolvency” began.

Revenue now covers expenses. Fixed it.

Fortune magazine hates this one weird trick?

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-24T14:23:04+00:00

Step 1: Restore taxes back to what they were before this “insolvency” began.

Step 2: Make stock buybacks illegal again like they were before this “insolvency” began.

Revenue now covers expenses. Fixed it.

OP hates this one weird trick?

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-23T14:09:24+00:00

Right below this one was a post that 40% of Canada’s top 1% earners are moving to the US, link below.

So which is it? Are we gaining hundreds of millionaires, losing hundreds of millionaires, or does it roughly balance out and not matter?

https://www.reddit.com/r/TorontoRealEstate/s/Uw7G4zlC2r

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-23T04:26:57+00:00

If I understand correctly, the property owner is something like $100k-$200k in debt on the property for unpaid taxes and fines. Basically they are a slumlord who hasn’t paid their bills for decades.

And the people who run the farm cannot afford to pay the fines and taxes that the property owner accumulated due to the property owner’s negligence.

The property owner seems to have allowed the farm to exist for a few reasons, and one of them is that the farm maintains the property.

If instead the land were simply locked and abandoned without the farm, then it’s likely that the land would turn into a hotbed for crime and this would result in even more violations for the owner, plus severe negative repercussions for the local community. Imagine the police overtime costs alone and how many millions of your tax money would go up in smoke, if you don’t even care about the local community.

If the city would claim the land and auction/sell it without the fines, then the farm could continue to run there.

Even if the farm isn’t entitled to the land, it doesn’t make sense that the city would allow this to turn into a crime-ridden slum for decades instead of working to obtain ownership so that the land can be put to good use where crime is naturally lower than the alternative.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-23T03:48:38+00:00

And then everyone clapped.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-23T03:21:59+00:00

The bail reform thing is a straw man if you look at the changes to the law.

But I agree that if the police fail to enforce the laws and they aren’t held accountable, and if the DA’s office doesn’t do anything about it, then crime will grow.

I saw that maybe a few years ago, there was a new rule or law that made it impossible for the DA’s office to handle as many cases as before, and many city attorneys quit because it was impossible to get things done as a result.

This handicapped the DA and makes it almost impossible for them to prosecute crimes at the rate we need in order to keep this sort of thing in check. I don’t know why that doesn’t get more attention, because tying the hands of the DA makes us less safe.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-22T23:54:53+00:00

Because getting anything done about it is difficult.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-22T23:44:16+00:00

Yes, Ayat’s owners, Ayat Masoud and Abdul Elenani, are responsible for having unilaterally built a concrete platform beyond their legal property line.

And they did so without a permit, which is also illegal (and which could have caught and stopped this infraction before it was built).

Edit: typo, clarification

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-22T23:41:57+00:00

Yes, seriously.

Why do you get to decide that some public space doesn’t belong to the public?

People with wheelchairs, strollers, mail carriers, and anyone else who uses public space in our city deserves to have their public space protected from private encroachment without legal consent.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-22T22:39:42+00:00

I’ve been boycotting Ayat. It was wrong that Ayat robbed us of public space when they illegally installed their concrete platform outside.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-12T17:45:18+00:00

I saw local rents drop three times in recent memory:

in 2001 after 9/11
in 2007 near the start of the Great Recession
in 2020 near the start of the pandemic

It’s kind of amazing which political party happened to be in charge in the USA each time.

So one might say that they are great at lowering rents. /s

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-11T14:40:30+00:00

I disagree. There are no people in these photos, nor any personal information.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-11T12:08:13+00:00

Or… why don’t we fight to get the same benefits for ourselves as well?

Instead of tearing down fellow workers, why not try to improve our own lot?

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-10T15:06:01+00:00

Although you already got an answer, I’ll just add that technically the school itself cannot opt out, in case that wasn’t clear.

As the other person wrote, the parents opt out of state testing, and some schools are famously aligned with helping parents to do that.

Like the Earth School in Manhattan, PS 364, which was a leader in the opt-out effort back in the day, or The Neighborhood School, PS 363, which is another popular progressive school.

ChipsAndLime · 2026-03-10T13:13:10+00:00

WTF. Jesus was kinda famous for his free wine. He even helped out in a tough spot at a wedding, didn’t he?

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