Useful for letting us know that GP has a limited network and situational awareness.
I always find these “relative to me” claims not very informative on the internet. But it fun when every once in a while you notice the claimer is Bill Joy or Linus Torvalds or someone where the relativeness holds weight.
They made a movie to make money. I doubt anyone holding the purse strings cared one iota if that bit were corrected or not. It’s not really a retcon either because they didn’t change anything.
That had more or less been the explanation in the books for decades, and even in George Lucas' notes from 1977:
> It's a very simple ship, very economical ship, although the modifications he made to it are rather extensive – mostly to the navigation system to get through hyperspace in the shortest possible distance (parsecs).
For Star Wars, they retconned it to mean he found the shortest possible route through dangerous space, so even for Han Solo's quote, it's still distance.
A certain percentage of comments I write on social networks end up being deleted before even clicking post. Sometimes after spending 10 or 15 minutes writing it.
The reasons are many, and I've long suspected I shouldn't feel like I'm throwing my time away when this happens.
Sure, and this 70% of Americans bullshit is propaganda by that measure. It is frequently trotted out on HN and is met with enthusiastic belief despite being total ass pull. There are US Senators pushing this propaganda and people enthusiastically agreeing.
The phrase "live paycheck to paycheck" means "To spend all that one earns without saving anything", not the literal interpretation of "failing to die between paychecks" that you seem to be using here.
(IIRC, 60-70% is based on surveys, that percentage of people feel they're living like that, but actual stats are much lower, like 25% or so, but it's important to make sure the same thing is being discussed when having conversations like this).
In a marvelous twist of irony, the commenter unwittingly and perfectly exemplified how easily it is to get people talking as if they were good little disciples of Goebbels. But don't worry: he's here to make us all woke, or red pilled or whatever specific propaganda term the party has commanded during this election cycle
a. LendingClub: "According to a Reality Check: Paycheck to Paycheck survey conducted by LendingClub and PYMNTS, 60% of employed U.S. adults, including more than four in 10 high-income earners, are living one paycheck to the next with little to no financial cushion.": https://www.lendingclub.com/resource-center/personal-finance...
f. All those are neutral. If you want, I could also find slight D-leaning: CNBC / SurveyMonkey: "more than half of Americans (61%) consider themselves to be “living paycheck to paycheck,” up from 58% in March of this year": https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/07/majority-of-americans-feelin...
g. As previously mentioned, 60-70 is a vibes check, asking people how they feel. Those same vibes checks from R-leaning sources do much the same, they just don't report it with the same phrasing. Which is fine so long as everyone's on the same page about what words mean, but even with the stricter phrasing that R reporters prefer for "paycheck to paycheck", it's not even close to the same meaning you were using which comes across as being needlessly literal-minded for the sake of rhetoric rather than situational awareness.
Haha, I can’t believe I said “you’re just falling for startup content marketing” and you’re like “okay, so here are my sources from startup content marketing”. Truly an art form, my dear fellow, your performance.
Uh, what? People don't "agree" with stats. They either believe it at face value, or they fact check the stats and find, oh, this is actually true but the study was limited, or they find that it is indeed just bullshit. No agreement necessary.
Politicians taking advantage of the fact that their constituents will not fact check them is propaganda 101.
My comment has nothing to do with the actual statistic of living paycheck-to-paycheck. OP could have used a completely different (made up or not) statistic. Of course the statistic will change when you change the definition.
The version I know is a little different: A Russian visits America and meets an American at a bar and they get talking about life in Russia. "How is the propaganda?" says the American. "It's everywhere, but it's easy to ignore it" says the Russian. "Yours is much better." "But we don't have propaganda here" says the American. "Exactly" says the Russian.
idk how a person can be forced to pledge allegiance to the flag every morning and not think that's some North Korean style shit.
When I was in kindergarten, I refused to do the pledge one day. My teacher was livid. "Are you American or not?"
Being 5, I didn't know the difference between ethnicity and nationality (I'm Asian but I was born here and didn't know any life outside of America). So I was afraid that my teacher would not let me be American anymore if I didn't say the pledge. So I said it and never refused to say it in school again.
