I have a lot of friends in the commentariat. And their being interesting and intelligent people, everything else being the same, I often share their takes on something or other. It saves me from writing a ton of stuff myself. (I mean, more than I write.)
So two nights ago I ended up passing on articles from two of my friends, which were BOTH on the same thing and alerted me to a push going on in the blogsphere which I think is — if not part of a lefty psyops. I don’t think it is in this case, because I don’t see the usual stronk accounts pushing it — profoundly stupid strategically (that’s the first point), profoundly blinkered (that’s the second point) and the first time I heard the guys sound like for real old men. Which is not so much a point — I’m sixty three. My friends are sometimes a little younger — but a point of irritation. They can BE old, sure, they shouldn’t sound it. Because sounding old is when you stop being heard. Also it prompted me — me! — to say “Okay, boomer” even though one of them is younger than I and I’m not a boomer except via the generation slowly annexing another year in the 90s.
Look, guys, let’s level up. I do absolutely get that talking trash about the younger generation is a privilege and pasttime of the old. It’s been recorded as far back as the Romans and frankly I think if we ever decipher some of the rock squiggles that MIGHT be writing, we’ll find “The younger generation has no pride. They wear their furs sewn not tied like G-d intended. And their mammoth hunting is a disgrace. No more do they chase the whole herd over a cliff. Instead it’s this poking at a young or sick mammoth with spear.”
However, we don’t live in Roman or pre-historic times. And while a lot of people still die around their sixties (or younger) as people did who were wealthy enough to eat well in older times, a lot of us can expect to kick around for twenty, thirty or forty more years.
That’s way to long to sit in a corner screaming at the young. By any measure of past ability to function/move around, work, you are young compared to your 30 year old ancestors 200 years ago, even in your sixties. So stop sounding like oldsters sucking your gums by the fire.
But that’s an aesthetic concern. I might have let my hair go white (I earned it. Also dye is a pain) but I’m not about to stop trying to create new stuff and understand the world we now live in. (Part of the reason for the songs and the poking at clankers is that if time comes that clankers do my job, I intend to use the to produce movies and tell my stories ANYWAY.)
And that’s the second point above, but the point I’d like to start with: the world we live in.
I do enjoy as much as anyone else a good chest thumping and a declaration that “We did it uphill both ways.” It’s cute and amusing. And, yeah, I don’t like it at all since I heard this from the boomers (the real ones) as I hit the worst job market in generations in the mid eighties.
I have my own stories of “uphill both ways” and because I’m a story teller I can make it amusing and funny. Or at least I hope so. Part of the Dyce mysteries is my selling such stories. While I was never a single mom and I’m nowhere as colorful as Dyce Dare, (On sale for 99c Nov. 29.) but I furnished our first house from discards and work. (And sold the stuff when we moved. For enough to buy a car that would make it to Colorado from North Carolina. And for three years after.) And yes, there were the weeks of living on pancakes so we could buy a single paperback. We’ll elide the years of reading exclusively from discard book racks which gave me a profound knowledge of gothic romances and westerns not to mention early 20th century science.
Now I want you to sit back and consider: the kids have it worse.
No, stop. Just stop right there. I know you’re already pouring lighter fluid on your heads and running around in circles screaming about expensive phones and designer coffee and and and.
Bullshit!
No. You heard me. Do I need to say it louder for the back row? Then fine. BULLSHIT. BULLSHIT on stilts with bullshit sprinkles.
You can put your hair out and wash out that lighter fluid. You didn’t have much hair to begin with. And you can take your little horse out of the rain. And then you can LISTEN.
Yes, you do hear the regular whines from precious flakes who cannot — cannot — go without their triple ice soy lattes. Ignore them. I don’t know what percentage of the population they are, but the nepo babies have always been with us and will always be with us. As are the ones that waste their money. Newsflash, no the new generation (and new is pushing it, since both my kids and their friends are in their thirties though some barely) isn’t going to “If only everyone just.” AND YES they do have their share of wastrels and they’re the loudest. Aren’t they always?
However, I know a good number of young people and most of them DO NOT buy fancy designer coffees any more than we do. (And some do it way less.) The only time they indulge is when parents (yeah, us) give them a gift card or in lieu of going out to eat for a date night.
They do, all of them, have smart phones. Guys, stop yelling about smart phones. It makes you sound like you’re eighty. I don’t know what the hell you were doing ten to twenty years ago. I know some of you are retired and CAN have a flip phone. My dad has a flip phone too. (Dan will forever be favorite son in law — he’s the only one! — because he figured out how to schedule meds on it, so dad doesn’t space them and end up in ER.) I don’t. I got my first smart phone ten years ago, because it was time. My kids got theirs a year earlier. (We pay for them, yes, because they’re in — for real — business with us. So we can.) Why? Well, because they needed it for school.
I’ll wait while you put your hair out again. It’s cute really to be that exercised over the fact things have changed.
Look, study groups coordinate by text, which is super-hard if you pay-per-text (and more expensive too.) And professors are fond of sending out things to be completed on the phone. If that were all, they would have devised work arounds. The problem is that professors no longer give people time to copy from the board. They write on the board or flash the slide, and expect the students to take pictures.
Now I don’t know, haven’t asked every one of their friend group (some of them become unable to talk in my presence anyway. It’s cute. I’m not used to being a revered elder) but I suspect the same applies to various work things.
Heaven and hell, people, we need the stupid smart phones for things like digital discounts in the stores, and taking pictures of damaged stuff that we’re not returning but want refunded. (What possessed Amazon to package molasses bottles in a paper envelope with no padding? Sometimes one wonders.)
And yes, it might be worth to not have one if it were just us, because we can nudge a flip phone to do at least some of the stuff. But now you’re supposed to pre-check online for your doctor appointment. Medication? You review it online. And no, I’m not going through the gymnastics Dan went through to schedule Dan’s meds. I’m getting old. The time I had I’d rather spend writing than fighting tech to save ultimately once I pay for all the texts (I’m deaf, more and more every year) maybe $10 a month.
The kids? They kind of have more time than money. Except truly they don’t have much of either.
Let me explain: One of my friends was talking about how there are houses available for 700k and plenty of young people buy them. I’m sure they do. Back then we had friends buying million dollar homes, too. Mostly nepo babies who lucked or managed to claw into highly lucrative jobs. And usually both.
I’ve never yet been able to afford a 700k house. (Though we came close for a shining moment. The house had, of course, serious problems.)
Now I realize it’s different parts of the country, etc. And yes, in some parts there are homes for $250k that are livable, if your kid is lucky enough to be able to work remote. (One of mine does.)
But the average salary for young people is around 50k in those areas. And out of that comes the Obamacare insurance. Which by your thirties you start to need. And most of them are paying on student loans that usually start at 40k and can be much, much higher.
Yes, there are young people making 100k, but the job market is more f*cked for them than it was in 1984. No, trust me on this. Somewhere along the line America also managed to go from “knowing someone is nice to give you a leg up” to “you have to know someone to get a job.” Yes, I know why. It was things like #metoo and other crazy stuff that makes employers scared to hire strangers. BUT IT’S STILL A MAJOR PROBLEM. You’re limited to the people you know. And if your parents aren’t very sociable, you’re going to get hind teat. And heaven help people like Dan and I were, far away from both families, both in fields our parents didn’t understand much less have a foothold in. Pity them. They deserve it.
On top of which we — and by we I mean everyone from 1950 on. I’m certainly not taking personal ownership of this f*ck up, since I’ve been fighting it as hard as I can — managed to depth bomb the relationship between the sexes.
This was already going on in my day, okay? Any woman who had good grades in high school much less college was mocked and derided if she wanted to be a “wife and mother.” This was already so bad by the eighties that most of us who did very much want to be wives and mothers didn’t dare talk about it. And that people assumed my drive and very real work to be a published author was just cover to make it sound like I had a career. Because a lot of women were doing that.
Now? Ten times worse. Every woman has been told and convinced and harangued that her highest purpose is to be a corporate drone. And not only has every boy been indoctrinated that he’s to blame for everything, he’s also been persuaded that every woman hates him.
Pretend you’re in your twenties and thirties, approaching an attractive stranger with that in your head. Go on. No, they’re not forming lasting relationships at the level we were. (And my relationship was already effed. Dan and I used to joke that we had a trial marriage like everyone else. It was just with each other. (We had two wedding ceremonies, so…)) Which makes thinking of the future, applying themselves and saving much harder. PARTICULARLY for males. Males seem to need to work for SOMEONE’s future, not theirs. They need to be protectors and providers.
Oh, on top of that, yes, indeed, rents have gone through the roof. Why? Well, 2020 and deferred maintenance. The landlords have to make up for that. And they need the money to. But rents are truly outrageous, compared to ours. Even in the hinterlands.
There’s other stuff: Those beater cars we bought? Even if they could find them — they can’t, because of Cash for Clunkers, which mostly took functional, cheap used cars off the road — they can’t keep them running like we did. I mean Dan kicked, prayed and seduced total wrecks into working for ten years or so with the application of a few hours a weekend cussing and sweating in our garage (and before that our driveway.) At the same time I was patching dry wall and painting and replacing flooring in the house, yes.
The problem is most cars today you can’t fix unless you have a computer that talks to the innards. And even then, you often need proprietary tools. It’s not easy or cheap to fix cars, and mostly you need to take it to expensive — and often larcenous — professionals.
And houses… well…. they will be wrecks at the level they can afford. Probably more wrecked than ours were, because a lot of people have lacked the money to fix them and passing them on to the next buyer. I know because I know how much we sank into the current house, and all the others we passed on that were more obviously wrecks. And this was not that cheap a house.
The problem being with their other obligations they can barely afford a mortgage, much less the fixes.
Guys, in the early eighties we had our butt in a trap, and kept getting told we were lazy and stupid.
Trust me when I say the kids are in much, much worse straits. No amount of your chest-pounding at them is going to make them do what’s impossible.
Take the “I worked three jobs retail and slept on alternate weekends.” That’s super-cute. Except these days you can’t. Obamacare scared companies of going over 30 hours consistently for part-time or unskilled or even beginning help. This mean they adopted “management by computer.” And this is now being used by less than brilliant (I have other words. Oh, I have other words.) people to schedule by whim. They will treat the employees like widgets, schedule them randomly, no consistent schedule. And drop them if they “miss” coming in more than twice when called out of the blue.
Yes, retail employees ARE flaky. I worked retail in the eighties, and we had people who came in a couple of times and then never again, not even to pick up their check! I’m sure that hasn’t improved.
But management by computer makes it impossible to have two jobs, much less three.
Also not to join in in screaming at boomers, because this is one of those demographic things that they can’t help: boomers are healthier than past generations. A substantial number of them are still working. That means, though that my generation didn’t move up. Many of us are still “the kid” at work, in our fifties and sixties. And the real kids? They’re beginners, even when they’re not. There’s no room to move up. It’s a side effect of longevity.
The kids are — most of them — in a much worse position than we were at their age. And the things we did to get around it aren’t even legal in this ridiculously over-regulated work.
Sure, the snow flakes complain about the price of lattes. But be aware there’s any number who aren’t screaming and are quietly plugging away and doing the best they can.
What is the point of screaming at the entire generation? Even if they were the wastrels of your imagination, what are you, stupid?
