some points - pete has some thoughts on income

1) poor people - living hand to mouth, no savings, never going to retire, will end up living on socsec once they can

2) rich/wealthy - can isolate themselves from the rest of us (someone else pointed out this nice distinction)

could retire today and never work again and live their current lifestyle or close enough to not matter

3) the middle - everyone else

4) yes, the middle would include 200k, even though 200k is light years away from 50k

5) but

200k is the top 5%, and they are NOT like the middle.

They can retire early. They have massive safety nets.

So we really should make another group.

Damn Comfortable

Not rich/wealthy, but not middle.

so let's try again

1) poor - 0k to 30k - 30% of the people

2) middle - 30k to 200k - 65% of the people - AKA - The MIDDLE

3) damn comfortable - 200k to 500k? 4.8% of the people - really not the middle

4) rich/wealthy - 500k+

/you can argue where the 200k and 500k break are, esp with COLA (NYC vs detroit for example), but the concept stands

/damn comfortable lowers a little, as you get older, pay off your house, have more in savings and retirement, etc

--- more thoughts

BMFPitt: pkellmey: I also know several middle class couples who have never balanced a checkbook and have no idea what their current balance is.

A literal, physical checkbook? I doubt anyone under 30 has.

in some ways, this might be an interesting and more useful split for middle

1) do you bother to balance your checking or even know how much is there? (electronically or not)

2) do you carry a balance on your credit cards, even for only a month or three around xmas?
3) is your house paid off?

no house? lower middle (or young or moving a lot)

carry a balance? middle

house paid off? upper middle

grudge vs feud vs conflict

My family accused me holding a grudge.
Which was completely false and dismissive.

I had a conflict, I was able to resolve it only one way, by shunning the people involved.

I did not pretend that the conflict had been resolved.
I did not pretend that the conflict had gone away.
I did not pretend that the conflict is over.

But I was unable to resolve it and I was unable to live with it, so I moved on.
I no longer talk to those people.


BUT
For my family, it bothers them.
They have zero skills at conflict resolution.
So everything is resolved by waiting enough time and the pretending that it didnt happen.

It isnt a grudge.
It is a resolved conflict.
And that really bothers them.
I have learned a new skill and am happier for it.
They have not and still suffer.


I WIN

gender change fluid vacuum

hahaah
Didnt even notice that there was no gender.  While I assumed that Chris was male, there were ZERO clues.
Esp since you only interacted with Chris while Chris was in Chris' robot body ... which was sexless.

And there was no side romance storyline ... LOL

I have read a bunch of books recently that have been gender insane.
One had the main character unable to properly "guess" the gender of the person that they were talking to.
Which was a problem when it went back and forth, leaving you uncertain of anything.
That the main character was the physical embodiment of an AI, one of 100s of such, gender was irrelevant.

Looks like we are back to the days of sexual investigation of Heinlein.

Q: If you lived to be 1000 years old, and there was perfect gender change reconstruction, down to the DNA level, how long would it take for you to get BORED BORED BORED and change?
Hint: If you think that you would never change, you clearly have not been bored enough.

how the zombie war started

The real goal is to stop the spread, worry about mutations later.

THIS, is the first sentence to my new book:
HOW THE ZOMBIE WAR STARTED

False Dichotomy - Vaccines

welcome to batshit crazy ....
"who should we believe?" - they ask that, pretending that it is a real question ....
1) the dr that committed fraud and lost his license
2) the playboy nude model
3) FUCKING SCIENCE

It's a false dichotomy.
One is a fact, one is an opinion.
There is no argument. They are just wrong.

/fine, you're a jehovah's witnessand HATE MEDICINE? fine. but that isnt arguing that the medicine is dangerous, just that god wins.
/nova had an episode recently on vaccines, and they had these idiot mothers on ... claiming "rationally" to question the schedule. On WHAT scientific basis? A playmate??? ROFL

The Government does not create jobs.

Next time someone says that the government does not create jobs,
PUNCH THEM IN THE FACE.

And dare them to call the police. You know, government employees.
And courts?

And them ask them if they used the sidewalk or the street while getting there. Or bridges.

And then PUNCH THEN AGAIN.

How often do you sit in a movie theater and try to hit pause or rewind or CC?

FTFA:
Cutting says some people have tried to pin declining shot lengths on MTV, by invoking a sort of video-killed-the-attention-span hypothesis. He doesn't buy it. For one thing, Salt's graph of declining shot durations has no obvious inflection point in or after 1982, the year MTV was born. Shot durations were declining before that, and they kept declining at a similar rate after.

what makes more sense is advances in tech led to quicker and shorter attention spans.

radio slowly was found in every home. people would sit around and listen to every word.

speeches were long winded and repeated themes.  news would have to graphically describe the scene on the radio.

Then we got TV and TV news and speeches. Once again, slowly filtered into the households as more and more families could afford one.  A picture could take the place of 1000s of words, video even more.

Printing, Radio and TV and Talkies directly changed how we received information.  

But it was a relatively smooth process, steadily progressing.

Now we have FARK, facebook and other news aggregators quickly spreading the news.

I dont need a slow 3 minute video.  A picture and 3 sentences are all I need to get the headline.

Toss in pause and rewind on our "tivos" and fast cuts can be slowdown and rewatched whenever you need to.   

How often do you sit in a movie theater and try to hit pause or rewind or CC?