Andy

Yeah, this. You schedule of days or you ask your boss if it’s cool if you come in at 10 so you can get a new glasses prescription.

It depends a lot on the work culture where you are.

This is also a big reason people get married. It helps a lot if you have two people juggling this stuff.

Can you imagine how bland the average an American wedding must look to them?

The size of families and the expectation of who gets invited varies a lot by culture, too.

Irish weddings are often big. Same for Mexican weddings, a lot of Arab folks.

I suspect Protestant Americans are outliers globally in the size of the average family and the degree of contact people maintain with cousins.

What I’m really interested in is using OSM and the associated apps as a framework to develop me features.

I have a dream where I can search a map app like Google Maps for a barber or baker, bit ask the results are worker owned.

I’d also like an app that makes the Fallen Fruit urban harvest app more user friendly, and includes food pickup and drop off sites.

Is this something I could do?

This is really interesting to me but also overwhelming. I’ll try to work through it later and follow up with questions.

There is actually a popular book that answers this kind of question: “The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics”

I haven’t read it, but from summaries, my understanding is that the answer to your question is that every high ranking office depends on maintaining support from other people with power. Even if we disregard voters, Trump (and other presidents) need to keep generals, oligarchs, and senators happy, or they can remove him from power. Naked disrespect for the rabble displeases these people, because they’re still sensitive to assassinations, market disruptions, challenges from other power centers like state governments, etc.

Again, I don’t want this to be a fight, but this isn’t really true. Again, our media presents a certain picture of boomers that isn’t actually reflective of what the average boomer looks like.

Most boomers aren’t country club Republicans. In 2024, most baby boomers did not vote for Donald Trump.

In 2025, about 37% of baby boomers voted Republican. Just like most years.

You read that right: 25% didn’t vote, and of those who did, Trump won 49%. That was enough to win.

Maybe you’re asking, though, 'Why didn’t they vote Democrat more! They should’ve elected Gore! And lots of Democratic congresspersons and senators! To which I would say that we live in a very damaged democracy in which the Democratic party has been running on most of the same economic policies as Republicans since the 1970s. Most boomers didn’t have a say.

Most boomers are poor and have been fucked over by the government just like the rest of us.

The 1% (regardless of any age) are the bad guys.

Respectfully, whenever I hear this I have to push back.

‘The boomers fucked us over’ trope is largely a myth like ‘first world consumers are responsible for climate change’: it’s a cultural narrative that exists to divert blame to a huge group to obscure that it’s mostly a small group of investors and their corporations who (in both of these cases) fucked over the other 99% of the civilisation.

It’s true that most of the worst people are boomers: but as a group, most boomers are not these people. Most boomers are poor and have lived their whole lives in a fake democracy where they never really had serious political power.

The elderly greeters at Walmart who can never retire; the old woman at the bus stop wearing chipped glasses with a prescription 10 years out of date; the guy at the VA home dying of cancer he got from being drafted into Vietnam; these aren’t the people who fucked the rest of us over. They’re just us, older.

You’re welcome to your opinion, but what’s funny is that I live in Oakland in a household of three on a joint income of $160k. We live in a two bedroom apartment near Lake Merritt that costs $2500 per month. And we’re pretty comfortable.

It sounds like you and I are neighbors. If you’re having a harder time than I am I don’t want to invalidate your experience. But not everyone who feels financially constrained is poor, imo.

I saw it, and it said that a household of eight living on an income of $200k would be “low income”.

First, “low income” is not poor, either legally or in the informal definition of the word. Even according to the chart you’re referencing, $200k is far above the poverty line. It’s more than twice the cutoff for “extremely low income”.

Second, this is also based on an absurd qualifier: It’s only “low” if you’re trying to support seven dependents.

By this logic, $300k a year is poor too (if you’re supporting a household of 12), and a million a year is also poor (if you’re supporting a household of 40 in San Francisco).

This is silly. If your monthly income is $16k you aren’t poor.

You can still be broke. You can be in debt. But no: you are not poor.

Not really. “Africans” doesn’t really have humor value in the way that “Francophones” does.

I’m not saying the chat is definitely wrong. I’m just saying that a chart of language use in which French is flat until the present and then is forecasted to suddenly take off while everything else stays level reads like an example of well-executed visual humor.

That graph feels like comedy.

I’m not saying that you can’t run out of money if you make $200k. I’m saying that it’s not poor.

If earning well above average in an area with a high concentration of high earners can be poor, the word means nothing.

$200k is not poor in San Francisco.

It’s still significantly above average, even in San Francisco.

I mean no offense, but I don’t think this is true.

I don’t think anyone who makes $200,000 a year is considered poor under legal definitions or under the casual common use of the term.

You could make $200k and be in debt. You could make $200k and be in a precarious situation. But I don’t think you can make $200k and qualify as in poverty, either legally or in the court of public opinion.

Okay, but that’s not what poor means.

No?

This question makes no sense.

Wait I’m not up to date on the Bratz lore: do they hunt demons?

First, I’ve been to Astoria Oregon, and I assure you that people live there. It’s not Vancouver, but it’s a legit town.

But I get your question. I think the answers are complex and technical, but my understanding is that people migrate and settle, and then population centers often grow based on a mix of natural features and where human-made resources like centers of education are constructed. So it’s really more of a question of why were the locations of Portland and Seattle better.

I’m not a geographer, so I don’t know the precise features, but my guess is that Portland and Seattle were located in areas that offered most of the benefits of this coastal region in terms of access to the ocean but had greater benefits and fewer downsides. I’m just speculating here, but my first guess would be that the weather inland is less intense. It might also provide better access to freshwater and arable land.

But people do live there. And if you live in Newport or Lincoln City you’re two hours from an international airport. That’s not exactly undeveloped wilderness. People just chose to settle a bit more inland along bays, which considering how rough the weather in the coastal Pacific northwest can be, seems sensible.

This is a really interesting question that people aren’t taking seriously.

It’s a huge mix. Because one of the key features of wealth and privilege is freedom: these people get to do more or less whatever they want.

For some, that’s whatever their parents do. Maybe they just want to make money and have martini lunches. But for a lot of them, they may just want to be a gaming YouTuber or a marine biologist, or a even run a social-justice focused non-profit.

As much as most of us resent unearned privilege, there’s no rule that says people who lucked into life are all stupid, mean, or incompetent. Many will become successful academics or devote themselves to politically righteous causes. The main problem is not what they do, but all the human potential among the unprivileged that is denied and squandered.

Many may also move between careers; etsy store one year, writer another. It’s very fluid.