It wasn't til I was well into my adulthood that I realize how absurd that situation sounds.
So you were actually pledging under duress. Contracts and statements made under duress are usually treated as null and void, so you have that going for you.
Have you considered, however, how that event shaped your developing and impressionable subconscious and possibly influenced your future behavior as an adult?
It's not something I fully understood as a child. I didn't even fully grasp the concept of "nationality" so when she asked if I was American I just said yes because I didn't know what it meant. I just understood that not saluting meant teacher mad, just like not cleaning up my toys in the classroom meant teacher mad.
What if the whole world population would have F-Y money enough for subsistence and would not have to perform the act of asskissing or complying? Not luxury but basic needs met alright, something like the basic income the democrats blocked during Nixon era(twice actually).
I'm gonna try to remember this comment for the next time someone brings up the boiling frog analogy.
Which is usually back to back with the thought that in bygone times "the human mind used to be cleaner / healthier / smarter and it was slowly destroyed by modern living"
There's not that much difference between our behavior and that of a chicken fixated on the chalk line in front of it.
This. What really happened is that someone figured out what makes people give something their undivided attention and is profiting handsomely off of this finding.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
Highly recommend reading Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death.
in the 80's, he wrote about how shift from print media to TV has caused us to trade critical thinking for a 'numbing' addiction to constant amusement. Little did he know about social media..
The hardest part of a 2026 reading of Amusing Ourselves is that nothing within the pages is extraordinary anymore — the book is plainly boring once you know about the internets... definitely groundbreaking, for its time.
Fair point. However, books like these show where society is heading and what values we are promoting as a society.
As an aside, what was really interesting to me was learning that in 1850s white Americans had a 95% literacy rate (highest globally) and were able to easily follow debates between presidential candidates that lasted 3+ hours, and ask relevant questions.
I doubt even the most educated people would be able to do that today. Certainly, I would find it extremely difficult to do so.
>I doubt even the most educated people would be able to do that today.
Certainly this is a valid point.
>able to easily follow debates between presidential candidates that lasted 3+ hours, and ask relevant questions
This is likely one reason for keeping the masses month-to-month (~70% in US, 2024~). I hate to quote this madman, but Father Jones once said (before flavor-aide-ing his entire congregation):
>>~"Keep them poor and tired. If they're poor they won't have time to organize; if they're tired they won't have energy to fight back"~
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>1850s white Americans had a 95% literacy rate (highest globally)
Working in construction these past few decades, some of my favorite co-workers have barely been able to read — yet are brilliant field electricians (that often can read blueprints — but fuck this engineer they'll proudly mumble, often ["what the hell was he thinking, here?! wuz he thinkin'?!"]).
fuck this guy . laughter
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I fully support returning to a time when countries had smaller populations and embraced technologies in running themselves, their more-isolated population's needs.
As an older millenial american, I fully support the breakdown of USA into smaller territories (too large to reasonably rule, IMHO).
>some sort of dick measuring competition like some stupid 20 y/o over enthusiastic frat boys.
From my privileged perspective (as brother to a state-level politician, up for re-election this year) this isn't too far from his truth. I love him in the brotherly-required manner — but do not understand his ivory towered viewpoints. I've only ever seen him humbled, twice: after crashing his first motorcycle; getting arrested with him in 2003, no mercy to those officers.
All my brothers are very successful — making me blacksheep (along with a mentally-deficient step-brother == "doesn't count") — they'll often pull the "I grew up poor" punchline... my retort is that I'm the only one that got poorer. Through fault of my own, admittedly.
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None have outside "real world" perspective, having spent their entire lives in the educational _e_-daycares which can extend up to entire bayarea tech campus cafeteriæ. Surprising, moron-bro actually "served" 2003-2006, and even with a seventy-something IQ still knows a few things that 130+ IQ-bro-bros DON'T.
Definitely I'm proud of my brothers, but none of them are in the 70% of household that live month-to-month... while I've spent decades of adultlife struggling (willingly) so.
Not yet. Working on it, though.
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