I see a lot of people saying "but that's how creators get paid".

Listen: I didn't put ads on my video. YouTube did. I can't take them off and I don't see a cent from them. Block away.

I agree with the sentiment. There's a large gap between minimum wage and housing. I don't think anybody expects to afford an ultra luxurious three-story corner penthouse loft from working full time at Taco Bell, but I do think it's reasonable to expect to be able to afford a simple, safe, one-bedroom in good repair.

I own so I'm completely out of touch with rent prices. I know what they were when I was renting 10+ years ago but things are a lot different now. I went on apartments.com to see if I could prove this study wrong.

TL/DR: I could, but ... not really.

My criteria was: (1) under $1002 / month, (2) in a safe area, (3) with free parking, (4) within a 10-minute drive of at least two supermarkets, and (5) within a 20-minute drive of most of our metro area. I found multiple apartment complexes that met all those criteria, along with multiple independent rentals. All of the complexes were within the $900 - $1000 range. So ... yes, technically I just proved the survey wrong. But that $100 savings doesn't really exist.

First, you need a car to get from there to here. That's non negotiable. Our mass transit here sucks and you're either going to be two hours early or 15 minutes late, and that's assuming you have a regular, consistent schedule to work with. So let's assume you buy a sensible 10-year-old Civic / Corolla / whatever with 90k miles in immaculate condition. I found a few options nearby for $12k, and let's assume you talk the dealer down another $2k, you have a $2500 downpayment, and there's no tax because we're in magical la-la land. Let's also assume you got zero percent interest because it's 2003 again for some reason. A 60-month loan would be $125, or an additional 4 hours a week.

Next, let's talk groceries. Let's say you are exceptionally frugal and can prepare nutritious, filling meals for yourself with only a $200 / month grocery spend. That's an extra 7 hours of work per week.

Next, gotta put gas in that car. Your friend, who happens to a magical elf, magically conjures up gasoline just for you for the low, low price of $2 / gallon. Wow! Combined with your extremely thrifty vehicle (and your commute, which also just happens to be entirely on interstate at 40 MPG), you only go through 10 gallons of fuel a week. At $80 / month, that's an extra 3 hours of work per week.

Don't forget car insurance! Your driving record is spotless, your FICO score makes TransUnion weep like that statute of liberty from The Onion's political cartoons, and your driving is angelic. Your full-coverage premium (because you don't want to get hit with surprise bills) is only $75 per month. You pay in full to avoid fees, so that's another two hours of work each week.

Did I mention car maintenance? You do all your own oil changes, filter changes, tire rotation, everything, because you're a frugal bastard. I don't even know what oil costs because I'm fortunate enough to be able to pay people to do that for me, so just for the sake of making things easy, let's say one banana ten dollars per week. Heck, let's just round that down an hour of work per week.

Oh and let's make utilities super simple. That apartment includes water, sewer, trash, cable, and internet. You only have to pay electric and gas. And because it's exceptionally well insulated and you're very frugal with your electricity, your combined electric and gas bill is only $75 / month, averaged year round. That's only two hours of work per week.

You use an MVNO to save a fortune, and your phone is only $20 / month. That's a half hour of work per week.

And I know it's exorbitant, but you have the audacity to want to go out once in a while. You splurge by getting the dollar menu at McDonald's (which doesn't exist anymore BTW) so you budget an extra $30 / month on "fun money". That's an extra hour a week.

So with those extremely unrealistic and lowball numbers, you're looking at an additional 20-ish hours of work each week. To afford that barebones and frankly impossible lifestyle, you're looking at working 125 hours a week. That's 18 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, with no downtime ever. And again, I'm using impossibly low numbers here and making a lot of assumptions that will never happen.

That's before taxes. That assumes you never get sick. You never splurge on luxuries like "plates" or "clothing". Your car lasts forever. You're never a victim of crime. Your rent never increases. Inflation never happens. And you never take time to go on interviews for a better paying job.

So yeah, I technically proved the study wrong, but not in any remotely good way.

Mark my words:

Trump will win, and it will be largely because of people who refuse to support Biden due to Palestine.

I will be truly happy if time proves me wrong.

I love this.

