I was the first in my family to go to college. I lived an intensely frugal life to minimize my debt, which was successful: I graduated with $3 in my pocket and no debt.
All of that effort got me, after 3 years of job hunting while making minimum wage, a $20 hour job. Almost twice our minimum wage at the time and I didn't even have the purchasing power my mother did at the start of her career, despite starting mine years later with an education and a whole stack of certificates.
This is the joke that capitalists think is acceptable.
It's interesting watching how China has reacted to having the same problem. By helping build infrastructure in other nations they help create the economic conditions required for permanent job creation. More jobs leads to more pay, more pay leads to more purchasing power, and more purchasing power leads to more imports.
China is creating consumers rather than juicing them. Not that their ideas are innocent, but they are more coherent and beneficial.
Both parents in that show worked (though if I recall correctly Hal sometimes had trouble with employment) and the joke was the two of them were simply dysfunctional as hell. There is an episode where they stop having sex for a while and they fix everything up.
Side note but the scene where Hal goes to change a light bulb is one of my favourite ways to illustrate what ADHD can look like for people: not laziness so much as misdirected energy.
The layup for Reagan effectively began the moment WW2 ended and it's important to acknowledge that so we understand the villainy runs so much deeper than just him. Reagan was just the one in power when the time came to land the dunk with the help of the Chicago boys and a weakening socialist presence. Neoliberal economics would see many western nations begin to sell off their assets and begin an era of hyperindividualism completely alien to humans.
Some countries caught on to the damage earlier than others and have been struggling against the neoliberal world order being held up by the IMF, World Bank, World Economic Forum, etc.. The anglosphere however is subject to America's cultural exports as well and that has left us particularly weak.
Ah I see you've run into the hexbear people. Theyre like the mentally ill homeless guy who just jerks in the middle of the street; better to leave them be, it's just about never worth getting involved.
lmao I used to buy cheap lawn decorations at the thrift store and place them in my grandparents' lawn. I got several dozen items in before they caught me lol
Just about every time someone said something dumb about me or other people, it had real impacts on their lives. Some asshole said I could read minds which drove away friends who believed that's possible. They also said I was a whore despite never even touching anyone until I was an adult; between me and others this happened to, it seriously harmed our ability to form relationships for years.
If a hit of nitrous oxide is all it would take to knock someone out of a dangerous depressive episode long enough to get some treatment, that's a huge win.
Updated formatting because it keeps getting messed up when I paste it from my cookbook. (P.S. Microsoft OneNote RULES as a cookbook.)
I was using OneNote at work for a while and this is actually why I stopped. Nothing ever gets copied out with sane formatting and it was driving me mad.
Every study I've seen on the subject said it helps or that it doesn't hurt. Note that this tended to have a lot to do with the type of games and how they're played.
Mobile games and similar attention vampires are worthless. On the other hand are puzzle, strategic, and some competitive games that challenge the user the most. The more you have to think or the faster you have to think, the more good it does.
The issue is that if you sell the PC at a loss, you're effectively subsidzing every person and business who wants an SFF-PC but may not necessarily buy games for them. It's not like the Steam Deck where you can bet the majority of those devices are ending up in the hands of gamers.
I was the first in my family to go to college. I lived an intensely frugal life to minimize my debt, which was successful: I graduated with $3 in my pocket and no debt.
All of that effort got me, after 3 years of job hunting while making minimum wage, a $20 hour job. Almost twice our minimum wage at the time and I didn't even have the purchasing power my mother did at the start of her career, despite starting mine years later with an education and a whole stack of certificates.
This is the joke that capitalists think is acceptable.