Stop reading my chat history! You're worse than Zuck!

"TX has ... far more corrupt state politics..."

Oh, you lost me there. I live in CA and couldn't disagree more. CA wins on that -- from the money holes of public schools, infrastructure spending, costs to actually build anything and homeless spending, money just vanishes.

Also the current and recent governments have just refused audits or direct "blue ribbon committees" to investigate. Hell, LA Mayor Bass in the great and broke city of LA spent several million$ of dollars on a team of private lawyers to prevent her from having to testify on where $2 billion (with a "B") in homeless spending went and her relationship with the head of LAHSA (appointed by Bass).

CA has spent the last 15-20 years blaming the oil companies of being greedy and getting rich of the backs of Californians -- which frankly is a damn lie. Our own Governor has appointed several "blue ribbon" committees to investigate (which, btw, aren't free or cheap) with no results. The "nutshell" version is that those oil companies are making so much profit that they keep shutting down and leaving CA. We're about to hit a wall of not enough production in CA to keep pipeline pressure enough to move crude through pipes to the few refineries we have left. That means moving crude by truck -- expensive and far worse for the environment, bring in crude or even refined gas from countries that don't have our standards. Apparently pollution doesn't blow across international waters. But ever "green" attempt gets HUGE amounts of tax payer funding and there are too many failures to list. The Ivanhaw Solar plant among the most recent. North of $2 billion wasted -- but many a CA union employee made out well during construction and leadership appointed by the state had insane salaries got rich. So... Go figure.

So, we're looking at north of $8 a gallon in the near future and our "hate fossil fuels" Governor is running around trying to find a buyer for one of the refineries -- and even offering to PAY Valero it's operations costs to stay (they aren't).

Texas is a piker next to CA.

"The Humanoid Boogie" by the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band", 1968. Plus ca change.

I can think of no faster way to kill the word 'Vibe' than to associated it with annoying corporate nonsense. Go for it Meta! I'm counting on you.

Sorry to be blunt, but are you an idiot? People have been talking about it since at least the mid 80s, there are government policies on it in the 90s, and the whole 'EV revolution' arguably started to go into full swing about 13 years ago.

It's mostly WINE though isn't it? Well, Proton but still. That has the 64bit-32bit thunking layer required. Native Linux builds would need to be 64 bit true, but that's where I was going with the "10-20%" bit.

I run 32bit Windows games on ARM via Rosetta/MacPortingToolkit. So long as the game itself is tricked into believing it's in a 32bit universe, it's happy.

gah - Kinoite. Spelling.

That's chicken and egg though. I use Bazzite, Fedora Kinorate with some gaming tweaks. Fedora wanted to drop 32 bit and there was a lot of noise as things like Bazzite or any gaming usage at all from that distro would break.

But, if Steam went 64 bit then that's 80%-90% of the issue solved straight away, and the last 10-20% would quickly sort themselves out in response. Summary is the distros have already indicated they don't want to do the work, and it's userland that's holding them back right now. Would be mutual benefit to lose them, but userland has to move first.

Everyone online knows that. The vast majority of the population doesn't - it's not general knowledge outside of people that spend a lot of time online. That where you get this 'the famed hacker 4Chan' or 'CEO of Bitcoin' nonsense in reports, it's simply not their world and they don't swim in these waters.

I mean, I've been online since about 1989 and even I don't know that much about actual 4chan, to me it was always the Lion King's "You must never go there" scene (and then came 8chan - my god).

It doesn't surprise me that those who aren't immersed in this environment daily don't actually know that much about it.

This one in fact, saying that survey response rates for official UK data had collapsed from 35% to 5%.

Survey fatigue is one, but I think people are also more wary about having their opinions attached to data these days. At least for formal, official data anyway, obviously social media is still going strong. I think a factor is that people aren't sure how it's going to be used and if it could come back to them in some way.

Lean on your keyboard for long enough and you'll have a valid Perl program. You won't know what it does of course, but then how does that differ from any other Perl program?

Because for music, we're in a post-scarcity future. The world is not short of new music, and the tools for producing it get better and better and better. There's no shortage of people wanting to write, you can reasonably easily self-publish (and on a completely unrelated note...check out my two albums and my singles...)...there's no scarcity here.

The problem isn't availability. The problem is gaining an audience.

For 20 years, plus or minus, personal computers reversed that idea.

" wouldn't it be better if the 300 million plus people in the United States DIDN'T need to sacrifice?"

I'm not sure, but I think this song was written *JUST* for you...

One evening as the sun went down
And the jungle fire was burning
Down the track came a hobo hikin'
And he said, "Boys, I'm not turning
I'm headed for a land that's far away
Beside the crystal fountains
So come with me, we'll go and see
The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
There's a land that's fair and bright
Where the handouts grow on bushes
And you sleep out every night
Where the boxcars all are empty
And the sun shines every day
On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees
The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
All the cops have wooden legs
And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth
And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs
The farmers' trees are full of fruit
And the barns are full of hay
Oh I'm bound to go where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall, the wind don't blow
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
You never change your socks
And the little streams of alcohol
Come a-trickling down the rocks
The brakemen have to tip their hats
And the railroad bulls are blind
There's a lake of stew and of whiskey, too
You can paddle all around 'em in a big canoe
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"In The Big Rock Candy Mountains
The jails are made of tin
And you can walk right out again
As soon as you are in
There ain't no short-handle shovels
No axes, saws or picks
I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day
Where they hung the jerk that invented work
In The Big Rock Candy Mountains

"I'll see you all this comin' fall
In the Big Rock Candy Mountains"

= = = = = =

"The boomers and gen x are hoarding 80% of the wealth..."

