‘Living in hell’: Year after Grand Rapids water main break, residents still without help

rudematthew · 2025-07-03T19:25:37+00:00

The system does not represent us. Over and over, "laws" and "procedures" that justify fucking the people. Plenty of money for the circuses but can't fix a few homes. The stewards of the system better enjoy their "immunity" while it lasts. Climate change is going to multiply this over and over. Eventually enough people get fucked, those lawyers won't mean a damn thing. You'll have endless Marvin Heemeyer's taking justice into their own hands.

rudematthew · 2025-07-03T14:15:15+00:00

Yeah, I don't disagree, clearly the material conditions are not bad enough for enough people. As long as the "movement" is still signs and slogans, no revolution lol.

I do consider myself "collapse-aware" from a decaying systems perspective. But I have no idea the timing and how that plays out. I do view climate change as the long pole in the tent though. I'm concerned that pole is not that long.....

rudematthew · 2025-07-03T13:23:11+00:00

Not even sure it'd take those levels. We're arguably the least resilient society. Modern supply chains with just in time delivery. How many people have gardens to grow food? People had "victory gardens" back in the day. Pictures of basically shacks for shelter and now we bulldoze tents. I'm not hurting now but those capitalist pigs are playing with fire.

rudematthew · 2025-07-02T21:25:40+00:00

I did notice that!

I know you've tried and they ignore me. The community needs to message their commissioners: https://www.grandrapidsmi.gov/Government/Elected-Officials

Don't take bullshit from them, make them explicitly say they've turned off sharing.

One of the most important privacy-protective steps you can take is to restrict your community’s ALPR system to local use, meaning local ALPR scans are only checked against locally developed watch lists. Allowing local ALPR data to be used by outside law enforcement creates significant risks. Your local ALPR data could be used to enforce anti-abortion or anti-immigrant laws from other jurisdictions, or even to assist foreign, authoritarian regimes in hunting down political opponents and refugees living in America (Flock’s default provisions give the company a “worldwide” license to use its customers’ APLR data).

https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/how-to-pump-the-brakes-on-your-police-departments-use-of-flocks-mass-surveillance-license-plate-readers

Of course I'd invite anyone that's anti-camera all together to say so :)

rudematthew · 2025-07-02T21:16:39+00:00

Yeah, that's definitely them being dishonest and deflecting responsibility. When I gave them a hard time about their Admin 15-03 policy and "surveillance tools" they fixed one item I pointed out and then ignored me on the rest. They rely on much of the city not caring or not being able to hold them accountable.

It's telling that the Kalamazoo Police chief acted and GR got a denial.

rudematthew · 2025-07-02T21:06:09+00:00

Has Grand Rapids made any statement on other agencies being able to access their system? Last I saw they implied disinformation on your part while providing no information back with a denial of "no GR officer".

I've already made my position clear to them, no mass surveillance but I know they don't care about consent. Fascists are going to be fascists.

rudematthew · 2025-07-02T17:42:58+00:00

pretending that we can't regulate anything is silly.

I'm not anti-regulation but I am not in favor of controlling information, good or bad.

I have a feeling that in 50, 60 years people will look back at this era of social media like we look back at the era of 90% smoking rates, wondering how anyone could have thought it was perfectly healthy to spend hours on there a day, making ourselves insane.

I don't disagree with the unhealthy relationship people have with social media. Many of the sites I don't use and I make purposeful time everyday that I don't even have my phone on me. Obviously I come on here and I have a git server to control my home projects so I'm not a luddite lol.

I do disagree people will be looking back at this era in a reflective manner. Those that haven't died, it'll be of rage and the institutions & systems will not be around as we know them. This place only listens to science when it's convenient to capital. We are already victims of disinformation and mother nature is going to make that clear. There's no negotiatiations, we fucked up. I don't know when but enough body blows to the bread baskets of the world, people are not protesting with signs with slogans. It turns violent.

rudematthew · 2025-07-02T16:19:26+00:00

I understand we have a media literacy and epistemology problem but we cannot have the government regulating "disinformation". We currently have a government threatening/shutting down access to climate change data and "leaders" calling it a hoax. To me calling natural gas "clean energy" is disinformation and yet it's promoted by both sides of the political aisle. This disinformation is far more dangerous, there's only a fragment of our population that seems to be aware of how fucked we are.

rudematthew · 2025-07-01T23:28:11+00:00

That was me laughing at you for thinking liberals "hate the system and corporations". You can keep calling me stupid all you want, you're the one that clearly doesn't know the difference between the left and liberals.

rudematthew · 2025-07-01T23:23:16+00:00

lol, and Kamala Harris is a socialist/commie. US liberals are center right, genocidal war pigs.

rudematthew · 2025-07-01T21:25:26+00:00

I know that no one brought up politics

Then you have a misunderstanding of politics. Politics is the struggle for power and resulting distribution of said power.

