The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
You could of course sell your assets, move to Asia or South America and live well...
You can do that if you're a certain kind of person, who can be comfortable living in a foreign culture. Most people aren't; even most expatriates aren't, which is why there are expatriate communities.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Now, we're asking kids exiting college (which didn't teach them anything and saddled them with debt) to live like a monk for 10 - 15 years so that, on the other side, they can move into a home they still can't afford. In the interim, they can enjoy consumer products that help dull this drudgery, but don't act as compounders. Who in the hell would take this deal?
Generation X. It was the only one on offer. Well except we didn't have the consumer products.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Oh, another thing that adds to bad vibes: the proliferation of cash discounts again. This happened during the big post-COVID inflation, but it's remained. Cash is a pain in the butt, but since 4% is 4%, eschewing the cash discount feels like throwing away money, and dealing with cash to get that little bit of money makes me feel poorer.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
How does $26.50 an hour in 2024 dollars sound? And that was after the first big drop in manufacturing employment (circa 2000)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The second largest city in the US, by population, is Los Angeles, at 3.9 million to NYCs 8.5 million. NYC's population in the 1960s was about 7.8 million, considerably larger than Los Angeles today. There are no US cities of similar size to New York City in the 1960s today, so your comment is utter nonsense that you obviously didn't even bother to check.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I got it from Investopedia, but the FRED data agrees. One correction: the GFC is at 5.6% and 1990 at 6.3%
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Back in 2020 - 2023ish, when prices on everything were taking off like bottle rockets, the official inflation rate was fairly flat.
No, it was not. It hit its highest value since the 1980s recession, 9.1%. During the GFC it hit 5.3%, in 1990 it hit 6.4%; inflation was really high, but it showed in the numbers.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Kindness runs into the problem that kindness to one person is often unkindness to another. Which means your system devolves to who/whom.... who is deserving of kindness and to whom it can be told that they can just suck it up.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Not sure about Common Core math, but Whole Language learning would have the opposite effect -- phonics is the system which works for almost everyone, whereas whole-language learning requires more cognitive ability. And the smarter kids would have likely been taught the "cheat code" of phonics before even getting into school.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I used to post stuff like Scott's article before COVID, because from the viewpoint of an Xer who lived through the late 70s and early 80s, redditors complaining about how great things were for the Boomers were really annoying. It was true then, I think. But it's not true now. Before COVID, house prices were rising but more slowly and interest rates were crazy low. Now interest rates are higher and house prices even higher. Unemployment was falling then, it's rising now. Real wages had been rising for a long time then, they fell precipitously and are rising slightly more slowly now and are still below trend. And that's with higher unemployment, which typically makes wages look higher (because the unemployed aren't factored in and usually unemployment eats at the bottom of the market).
i do think there's some manipulation going on too -- both for financial reasons (the big uptick in "AI is a bubble" stories shortly before NVidia reported earnings seemed quite suspicious to me), and political reasons (Democrats want sentiment to be bad). I said earlier I think a good test is going to be holiday spending. So far, it looks better than sentiment, but only modestly so.
Spirit? Meaning? These have been dead longer than I've been alive. They're not what's causing bad vibes.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Alas, that wouldn't have helped what with requiring more formal math and logic theory in turn. I already only passed the one required logic course by bribing my ex-gf to do the mandatory course project for me.
Ah, logic and discrete math didn't bother me. Stuff that requires 10 pages of for a single problem did, because it was so easy to make a mistake early on and produce 20 pages of nonsense instead. And actual advanced math I'd tend to just bounce off the notation and terminology, which there's so much of.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
You should have known better than to go to engineering school. Stick with CS, if you must take physics, take physics for physics majors where the problems will all have round numbers, and whatever you do, DON'T TAKE DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS, and you can get by with much less effort.
(I took differential equations. It left scars)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Ah, yes, right, over a year. If you're not tracking everything, how do you track that?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Criminals. I mean, if I were building and planting a bomb I'd make use of salvaged stuff as much as possible, anything I couldn't would be bought with cash (thought that didn't help here), the cell phone would stay at home, I'd try to note the location of CCTV cameras and such and at least try to make me and my car get lost in the noise if I couldn't avoid them, etc. I also would NOT do Google, Bing, or even DDG searches of bomb-making and stuff from devices that could be associated with me (including other people's phones at my house). But
a) I'm also not going to build or plant a bomb.
and
b) Blowing shit up is fun, but this would be a lot of work and who goes into crime to do a lot of work?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Not the cash part.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
That 4% could be the difference between a track leading to a seat on the Supreme Court and one leading to handling divorce cases day in and day out until you drink yourself to death.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Well if that isn't proof we're living in a panopticon, nothing is. They were able to trace his month-old purchases of 9V battery connectors that he made with cash:
COLE purchased five of the Nine Volt Distributor’s nine-volt battery connectors from Micro Center in northern Virginia on or about November 12 and December 28, 2019, including cash purchases made during the December transaction.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
RNs typically only needed a certificate program. Requirements in many places that they get a full Bachelors are recent.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Note that the order to make full payment was stayed by the Supreme Court... in the person of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. The stay was later extended 8-1 by the Supreme Court... oddly enough, the dissenter was Jackson.
It as apparent, as @FCfromSSC often points out, that the court system is broken. The Constitution is pretty clear about not spending funds which have not been appropriated.
No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.
Yet not only did at least two District judges, but the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, rule that the administration has to "find the money". Yes, including from the school lunch program.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
As with the healthcare systems, those Japanese or Korean schooling methods have some pretty nasty drawbacks of their own (as you note). And I think historically when the US attempts to copy them we end up (temporarily) with the worst of both worlds -- kids grind but learn nothing. The Sputnik Shock worked better for primary and secondary education, but the resulting National Defense Education Act also set us up for the student loan crisis.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
But if, de facto, the opinions of judicial clerk genuinely shape the law of the land, then it's clearly unjust for able-bodied fast workers to be over-represented among them. Accommodations that allow for disabled lawyers to work those jobs will lead to kinder, better laws where disability accommodations are concerned.
This is not, in fact, clearly the more just outcome. Your argument is circular; you're assuming that "kinder" disability accommodations are desirable and using that to argue that judicial clerks should obtain those accommodations.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
What you say is true of whoever was running the Biden administration, certainly.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Saying you have street smarts just means you're willing to do things that smart, sensitive people are too decent to do.
That's not really what street smarts is supposed to mean. Street smarts is things like knowing when someone's trying to con you, being able to tell what strangers you should to be civil to and who you shouldn't, knowing how to avoid getting robbed or caught in the middle of a fight, how to project dangerousness without aggressiveness so people will leave you alone, things like that.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
Yes, and the "World" system is left over from that time. As is Trump.
In my neighborhood -- a middling NYC suburb -- such a Cape would be half a million. And have taxes to knock your socks off.
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