#the power of science #I sure am having emotions about this video but they’re mostly not the intended emotions #let me see if I can convey the emotions in words: #the world that was big enough to contain science museums was an illusion #built atop the sand in an hourglass #I was one of those cheering kids once (not this exact group‚ not this exact demo‚ but the general area of concept-space) #and then I grew up and realised just how much had been stolen from my future to build that happy present #in the end‚ there are only two kinds of people: those who are independently wealthy‚ and those who are not #my parents failed to treat their dependency on my father’s career as the emergency it was #(they even failed to treat the *absence* of my father’s career as the emergency it most certainly was) #they could have been *fine* #*we could all have been fine* #if they’d *prioritised* correctly #but they didn’t‚ and now I’m going to spend the rest of my life cleaning up after their mistakes #Mom had the fucking gall recently to say ”I’m glad things didn’t get bad until you guys were old enough to understand” #what the fuck do you even say to someone who has missed the point that completely #the only good thing to be said about it is that I know‚ firsthand‚ the better world that might one day come to be #it has never yet existed‚ not truly #but it might‚ someday #tag rambles #venting cw #adventures in human capitalism #my childhood
#oh my god #adventures in human capitalism #covid19 #vaccines #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #embarrassment squick? #(ftr the NYT pirates say that the ”terrific news” is that the bivalent boosters reduce your risk of getting Long COVID)
(status: I acknowledge that this is psychological damage from an extended period of financial hardship during formative years, but I nonetheless mostly endorse it)
Hmm. I seem to be having a bunch of thoughts and feelings about this.
There seems to be a…maybe “divide” is too strong a word, I don’t know. But…like, I called it “fuck-you money vs fuck-me money” in a post a while back. Even when the actions are the same, there’s this psychological difference in how people can approach it.
When I see FIRE people, they always frame it in terms of *freedom*. (It’s right there in the acronym: Financially *Independent*, Retiring Early.) But to me, it strikes me as being a thing about *safety*. “Enough money that you can run your household solely off the interest from your investments” can protect you from a lot of different problems, and *that’s* why the idea appeals to me.
A few weeks ago I saw some distant acquaintance-of-an-acquaintance on Tumblr (I don’t recall who) advising a young person with a high-paying job and relatively low expenses (Silicon Valley programmer, I think, or something like that) to go on some trips and enjoy themself, because they weren’t going to have this much disposable income again until their forties if not later. And it felt like a very weird framing to me, because…the way I see it, if future-me doesn’t have money to spare, then neither do I. I don’t have spare money unless I can afford to feed myself, and I can’t truly afford to feed myself unless I can afford to feed *all* of my selves.
16-year-old me got to eat because 7-year-old me’s dad put away some “”extra””, and eventually that “”extra”” was all he had left. Where is 33-year-old me getting *her* food from?
Because if the source isn’t me, then I don’t trust it to come through for her. I want to do all I can to make sure that, no matter who is or is not willing to employ her or for how much, 33-year-old me (and 44-year-old me, and 55-year-old me…) is fed and housed and so forth.
—
(This was going to be a tag ramble, but then I thought it should probably stay with the post if somebody reblogs it to respond or something. I’m just going to leave it in tag format.)
#this post probably partly inspired by my first anniversary of non-freelance employment #which is coming up soon #I think I will celebrate by scheduling the dental checkup I have been putting off for ~3 years because I didn’t feel I could afford it #(yes government healthcare does not cover dental) #(OHIP has some very weird-looking exceptions) #(this is probably the result of some kind of complicated political negotiation that I’m not sure I want to know the details of) #anyway a dental checkup seems like a good compromise between celebratory and practical #(and [practical celebrations are easier to enjoy]/[I find myself drawn to practical gifts these days anyway including gifts I buy for myself]) #((that safety thing manifests here especially)) #((the things I dream of buying these days are always things that protect you from something)) #((checkups that protect you from tooth damage and electric cars that protect you from rising oil prices and solar-powered phone chargers that protect you from power outages)) #((this I am much less sure I endorse)) #((I mean I think it is good to want practical things but it would also probably be good if I felt safe enough to want a few non-practical things too)) #(((sometimes on especially bad brain days I can’t even bring myself to play Flight Rising))) #(((that is currently the most common cause of my FR hiatuses))) #(((it used to be the most common cause was that I felt like playing some other game instead)))
#I will put this in the tags though: #I was reading my Tumblr archive recently and *damn* 2014!me was having a hard time #she didn’t talk about it much in public but occasionally she couldn’t quite hold it in anymore and it leaked out into a post #I felt very sorry for her #basically what I’m saying is #hi 2022!me #I hope you’re in a good enough position that you can feel sorry for me rather than going ”yeah I still know that feel” #(but if so please do still provide for farther-future!us) #(just with a healthier frame of mind) #(maybe buy solar chargers *and* video games)
Hi, 2018!me.