No amount of screaming would make them walk uphill both ways while leading a horse or whatever you think would be a simpler life. What it will do, though, is build immovable resentment. Which honestly you’ll deserve. (But I don’t.)
I’m not going to do the math for you, but even the snow flakes buying lattes every day, if they saved every cent of that, would not be able to get a house much sooner. Maybe a month?
And as for “but they should not have any pleasures” PFUI. Even we went to movies and went out to eat on occasion. Their pleasures are different but adjusting for inflation they are probably cheaper. (That’s one thing that has genuinely gone down in price. I can read a lot more now for cheaper than I did back then.)
People don’t live of promises and determination. That’s people. Again: Not in the history of ever has “everyone just.” And the young people are just as human as we were. Sometimes they need something to keep up their mood. And sometimes they just want it. No one has perfect will power, ever. (I will say the kids I know seem to have more than our generation, though. I remember.)
Stop telling them to buy clunkers, ditch their phones, not buy games or coffee. One is impossible, the other is inadvisable, and the last two are not universal expenses, and if they were they might be what keeps someone going day to day. When I was about their age I came across Heinlein’s “Budget luxuries first” and it was both a revelation and might have saved my sanity. And Heinlein was — coff — a little older than I and had already evolved that strategy when he was young.
They’re complaining life is too expensive, because it is. Their going is harder than it was for us.
If you want to scream at them, scream at them to start a business on the side. And then be ready to put your money or your help where your mouth is and at the very least GUIDE them in doing just that. Because that’s one way to beat scheduling by computer. And introduce nice boys to nice girls. Having two incomes helps, and maybe we’ll get lucky and they’ll have kids.
That’s constructive screaming. Telling them to have nothing and love it is leftist screaming.
Don’t be a leftist. Not even once.
Be your age, which I know is not mid-nineties. Learn how tough it is for the younger people.
Help if you can. And if you can’t, stop heaping coals of fire on their heads.
Enough already.
According To Hoyt 
The reason is it worse is because 1) they are subject to, often willingly, to a level of surveillance and control that prior generations simply would not tolerate; and 2) the same leftist globalist aspiring totalitarians that have driven the creation of the surveillance society have also systematically undermined and worked to destroy the middle class and middle-class businesses, so as to create a Neo-feudal society with a small ruling oligarchy and a vast serf/servant class.
The conditions that exist are the result of this, and far too many of the young people have been brainwashed to believe that the cause of their problems, pervasive socialism, is in fact the solution, which is why so many support the open commie Mamdani and the rest of his lunatic crowd.
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If you were raised to believe the ultimate expression capitalism is the modern subscription society where you have to pay extra for the equipment in the car you just bought to work as advertised and all the other “hey, we left $0.000001 in that person’s pocket. If we pick it from all our customers line go up $1” games that modern, government protected oligarchs play* it’s not hard to sell socialism.
Hell, it’s not hard to sell honest socialism. A lot of these kids probably believe the only thing socialism spreads are poverty and misery and look at their lives then decide they are happy to share it.
I am convinced Ayn Rand would look at a lot of these a-holes and tell them to stop being so damn profit minded…mainly because her heroes were creators of value to exchange, not extractors of, which is the hot phrase in modern business, “extracting value”. There is another word for that: destruction.
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People forget that a lot of the bad guys in Atlas Shrugged in particular were businessmen. (James Taggart and Orren Boyle, right off the top of my head, were irredeemable scoundrels.) You are correct that she would abhor the beancounting shell games that hurt everybody in the long run, but that’s not “profit-minded” except the most range of the moment, make-next-quarter’s-balance-sheet-look-good kind of way. You’re bang on that productivity was the goal and ideal.
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Good to see you here.
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Thanks
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“tolerate”. You keep using that word……
How, exactly, would you suggest they NOT tolerate it. The surveillance is everywhere, and in everything, and even when there’s a “choice ” to opt out, the choice in reality does nothing, because it can be and is turned on behind our backs.
I didn’t ask to have a “smart meter” put on my power and water meters; the power company and the local water authority just DID it, and the “alternative” was no service at all.
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Same here. Devil’s Prostate, GA, a longtime Democrat plantation–and I mean that just about literally–yoinks what they want when they want it, in whatever amount they want it, justification be damned. I hate this effing ghetto with every cell I have. We moved here with high hopes and a lot in savings and we’ll be lucky to get out, period. Straight to hell with this whole place.
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Same.
We had a smart meter immediately when we got natural gas hookups. The company just bloody well put it on when they added the connection.
We were retrofitted to power smart meters. Someone one NextDoor asked general question on “how to tell if they’d been hit yet”; it was answered. I went to check ours, yep done. No idea when it happened. No notification beyond “this is happening, eventually.”
Water smart meters, those were two stages. New meter covers, then the new meters. We were bypassed initially. Why? Because we’d “raised the grade” of the yard over the meter (we put a box over the old meter lid so it could still be read). The ones installing the meters said we’d have to pay to either remove the raised area, or pay to raise the meter. We said, “No. Meter reader and company has had 20+ years to complain. That ship has sailed.” Took them awhile but sure enough suddenly all kinds of different colors of paint noting where utility and water lines were. They came in raised the meter, put in the new smart meter.
I’ll give them this much when the power goes out, they know as soon as we do, and how far outage has spread. Got a leaky faucet or something else? Someone leaves the hose on, just a bit? You will get a text to check things. Which is super nice. A few extra 1 kgals of water used than normal. Way different than getting a water bill for 40 kGAL of water 3 months running in the winter, when you normally only use 5 or 6.
Oh, that is why the standing water between the Sequoias and the house. Shattered PVC delivery water line between meter and house. Been nice to been notified when the meter was read the first month. Oh, the financial hit was just a blip, didn’t even notice with normal uptick on the electric bill. Not like we’re in an area where water is expensive. Caught it because of the standing water, it’d been raining, but not that much. Even with smart meters I monitor the amounts.
FYI, water company’s responsibility ends at the water meter. Meant digging it all up and replacing the line, on our dime. Luckily that was when we were required to hookup to the new street sewers. They did the water line too, rerouted to bypass most the roots. At that it was trying to pinch and break the copper (instead of PVC) pipes through 2017 (when the trees were removed); proven 2019 when the sprinkler system was installed.
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Young people aren’t all that bad as young people. At second job, I work with a bunch of them. Entry level dudes and dudettes. First time they ever took a paying job, most of them. They are ignorant of a murthering lot of things, but that’s endemic to “young, new, untrained” and what all.
There’s the young man that throws testosterone fueled fits, the young woman that’s catty and starts a rumor mongering clique, but that’s nothing new. By and large, that’s not the vast majority- those are the exceptions.
Most of them, they just want to learn. They want experience, knowledge, skills. They want these things passionately, and when you give them responsibility, they grab onto it like the only paddle on the boat. Getting a bare few fingers on the bottom rung of the ladder means something. Those first few successes are an investment that may pay off greatly over time.
Put bluntly, young people are unstable balls of raw potential. That gives them lots of room to grow. Giving them a task, a responsibility, and recognition for it may be the first time literally anyone has offered it to them in their lives.
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Brief comment now, with possibly more to come later: There’s a YouTube channel called “Uncle Tony’s Garage.” Uncle Tony is a drag racer, mechanic, and former editor with Hot Rod and other auto-industry magazines, and a really sharp guy who now lives in Tennessee. If you’re a classic Mopar fan like I am, it’s not to be missed, but he does a lot more than just Mopar hot rods and his focus is how to do as much as possible within the financial reach, tools, and expertise of the old “shade-tree mechanic.”
I mention it because he did a couple of recent videos about the possibility that the classic-car market will be displaced by the “Forever Car:” pre-computer cars still available in substantial quantities with good parts availability and good maintainability that with proper scheduled maintenance can be made to run almost indefinitely (Chrysler equipped cars with the Slant Six engine well into the 1980s and you just about have to be trying to kill one of those things to kill them).
I haven’t remotely done the topic justice, but Miz Hoyt’s accurate invocation of Cash for Clunkers put me in mind of it. Go check it out when you can.
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“I’ve never yet been able to afford a 700k house. (Though we came close for a shining moment. The house had, of course, serious problems.)”
As soon as you said “shining moment” I thought: “Which means it was a porcelain white elephant.” Those hurt. They really do. “It would be perfect…but…”
Sometimes, I wonder what a “reverse aging” trope story would be like these days. When was the last time we had one of those tales? If someone could turn back the clock and be 20 years old again, starting from scratch in 2025, what would he be able to really do now? Other than be permanently exhausted trying to keep the basics together? Isekai a 20 year old from even the 1980s to now. See how well that would work without a phone.
Obamacare ended a lot. So did Cash for Clunkers. I haven’t seen near so many classic cars that don’t cost a lot of money to maintain for car shows since….gads, 2012? And as for phones – look, you can either pay cash at a yard sale or a festival, or you can Venmo it, or even use your credit card. Which can cost anyone who only takes cash customers, because if the retiree or 60 something trying to find a hand-crafted item likes the pretty item at the table but doesn’t have the cash available to buy it? And the seller doesn’t have Venmo or a credit reader? That customer is not coming back with cash unless they really, really want that item the seller has.
I can’t remember when the card readers took off at yard sales, exactly – maybe it was 2018. But we’ve been going cashless for a while. Combine that with the fact that they’ve been debasing the currency for years (0.04 cents to make a penny that’s primarily zinc with a copper sheen), and….
Things are different. Good, bad, and just harder. No one has to like it. They just need to figure out how to live with it – and hope for the love of God that the regulations actually do meet a chainsaw brigade, somehow.
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My brother, there’s a solid chance that the popularity of the isekai genre is basicalyl down to how difficult it can be for those cohorts.
Now, for the PRC webnovels, the PRC is maybe unusually screwed.
But, South Korea, Japan, EU, India, and US?
Surveillance, an utterly mad academic endorsed regulatory bureaucracy, and the opportunities in organized crime are not exactly wonderful.
I would argue that it is not normal for people to consume quite so many novels about dying and going to another world just to find a place where the employment bureaucracy is not written in stone that you will wait years for a chance. (Okay, maybe that is just my reading habits, but…)
Yeah, it also sucked when I was young. The way the current youngest cohorts are treated, and taught, is still not just.
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Oh, good point. That would explain the explosion of the popularity of isekai – even and especially power fantasy isekai – by a WIDE margin. Die, get reborn into a new world where you can actually work for a living and build on skills you have chosen or already have? And considering the increase in suicides….
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Never heard of isekai before today. Looked it up.
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Oh, if you hang out with these reprobates, you’ll learn.
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Used to be known as “portal fantasy” in english.
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The one distinction—which is why the term “portal fantasy” is still around—is that the method of changing dimensions in isekai is death. In a portal fantasy, you may be able to go back and forth.
A lot of people will use the terms interchangeably, and call portal fantasies that do not end in death “isekai.” The distinction still remains for us pedants.
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‘Isekai’ literally means ‘other world’. It’s not about how the MC gets there.
True, death is common enough that Truck-Kun is a trope, but sometimes they’re summoned or otherwise magicked away. In ‘Welcome To Japan, Ms. Elf’ Protag-Kun travels to another world in dreams. Then, one night, he and an elf get roasted by a dragon. He wakes up back in Tokyo, just like always — except this time, the elf is there too. In ‘Arifureta’, ‘Moonlit Fantasy’, ‘The Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic’ and ‘How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom’ they’re summoned. In ‘Saving 80,000 Gold For My Retirement’ she grabs an ability to travel between worlds from a curious Kami and saves herself after falling off a cliff.
