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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 22nd, 2023

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  • Yeah, but honestly getting rid of coins is an admission that inflation is high relative to 40-50 years ago. When pretty much every government wants to keep that fact out of the public consciousness. Especially the current US government who wants to both claim we don’t have inflation at all, and are the ones getting rid of the penny.

    I’ve been saying we should drop the penny for almost 2 decades, but I still kind of look at getting rid of the penny as a sign of our current government’s abysmal handling of inflation.



  • Also, when donating to local food pantries, remember that donations of money go farther and feed more than donations of food. Food pantries have access to economies of scale and can buy food cheaper than an individual can. So you’ll increase your impact if you just donate your cash straight to the food pantry, rather than going to the grocery store to buy food to donate. In addition, the food pantry will be able to more accurately supply what people actually need and stock what they are short on, rather than you just guessing.





  • My personal scores have increased by about 100 points in the last 6 months (I started getting worried about interest rates getting even worse and consolidated my credit cards under a personal loan with a definite payoff date).

    At this point I really don’t care what my credit score is, but this feels like a bad time to have debt, and for once in my life I feel lucky that I’m able to be paying off debt faster than I can take on more - which really hasn’t been the case since I went to university in 2007 (and never finished for financial reasons).




  • I think the real reason they were hired was to give them something to do other than ask for the Epstein files all day on their podcasts. Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were both very outspoken about wanting the Epstein files released before they were given jobs leading the FBI. Honestly letting themselves show their incompetence to the world with this case may have been part of the plan all along. Make them look like the fools they are, and people will stop believing them when they inevitably decide they want to talk about Epstein again.


  • Most of us that are younger than the Boomers or maybe Gen X don’t want to count on Social Security because we’ve been hearing our whole lives that Social Security is on the chopping block because the government is in so much debt. And at this point we kinda just expect that ladder to be pulled up behind the Boomers before we get anything, because that’s already happened in so many other areas like home ownership.

    I also think people need to remember that Social Security is their own money that they paid in over their lives, and they are owed it back.

    And also that even though the US government has a large amount of debt, we’ve also spent the last 50 years giving tax cuts to the rich, we’d probably be just fine if we went back to a 90% marginal tax rate on the top earners like we had in the “good old days” of the 1950s.


  • Grew up in the great plains/midwest around the dairy industry. Had extended family who owned a smaller dairy farm. This all sounds pretty standard. Not saying it’s right, but none of it sounds new to me.

    I would imagine there were plenty of people who bought modern marketing that was designed to cruelty-wash the dairy industry. The reality is there’s no way to insert yourself between an udder and a calf without cruelty, and that’s the only way to get cow’s milk. Unless we can figure out how to get milk from lab-grown organs, which probably comes with it’s own ethical issues.






  • I’ll admit I tried talking to a local deepseek about a minor mental health issue one night when I just didn’t want to wake up/bother my friends. Broke the AI within about 6 prompts where no matter what I said it would repeat the same answer word-for-word about going for walks and eating better. Honestly, breaking the AI and laughing at it did more for my mental health than anything anyone could have said, but I’m an AI hater. I wouldn’t recommend anyone in real need use AI for mental health advice.



  • As someone who has casually considered running for office in South Carolina (because our local representative is an incompetent buffoon, and while I don’t consider myself qualified to run, I know I could do a better job), I kinda agree. If you want your representatives to be normal people, and understand what reality is like, then you really need to pay them at least a somewhat liveable wage, because as it stands, the only people who can afford to do the job are those who are basically independently wealthy, own a car dealership or some other business that basically runs itself, or are retired. I’m not saying politicians should be making boatloads of money. But their pay should also be a liveable wage for the area they represent.