I am all for purchasing or licensing content that I enjoy. 100%. But that assumes the content owner is willing to take my money. I have no sympathy for people who refuse to let me give them my money who then turn around and cry "noooooooo, piracy is ruining us!!!".

I am 110% in favor of breaking the two party stranglehold. It's long overdue. It needs to end yesterday.

But hot fuck, this is LITERALLY THE WORST POSSIBLE TIME to vote third party. I read here and on Reddit that people are promising to vote third party because Biden hasn't personally solved the middle east conflict or whatever, but doing that in the presidential election amounts to screaming "fuck yeah I love Trump and everything he stands for".

Vote Biden or vote Trump. There is no third choice. Doing literally anything else is a vote for Trump.

Great! There's no reason not to clearly disclose those fees up-front other than deception.

AirBnB is the worst at this. A vacation rental is $200 a night, so you'd assume five nights would be $1000 plus tax. But then add the cleaning fee, the service fee, the booking fee, the hosting surcharge, the surcharge fee, and a half dozen other junk fees, and suddenly it's $375 a night. Plus tax.

Look, I am all for breaking the two party stranglehold in the US right now. Progress can't happen as long as we're forced to choose the lesser of two evils.

But my word this is literally the worst possible time to vote third party.

I'm a moderate. I tend to take a lot of what I read online with a grain of salt (as everyone should, but you know how that goes).

A few months ago I decided to try X again and see for myself. I thought "what if this is just exaggerated hysterics, and the site really isn't that bad."

No. It's not exaggerated. It's not hysterics. X / Twitter really is that bad of a dumpster fire. You can say "I don't like Nazis" and a billion bots will accuse you of being a woke radical leftist.

Sold my well-aged account to a scammer, haven't looked back.

I'm a boss. My criteria for evaluating whether an employee continues to be allowed to work remotely full time is:

1. Can their job be done remotely?
2. Is the job getting done remotely?

If the answer to both is "yes", then I'm happy to let them work just about anywhere they'd like.

How are they with temperature regulation? I think that's a big holdback for a lot of people. A gas burner gives consistent heat output at the set level, while an electric burner cycles on and off, resulting in a wider temperature range.

ETA: Wow, WTF? Downvoted for asking a legit question. Are we Reddit now?

We don't often talk about this in the limelight, but it's important. We need to understand how they got here if we want to have any hope of reducing the odds of that happening again.

Everyone should have the right to organize. Unions are why most of our labor laws, including pesky things like overtime and workplace safety, exist.

It doesn't really matter what someone's personal thoughts are on the subject. Don't like unions? Don't join one. I know the common response to this is "but what if I'm management and I have to deal with a labor contract", and honestly, that's why you get the big bucks. I'm management. I deal with a labor contract. It's far from the worst thing I have to contend with.

In related news, AT&T has decided to rebrand their 5G network as 25G.

(they've done this before)

About 3 months ago I was banned for saying "People have the right to use like force to defend themselves against an attacker, including using deadly force. It's not a happy outcome. But neither is being a victim." It was a comment on an article about a homeowner who killed a burglar, so context is king. /r/news banned me and reported me for "threatening violence". Then I got an account warning (whatever that means) by Reddit.

When I contacted the admin team, I got a ban for abusive reporting.

%reddit%.com is now blocked in my DNS. Fuck those fucks, they don't even deserve my ad revenue from searches.

Tuta is an excellent alternative.

Fastmail is what I use for my day to day mail. If you're concerned about it being subject to Australian privacy laws, check out Startmail.

Mailbox.org is very good but some may find it overly complex.

They don't care.

The people pledging to vote against Biden over Israel are typically armchair politicians who get all their news from echo chambers. Facts and reality don't matter; they honestly believe they are "sending a message" and "making a stand". The reality is that they're the 2024 version of 2016's insufferable #voteswap techbros.

Browser fingerprinting is nasty and easy. There are ways to push back but it's still awful.

I'm sure some do, but I also don't hang out to watch "10 most fatal crashes (#2 will amaze you)" and "here's a 10-minute SEO-optimized video to tell you something that would otherwise take 20 seconds to read" videos, which are probably typical "creators".

Here's a complete list of all the times someone else's hair had any impact of any nature whatsoever on my life:

Have you looked into Matrix / Element?

https://matrix.org/

https://element.io/