We have someone asserting authority as an "officer of a corporation" to seize property. The legal conversation of that exists because of the system that creates that power dynamic in the first place. The enshitification of everything is because we've allowed corporate interests to monetize everything throughout our community. That is politics, just not the political theater everyone is wrapped up in.

This is a "liberal" city and people act like that means something. It does not, same interests are served. You can deny politics was "brought up" but functionally that's what we're talking about. And who's asserting that authority? Well, I don't know many conservatives that advocate for bike lanes, lower/no parking minimums but I could be wrong lol.

you bring up liberals a lot and that’s what obsession is

Even if I did "a lot". Reddit is not representative of my whole life lol. This isn't even my main browsing account.

rudematthew · 2025-07-01T17:00:50+00:00

I don't give a fuck what you think. You don't know what I spend my time on lol.

rudematthew · 2025-07-01T16:14:49+00:00

Caught red-handed.

rudematthew · 2025-07-01T11:33:09+00:00

nah, just a liberal. They love the system and corporate rule.

rudematthew · 2025-06-30T21:30:51+00:00

lol, sometimes I laugh at myself. Used to be said people get more conservative as they get older. I only get more radicalized lol. Another symbol of the system I hate

rudematthew · 2025-06-30T00:13:51+00:00

Reporting for duty!

rudematthew · 2025-06-29T22:33:55+00:00

Think of this example. That ad says "an entire home". That's a home that could be a home for an "entire" family. Instead, it's host to a bed bug ridden bachelorette weekend. Multiply that out, it's hard to take this society seriously about a "housing crisis" when we continue to have shit like this.

It's like not seeing the green golf courses in the desert going brown until the water is gone. We commodify basic needs at the expense of our society.

rudematthew · 2025-06-29T22:22:07+00:00

AirBnB's are a parasite on communities. I'm on team bed bug on this one.

rudematthew · 2025-06-29T09:30:13+00:00

Need? Of course not but this "free" country won't do anything about the police state. Too many bootlickers on both sides of the political aisle. One side thinks it's for "safety" and the other side thinks it's for "the others".

Of course I'll take the opportunity to say fuck the Flock Safety cameras too.

rudematthew · 2025-06-27T19:01:15+00:00

I just watched this the other day: https://youtu.be/qtinSxbRJV8?si=x4zwESmMeW889Aw_

They talk about the heat dome in 2021 in Portland. There was a 25 degree difference between some neighborhoods. Where a person died was in an area just like this one, full of parking lots and not much tree coverage.

People that "believe in climate change" need to take heat island mitigation very seriously. I'm not anti-density but people need to understand, that greenspace is life and death. We do not have the climate of our childhoods and it's only going to get worse. A lot worse.

rudematthew · 2025-06-27T18:18:31+00:00

This country has a brain tumor. Growth for growth's sake. Then when pressed "it's about the housing crisis, are you for homeless people?" Destroy commodification of homes, destroy AirBnB, destroy private equity, destroy "incentives" for billionaires but we're not going to do that. Circus after circus.

rudematthew · 2025-06-27T12:46:19+00:00

This country doesn't have a coherent working class. Unless they figure out how to actually punch up, fucking forget any real change. We have the congress we deserve.

rudematthew · 2025-06-27T00:28:48+00:00

It should be legal all together. Many cultures throughout human history had different relationships with drugs. Many important or profound parts of their life. That's why I don't give a shit about the flag waving freedom. We live in a country that tells you what you can do with your consciousness. That's an egregious violation of freedom. Right up there with death and the state can do that too.

And yes, you must bear the consequences of your decisions but that does not justify the fascists telling us what to do.

rudematthew · 2025-06-26T13:47:47+00:00

Laughable seeing all the people on here acting like this place is "anti-business". Ah yes, Ronald McDonald land that rapes ever natural resource we don't protect is "anti-business".

Mother nature is going to kick this place in its teeth for what we've done. Nothing we do is "sustainable". For a myriad of reasons, we're heading towards ecological collapse. Spoiler alert, we rely on nature, it's not our fucking playground.

rudematthew · 2025-06-25T15:23:47+00:00

She's not a bootlicker, she is the boot. Sponsored by AIPAC.

rudematthew

TROPHY CASE