So, there are a lot of different kinds of isekai.
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As I understand it, Sword Art Online was one of a few series that helped popularize the genre in the early 2010s, and that’s just “trapped in a VR MMO” with no reincarnation or magic involved. So there does seem to be some variety, even if death is a standard trope.
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The SAO manga were published roughly concurrently with the Log Horizon and Overlord light novels, iirc (the Overlord anime is still running). And the .hack project preceded all of them by several years. Though for .hack, only the TV series that opened the story had a trapped in the game plot.
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Makes sense. We’ve gone from a trickle to a torrent over the last 15 years or so.
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Makes sense. We’ve gone from a trickle to a torrent over the last 15 years or so.
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Though there’s some blurring. John Carter is arguably a very early version of Isekai, and he goes back and forth. But he doesn’t do it at will.
Possibly also worth noting –
Modern Isekai stories often use computer RPG-related terms (often with a JRPG-inspired interface that might only be visible to the hero). The protagonist can use this to check his or her stats, level, class abilities, etc… There are also now increasing numbers of stories in which the fantasy monsters invade Earth, and the protagonist (and possibly other chosen people) gets access to a JRPG-inspired interface that helps them fight back. Solo Leveling is currently the most prominent example of that, but it’s hardly alone.
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Number One Son has been a sucker for anime bootlegs on YouTube for some time, when he gets a chance, and some are good, well-done, and even amusing. But the two tropes I most loathe are “I got reborn as an ultrapowered god” and those bloody stupid JRPG stat-check things! Now the stat-check trope makes sense in something like Sword-Art Online (which I haven’t watched) or the Jumanji reboot movies: characters are actually supposed to be inside a video-game cosmos for much of the plot or all of it. But if this is a Real World, where that cut leg needs a bandage and will slow you down until you find a real healer, or whatever else, then LOSE THE STAT-CHECKS AND LEVELLING! To me it just screams Lazy Writing—you don’t have a bell ding and a pop-up window with voiceover announcing that MC’s Strength has Levelled Up: you show him adding more plates to the barbells!
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I would argue that the precursors to the Isekai stories were the “trapped in a game” shows like (as you noted) SOA, Log Horizon, and of course the grsnd-daddy, .hack. And since they all used RPG interfaces (since they were set in games), that likely influenced the look of the Isekai stories.
And then there’s the manwha “Keep a Low Profile Sect Leader” which is somehow both “living in a game” *and* an Isekai at the same time…
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Characters often find themselves in worlds that they have played or read of in their original lives.
NOT as virtual reality. As real reality. Except that there’s often game elements.
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How about “A Conneticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court”?
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You are not alone.
I had to look it up too.
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Genre’s as old as Narnia, but it didn’t have a good name. When isekai came along, it filled a gap.
I read a number of Japanese ones. And philosophize about them on my substack. At length. Like this
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/the-villainess-live
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And how many of those stories are based around someone finally getting a little time to rest?
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There is literally a whole subgenre of slow-life isekai where some ‘black company’ office worker who’s been literally worked to death gets reborn and spends their time farming, or researching monsters, or what-have-you.
They have titles like “The Forsaken Saintess and her Foodie Roadtrip in Another World” or “By the Grace of the Gods” (the slime researcher one), or ‘Isekai Book Cafe”.
Can you tell that I’ve read a bunch of them?
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I honestly want to read more….
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“I’ve Been Killing Slimes For 300 Years And Maxed Out My Level.”
Also, “That Time I Got Reincarnated As A Slime.”
Slow life specials.
This season, The Phantom recommends “Campfire Cooking In Another World With My Absurd Skill.” and “May I ask For One Final Thing?” Honorable mention to “A Wild Last Boss Appeared.”
Of interest to isekai genre nerds (like myself ~:D) in May I ask For One Final Thing? it is the bad girl who’s the isekai character. Nice wrinkle in the plot, I am enjoying it even though it’s 90% fan service.
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The only way ‘May I Ask For One Final Thing’ is full of fanservice is if you’re really into watching a hot girl in a formal gown slug a bunch of assholes that totally deserve it… Okay, it sort of is fanservice. 😄
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Totally is. That character design? AWESOME!
Fan service: they finally showed her legs in the last episode while she’s doing the 20 feet in the air falling heel strike to the bad guy’s head. She’s wearing bloomers that go down to the knee. ~:D
I’m too old to be an anime nerd, but I can’t help myself.
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Lots. LOTS….
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Yeah. I need to get a POS machine for conventions. I also need to answer Fencon, among other thigns.
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I know in this context POS means “Point Of Sale”, but I can’t help but read “Piece Of Soclalism” when I see that acronym. (What? You thought I was going to say “Piece Of S___” with a different S-word? Well, they’re synonyms aren’t they?)
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Yes, I know.
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Sale Point
conveys the meaning and avoids the unfortunate term.
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And then we have SP, which anyone who was in the Navy or Marines knows means Shore Patrol…😈
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Retail workers use those two terms interchangeably, for good reason.
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It was when I saw the devices on cell phones for Girl or Boy Scout product sales. It was “what the heck?” Unless the devices weren’t taking the usual processing percentage off, possible, OMG the cost!!!!
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Our Girl Scout council took the processing fee off one year. I know that Trail’s End has their own software for Scouting, so a lot of us just typed in the number.
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We did a craft sale at the beginning of the month – and while a lot of people were handing over cash, I couldn’t get my Square card reader to sync up – and so we did a lot of the non-cash sales on Venmo.
Wave of the future, I guess. For some reason, Paypal decided to walk away from their card-reader program for point of sale. They have annoyed me with their fees, because I use them for invoicing with the Teeny Publishing Bidness.
I reflect back on my own parents, though – they were renters until they were in their high thirties. They bought their first house then, but it was pretty tight, even after that.
I do think that the powers that be are set on destroying the middle class: they prefer a large class of essentially serfs, as a striving, home-owning, independent and prosperous middle class is just to uppity and demanding for their tastes.
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My paternal grandparents never owned a home. They always rented, and moved every few years as job, school, or age dictated. Maternal grandparents bought part of a farm on the far north side of Houston, as did a great uncle. The properties are now well inside the city limits. (North Shepherd Road area, for those curious)
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My parents owned their first house as they hit their 30’s. I was 7. Sisters and I have all owned our first houses in our 20’s. Have an aunt and uncle, in their 80s, and all 3 of their children are all renting their homes. Aunt worked for the state, and uncle worked vehicle finance. Took them awhile to find their footing financially, but there is no reason why they shouldn’t have been able to buy a home. They knew very early that there was nothing coming from either set of parents; especially uncle’s (I’ve mentioned the grandparent estate disaster a time or two).
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My PGP rented forever, it seems, in Chicago – Marquette Park area, if you know Chicago.
Grandfather retired and they moved out to Forest Park, I think, and bought a condo, in the late 60s or early 70s. I think they got out of there Just In Time. Google street view shows the Chicago area a whole lot sketchier than it was when we used to visit.
My dad, USAF officer, bought a house when he was a civilian, like 1948. He bought at least two houses while on active duty, and other times we rented or lived on base, and again in the late 60s or early 70s he bought the house he retired in.
We bought our first house in 1983 (we were 33 years old), our second in 1992, and our third and current in 2019.
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I’ve had a story premise knocking about the mental junk-drawer for a few years now, unwritten (so something, something, “… that runs at large. / Take it, you’re welcome, no extra charge!”), about a preteen boy who Trick-or-Treats the wrong door and is Isekai’d some 75-ish years forward, but for every day he lives, he rewinds two days into the past until he’s lived every day of those 75 years in the wrong order. It’d be cute to make him the old man warning himself not to go ito that one house, but somehow the focus seems rather to be on his relationship with his wife whose life and the whole world is rushing at him, as his life is at her, from the opposite direction.
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As regards “wimmin”.. my coworker is 67, single, never married, all serious relationships broken by her working a corporate job that made her travel a lot. she ain’t happy ’bout it but kinda quietly broken.
So-called “feminism” was just commies killing women’s souls and wearing their skins like an evil pack of Ed Gein wannabees.
There are countless evil influences on Chinese TikTok and elsewhere preventing young folks from having healthy marriages—including the “Passport Bros” selling foreign snake oil to the gullible.
Housing is expensive because it is literally given to non-workers by the government misusing our tax dollars (see also the EBT frauds). Those with the product hold out for the most they can get. And of course the 20? 40? 60? Million illegals must sleep somewhere, too…
My own life has been very messed up, too; but by the grace of God I met my wife in 1996 and she agreed to marry me and move to Texas, where my house has more than tripled in appraised value to generate additional taxes that pay for no services my family has ever used…
I do feel bad for the young’uns. But the politicians that created this will roast in perdition for eternity. The young may be smart enough to see the way out.
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I think you’re overreacting about the Passport Bros. Are there some? Certainly. Is it all that many? It doesn’t look like it. I haven’t heard stories of large colonies of American men forming enclaves in foreign countries while looking for local wives. It’s out there as an option for guys who for whatever reason have trouble finding a wife in their home country. But it doesn’t change the fact that the guy still has to be successful in order to find a wife in a foreign country. If he’s broke here, he’ll probably be broke there, and not able to support a spouse (and the host country will kick him out if he can’t support himself, in any case).
The only notable thing from it, imo, is the occasional reaction from a woman on an airplane who freaks out and attacks a guy on the airplane because she decided he was a passport bro.
Yes, it’s happened and has been caught on camera.
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Eh. Kind of. I mean, both of them would commit suicide, but for younger kids going to Portugal for a couple of years and saving money would work well. They could work remote and their pitiful salary would be extravagant there. This suggests so so remote worker could be moneybags elsewhere. And remember, Portugal is EUROPE.
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I think something got left out of the reply?
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No. I was just talking about “younger kids” being younger son and DIL. They could live like princelings on barely getting through in the US. And this is Portugal, not some African village. OTOH they’d die of misplacement. (And I wouldn’t go for any money.)
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Yes, but…
They wouldn’t be doing it to pick up on local women who might be more trad-wife minded (what the Passport Bros are supposed to be looking for; that’s literally why they’re there) than American women are.
I suppose there is a point about someone being broke in the US but making enough to date overseas. In which case, looking overseas is likely the only way the guy’s going to find a wife within the next few years.
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Oh, no. but I was talking about a little money seeming more overseas than here.
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So called “ex-pats”. Like US citizens who realize their remote work and salaries means a very comfortable lifestyle in American -ized locations in Mexico, some central America, Puerto Rico, etc. “Ex-pats” is just wrong. Most aren’t going to these locations for citizenship, even if they could. Still Americans. Just Americans living in US territories, and other countries.
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There are also often stringent rules about how long they can stay in the country, etc… For example, some countries (including Mexico) don’t allow non-citizens to own land. Many only allow short stays without a work visa. I was watching a video by an Aussie couple that bought a home for very cheap in rural Japan (just a little over $30,000 – I think that’s US, though I’m not sure; though getting it merely *livable* has been a *huge* project for them). But the Japanese rules on foreign visitors mean that they can only be in the country for a total of six months, and not for longer than 90 days continuously. My understanding is that most countries have rules like these, and that means that someone working a remote job in the US while living in a foreign country often has to jump through additional hoops, including the possibility of not being able to continuously live in that country. Ex-pats and others will try to figure out loopholes to allow for longer continuous stays, but there are no guarantees.
