I remember ICQ being better in every way I cared about, except I couldn’t get people to use it. (offline messaging, you could change your display name without making a new account, other stuff I forget). Kind of like trying to get people to use fediverse stuff now, I guess.
Many people are just scared all the time. No one’s smart when they’re scared. The body doesn’t let you. They think the police will protect them.
Right wing media is largely to blame. And segregation and under funded education, public spaces. And suburbs + car culture isolating everyone.
Pretty much every right wing idea is bad.
Apparently about 40% of adults get insufficient sleep, if the CDC is to be trusted. That’s pretty bad.
I started setting an alarm for myself to go to bed. Now I have better sleep habits. I used to stay up too late, but then I’d be in a brain fog the next day and it sucked. An extra hour of video game isn’t worth the following day and its video games sucking.
When people talk about their income they usually talk about gross, which is pre-tax. When someone says “I make $100k a year” they don’t typically mean they take home net $100k.
Investments are typically also only taxed when you realize the gains, so if you have $3mm and “earn” $300k, you only pay taxes if you sell some of that. Other interest, like from a high yield savings, is taxed as income.
Health insurance is a nightmare, but there are options in this hellscape for buying it. Many poor people are also just uninsured, so you’re not much worse off than them in this scenario.
Did you have any details you wanted to talk about, or did you just want to try to be pithy?
It is kind of fucked up that if you’re even mildly rich, you essentially get basic income.
If you have $1 million, a fairly conservative investment strategy will get you $100k per year. That’s about the median income for NYC. You’ll probably get closer to $150k, since vanguard usually gets about 15% returns. That’s just sticking the money in Vanguard and doing nothing else. Sit at home playing final fantasy and “earn” more than a teacher.
If you’re richer, but not even mega-rich, say $3 million, you can put it in an *insured high yield savings and take home $135,000 a year. Or diversify, put some in vanguard, some in bonds, and some in high yield savings. You’ll “earn” more than many people do at their jobs.
You could then just do what you want with your days. Write a book. Finish your backlog of games. Start a band. Whatever you want. You’d be free.
I want everyone to have basic income, not just the rich.
I imagine early intervention helps, but right-wing (ie: authoritarian) people don’t want to invest in quality education. Not the kind with a good teacher-student ratio and time spent on social skills.
Is authoritarianism also cluster b? There are a lot of people who seem to get off on being part of the group. Like, it brings them chemical joy to be screaming in a crowd about how that other group of people need to die. Those people kind of suck, too.
I don’t think every maga hat is a narcissist, but a lot of them are trash humans who value their in-group feelings of solidarity over everything else.
People are emotional creatures. Some people are almost exclusively driven by emotions. Amusingly, it’s usually the right wing saying “facts don’t care about your feelings”, because everything from them is projection
If I’m out of my home for a day my cat comes running to the door meowing when I return. Then he paces around for a while, but if I sit on the couch he’ll join me.
Usually when I see traffic, I’m on the train looking out the windows feeling very smug
When I was a cashier they recommended we not do this kind of thing, because there are some fast-talk scams people will do to get more money. Like they’ll give you more money, say something confusing, take the money back, and then you give them the extra change, except more sophisticated than that.
Could be, but that’s immature and unattractive. You’re better off not throwing in with someone who’s unwilling to be vulnerable
Half of US adults can’t read at a 6th grade level. This is haunting.
Some strikingly high percentage can’t complete complicated tasks on a computer (eg: find 3 user email addresses and add them to a spreadsheet).
Reading the manual is good advice but I think some people are just left behind
That sounds psychosomatic but I’m not a professional. You take care of yourself.
The “American” one is full of [bullet] holes
Not counting nice walks in prospect Park, I can get on the metro north train and go on a variety of hikes. It’s not 20 steps, but I also get all the other benefits of a city.
Also Manhattan isn’t known for smog, and there is a lot more to New York than Manhattan. Go look at like park slope or Astoria
They said the problem was “widespread”. I’m saying it’s not like everywhere you look, but it feels worse than it is if you only go to the high traffic areas where homeless people go to beg for help.
Cost of living is rising higher than salaries everywhere. This isn’t unique to New York.
The fact that homeless people exist is a poor reason to avoid New York, in my view. People act like you’re going to be wrestling with the homeless every day.
We should do more than ignore the homeless, but that’s a separate conversation.
If you live here you don’t really go through Penn station. That’s a major commuter hub.
I’ve lived here for years and only go there if I need to go to NJ transit for some reason (which isn’t often).
That’s like thinking all of NJ is Secaucus train station, or all of someplace else is just the airport. It’s not representative.
I’m confident whatever you are imagining is not the daily lived experience of new york city. People picture like times square in 1973 on new years eve and also classic film the warriors. Go look at like park slope on google street view (or another similar service of your choosing).
I feel like everyone knows the ownership class is ruining everything, but no one wants to do anything.
But that’s not true. I just hang out with people with more class consciousness, I guess. The average idiot probably blames the queers and the non-whites. “They had to raise the price of CoD because of all the money spent on sensitivity and diversity!” is probably something a dud sincerely believes.
Sometimes I wish real life was more like some video games, and I could just crouch behind those people, snap their neck, and dump the body in a bush with no consequences.