Btw, "wealth" isnt a zero sum game it grows and is continuously created -- and I fall in to the gen x category. What I'm "hording" is what I've earned in ~40 years of work. You didn't lift a finger helping me with that work, why do you think you (or anyone else) are entitled to it? It was already taxed -- and the property I bought with that already taxed money is also taxed yearly, itself. If you don't like the level of services the government provides you just ask for an audit. Good luck getting one in California. They will, however provide a lovely "blue ribbon" commission to investigate how moneys were spent and why it costs ~1 million dollars to build a single unit of homeless housing or countless other money-pits that never answer the question of "where did all the money go". You'll get the similar run-around on the federal level. Vote better. Vote for people who actually represent the people who voted for them -- and not some ambiguous "party" that claims the other 'tribe' is evil.

BTW, I'm not a Republican or Democrat. My votes go to I feel is best qualified. I want a representative who will represent me/our community over what ever party they represent. Neither party does that well.

"There simply aren't as many resources and there are more people competing for them."

It's choices. The stats show that choices and an inability to delay every single gratification leads to much higher risk of poverty. Want to avoid being in poverty? Do the following:

Graduate High School.
Don't have a kid while in High school.
Don't have a kid before marriage
Share responsibility raising your kids.

If you go to college, follow the same rules about marriage and having kids.

THAT is the toolset you need to access "resources" in life for you and your family, and pass that 'culture' on to your kids. That way, your kids will have a much higher likelihood of avoiding poverty -- and if they do experience it, minimize it's duration. A good life isn't guaranteed -- but you can stack the odds in your favor -- dramatically -- without a trust-fund.

"average age for first time home purchase across the population is over 40 buying a starter home not a young family doing the same"

I was 30 years old when I got married. We bought our home when I was 38. My son was 5 years old and my daughter was 2. I was still driving my paid off 1988 toyota pick up. Which I still have. And the stats I read place the average first home buyer age across the US at 38 as of 2024 -- but CA is certainly in the mid 40s now. We got our home about 20 years ago -- so yeah, it took us a bit longer than average back then. Our family was still "young". One of the reasons for the age creep on home-ownership that everyone ignores is that a huge chunk of the US (about 10%-15%) now have substantial student loan debt. Again -- choices -- and a failure for both school and parents to instill the need to consider what they might MAKE after graduating and how long it would take to pay those loans back.

And the cost of housing? Much of it is due to over regulation by local and state governments in building new housing and an almost religious belief that home-ownership is a sin.

"How do you stop subscribing to things when everything is now a subscription?"

Lower your standards. Pluto TV is free and has a wealth of programming.

" When you have to keep saving for and buying the same goods over and over instead of being able to save for something else after buying something."

Stop treating buying something as permanent. If you buy a $1000 phone that you KNOW will be obsolete in 5 years -- the BEST you are doing is you are "renting" the phone for a bit more than $16/mo unless it breaks in a way it's more expensive to fix after the warranty expires. Maybe buy a $200 phone that lasts 3 years? That's only ~$5. And you get a new phone every three years.

"It's all well and good to suggest that everyone should be frugile, eat ramen, and suffer but if a significant number of people actually did it the result would just be that the economy would crash."

To be clear, are you advocating people just not consider saving money? That being frugal is the equivalent to "suffering"? Sorry, but it's not a human right to have a $1000 phone, have 10+ subscription services costing more than two premiere cable services combined, eating quality steak 3+ times a week or driving a new car every 2 or 3 years.

  "The American dream needs to be achievable for the average man not just the exceptional."

I'm not exceptional and I started below average on the economic ladder. I'm the first in my family to go to high school, never mind college. My family didn't give a rip about school. My entire family were substance abusers. My sister got me high for the first time when I was 7 (she's 13 years older than me) because she thought it would be funny.

Today, I'm a home owner, I have two 10+ year old cars (paid off), two adult kids (one in the middle of college with zero debt so far and the other starting medical school next year). My son (going to medical school) has $70k in his bank from money he's earned while going to college and currently making $75/hour tutoring students for the MCAT (doing about 20-25 hours a while) taking an gap year. Daughter has 11k saved up after 3 years -- also zero debt.

The only advantages my wife and I provided were rent-free promise and paying tuition if they go locally. Both went to community college -- which, btw, was free -- just books). We only had to pay tuition once for our son as he refused our money when he got a paying job at UCLA as part of a research group.

Hell, my wife came to the US when she was 19 with her entire family back in the late 80s (she's the eldest child of kids -- and her parents). They had nothing, too. Yet each one of their kids got out of school with zero dept, all post grad degrees and are doing well in their chosen fields.

You have very low expectations of people. I think it's those low expectations that cause far more of the suffering you attribute to being "frugal" than eating Raman a few times a week.