And even if you do find a place that you like and that has rules that you can live with, you’re still subject to the government’s whims. For example, I’ve heard that Thailand has recently put more restrictions on tourists. I don’t know the details, but I suspect it’s made things more difficult for the ex-pats trying to stay there long-term.
Curiously, the changes to Thailand’s rules happened right after season three of the series “White Lotus”, which was set in Thailand. It’s not likely, but a part of me wonders if there’s a connection. Or more likely, they’ve gotten tired of video bloggers like the moron that got himself arrested in South Korea, and the ones that have been causing trouble in Japan.
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I know.
BIL’s stepson cannot own land/home in Thailand. He can pay for it but his bride has to own it.
Cousin’s wife’s family trust (farm incorporated) has a home (condo?) in Mexico. It is “owned” by a bank. The condo and trips can be justified to PTB because they have a number of agricultural partnerships (not ownership).
Didn’t know about the residency rules, new or otherwise. No need to know.
Know there are limited visas, even student visas, for places like Spain. Nephew spent a quarter in a program at a Spain university, last year. The student visa was such that because he and his parents (on a vacation visa), went over earlier than the total student visa would allow (exceptions? Please. Like that’d happen.) So the first week they got him to the school, settled in the house/dorm (whatever), then all 3 toured part of Spain. Parents then took off for the rest of their Spain vacation, but nephew went to UK to be out of Spain a few weeks to ensure he did not overstay his total student visa time in Spain.
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“There are countless evil influences on Chinese TikTok and elsewhere preventing young folks from having healthy marriages…”
Honestly I think most of it is down to sheer cost. What girl is going to lock-in with some guy and take the risk of having kids when the pair of them can’t scrape together a car payment, never mind a mortgage. A freaking junky used car is $10K these days. Payment plans for used cars. It’s nuts.
And here in Ontario, the GIRLS drive because the boys can’t afford the car insurance. Because it costs more than the car. I still can’t get used to seeing that. The kids leave the pizzeria or the movies and the dude gets in the passenger seat, the girl drives? No wonder so many of them stay home and play Call of Duty.
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“Honestly I think most of it is down to sheer cost. What girl is going to lock-in with some guy and take the risk of having kids when the pair of them can’t scrape together a car payment, never mind a mortgage.”
————————————————————————————–
That’s the way that it’s supposed to work. Two low twenty-somethings getting married while they still can barely afford a place to live (and that last word might be questionable). And then they would start improving their economic situation and move up in the world. That’s the way that it worked for quite a while. The woman would say, “I’m gonna hitch my horse to this guy’s cart, and even though neither of us has anything now, we will eventually.”
Now?
I recently saw a chart showing the number of college-age women who are interested in getting married declining over the years to the point where there are now fewer women at that age interested in getting married than there are men (and women are the ones who *need* to get married early in order to have kids during their optimal child-bearing years). That’s a big issue that needs to get fixed.
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“…the number of college-age women who are interested in getting married declining…”
Yes, because what girl wants to get married when SHE has to drive everywhere because he’s not allowed to? It’s insidious.
We used to have a path forward, right? Even in the #PeanutFarmer Famine there was a way to get ahead. Now? They can beat their heads against wall as hard as they can, not going to make a dent.
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Here boys still drive. BUT they’re very tired of feminists….
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Little girls in school are VERY FEMINAZI around here, they’re all gung-ho for Palestine, every one of them is pretending to be trans, lesbian or something weirder, and they’re all on the hunt for Mr. Finance trust fund 6’5″ blue eyes. It’s like a friggin’ mental disorder. Oh, and they can’t do anything useful, most of them.
There are going to be a lot of fat, bitter, 45 year old welfare queen cat ladies in Canada in 25 years, let me tell you. I hope I last that long, so I can be the old b@st@rd with the cane cackling “told you so, told you so!” from the front porch.
The car thing though, that’s important. Let me just reiterate that teenage boys and early 20s young men riding in the passenger seat while a girl drives is a sign of the apocalypse.
Boys and men want their freedom and mobility more than they want anything else. They’ll work three jobs for a car. They’ll literally make their own freaking car out of junk if pressed. That’s what a hot rod is, right? Five wrecks made into a working car.
If large numbers of boys and men can’t get even a clunker and stop trying, your country is f-ed. That’s Canada right now.
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My Canadian friend believes that one of the Western provinces will vote to break away in the first half of next year.
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Honestly, I think that is the type of thing it’ll take to break the grip of socialism on this nation.
But, sadly I must say that I think my myself and your friend are dreaming. The Normies are not going to pay attention, and the West is made of mostly Normies the same as everywhere else.
Some people will rant about separation, and then they won’t do it. Because Normies.
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I find I say that all the time, multiple times a week at least, to a lot of the right of center commentary folks.
They do. Much worse. Don’t think so? Why do you think half of the youth seem to be open to trying socialism and immune to “it’ll make you all poor with no future” argument because, wait for it, compared to their parents, grand parents, and great grandparents they are poor and with no future.
The same bleakness empowers the like of Nick Fortes or whatever his name is.
And screaming “you’re ungrateful and lazy” is only hastening the trend.
Consider this, the median age of first time home buyers is now 40. And the president’s solution is 50 year mortgages.
A lot of us have 50 year mortgages. They’re called rent. Even if the median first time home buyer was 20 a 50 year mortgages meaning paying on it until retirement.
And a defining aspect of being a boomer is thinking this is okay as long as you’re getting yours. The kids just have to figure it out is the attitude.
Good luck with your elder care with that attitude.
No TBTF bank employer requires one to be able to log into the bank network to do your job. And, no, they are not providing one for me anymore.
Yep, and anyone who tries to teach them otherwise gets a following. Then we claim men who try to teach them otherwise in a positive way, say Jordan Peterson, are no different than than jack stains who teach the negative version and get ahead by lying, cheating, and abusing women like Andrew Tate.
Then have the nerve to wonder why Andrew Tate types having increasing followings.
It’s called luxury poverty. We’ve made the toys and frills amazingly cheap and the real things of value impossible to get.
A lot of the latte kids and the party kids and the Instagram Shin hauls are a rational choice. For a lot of people under 40, you can spend today and have nothing tomorrow or sacrifice today and have nothing tomorrow.
If I can work (saving is work) or not work and get the same outcome, the human norm is to not work.
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This.
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Technically we’ve had a 50 year mortgage. We’ve refinanced the 30 year mortgage about 5 times, to another 30 year mortgage. Current one, 3.35%, pays off 2035 (I think, it keeps dropping the year because I pay little extra each month). Interest rates drop like they did before, get where the bank will pay us to refinance, I’ll take a 2% (ish) rate. Just pay the same amount.
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Yes. I get it. Our “50 year” mortgage isn’t the same.” OTOH we were very unhappy to get the initial mortgage as a 13% 24 month flex rate, 5 year balloon, just to get into to the house. About the only condition that could have killed that deal was early payoff penalties. Does not mean we were locked into that mortgage forever. It was gone within 6 months.
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My hope is that the 50 year mortgage idea is something he’s throwing out there to buy for time, and to draw votes during the mid-terms while he waits for the actual solution to start to work.
But who knows? It’s Trump. He sometimes appears to like to suggest a bunch of different things just to see what sorts of arguments people come up with about those ideas.
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He seems to throw things at the wall to find out what his people think. He also seems pretty good at responding to the feedback.
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Yes, and it’s going to get worse because that which can’t be paid won’t, and the cure for high prices is – high prices. But HOW we are going to get there is not certain and I can face it better at 78 than 18. I feel for ’em.
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For one we have EXPERIENCE. For them ten years is an eternity and everything is the end of the world.
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Thanks. I sent a link to my kids. One of whom spun my truck into someone else’s vehicle mid-morning. No injuries, thank the Lord.
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Indeed on thank the Lord. It happens. As the late David Drake said “If it can be fixed with money, it’s not a tragedy.” At the time we were so tight I thought he was nuts, but looking back he was right.
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Eek.
Glad everyone walked away. Even if the truck didn’t drive away.
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I worked retail in the seventies and I don’t remember a single no call, no show. What happened in ten years to change that?
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I suspect it’s where you were and maybe the subfield. I was in Charlotte, NC, and oooh boy.
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Did it vary wildly by cultural sub-group, or were the no-show levels pretty even across cultures? (Many people would say “races” there, but racial issues in America are usually cultural issues that people mistake for racial issues*. For more on which read Sowell, Black Rednecks and White Liberals.)
Because I can imagine people from rural or suburban cultures, and people from urban cultures, having entirely different attitudes towards time and dependability.
* Which is not entirely unreasonable, to be fair, because in America, by looking at someone’s skin color you can predict their culture with accuracy somewhat better than random chance, so people tend towards mental shortcuts like “All X are Y” which are often false, but stereotypes don’t last in the mind if they’re always false. So people tend to see black skin and assume “urban culture”, because even if that’s wrong 25% of the time, a prediction that’s right 75% of the time is one that will tend to stick around in the mind and get used for first assumptions. The trick is to keep an open mind about it, and remember that your first mental prediction can need refining by more data: for example, the combination of skin tone and accent will tell you a lot more than skin tone alone. But since skin tone is a reasonably accurate proxy for culture, many people who don’t think about it in enough depth think that race determines behavior, when culture — the values and fundamental assumptions you got from your parents and neighbors — is far more important to human behavior than genetic factors like skin color.
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I was the only furriner. Everyone else was native born Southerner, and all but one white.
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When a move required me to transition to retail from a mechanic/warehouse background in the 80s I can remember some people who fit the ‘no show/no call” pattern. There weren’t many and the majority of people were dependable. If they weren’t there you would know ahead of time and know why. As the years have passed it seems to have gotten worse, my wifes employer goes through employees like a PEZ dispenser pops out candy. Worse, they often hire the same people back a month or two later.
In my part time “retirement” job I see a lot of it too though at least they don’t rehire the same undependable ones. I think some of it is cultural, no one put the idea of being reliable into their heads when they were young and they are having a hard time picking up on the idea. There are also some cases (mainly women with kids receiving some type of social assistance) where they only want a limited amount of hours (it affects what they receive) and management tries to over schedule them and they just quit.
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SIL does that. But then she’s 72. Not that where she works does not know when she doesn’t show up, or that she might have to clock out early. If someone implies she is doing that they are flat out lying. Trust me, she lets PTB know she won’t be there. (Now, me and hubby, her BIL, not so much.)
Not hours, her insurance and SS isn’t dependent on anything. She is only working to get away from the house, and doesn’t have any hobbies that does so. Not just her health (nothing except stress currently). But she is the only one to deal with her spouse’s, her mother’s, her two brothers, her son’s, and until a few weeks or so ago her uncle’s, health issues. The latter two long distance. At least her uncle’s it was just knowing his status (he passed a few weeks ago, she flew home from the funeral yesterday, baring flight problems from NE US). FYI, nothing we can do to help her. Not even hubby with his brother. We can lend an ear to listen. But nothing we can do.
