the line between poor and rich was a lot closer in 1950 than it was in 1980 than it was in 2010.

it's interesting if you watch old movies in the 1980s vs today and compare the 'average' lifestyle portrayed. it blows my mind how 'poor' families in 1980s films are.

poor folks can work and achieve stuff. they just have to beat the odds stacked against them.

and whatever they achieve will just always been less than what the rich and privileged folks were born into, and they will forever look down on them for it.

poor people's achievements are rich people's failures. like a poor person going to college is a huge deal... for a rich person it's the equivalent of learning to tie your shoes.

I'm in the no man's land of being born into a poor family, having made it 'big' by getting a fancy education, but then only having a middle-class life, and basically being told by everyone I'm a rich privileged assholes and a poor loser piece of shit, depending on their mood at the moment, often from the same person. Schrodinger economic status, I guess?

But I'm also an asshole in that I view folks in their economic whole, and I don't really believe them when they cry poor.

well you should have not been different.

nothing. you can't control individuals behaviors in their own homes. that is where this is going on.

and you can be assured the people doing the violence are 100% against in it in public. and the loudest ones... most likely are the abusers, because people project their shame loudly and proudly.

why haven't you tried to change jobs? they don't value you, why do you value them?

or people just like good games that capture their imaginations and are fun and rewarding to play.

and what makes a game good doesn't really change with time. anymore that a good film or book or anything.

good shit lasts and is timeless. it speaks to people across time and cultures.

yeah not everyone likes it, but not everything is for everyone. But there is a reason we are still reading and talking about the Illiad 2000+ years later. and people will be playing Mario 64 in 50 years, just like they play the NES games today. NES Zelda is 40 years old and still a classic.

the secret is to online order ahead of time, so you don't have to wait in line or interact with anyone at all.

or they are just stuck dating the same crappy people over and over and don't win the lottery, so to speak.

what strikes me about people i meet from online dating is they all have the same sob story on every first date. it's like they are reading off a script. and if you try to take them off-script they get angry with you. it's been years since i met someone who seemed like a genuine human being.

and what's wild is these folks are often radically different jobs, backgrounds, etc. but they have the same 'my life is sad and i need a boyfriend to make me not sad' routine, despite how objectively amazing their life is.

also people have changed. social skills have atrophied, extremist thinking and echo chamber has massively increased, and folks are way more antagonistic over differences of political, preference, and activity. I used to meet folks who where not the same as me and we got along or even dated, now folks basically want you to be a carbon copy of them and dismiss you over what TV shows you watch, because it seems they just want endless validation of own choices, rather than trying to learn or try something different. I guess I blame social media? but I'm comparing dating in 2010s to 2020s mostly. and there was a huge shift post pandemic, even outside of dating, in how people socialize.

that's not to say some of these folks are probably perfectly good partners for someone, but the specificity of their preferences is certainly not doing them any favors. I don't recall my dates in 2015 demanding I be interested in love island or taylor swift whatever was popular back then... now they almost certainly do and they add an insult on top of it.

yes, but that doesn't explain why it takes people in front of me 5m to order a coffee and a pastry and it takes me 30seconds.

but i do know why, it's because they are weird and needy and need to interact and question and hem and haw rather than just know what they want and ask for it. same type of person who will then come back and complain to the person behind the counter how it wasn't good or they should get their money back or something equally stupid.

it's that i have respect for service workers, as I was one for years, and I want to make our interact quick and pleasant rather than miserable and drawn out.

OK, at what age are you going to teach them all that? Each of those topics could be a year long course, in and of itself. Do you expect to cram all of this into a single semester of high school or something? How are you going to test this?

Further, what will you do when the ID pols protest this course about how sexist, racist, and colonialist all these things are and how they are just pushing white male supremacy? ignore them?