G650

Was the degree in education?

Yep

Alright, it's taken me a couple days to reply to this, because I wanted to have time to actually sit down and articulate what I am trying to communicate properly. There are so many threads and ideas flying around so quickly, I can't possibly keep up with what is where anymore, so this is definitely covering shit that is talked about elsewhere. I'll apologize in advance for what is an especially long winded post from me, but if we can stop insulting each other for 10 minutes here I think the core of this country's problems have been easily identifiable for a very long time. As far as solutions, I honestly have none. Ana, I understand your point on multigenerational families and their lack of prevalence in America, but that is kind of a side show as a peripheral issue. The reason I asked you to expand is captured in your post above. We in fact don't agree at all that QOL has eroded, and I think that is the fundamental issue, not between me and you, but with the American middle class. QOL has increased for every American currently alive in immeasurable ways, which is something I've been screaming for the better part of two decades. What gator is describing is correct and he is one of the first people I've seen to really get it. As I said, all the threads are coming to fast and furious for me to remember, but in one of them I noted that the US middle class is living in an unreality, and that is literally what has happened. They have a mental construct based purely off of emotion, and there is no rational response to that. When the most privileged humans to ever grace the planet think they are losing, there's nothing you can say in empirical terms to reason with that, it's a total fantasy. The basic truth now is that the lowliest peon in a western democracy is more privileged than Henry VIII. Set aside the ease of modern life, things like basic sanitation, and just consider time singularly. More raw time is the one thing that can't be bought (though us wealthy ones definitely buy more time for ourselves, early boarding on planes, car rides instead of sharing, meals made by others...), just watch billionaire psychos desperately trying to unlock the fountain of youth with treatments. But guess what? As a society we did just that. Average life expectancy is 77 years in the US, literally the average American has 20 years more life on the planet than one of the most powerful and privileged persons of all time. We somehow engineered ourselves an exemption from the laws of nature, which is insane. Yet we have country that thinks it's losing? Unreality. We have fundamentally lost the ability to even know what privilege even is. Because there are millions of people in subsaharan Africa, Southeast Asia, South America who have not gotten to this point yet, they are in fact half a millennium behind in most respects. Right now. On Planet Earth. To look specifically to the change in the US vis a vis the 50's or 60s, which is getting more specifically into what you are saying and what gator is speaking about, it's the same thing just on a smaller scale. You will get no argument from me that the general populace has been force fed American Dream™ propaganda for a century. They have been lied to and pandered to, had their heads filled with all sorts of dreamy nonsense. But what it even means to be middle class now is so divorced from when even my childhood took place, it's unrecognizable. And I'm just a late Gen Xer. The house I was born into would basically been considered uninhabitable these days by a middle class person. From the fixtures, to the floors, no HVAC, it would be a tear down for any buyer. It may even be torn down now, I don't know. But it was the average middle class family house then. The townhouse my mom bought and she and I moved to after my parents split was a a solid middle class house. It would be considered something the working poor rent these days. The little pocket device we all carry has condensed trillions of dollars of technology into something that the lowliest working man can video chat a relative across the globe with, the ability to be with our loved ones across time and space is literally in our hands. Rockafeller and Vanderbilt could not buy this in their wildest fantasies with all their money, much less a middle class person from 1972. Just looking at dollars and cents phones have put more accumulated wealth in peoples lives than a 1950s family would ever seen combined. Health outcomes now vs then? No comparison. These are the very things that define QOL, and we are unimaginably ahead of where we were just 30 years ago, much less 70 years ago. People can absolutely have the 1950s ideal, one income, yadda yadda, but they don't want that life. At all. The way people people even characterize middle class now is totally separate from any empirical definition and hence undefinable. It's raw unadulterated emotion, and thus can never been attained. So as I said elsewhere, there is no policy outcome that will appease these people, it's by definition impossible to. As Andrew Breibart himself noted, politics is downstream of culture. American culture has been sick for a long, long time, and in so many ways. Morally, aesthetically, socially, this has been something coming for decades, since the 80s at least. There's been small flashes of breaking out that torpor, but nothing that has sustained against the downward trajectory. This isn't something Trump did, or the Democrats, or even politicians in general. I've said this for so long now that I can only vaguely remember when I first got the sense this was happening. The American people did this to themselves. I have no answers on how it will change. I used to think maybe I did, but this election put that to bed permanently. I fear absent a worldwide depression and massive war, it will just be a gradual decline to black. So, I guess in toto, TL;DR We played ourselves. Alternatively, I ain't reading all that I'm happy for u tho or sorry that happened

One of the wildest things is when I go over to my folks house and cable TV is on. It's like a culture shock.

Please white people, stop the Mayor Pete dream

I can't speak to your experiences, only give my own observations. There's certainly some on the left that will be jerks, but there's some on the right too, as you can see with the dickheads that came out of the woodwork this week. But you can’t consider a handful to represent the masses, on either side. Well, you can if you want I guess, but you will never have a space for discussion if you do. You have to tune out the extreme yourself. Typically the only people I see get piled on here are the ones that come in with half baked unsupported ideas. That's not to say you won't get push back on any given idea, but if that's what you are looking to avoid, that's a plea for a safe space, not a discussion. At any rate, I hope you stick around and participate.

I mean, I'm happy to keep everyone apprised of our cost increases. Just tell me where. And remind me from time to time because I'm sure I'm gonna forget.

My massage therapist did Chattanooga IM this year, loved it even though swim was canceled from storm.

Yeah I'm sure you have a dealer somewhere. There's a dealer locator page on the BMC website i believe

I do a lot of work for Horton, very Trumpy bunch.

Didn't realize gods love was herpes.

Meatball Johnny as I like to call him

I mean, I think there is a very good chance prices go ham from this. We are preparing for it and putting very limited expirations on our pricing. She didn't say she was a GC in that post btw.

I mean, I'm a contractor and this is 100% what we are going to do. Suppliers have been doing it to us for 2 years now, that cost is getting passed on

Definitely, thanks.

Yup

Interesting, I'm obviously pretty out of touch with procurement of acid these days. It was probably the easiest thing to score in the 90s.

Is there an impediment to getting acid these days?

Worked out great for Syd Barrett

Mostly because it's home to a lot of them has been my opinion

Well yeah, I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise. It's symptomatic.

That's true of pretty much any thread my friend

Definitely.

It's clearly not an all or nothing thing, plenty of wickedly smart guys have been football players, and a lot of dumbasses have played and watched supposed high brow sports. There's definitely been a lot of self segregation going on over the past few decades though. Baseball a notable one.