We’ve heard the complaints from people, mostly those working the fuel pumps. You know ask “How’s it going. Pretty cold/wet/hot …”, and get more. There is something to the “earn barely too much, lose benefits, now are short what is needed.” Used to be with low income that covered child care, so they could work, was affected. Make too much, lose free/subsidized child care. But too much was less than prior income + subsidized amount paying for child care, so losing child care subsidy meant can’t work because not subsidized child care. Got worse when it was subsidized child care and rent. Make too much, get cut off, now can’t afford either subsidy. In addition they are penalized for saving to help get off that roller-coaster. It isn’t that they aren’t capable of doing more. Just balancing what they need to subsist on without breaking the rules is proof of that. It’d give me a headache.
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Honestly, the kids were if anything over scheduled and told to do things at precise times.
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And there will not be more of them when the repetitive work we olders passed out to teach them the basic skills so they could learn how to spot problems and diagnose and fix have been replaced by AI.
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Weird story fodder. This echoes strangely with the 2nd LitRPG/2nd Zapocalypse one that’s been banging away at the writer brain for almost two years now. Is it survival, post apoc, LitRPG, cyberpunk, space opera, fantasy, and all the mini stories festering below the overplot? The young people, the 85% insane older people, the time travel, the plots and counter plots, the whole bit. Losing traditions, history, the uncertainty of everything, the yearning for stability beyond almost all (which is used as a convenient handle for warlords, opportunists, etc). The difficulty of getting anything started, being lied to constantly, and having almost no support system, the interests that want to keep everyone apart, suspicious, and antagonistic for their own gain. Almost too much intrigue to even shake a stick at.
You’re giving the story ideas. Argh! (shakes fist) Other story needs to go first. I promised.
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I’m sorry. giving friends story ideas is a lethal offense!
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Doofus will be very fussy that his napping spot keeps getting up and pacing. The angst of the orange fuzzmonster is on you, missy. He’s giving me that look again. The one that says “suspicious hooman needs to sitten down nao!” Or-
Waitaminute, nevermind. Hairball. You got off lucky this time!
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Tell him I’m sorry, anyway. Just in case. :D
Circe is looking at me crosseyed because I won’t let her hug my arm. :D
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It’s feeding time, so he’s sunny of disposition and will soon be on his evening zoomies with Othercat and Nasty before too awful long. Doofus accepts all apologies that come with scritches or chicken with all the fuzzy aplomb of a gentleman. Which is to say, he goes after the latter like I starved him on purpose, but he forgives anyway.
Doofus may be occasionally nutty, but he’s a good little(r than he was) fuzz. Never a single grudge held, always ready for a good nap or a good bit of tasty nomchicken.
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Assuming I am a friend might be arrogant; but you game me the idea for “Catellano, Maestro” when you said something about “Castellano hissing” in the post about borders.
I am not complaining. It was fun to write and I needed a break from writing/studying computer textbooks.
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I have a smart phone. It stays plugged in next to my desktop computer most of the time. I take it with me when I go out, along with my ccw. I figure if I have to shoot somebody, then I’ll also need to dial 911 either just before or just after doing so. I occasionally use it as a clock or a stop watch. And once in a blue moon I might try to read the news on it. That’s it.
Friday Meme Thing – Granite Grok
Midweek Memes – Granite Grok
Monday Memes – Granite Grok
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I read that as “along with my cow.” I need new glasses.
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Cows are a little hard to draw from a holster. One would have to carry OWB, as an inside-the-waistband cow, even a little one, would stress one’s wardrobe.
Is food for a cow cheaper than ammunition?
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Commonsense bull control. High-capacity assault udders. “When you need milk in seconds, the farmer is only minutes away.” Concealed cowwy. The Second Amoondment.
…I’ll stop now.
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You guys are milking it for all it’s worth.
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yes, but think how impressive it would be when you draw it out!
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You know that’s a straight line for the 4-word refrain T W S S
But I will forbear.
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What? Is that a cow in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?
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“Dont have a cow, man.”
To err is human, to moo bovine.”
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REALLY Milking it for all it’s worth, I see.
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If one teaches the cow to twerk, does it then give milkshakes?
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Why would I need my phone if I took my cow with me? If I want to talk to her, she’s right there.
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wait. you’re calling your cow?
You might be one of my characters.
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Wisconsin Dairy Country Shifters
The Real Animal Farm
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I saw a cow too, and I don’t have dyslexia. 😄
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I’ve herd of cows.
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Oh no you didn’t horn that in there.
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The Reader believes an emergency carp delivery is necessary to cull the herd.
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DoorDash is offering a new service?
I’ve herd of carp, too. Even though carp don’t come in herds. But they don’t seem smart enough to ever have been in the schools -I- attended; perhaps that’s Modern Education For You.
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“…take off, and Carp-et bomb the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
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My smartphone is primarily used for three things: talking to my wife via Signal rather than text messages (because our phone plan is pay-by-the-text), reading books on Kindle (or fanfic on the Web, which I lump into the same category), and watching Youtube videos (which I pre-download via yt-dlp and then watch with the VLC app: I refuse to give Google info about my viewing habits). And actually, the watching Youtube videos thing is more like “Listening to the audio of Youtube videos while I work, and occasionally glancing over at the phone screen to see the thing that the audio is talking about right now”.
Social media apps? Don’t use ’em, in fact I avoid them like the plague. (Well, technically some people might consider Signal to be “social media”, but if talking to one’s spouse is “social media” then people have been on social media for as long as the human race has existed, so that’s not a good definition).
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Interestingly enough, flip phones have been influenced by smart phones. My latest has some of the low-end smart phone features, decent camera, a calendar/appointment app, as well as tolerable texting. (Unfortunately, the text entry method puts Otto Corrupt as the default, but I found the override to make it less difficult.)
I need a cell phone, but usually once a week when I go to town for groceries and supplies. Since I’m partially deaf, a phone that rides well in a shirt pocket is my preference. Not sure if the Samsung I also have will work there. That one has proved to be a valuable backup when power goes out, taking the satellite modem offline. So far, cell service stays up when the power dies. One of these days, I’d like to try that phone in the shirt-pocket role. Need to do a fair amount of setup to get it to duplicate what’s in the flip phone.
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Look for the Live Transcribe app. Couldn’t live without it.
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I guess I live in an odd pocket universe. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving with my best friend and his family and friends. They have two boys in their mid twenties who are good people and doing well. Other than that, most young folks I meet are at church, and they all seem to be happy families in the making if not already with 3 or 4 kids. Orthodox churches in this country are small affairs befitting their tiny minority status. Our temple is certified by the fire department to hold 250, and we’re seriously pushing that. We had 50 catechumens last Sunday and even more inquirers. We’re fixing up an overflow space, and talking about founding another “mission” church parish. From what I hear, it’s like that at a lot of Orthodox churches these days.
My wife and I were poor for many years. It wasn’t until I was in my fifties that we started to get financially comfortable. The first, and so far only, car we ever bought new was in 2004 and is the one I currently still drive. With luck it may outlive me. :) I feel pity for young folks tricked into going into massive debt to get college degrees, but I don’t blame them. I blame the parents who should know better. My boomer stories tend to be the opposite of the “walked to school 5 miles uphill both ways”. Rather I tell them I attended the University of California when it was free. Yes kids, there was no, literally zero, tuition at the UC for in-state students in the late 60’s. I have nothing but sympathy for young folks these days.
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I think a lot of the interest in the Orthodox church these days is because it actually presents a challenge. You see those megachurches with the huge youth groups that go on to become non-Christians, and they say “where did we go wrong? we should draw in the youth more,” and they go for more Excitment! without bothering to think that all of secular culture does that, and does it better.
If I were to run a youth group, I’d give them work. You’ll retain more faithful if you have them work at the soup kitchen or clothing closet.
Anyway. People go to the Orthodox because they’re told it’s not easy, and we humans kinda want that.
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We do have about 20 active ministries from dealing with such things as internment rites (funeral services), preparing weekly dinner for the homeless, rotating groups for feeding the parish on Sunday after liturgy, choir, pro-life ministries including housing and care for unwed mothers, to the quarterly house building for an orphanage in Mexico, and on and on. That might help young folks to stay and feel involved in doing good.
More important for initially attracting them though, from what I’ve heard, is a serious dedication to learning about the Christian faith, its dogma, and its history. In fact I’ve had several former Protestants describe their Protestant services as, “a concert followed by a TED Talk.” In fact our particular parish derives from one of the founders of Campus Crusade for Christ. That organization’s founders were serious about their desire to be good Christians and started researching the history of the Church and why Christians believe what we do rather than just playing with a few, maybe not so random, bible verses that everybody gets to interpret for themselves.
Also I’ve met several young folks who went to Protestant bible colleges where the Church History profs were Orthodox because the Orthodox clergy spend a lot of effort studying Church history. They didn’t try to convert anybody, but the colleges eventually caught on that many of their students decided to convert to Orthodoxy and, as I understand it, are now making sure they don’t hire Orthodox professors.
I certainly make no claim that Orthodox Christianity is perfect. IMO too many Orthodox churches in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, are much too entangled with the country’s politics where they are based. Not a problem in America since we’re a very small group, or actually an overlapping set of groups since the Greek, Antiochian, Russian Orthodox, etc. hierarchies are all represented in the US, and none have any secular influence.
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You get out of life what you put into it, that means with everyone and everything, except Karma, she a Bitch and her job is balancing scales not expectations.
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…Not true. Really not. Especially if you keep trying but you can’t even fake the social games.
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I should be sorry about this, but I can’t resist the quote from Tom Lehrer, describing a friend in the introduction to “We Will All Go Together When We Go”:
“Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.”
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A lot of it is we’re in an era of systems breaking down entirely. Schools can’t teach, companies can’t hire, and factories can’t build. And it will get worse before it gets better.
We just don’t notice it yet, because right now we still have the immense bounty from before the system broke to work through and a lot of entities are juggling a lot of imaginary numbers to look healthy.
The balloon will pop and it will be ugly and a lot of the wealth a lot of folks think they have will likely pop with it.
That said, we aren’t dead, and I don’t think we will die, beyond the self-inflicted and the ones otherwise lost in the dark of their minds either. There’s just to much potential prosperity there for everything to die back to dust, but it will certainly be very very messy.
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At first I misread “the balloon will pop” as “the bubble will pop” and thought you were talking about the AI/LLM balloon, which I have a feeling is just about to pop, but the dot-com bubble lasted about two years longer than I thought it would, so maybe the LLM bubble is going to last another couple of years. “The market can remain irrational for longer than you can remain solvent”, after all, which is why I’m not betting any money on the LLM bubble popping (via things like shorting OpenAI or whatever): my ability to predict when obvious bubbles will pop has been proven unreliable at best.
But the rest of what you said is largely true, which is why it’s so important to build under and build around. When the schools can’t teach, America will survive because of the millions of homeschooling families turning out kids who have actually learned. And so on.
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Well, I am thinking of it like a bubble, or a shell around what was once there. A lot has rotated away to nothing more than a shape.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the AI/LLM bubble popping is what kicks it off, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if it wasn’t.
And I do think LLMs are going to still be huge after the pop. I’m just also very aware that any time something that disruptive comes along, best case, at least half of the mad ideas are just that: completely mad and end up failing spectacularly. Things can be revolutionary and over-invested in and under-utilized all at the same time!