I won’t lie to you: I do still know that feel. Things haven’t really changed much for us financially: still a slow bleeding kept at bay by unpredictable one-time cash infusions, still with a-home-in-good-repair being a cherished but distant dream. Still taking some gigs at $1.30/hour, though only the especially easy ones now. We graduated last year, and the diploma’s been *exactly* as much of a waste of time and resources as we feared it would be, though I have not quite lost hope altogether. I have made only $309 in deposits to my retirement fund, in the time since I was you.
Financially, we still don’t have the stability and security that we long for.
*Non*-financially, though, our position has improved. We’ve made new friends, and even mostly managed to keep the old, and (in addition to the non-practicality-related aspects) they’ve taught us (and we them) many useful things. I’m in better shape now: not *great* shape, but on a good day I can run for half an hour straight (almost two miles!), and even on moderately bad days I can do twenty minutes. I still work at the restaurant, but I’m allowed to mask at work now (I know, right, we thought that would *never* happen, didn’t even dare hope for it), and we were–by, admittedly, a terrifyingly narrow margin–not fucked over by the travesty that set the precedent that workplaces allow employees to mask.
(If this were two-way communication, I’d have opened with advice on getting higher-grade and more durable masks while they’re still easy to come by, so that the margin won’t be so terrifyingly narrow. But it isn’t, and I will have to content myself with knowing that it worked out for us in the end.)
(It didn’t work out, for a lot of people. A lot of people, in a lot of ways, are worse off now than they were in 2018. I do not live in as flourishing a world as we would hope.
But we, personally, were fortunate in this regard: we rose through the cracks of the problems that hit everyone, and that actually ended up counteracting a lot of the problems that were specific to us. It’s where most of the one-time cash infusions came from; it’s why I haven’t been sick–not *really* sick, not anything bad enough to make me wish I were unconscious–in over three and a half of the four years that separate us.)
((common-cold-induced depression isn’t normal, BTW. you know that weird non-depressive cold we had in December of 2017? yeah, that’s just what colds are like for normal people. sure does explain a lot about why people are Like That.))
The Ontarian government has announced plans to start covering dental care in a couple of years (a long enough delay that I’ve decided it’s still worth paying for a checkup this year, though I may skip next year). Our parents’ pensions will start trickling in next year, with the bigger ones starting in 2025. I still have a couple more ideas for how to break into an accounting career, and I still have the option of changing tacks and making a living in an unrelated field.
In the time since I was you, I have bought both a solar panel and a video game.
One way or another, we’ll get through this.
Remember, I love you.
Tags:
#reply via reblog #oh look an update #adventures in human capitalism #adventures in University Land #in which Brin has a job #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #covid19 #illness tw #this probably deserves some other warning tag but I am not sure what #venting cw? #bragging cw? #kind of both
Now our role models are media creations. Some are literal fictional characters (James Bond); others are nominally real people (Kylie Jenner). But both are merely representations – images usurping an essential formative role. ‘William Shatner’ and ‘Robert Downey, Jr.’ are only marginally more real than Captain Kirk and Tony Stark, yet they occupy way more headspace than people that live down the street.
Most people can name more celebrities, in more detail, than people they’ve known in person. I know the names of Will Smith’s kids – I don’t even know if my best friends from high school have any.
Like—is that true? Can that possibly be true? How does that happen? It’s asserted as if it’s just obvious, and it seems like a shocking claim to me.
(Now, the entire review feels like this somewhat. But this passage really stood out as sounding completely insane to me.)
This struck me as one of the *relatively* sane bits of that article, although I think it says more about rootlessness than it does about [knowing a lot about celebrities]. I *don’t* know whether my best friends from middle school have kids, because I live in a different country from them now. I think I *would* have heard if my friends from high school had had kids, but if we had all scattered to the winds it would be another story. I have spent over *three months* trying to start getting to know people down the street, and in that time the volunteering group in question has held exactly one meetup that they *both* remembered to tell me about *and* didn’t cancel. (I shudder to think how hard it would be if there hadn’t even *been* a volunteering group already in place.)
—
To me the completely insane part was this bit:
“We’ve all felt the shockwaves of the Internet explosion. Life is *different* now. It takes an act of will to put down your phone so you can focus on the TV. Low battery is an emergency. Losing signal is bereavement. Navigating without GPS is an anxiety attack.
Do you remember what it was like, not so long ago? How exciting it was to play videogames with someone a thousand miles away? How cool it was the first time you streamed a movie on an airplane? That sense of possibility and promise, like all the world was in the palm of your hand?”
In order of appearance:
1. If I have access to a TV (implying that I’m at home), why am I on a phone and not a laptop?
1a. I generally do have my laptop open while watching TV, *because* I generally only watch TV as a social activity with online friends.
