This is the same sort of reason why you can’t 3d print items that will come in contact with food. 3d printing leaves microscopic holes in the surface of the object, and once food gets in there, it’s never coming out and will become a breeding ground for all kinds of nasty stuff.
The best way to fight it is to simply be unmarketable as a community. This is how Verizon ended up having to sell Tumblr for less than 1% of the price they paid for it like only 3 years later. If the cost outweighs the benefit, fewer people will bother trying.
Yeah, unfortunately, I don’t think one really exists. I’m sure there are people who have done the research, but you’re probably not likely to find the info laid out like that in a major news article or something. There’s also a major generational divide in terms of wealth and a disparity between the rich and poor in the US that’s been described as being comparable to the conditions just before the French Revolution, when a loaf of bread cost the same as the average worker made in a day, so looking at market forces like interest rates and such can paint a very different picture from what the average person is experiencing because of how weighted the averages are by the wealthy.
About a month ago, I watched an unrelated video that happened to have some very well researched info in it on the economic situation of Millenials called The Perpetual Infantilisation of Millennial Women. Great video that I pulled some of the info from for a similar conversation. It’s definitely worth the watch for that info alone. Some of the stuff I remember are things like 43% of Millennials own homes, well below the average of 65% per generation. And of those who don’t own a home, 52% aren’t saving for a house, often citing reasons like poor wages or joblessness, showing that many aren’t buying homes not because they’re buying them later than previous generations, but because for many the idea of owning a home straight up isn’t considered feasible. Another big one is that only 20% of houses are affordable for the average American worker, compared to (I think) 63% in 2016. This kind of stuff has led to Millennials not buying material goods like nice furniture because they’re just going to have to leave it behind when they inevitably move to their next rental.
It’s a really multi-layered issue that definitely goes beyond the “the kids are choosing not to buy cars” or “Millenials could afford a house if they’d stop buying avocado toast or Starbucks!” takes that you often see in the news.
Everything I’ve seen has said that Millenials and younger are spending more on experiences and less on things, but also that their purchasing power is much weaker than their parents’ was at the same age. Millenials, I think, have about half the purchasing power as the Baby Boomers did in their 30s and 40s.
Also of note that I just saw the other day is that the price of cars has jumped up about 30% since 2021.
So, not exactly what you’re looking for, but some of the stuff I’ve seen/heard that probably plays contributing factors to this.
More like as more people got sick, the worse side effects they found. At first, they didn’t think there were any real long-term side effects. Then people started having the heart and lung issues, brain fog, hell, they even found permanent COVID damage in guys’ testicles, causing infertility.
Even now, we don’t know the effects it’ll have had when we look back 10 years after the fact and make the connections between increases in conditions and COVID.
The current strains of COVID are more infectious and more dangerous than the 2019 strain was. Up until the end of 2023, the only reason we didn’t hear about it was because the vaccines were effective against them (and the corporations want to pretend that it’s been over for several years now). The latest strain is resistant to vaccinations from before the end of September, and the US just saw the second biggest spike in COVID cases since 2019, with an estimated peak at 2 million daily new infections on the 11th.
Just because big businesses say that the pandemic is over so everybody goes back to work and buying stuff doesn’t mean that the pandemic ended. There are plenty of immune compromised people who never left quarantine because they can’t with COVID still around. The rest of society simply decided that their deaths were less important than going back to drinking in crowded bars.
Sometimes it takes my brain a moment to realize that what you’ve said to me is actually Words and to assign a Meaning to those words, and that you haven’t just done the human equivalent of when the Roomba drives back onto the charger.
It’s the Jobs, Gates, and Woz generation, but until they step out of the way we won’t get a new generation of pioneers in technology. It used to be the dream was to create the next big thing, now the dream is to make something that gets you bought up by Google, Apple, or Microsoft.
If you can’t get a big tiddy goth gf, then become the big tiddy goth gf.
Fill your house with arcane and esoteric items of dubious origin simply because they make you happy (bootleg pokemon figurines). Join a coven (D&D group or whatever other hobby) and join together for rituals that reignite the connection with nature that exists in all of us (hang out and touch some grass; pet a dog/cat, it’ll literally reduce your risk of heart disease). Become the witch who lives at the end of the street, creating strange brews that heal the sick (start a garden and cook homemade soup for your friends). Create a new family bound not by blood, but by bonds forged through hardship and triumph both. Move in with a girl that historians will refer to as your “good friend” and roommate.
Realize that it’s all you, and it always has been. That the person you were was simply the shell you created to protect yourself from the world. You are the big tiddy goth gf of your dreams and you can be the big tiddy goth gf that other people dream of, and all you have to do is let go of your shackles (and your facial hair).
The US is currently in its second biggest spike of COVID infections ever. At the estimated peak on the 11th, they’re expecting 2 million new infections per day. The current strain going around is supposedly different enough from the ones the vaccines up until September were designed for that it is effectively immune to those vaccinations.
COVID never left, and in fact the more recent strains have been more infectious and more severe than the original ones were, but we haven’t heard much about them because basically everybody who can be is vaccinated.
In fact, low speed electric cars are quiet enough that they’ve considered putting speakers in them to alert pedestrians and make the absence of feedback less disconcerting for drivers.
We’re so used to ICE cars that they’ve contemplated making electric cars pretend that they have an ICE.
I think that plus tons of people from out of state being there for the convention. My friend flew in from the east coast, for example. So I bet there were tons of people there who were taking advantage of the new legislation.
I have a buddy who went to a convention in Seattle right around the time they legalized it. Said you could smell it as soon as you walked outside; the entire city smelled like pot.
On the cooking one, I also recommend cooking double portions when you can. If you can cook twice as much with minimal effort, that’s half the cleaning you have to do afterwards and half the meal planning you have to do. You get up in the morning and know that you have leftovers from dinner ready to go for lunch in the fridge. Also, rice. Rice is cheap, good for you, and incredibly flexible in what you can do with it. A rice cooker is also a great appliance to have in general. Not only is it an easy set and forget for a pot of rice, but you can do all sorts of meals in it from steaming meats and vegetables to cooking soups and even baking desserts. An air fryer is similarly flexible and great for making meals for one person. You don’t have to preheat it or anything and it doesn’t cost all the energy that a full size oven does.