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One of the best parts of the investment bubble popping is going to be the retirement of older datacenter GPUs.
When those hit the tertiary markets they won’t be in my price range….. but the even older GPUs which more well off hobbyists replace will be.
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“Things can be revolutionary and over-invested in and under-utilized all at the same time!”
This. The tech is here to stay (until something better replaces it). The hype and ludicrous investments, maybe not.
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I’d take it a step farther: if something *isn’t* overinvested and underutilized then it either isn’t revolutionary or people haven’t figured out that it is revolutionary.
Markets are discovery engines. The search process has to be run to figure out what is going to work.
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Someone had a post on that a while back. I can’t remember if it was ESR or Mark Kern. It definitely helps to think of the bubble as part of a natural cycle, rather than a cliff everyone’s running off of. But in the meantime, there’s collateral damage as companies jam AI into things that don’t need it.
It’s not all that different from other business fads. For example, it’s easy to convince yourself that your open office layout is good for productivity if everyone else is doing it. The feedback signals aren’t that clear, especially when the technology keeps changing and everyone else is spinning their own failures as successes, muddying the waters on what actually works.
(Now it occurs to me that business trends are driven by managers who are moderately competent but socially impressionable. That feels like it should have predictive power.)
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The dot com bubble bursting effects lasted a lot longer in some places than others, depending on how much there was locally I presume. I know that back when the news was full of reporting about the rest of the country being basically done after a few months, with indicators like new car sales up and such, silivalley was deep into continuing recession that dragged on and on, which ended up about two years after the bursting point getting me zapped from the longest lasting cubical job I’ve had here in the second round of many at that company. Hiring didn’t really pick back up again for another year and a half, about when I was able to land a new gig.
I expect the AI company locations, out here and in other Tech-centric places, will get banged up badly for quite a bit, anyplace betting their collective municipal souls on that new local AI datacenter project to get hit hard but pretty briefly, and places like the oil patch will notice it for a bit but move on fairly rapidly.
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The dotcom bubble bursting also was close in time to the 9/11 attacks, so it was hard to distinguish which thing caused which part of the subsequent recession. I just know that in early 2002, my first job (a consulting data-analysis company) lost a major customer (a company name everyone would recognize) who decided they’d do their own data analysis in-house rather than farming it out. That one customer was 30% of their income, so they laid off about 30% of their workforce, including me. Took me nine months to find another job.
I still remember attending a job fair in the summer of 2002. I was standing in line with about ten other people waiting to talk to the recruiter for one company (don’t recall which one). He told the guy at the front of the line that they weren’t hiring any IT jobs right now. About 5-6 people, half the people waiting in that line, promptly stepped out of line and went to other companies’ tables. And that was in Illinois, nowhere close to Silly Valley.
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I remember one time back in the 90s (AAAK! That were 30 years ago!) Qualcomm advertised that they were hiring 400 (I think) people in Sorrento Valley. Comes the appointed day and 4,000+ people showed up. By the time I got to the front, you had about 15 seconds to pitch something to the frazzled hiring rep and drop off a resume. Never heard back, not that I had high expectations.
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I’m in Eugene Oregon. Bit far from either California Silicon Valley, or Seattle. When the small tech company I worked for started it’s decline between late 2001, into early 2003, I got “hit” on the 10% across the board no department spared, August 2002 (before that our understaffed department skated through the downsizing. Took another 17 months to find another job finally in Eugene. Looked further afield than I should have. Really couldn’t take any job further away than Corvallis. Even Salem or Roseburg would have been a stretch. In comparison, it only took 2 months (actually less from find to start) in ’90, less than that in ’88 (part time), and 6 months in ’96. There is (was? Not paying attention anymore.) even a Norton center locally (Springfield), every 18 months they were advertising. Sent in applications each time. Though from rumors awfully glad never got that call.
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That was a rough but blessed time for me, I was a early 20’s IT consultant and watched the firm make huge bucks mitigating Y2K, then jobs went soft, then 911 and the markets dropped. Thankfully I remained employed and as one of the cheapest employees rose to being Sr. as the more experienced sought more secure opportunities.
I fear this time it will be much harder, and I really worry about gen z and the oughties.
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So one of the subtopics in what inspired my shiny blast rant, and later inspired an essay I lost today (probably good riddence), was AI.
There was talk of what Trump’s goals were, about the import/export policies around AI, and about whether TRump was theoretically consistent. (He is not, he makes deals with groups, and if they satisfice him he tries to satisfice them back.)
I wound up having three additional issues specific to the AI discussion. 1. That many involved factions are folding other issues into their position on the question. 2. That ‘AI’ tech is software, and hardware, and the exports of those technologies are not strictly the same as exporting, say, lumber. The key limit on PRC access to hardware is ASML, which is maybe controlled by the EU, which makes not fucking with the EU on tech a priority for the US. 3. Bundling all of the disparate businesses that do something that the pop culture now labels AI is maybe an intractable mess of I have no idea how to evaluate the business fundamentals (1).
US, EU, and the PRC are in that order increasingly effective at squandering the economic potential of their populations.
The EU is bitter, and wants the shiny tech magic.
Jinping’s cronies think, or thought, that it could keep them in power.
Americans are pretty stressed. Some would like something that they can be angry at. Some want doom. Some want a fix.
I dunno, and we shall see.
(1) Okay, I am not a skilled man of business. (2)
(2) Still, the military remote sensing applications are a different business from the agentic (3) PC stuffs.
(3) An agent for whom, Mustafa. For whom?
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Lots of us are not disciplined enough for home schooling, or if disciplined enough not good at it, but we hella supplemented while the kids were doing homework. A full encyclopedia (bought at a garage sale), old college textbooks, and just the requirement to do more, do better, dig deeper, put it in perspective, write longer. And “Here is what you must say to the teacher, but the real truth is…” Except for the last, my parents did the same for us. I remember doing high school biology homework with my mother’s anatomy text at my elbow.
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I’d say about 80% of the youngsters I see end up with jobs, either in family business (ag area), starter jobs, or so on. We are in an area with low unemployment right now, and a goodly number of starter jobs have been opening up this year. [coughcoughICEcoughcough] However, I also see both ends – the nepo kid that even the other rich kids warn to quit showing off the flash, and the kid with parents desperately trying to keep the family from sliding into abject poverty. Both may end up having problems, for very different reasons.
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Even here, with the number of economic refugees coming in from blue states, and the housing codes, the market is seriously weighted toward older couples…. if you look at the housing developments going up, they’re all McMansions. Nobody’s building starter homes, so even if the kids could afford a 2B/1.5B, there aren’t any to be bought.
This is why Tiny Homes took off for a while – not because people really want a 400 sq. ft. house, but because demand for starter homes far outstrips supply.
When I asked a builder why all McMansions, he responded without even having to stop and think about it: “That’s the sweet spot for profitability between the cost of materials, labor, land, and regulations, and what people are willing to pay.”
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If you think about it, all the insane price inflation is in the land, not the structure. If the lot costs $300,000, and the permits cost $150,000, the difference between spending $60,000 to build a cottage on it, or $120,000 to build a McMansion, is almost trivial.
Like Larry Correia’s saga of building his Eeevul Lair on Yard Moose Mountain — he couldn’t just build a house on an empty lot. He had to spend 2 years and a couple hundred $thousand building the empty lot first.
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That’s definitely the case in the built up places here in California. It’s the land that the building is on that bumps the cost waaaaay up. There’s a small house across the street from my parents’ house (the house that I grew up in) that sold for an absurd amount of money. And it’s because of the ground that the house is sitting on (which in this case, includes a good neighborhood).
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Sister’s first house they bought in California. Multiple existing homes sold in their neighborhood at the same time they bought. They were the Only new homeowners who did not tear down the 1950’s two bed, one bath, detached garage, and build a new home (usually huge mansion). Bought for the land. Don’t know if their home survived them selling it when they moved north.
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Or why despite the slowdown on housing locally, the 1950 – 1970s, some from the ’90s, the non-mcmansions, still sell fast; 3 bed, 1.5 – 2 bath, family room or not, rarely open concept, large front and backyard (100×100 -ish, but still not acreage. Appear to be on the market as long as others because the “for sale” signs stay up same length of time as those that are pulled from the market after not selling for 3 months. No sell pending put up. More often than not, sold before or as soon as first open house. After all that for sale sign isn’t just advertising that house is for sale, it is advertising for the agent.
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On Smartphones, the entire argument they’re expensive is honestly a canard. Looking at smartphones, I can get a good unlocked replacement for my current smartphone (which I’ve had since 2019 or so) for about $150, and my plan, which is unlimited text, unlimited calling and 18gb data is $25 a month.
If I forgoed home Internet ($65/m) I could upgrade to an unlimited plan for $50/m. Ad YouTube Premium for $24/m that’s basically my entire connectivity needs: phone, Internet and TV for ~$75-$115/m.
That’s not free, but it’s also not some big expense either, especially when just a base labeling is $40/m. Nobody in their right mind is going to tell you to not have a phone number.
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I think I used to pay around $23/month for a land line with caller ID and voice mail. Now it’s $38.33/month with taxes for logarithmically greater functionality. The price has not even kept up with inflation.
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Yeah, it’s stupid that people keep using them as an example. The cost isn’t crazy unless you want it to be, and the hoops you have to jump through to not have one these days are just a waste of time for most people. I’m all for not plugging in if you don’t want to, but ditching your cheap Android and data plan won’t magically turn you into a homeowner, and it’ll make life a lot more of a hassle.
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The interesting thing about smart phones is that there is a huge variance in how much they cost. For someone like me, I get a new phone for about 200 dollars every 3 ish years, and I pay 20 bucks a month for my phone plan. On the other hand, there are people who buy the new $1000 + phones regularly.
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Yeah, my smartphone is the one I finally caved into getting five years ago, and it wasn’t new then. We also have a very old smartphone—probably 13 years old or so—that gets used as a music and audiobook player for the car. (There was a previous one that was used in that fashion that got stolen out of the car. The only reason that one hurt was I was taking the kids on a lengthy trip later that morning and we didn’t have time to convert another over.)
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Yeah. Thing is, the phone I got was an expensive one, in 2019. But now, I can replace it with one every bit as good for a couple of hundred.
The $1000 phones are mostly just status symbols now.
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THIS.
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I feel like the people buying the $1000 ones annually are entitled to waste their money that way if they want to, they’re just not entitled to complain about how poor they are afterwards.
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Thank you for writing this! I was meaning to, let me add one more exclamation point.
In 2000 I bought my first land line, which had a monthly costaround $50 with no frills like caller id. A dial up internet connection was twenty dollars a month. My first cell phone cost about seventy a month at the same time. I funded these working part time, as well as tuition at the community college (while living with my parents, the land line was so I could be dialed into the Internet 24×7).
The phone line would now cost $94 in today’s dollars, dialup internet $38, cell phone with only 200 minutes of talk time and 100 text messages: $132.
Somehow that puts the smart phone costs into perspective for me.
I do believe if we got the business regulations on hiring under control things would get better very fast.
Though the piece I’m most worried about for starter jobs is Optimus robots removing most of the base level jobs like CNA, janitors, etc.
Then again, if you could own one for $30k plus electricity, it could be very tempting to have a Rosie from the Jetsons doing the basic chores and cooking…
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–
Right?