2. I frequently go entire days without touching my phone; on most days that I interact with my phone I do so for only a minute or two; on most days that I interact with my phone for more than five cumulative minutes it’s because I’m updating its software or local files. Note that I have it set to sync SMS messages to my laptop over KDE Connect, so I do not need to touch my phone to notice that I have received a text or even to respond to it.
3. Low battery is an occasional annoyance. The worst-case scenario is that because my phone is dead I don’t notice the text from my boss offering me an extra shift on short notice, which *did* almost happen to me yesterday but fortunately I still had 6% left. I suppose I shall be *slightly* more careful, given that reminder that functioning phones are *occasionally* unexpectedly important.
4. *Despite* low phone battery not majorly featuring in my life, I carry two USB cables, a small solar generator, and an AC adapter at all times whenever leaving my home. Surely someone who cared desperately about maintaining phone charge should be, if anything, *more* careful?
5. I didn’t even *have* a SIM card for over *six years* after getting my first smartphone. Even now, my data plan is 250 MB per month: an occasional backup, not remotely something I can afford to leave on all the time. Everything about my smartphone is oriented around Internet access being erratic and/or heavily rationed: the *point* of a smartphone, for me, is that it can be made largely self-sufficient, that you can keep your digital belongings not only with you but *accessible* even when you are far from home and signal alike.
6. I did not have GPS until 2014, and I assure you that navigating without GPS was *always* nightmarish even when I *hadn’t* experienced anything better.
7. I *do* enjoy watching over a friend’s shoulder from two thousand miles away while they play a video game and we chat about it, although our schedules haven’t worked out lately.
8. Wait, streaming movies on airplanes is possible now? Since when? I was last on a plane in 2015 bold of OP to assume I can afford to travel and that was definitely not a thing, although it *was* a downmarket airline so maybe fancy planes could arrange for it. Do they still call it “airplane mode”?
#Brin owns *two* 2010’s computers now #reply via reblog #101 Uses for Infrastructureless Computers #proud citizen of The Future #adventures in human capitalism
Hey yall, I wanted to make a PSA about this because it’ll be useful to many of you in the United States. You might qualify for public assistance now, specifically because of rising food prices.
The federal poverty line, the biggest determining factor for public assistance, has been kept artificially low for decades because it was based on the outdated assumption that food was the primary expense for most American households. For decades now, shelter has been the larger expense, but the federal poverty limit has still been determined based on the prices of food commodities.
Because food prices have recently gone up, the federal poverty line has gone up significantly as well. This means if you were previously slightly over the income limit to qualify for public assistance such as food stamps or medicaid, you likely qualify now. I’d like to encourage everyone who thinks they might qualify to apply for these programs. The qualification cutoffs are still absurdly low, so please be assured that if you qualify for assistance, you’re not taking something you don’t need or deserve.
Please reblog this if you think your followers will find it useful. I haven’t seen anyone talking about this, it’s just something I noticed recently, so I want the info to become more public to help people who might be struggling.
I’ve found it’s a good practice to, after doing your taxes each year, take a look at that official net income figure and go “does this qualify me for anything?”.
Check your food, your shelter, your utilities, your healthcare. If you take public transit, check that too.
It’s tax season, so it’s about that time again.
Tags:
#adventures in human capitalism #PSA #reply via reblog #I’m still getting my family’s taxes together and I’m interested to see what figures result #it’s plausible they’ll be low enough for subsidised electricity and bus fare this year #it’s also plausible that they won’t #we’ll have to see #(I don’t have access to my brother’s transaction history so I have only a very rough guess at how much he made) #(I’m going to wait to ask until I have the exact net-income figures for everyone else)
me in my head at the supermarket: nobody is ever going to fucking love me. omg 25% off
Tags:
#the wounds in the world are innumerable‚ a constant aching wrongness whose healing is a Sisyphean task #oh fuck yes the cashews for $6/lb are still in stock #re: prev tag #(”it is only by the grace of god that i am not a highly active couponer”) #I am absolutely a couponer† and it’s great #it’s like accounting except you can’t fail the job interview #you just show up with your carefully optimised lists and buy $300 of groceries for $200 #(some people in the notes are saying that grocery stores are *especially* Like This) #(I agree that grocery shopping *was* a wild emotional ride in 2020 #–(…OP wrote this on 2020-03-14‚ so there’s that)– #but if you filter out enough of the aerosolised anxiety particles it’s fine) #†(the Canadian manifestation of this focuses more on price-matching‚ though literal coupons do make an occasional appearance) #tag rambles #food #anxiety #adventures in human capitalism #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
funny if it turns out Musk’s whole deal hinges on this elaborate humiliation fetish of his corporate lawyer
or an elaborately deniable attempt at courting Matt Levine??
Tags:
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #adventures in human capitalism #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
#anything that makes me laugh this much deserves a reblog #high context jokes #adventures in human capitalism #this probably deserves some warning tag but I am not sure what
Brinens and Things 