I can go to a cafe where I’m waited on and served decent food for $20.

How much do you tip on you cafe meal on top of that $20?

What specific traits or habits do people close to you recognize that would reveal an impostor trying to mimic you?

They ask me what specific things would reveal themselves when they mimic me. Thats probably a red flag.

Thanks for doing the math but, Iowa? I’ve been to Iowa many times growing up and not a place I’d wanna live. But valid point that it is affordable there if you enjoy trump fascists

I was picking a lower priced state to show home ownership is possible for a single person in the USA. Luxuries or preferences wasn’t in the equation.

This is where there isn’t great translation when looking at macro numbers (like the chart that lists median house prices) and trying to apply that info to the micro numbers, like one specific person.

Even the median home listed here in Iowa at $204k doesn’t mean thats the cheapest house. There are houses cheaper (and those that are more expensive), but the median represents a closer number when looking at large numbers of houses.

I’m “uneducated” and rapidly approaching 40 so my employment prospects are severely limited.

Its never too late to bolt on additional education. It can be a college degree, but it doesn’t have to be. It can also be trade school or industry specific certification. I highly recommend looking at your options. I too was a non-traditional student and complete get my Associates degree until was in my early 30s and Bachelors just before 40. Having those let me leapfrog several income levels in a short time. Its not the degrees alone, but the other skills I (and probably you) have that wouldn’t be considered without that degree. I now have trade school, college degrees, industrial certifications, and decades of experience. All of these together made employment very manageable.

I’d be happy to share my experience as a full time working adult and part time college student in their 30s if you want that. The short version is, being an undergrad college student as an adult is easy mode compared to doing it when you’re right out of high school.

You’re going to be 45 years old in the years ahead irrespective of what you do. Wouldn’t you prefer to still have that “uneducated” status then or would you like that to be different?

Yeah literally nowhere is affordable for a single guy…

So taking Iowa as an example:

So total monthly payment (with insurance and taxes ) is $1770 or $21,240/year. The downpayment is needed, of course.

Rule of thumb says your housing shouldn’t be more than 28% of your income.

So that would mean $75,857/year income to live comfortably. That would be $36/hour working full time.

That seems doable by a single guy. This is even with a very comfortable percent of only 28% going to housing. If you go to the uncomfortable 50% of income for housing that would bring down the required annual income to $42,480/year or about $20.50/hour.

Nobody’s demanding they wear a mask

Which country are we talking about. In the USA there were absolutely mask mandates.

“They’re wearing a mask to stop the spread of disease, because they are sheep and I feel a need to react to this person’s wearing of a mask to prove to everyone else within eyesight I am not sheep lest they question my superiority."

FTFY, they don’t see the mask as preventing disease that needs to be prevented. They see COVID as a mild inconvenience. An inconvenience that isn’t worth doing anything to prevent it, and they get upset when anyone tells them they should care about it (even if its just for other people’s sake).

Masks are a highly-visible sign of compassion. It’s a sign that you don’t want others to suffer due to your own actions, especially if you’re suffering already.

I agree with this.

So when a person who has no compassion (but doesn’t want to admit they have no compassion) sees a mask, they feel the need to defend themselves and attack the mask.

I don’t agree with this. There is no self awareness of lack of empathy in this group. Its not like they’re recognizing masking as an empathetic action, and choose to act counter to telegraphy the don’t care about empathy.

Instead, they (wrongly) see mask mandates as some kind of subjugation (even though it isn’t). They build the narrative that “COVID is just like the flu” so no freedoms should be impinged. Personal exceptionalism demands they rail against anyone or anything demanding their obedience or compliance. They see the demand of not hurting others with the spread of disease as an infringement on their freedom.

The result of their actions is a lack of empathy, but I don’t think that is their goal and they even have any awareness about anyone else’s needs except their own.

He said all this kind of nonsense the last time he ran.

And he violated all kinds of laws when in office and after his term ended.

I think there is a high likelihood we will see President Vance before the end of this second Trump term. I can’t really tell which is worse.

We could have had funniest moment of the year if authorities seized his Mercedes while he was voting.

My dream:

There was nothing in Number 92 but a standard Hitachi pocket computer and a small white styrofoam cooler chest.

Its been decades since I read this. Doesn’t he steal the tiny bit of RAM out of the Hitachi computer?

Yes but all that money is part of the marketing arm of his portfolio under the legal entity Lisa’s Castle LLC, which is incorporated in the Seychelles, and all funds still on deposit in Seychelles Commercial Bank. As long as he doesn’t repatriate more than $13,850 back to his home in New York City, he stays within the legal bounds of not having to pay income tax.

Lets be real. The Punisher is a vigilante mass murder. He’s not a monster that doesn’t pay his taxes to support a free and fair society.

Possibly not a crime.

TIL The Punisher’s annual income is below the Standard Deduction (in 2023 that’s $13,850).

I wonder if all those “alpha males” that put the Punisher Logo on their trucks know that he lives below the poverty line.

That’s an interesting bit of info I never knew. Thank you for sharing that.

Romance is Dead

The purpose is to rate the users.

Individual communities can set up guidelines, that if you have a new account under 6 months, and you have a negative overall karma, you’re banned from that community until a human can look through your post history to see if you should be unbanned. you’ll have to repost previously highly upvoted content to pump up your karma numbers, until you have a positive overall karma.

FTFY, I’d really prefer to leave that mistake of karma at Reddit instead of polluting Lemmy with it.

Lemmy karma-less method also drastically reduces the value of bot accounts to farm karma (for nefarious or advertising use before being banned).

In context of this conversation Deadpool vs Wolverine would be storytelling of storytelling. Great examples are all the breaking of the forth wall and exploration of tangential stories or actors that had short lives or never made it off a writers page. It was less a single cohesive story and more a moving about storytelling.

This is tragic and sadly entirely predictable given the Texas laws.

A dramatic rise in pregnant women dying in Texas after abortion ban

“From 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11% nationwide during the same time period”

If you have a pregnant loved one, get them the hell out of Texas.

FYI, Passive Matrix doesn’t mean monochrome. Passive Matrix were color too. If you’re actually looking for a reflective monochrome LCD, you probably want STN aka Supertwist LCD.

I’m not aware of any STN smartphones. Others have already rightly posted eink is likely a better fit for what you want.

Good City Prosecutor!

City Prosecutors that bring charges against bad police actually increase the trust of both the Prosecutors as well as the rest of police. If other police officers see that their co-workers can’t get away with crimes then that acts as an incentive for the rest of the officers to follow the law as well.