Everyone is complaining it is the 21st century “where is my flying car?” Okay. Sure. But … “Where is Rosie?” Is my complaint.
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I kind of think the real issue with starter jobs is any employee is currently very expensive, a high risk, and you’re stuck with them.
I suspect it would be much better if employeers could more easily trial new hires.
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Every job I’ve ever had, was 6 months minimum trial. Back the very first job hubby and I had, we couldn’t join the *union for 6 months. Even then we weren’t fully “protected” until we passed out of the training level, which lasted 6 months to a year (a written test, and X number of performance tests … Another “it’s been 50 years”.)
All the programming jobs never even had a “learning” or “training” period. It was “here is the code, go”. Only one (last one) even had anyone around that could be asked for help. Fail, or Thrive. Mentorship? Please. What is that?
(*) Single employer union back then. Union had to join Carpenter & Joiners late-’90s/early-’00s when the single employer pension funding rules changed. Note, union was mostly about site safety, which was not something to take lightly, which more than a few sites did.
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Both son’s post college job started through temp agencies. Usually with “if not hired directly within 6 months to a year, they’d be let go.” Both times son was hired directly. But to get the job had to go through the temp agencies.
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I only worry about other people’s smartphones when they start shrieking about the terrible horrible environmental impact of AI from their smartphones made of petroleum based plastics and rare earths mined by PRC slave labor with zero concern for environmental impact.
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Watertards are insufferable.
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The moreso because at least three crops beloved of the same crowds (almonds, avocados, and marijuana) are pretty water-intensive in their own right.
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Well, all of those air cooled this and that made us run entirely out of air, did they not?
:D
Just like that bucket of air sci fi story warned us about! LOL
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You need a smartphone with data to use the app required for your retail job. Can’t get clocked in without it!
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Oh, I flat refused. And when told it was required, answered “When you provide me with a work device.” And when that was repeated, I asked HR to put that in writing. Crickets, of course.
But again, I’m older and have been screwed around before, so I have the experience to say “No.”
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Technically my job has that. However, I usually clock in from my computer, since I am not mobile—unlike the photographers.
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Oh. I didn’t even know about that one.
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“This mean they adopted “management by computer.” And this is now being used by less than brilliant (I have other words. Oh, I have other words.) people to schedule by whim.”
I work at a small (5 full timers) branch of a very large multinational that does have a retail side, but my branch is specialized. OK. I’m 62 years old, and TOO OLD FOR THIS SH*T! We got a new timekeeping system that decided to schedule me 11.5 hours one day, 3 the next, 7 the next…you get it. And the rest of the crew wasn’t any better. Now, we didn’t work that schedule, we just all came in at our regular hours, but it created 30 minutes of work for our manager correcting our time cards.
And, Sarah, you’re boomer age but not a boomer because Portugal, and also I’m boomer age but not a boomer because all my life experiences are GenX.
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I identify as a “boomer” – SSBN 739, Nebraska.
I seem to have misplaced my Tridents.
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“D5”
…..
“You sank my nation-state!”
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No. It’s because no one from about 57 on has boomer life experiences. it makes no sense. Boomer is a peculiar wave of children born after WWII. We were, granted, born after WWII, but it has nothing to do with the people born up to about 15 years after.
Look, Boomers are remarkably the same in Portugal. By the time I came of age in 1980 they talked about how terrible we were and didn’t have a social consciousness, etc.
Then in the nineties they co-opted us, because they didn’t want boomer to mean “old.”
ALL my experiences are gen X.
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Technically, we’re Boomers, but I was brought up by a contrarian, authoritarian Odd and a rather conventional mom, so my attitudes re: the ’60s, anti-war protests, etc, is not the usual. Although as I’ve aged I’ve come to like the apolitical, crafty hippies more and more.
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“But management by computer makes it impossible to have two jobs, much less three.”
THIS. This this this so much!
I don’t even know my freaking schedule from week to the next – sometimes from one day to the next. Every week is a struggle to get enough to pay the bills, and yet the only other jobs I can get locally would also be part-time and have the same problems. It’s wrecking my writing something fierce.
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Also a lot of jobs are closed because I cannot come in skin or inhaled contact with wheat. It would be Bad.
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“On-Demand Scheduling” is an abhorrent practice and while I won’t say it should be illegal (I am wary of any time there is a variation of “there oughta be a law”), I feel very strongly that it should be discouraged as much as possible.
A variant of that has been around for a long time, though that was week to week and not day to day. When I got hired at a retail location about a quarter-century back, they said at the interview that though you wouldn’t have the same schedule every day, you’d have the same schedule every week, and they wouldn’t change it without consulting you. So there were some days I’d open and some days I’d close, but it was always a Sunday for one and maybe Wednesday and Thursday for the other, things like that.
It was supposed to be a big draw, and it was, because even retail workers would like to be able to PLAN.
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In my case it’s in part because they not only don’t have a predictable schedule one week to the next, they also drastically cut back hours. I used to be scheduled for at least 30 a week, for the past two months it’s become about 17. Which I can’t live on. So I’m having to keep asking if there’s an open slot and hop every time someone else calls out just to keep the bills paid.
I swear I’m trying to write faster, I’m just exhausted.
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D*mn it. The wrecking your writing should not be allowed.
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Part of the problem there is we used to be able to spend more time at a register, meaning I could grab a minute or two here and there to jot down a thought. On a lot of days I could write entire blogposts that way (sometimes 2!), and then my head would have gotten enough stray writing out that by the time I got home and got all the other stuff done, I could make progress on books.
Now – as in the past month – they’ve ordered that we can’t use the registers at all, we’re supposed to take everybody through self-checkout. This not only means there’s almost no time for jotting, it means that all the customers with Problems are hitting us at that, and we have to take them over to a register and pray nothing goes wrong at the self-checks while we handle whatever their issue is.
(You can imagine how angry the customers are at that. And who they take it out on.)
Now they’re making it so most available shifts for part-timers are either four or five hours only, or 6-2 or 2-9:30. I can’t do 6 AM, I’ve tried. Setting my alarm to get up at 4:30 AM so I can be at work at 6 convinces my nervous system we are in LIFE OR DEATH EMERGENCY conditions and the result is I get maybe 4 hours of sleep. And then get sick. And driving at night….
I’ve asked managers and others what’s going on. Manager types say “we lost money”. Department heads, however, say “this store is making the most of any of our stores in the area, and yet our hours are being cut and theirs aren’t. I don’t know what’s going on.”
Some people are quitting, or considering applying at different stores. I just got hit with a massive car repair bill after a bunch of other once or twice a year big bills, I can’t afford to lose this job for any length of time.
I am looking for other work, and trying to write what I can, but everything is really bleeping crazy right now.
(On top of that ear infection left lingering aftereffects in my jaw joints and I am at a constant level of Ow. Grump.)
I swear I’d be willing to work fast food, but I can’t. If I inhale wheat – yes, even heating bread in an oven – I’ll spare you the details but it’s bad in a way an epi-pen won’t help.
One day at a time. Drat it all.
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I’ll add the other side. My particular Twitter timeliness sees some, but not much, “You young’uns these days,” screens. But I am seeing a number of, “Boomers are selfish trash,” tweets. Boomers are selfish, they got to the top and pulled the ladder up after them, they aren’t leaving anything to their children, etc.
It’s true for some of us, but not all by any stretch. Is it the other half a a general campaign to split us into warring subgroups?
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Wouldn’t surprise me. Divide and conquer is an old, old tactic.
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It’s self-reinforcing. The young people react to the worst takes by the old*, and the old react to the worst takes by the young. There are some people who have their heads screwed on straight, but it’s a blind spot for a lot of big voices who are otherwise sane. Then you get radicals on the youth side exploiting the outrage for power/clicks because who else are you going to turn to? The “boomers” just aren’t listening. (Largely because the entitled/idiotic youth are more visible than the ones who did everything right and are still getting screwed.)
* And, boy, are there some bad ones. “Having matching kitchen towels is a luxury.” was a memorable one. Then there was “You [a youngster with a STEM degree] can get a house in the sticks, work at the local nail factory, and watch the boats on the river for fun.” Not to mention the Panda Express firestorm a while back.
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Oh yeah. that’s nonsense too. I mean, some did that. I can point the professions and types, but those always do that.
One thing that sticks in my craw is “olds ruined the world.” Really? I never had the power to do more than ruin my family and I tried very hard NOT to do t hat.
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The image I have in my head is two dogs with their jaws locked around each other’s throats. How do you even begin to untangle them? Any specific issue (e.g., collectivist blame game) is downstream of half a dozen others, and they all feed into each other.
Honestly, we need two or three sane voices to help steer the conversation. Peterson has issues. Kirk is dead. The loudest voices right now are bitter and angry, which might be justified but could end up doing a lot of collateral damage.
It’s an easy pivot for anyone with a platform: Listen, sympathize, find people who have a good grasp on the situation, share success stories and tips, and make people feel heard. Incredibly low-hanging fruit for anyone in the podcaster/influencer space.
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Welllll…..being the same age as you, the argument that “olds ruined the world” has some merit, IMHO. The people in a ten-year bracket around our ages allowed extraordinarily terrible governing and educating to happen for nigh onto 40 years. Which is why this generation has many of the challenges they do.
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No. It really doesn’t.
The only “olds” who ruined the world are people in the neolithic. OR if you prefer Adam and Eve.
What they’re complaining about is “Humans aren’t perfect, so bad things happen.”
Well, too bad. They are just like every other human, including “the olds” born into an imperfect world and imperfect themselves.
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Every step of f&cking up the education system so drastically seemed like a good idea to at least some people at the time, but there are simply loads of things that people do not understand if there is enough complexity or enough bureaucracy.
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We boomers had to put up with the same sort of nonsense. Any time we weren’t happy, a lot of us had to listen to our parents describe growing up in the Great Depression and World War II. To hear them tell it, it was bad enough to make the just-postwar parts of A Canticle for Liebowitz look like Winnie-the-Pooh. And the older tranche of boomers (born roughly 1945-1955 or so) had Vietnam dangling over their heads. Their parents didn’t or couldn’t get that Vietnam was not World War II, and the situation was very different.
My own lot (I was two and a half years old on the day JFK was shot) got reamed good and hard. I did what I was told to do—I stayed out of trouble, went to a good college and graduated, only to find that the economy in my part of the world (the Midwest) had mostly taken a giant dump, and that employers were under strong pressure to hire women and members of politically favored minorities, leaving me out in the cold. I’ve spent forty-two years begging on my knees in tears for the things I had been faithfully promised would be mine if I did what I was told. And yes, I am very bitter.
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I despise curmudgeons. It’s not an age thing; it’s a mindset. It’s a particularly nasty form of closed-minded argument where an imagined world (past, present, or fictional) supersedes the real one. You see it in the student loan debates (“Work your way through college.”). You see it in the culture wars (“It’s all because of video games/the internet/music I don’t like.”). You see it in the argument over housing/affordability (“Give up your avocado toast.”).
It’s frustrating because you’re not discussing the problem. You’re debugging someone’s bad misconception of what the problem even is. A successful conversation, which is rare, might establish what the problem is. Not solve it. Just show that it’s a reasonable thing to talk about. And then you have to do it again with the next curmudgeon. It’s like being in a boat where some people are rowing in the wrong direction, and new ones arrive all the time.
