Harassment is serious business. These kids should not be online.

That’s completely reasonable.

That’s tragic when it happens. I know that it will happen. Free lunches attract flies.

That doesn’t mean you can’t help people. It means you cut them off when it’s clear they are being hurt and not helped.

Then you have a hard conversation.

I’ve been that person. I lived with my grandparents for a year. Rent free, nearly no job. My aunt and uncle sat me down and explained that they appreciated my work helping to care for my grandparents, but if I stayed with them I would only be qualified for a career as a home health aid.

I talked to my extended family and moved out. Other arrangements were made for my grandparents. I found a job and started a new career. It’s certainly possible to enable bad behavior, but it’s also possible to help someone that needs it.

Don’t have to worry about your friend’s motives if you honestly want to help them.

Travel a little bit. Spend most of your time at home, either enjoying the simple pleasures, or with friends and family.

So what if they are taking advantage of you? You are rich! What’s the downside?

Sure, you have to be vigilant against con artists, grifters, and addicts. You have to draw a line somewhere. Maybe don’t fund their casino trips, drug trips, or Candy Crush high score.

Extravagant birthday gifts? College tuition for your niblings? Why not?

If someone is lying to you, you will find out eventually. I’d rather have friends now and let future me deal with the fallout from the grifters.

Inns like that existed during the enlightenment up through the invention of the railroad. In the medieval era you slept in a church or maybe someone’s home.

I just figured the hole is that deep.

Growing up my family could pile into a van for a 2 week road trip or Disney vacation every summer. My grandparents were still working at that time, grandfather was a small business owner mechanic. Grandmother was a part time bookkeeper for a non profit.

To have that financial independence today, I would need triple my income, or my wife and I would need to double our income.

I figure a decade+ of real wage gains across the economy would approximate that. Maybe not for me personally, but for the average.

The article is real and “shit still sucks” can both be true.

My thought upon reading the headline was “gonna need another 12 years before people start thinking we have turned the corner for the better.”

Heitterslly said he would be.

I’m glad it’s better.

People don’t buy cars based on emissions. Car makers make them based on emissions because lower requirements are easier to meet while including things people do want.

Literally cooking the planet for next quarters metrics.

Station wagons were subject to sedan emissions standards. SUVs wer subject to truck emission standards.

If you do I’m sorry.

Sandy Hook survivors are in high school now and some are getting into activism.

You give us too much credit.

Anhedonia is horrifying if you think about it.

With enough propaganda anything is possible.

That’s, a remarkably rosy set of predictions.

I hope you are right, and big picture, I think things might shake out that way eventually.

But I am not as optimistic as you on several points.

I don’t think LLM AI will do as much as you claim as fast as you imagine.

I don’t think the owner class will put enough pressure on the politicians to generate that level of systemic change. They will muddle through with a thousand band aids stuck together.

Which will lead to an increasingly dystopic hellscape in which young people increasingly persue careers as scam artists, wanna be celebrities, and outright criminals because those are the only paths to a comfortable life.

But so hope to be wrong. Good luck to us all.

The one thing you can count on conservatives paying attention to is messing with their money.

What happens might not be pretty, but if they try to day “fuck it, guess we are ending the program” there will be hell to pay.

Who said they have a wife?