To go back to housing/affordability, one of the most damaging dynamics in the current debate is when a “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” post has comments full of people who did everything they were supposed to do and still got screwed. They could be outliers, but it doesn’t matter. The perception is that the “bootstraps” post is generic and out of touch, while the rebuttal is specific and grounded in reality.
I can’t think of a better way to discredit yourself with the youth, and it’s happening left and right. It’s not hard to avoid this; all you have to do is not make sweeping generalizations. Heck, you could become revered just by paying lip service to the problem. But for some reason, people are missing even that little bit of self awareness. Oh well.
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Hm. This is probably why “Okay, boomer” caught on. It’s easier and more productive to ignore a curmudgeon than it is to refute him. Not that the phrase isn’t abused, but I can see where a glib response is better than derailing the thread to show that cancelling Netflix won’t pay off your student loans.
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When I went to (state) college in 1980, I could and did work my way through on a part-time wage job and my National Guard pay. But then tuition, books, fees were @$1,200 per semester and I was living at home. Last I checked, tuition is running in the neighborhood of $1,200 per credit hour. Nobody’s working their way through school at that rate on a part-time job.
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I really wish we could get back to that.
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Similar. I was in school three times (two bachelors, one associates). First mid-’70s till late ’70s. Between summer job ($2.35/hour) part time while in school ($2.25/hour), and $2000/year student loan (no interest while in school), I could almost pay for tuition, books, fees, rent, food, and car, all year. Usually ended up going to parents for last little bit in the spring to carry through (first year, parents paid rent/food – dorm). But then freshman year was < $2000k, total. Cost went up every year, but don’t think it went over $5k/year (hey, it has been almost 50 years!)
The associates degree, ’83 – ’85, and second bachelors, ’88 – 89, was pay as you go. No parental help, no loans (first loan paid off ’89, hubby’s paid off ’86, *both on the 10 year schedule). Note, lodging and vehicle? Technically that was “living at home and using the family car.” Of coarse that was because “we were mom & dad” (eh, not quite yet, but you get the picture). Did have some employer help on the second bachelors, successful completion of classes, until employer left town; fair enough employer was the one pushing me into the second bachelors for company benefit. After employer left, I did find a part time (20 hours/week) to help. Part-time school was then about $200/hour (counting fees), thus one class was $800 – $1000/quarter. Full load (12 – 18 hours) ran < $2500/quarter. Books were always expensive. Last quarter (one math class) was $1400 (ish). Books? Except for the university published forestry books? Always expensive.
Now, our son’s (’07 – ’12)? It took not only saving for 22 years (what you think we didn’t stop **saving after he started college?) but all 3 of us working at it, plus some scholarships, and small ***awards, to get son through without loans. His ran $15,000 – $25,000 per year, all in < $100k total, but not by much. It hasn’t gotten any better.
Note, ALL public state schools. Not a single out of state or private institution paid.
(*) Last few years we kept getting “pay off the loans early, it’s help upcoming students” letters. 1) Pull the other leg it has bells on. They wanted to loan the money at the extremely much higher rates. See #2. 2) At the interest rate we were earning on money we weren’t paying out VS fixed interest rate of the student loans? Go away.
(**) At least the last year, we were saving the next quarters needed money, the quarter before. Helped when the rent and utilities due became monthly instead of with tuition.
(***) Oh, he got a $500, or more, award this quarter? Good, books are (partly) paid for.
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Why do the isekai stories sell so well these days?
There’s actual, honest-to-God hope in them for something better.
Women who actually like you! And won’t scream about “muh feminism!” on TikTok and have you branded a sexual predator before lunchtime!
A job you can actually succeed in! And makes sense! And makes enough money to live on and actually improve!
The ability to make your own destiny!
Most of the higher levels of the universe being in your favor, or at least actively neutral!
It kind of sucked when I was younger, especially when you’re an undiagnosed autistic. Now? The world is just plain terrible in nasty, passive ways than it was when I got out of high school and was starting college.
I want to believe it’s just my brain playing tricks with my head, but I keep seeing so much evidence…
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My favorite isekai are where Protag-Kun builds things. ‘Moonlit Fantasy’ and ‘Reincarnated As A Slime’ they’re building new nations. ‘How A Realist Hero Rebuilt The Kingdom’ he’s undoing the damage caused by lousy political and economic policies. ‘Saving 80,000 Gold For My Retirement’ she’s building trade, selling products mass-produced cheaply in our world but unobtainable in that one.
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“I want to believe it’s just my brain playing tricks with my head,”
Nope. It’s real. They really are making it worse on purpose. Endless examples.
Isekai is popular because the poor schlub NPC worker dude gets offed by Truck-kun, but ends up in a new world where he’s the main character. Monsters to slay, hot girls to impress. What’s not to like?
And where is Hollyweird while all this anime stuff is eating their lunch? They are busy trashing the only IP that’s Western and comparable, super heroes. Because they’re -stupid-.
Lately I’m busy writing about humans being dragged to Niflheim and the monsters of Norse mythology being dragged here. There’s some isekai in there, some good ol’ monster stomping, and so forth. Because that’s what I want to read.
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We need an unjacked economy. We need deportations. And call me a jingoist but we don’t need ‘legal’ migrants even until our own people have been employed. And we need labor deregulation so bad. And a stake through the heart of Obamacare may he rot in hell.
Jolie LaChance KG7IQC unstagehand@yahoo.com
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We certainly don’t need mass immigration. People who come in en masse, such as refugees should be settled far apart. (Why not? Australia used to do it.) And assimilation should be encouraged at all costs.
Other than that, no mass migration, no chain migration, no– just no. We’ve had enough and for a while.
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I can think of a much more appropriate place to stick the stake in 0bamacare… 😡
As long as there is one American unemployed, they have no business bringing in foreigners.
Abolish minimum wage and the IRS. That would give the economy a huge kick in the ass. What’s the point of raising the minimum wage to $15 and then the government takes $8 of it? Just let them make $7 and keep it.
You want to stop inflation dead in its tracks? Eliminate taxes.
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Gonna waggle my hand a that (and I speak as a Canadian, whose overlords are even *more* hellbent on bringing in foreigners than your idiots-in-charge are).
There are jobs that need doing so specialized that a small pool of possible workers even exist. Easy example: there really *aren’t* a whole lot of deep water welders out there, because the actual industry isn’t big enough to support a huge number. That said, when you need them, you need them right now for a specific project, and it’s neither time-effective nor cost-effective to train your own.
Mind you, whoever extended that to fast food franchise managers needs to be hanged, drawn, and quartered (we’re a commonwealth country, the traditional punishments are best).
Honestly, the 100k fee for H1B makes sense – it changes the economics onimporting foreign serfs, and if you need some seriously high end people, that’s not going to significantly impact the cost on the kind of project they would be doing.
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There is this, though; it appears that many of them expect to be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment or to buy a house right out of school, or soon thereafter, and live alone. I got married at 21. We went 13 years before we bought a house, and for the last few lived in an old farmhouse with no central heat. My friends all had roommates. So did my kids.
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Not only that, they expect to buy a house. raise a family and have a comfortable retirement on a minimum wage job. Hence all the squealing about a ‘Living Wage!!’ They don’t want to ever have to learn anything more demanding than flipping burgers or serving lattes.
———————————
It is not within the power of any government to increase the value of unskilled labor, only to raise its cost.
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Hon. Sanity check. It’s more “They learn all the time, they just never expect to get promoted.” See management by computer and H1Bs.
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Roommates in the 20s are a whole different thing. This touches on “the kids are so isolated.”
Even studio apartments are prohibitive.BUT if you can’t trust roommates. (I could tell you stories.)
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–
Two nieces are in studio apartments. Portland highrises. They are paying $2000 – $2200/month, each. Which also requires an extra cost to park each of their cars in dedicated parking spots in their buildings, instead of on the street (if available). One niece’s “garage” spot is a moveable store-able individual garage. She calls it, drives inside, then the garage is “put away”. Reverse to take her car out.
Do not know what kind of apartment nephew got in Madison Wisconsin. His limitation was he had to live within a specific radius of the work campus. He does have covered parking (given where he is at, that is good).
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There is this, though; it appears that many of them expect to be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment or to buy a house right out of school, or soon thereafter, and live alone. I got married at 21. We went 13 years before we bought a house, and for the last few lived in an old farmhouse with no central heat. My friends all had roommates. So did my kids.
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Eh. I’m 65 and closer to 66 than that. I grumble at the idiot useless people that are OLDER than I am.
From my perspective, the young ‘uns largely either have their heads on straight, or they have more time to get themselves straightened out. The majority of oldsters (excepting the people here, of course) are up to their noses in the concrete of their stupidity (cf – the “No Kings” theater productions).
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“Now I want you to sit back and consider: the kids have it worse.”
Oh yeah. That’s totally true. No question.
We definitely walked up hill both ways in the snow. I graduated into the #PeanutFarmerDepression in 1979. No jobs, no growth, no f- all. I ended up painting houses with my shiny new university degree. On a motorcycle. Try that some time, millennials.
But now? Kids walk up hill both ways in the snow, jumping through flaming hoops. They get to do the painter thing with a kick scooter, or a Temu e-bike.
Except there’s no white kids painting now, because A) there is zero building going on and B) Temporary Foreign Workers work for below minimum wage.
Buy a house? Don’t make me laugh. No kid in the nation is buying a house in Ontario, because the minimum income to get a mortgage that big is ~$250,000. Show me a guy that makes over $250K before age 30 and I will show you a drug dealer. Mom and Dad buy the house, or the kid doesn’t get one. Ask me how I know.
You want to have a wife and a family before you’re 50? Stay in good with Mom and Dad, that’s a two-generation effort now.
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Younger kid and I are writing a series of space operas together (was delayed due to his life events stuff) which is hopefully how I buy him a house.
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Will those have operatic musical accompaniment videos?
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sigh. Likely. I’m overdue to finish a rousing number called Defenestration!
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I would say set it to “Tradition!” but it doesn’t scan the same….
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Things in 1984 were REALLY bad . . .where I lived. So, I moved, but that was possible only because someone I was related to, and was willing to allow me to live with them, lived there. How bad were things? Ma and Dad moved not long after I did. Clunkers? my fist auto was $25. the second, $300. the next $125 (sold for $400! made a Profit!) the next was $100. Then I splurged, needed reliable transpo for sales work and spent $1000. Then $1650 (from a dealer!), then $3000, but I shoulda kept that one. 90 Honda Accord 2 door 5 speed. The truck was $6500, and I still have it (changed tires to winters this afternoon), and because I can fix things, will certainly keep it. I’ve spares or bits to be repaired that were replaced for a time. My car was $9000 dropped at my door. Online buying.$1200 was the transport fee, but anything like it would have run $11,000 or more locally. 2011 Honda. Not quite simple (hybrid, but the hybrid system dies, I’ll have an under-powered sporty-ish econobox that isn’t quite the gas miser. While the hybrid system works, it’s a slightly under-powered sporty-ish econbox, that isn’t quite the gas miser. just better than without) but with an OBD reader and a TPMS programer, I’m fine. Worst comes to worst, Link or Haltech and K-swap it. BUT, one still needs those skills to do that stuff, and today, they steer them away from that. too much.
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WPDE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic DE *tic
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