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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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I just slapped that on there, when I think about it it's been 37 years since I started, although I was a mechanic from '95 to '02 or so.

When I started, I worked full time (for a cab driver about 70-80 hrs/wk) and we averaged maybe 200 miles a night 6 days a week, although July - September it might have been 100 miles a night. About 10 years ago I slowed down due to health, so now I only work occasionally (1 to 3 days a week) and maybe average 70 miles a night.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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So you spent your life in servitude to the man

C'mon, man, that doesn't sound very groovy. What a downer. No flower power for you.

Seriously, what does that even mean? Does it mean I work for the illuminati? How about those years in the early '90's when I owned my own cab? Does that count?

I get by on next to nothing

Well, that's nice. I don't splurge on junk either. But the question remains, what money you do get, does it come from your own efforts or do you go to the public trough? I have to admit I did go for the early social security, but they're just paying back some of what I involuntarily had to put in all those years.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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Yeronner, witness is evading the question >:(

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
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You should. When it's a right, you have to take that money !

"Code is like shit - it only smells if it is not yours"
Allegro Wiki, full of examples and articles !!

Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006

Seconded, I believe disability comes out of Social Security, or some of it does. And as Arthur said:

"...I did go for the early social security, but they're just paying back some of what I involuntarily had to put in all those years.".

By reading this sig, I, the reader, agree to render my soul to Bob Keane. I, the reader, understand this is a legally binding contract and freely render my soul.
"Love thy neighbor as much as you love yourself means be nice to the people next door. Everyone else can go to hell. Missy Cooper.
The advantage to learning something on your own is that there is no one there to tell you something can't be done.

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
avatar

Social Security is not actually a terrible investment for it being guaranteed if you only look at the portion that comes out of your paycheck.

I pay the maximum in Social Security benefits ($8500/year) and I'd currently get around $2300/month (in 2021 dollars) in benefits for a lifetime at age 62. If I assume 8% growth and 2% inflation, I'd get about $2650/month for 20 years if I privately invested.

...However, my employer is also paying $8500/year, so that makes the numbers not very good.

But the problem is that without Social Security a good part of the population wouldn't save any of their money. I'm not against mandatory saving for retirement, although I'd welcome any improvements to making it more solvent. I don't mind that it's a worse than average way for me to save money if it helps the poorer people save money in retirement. I have plenty of money left over to invest privately on top of it.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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You should. When it's a right, you have to take that money !

Agreed. Americans are so backwards with regards to socialism. It's such a sickness over there.

You're at no risk of paying my bills, Arthur, don't worry.

It's fine, Arthur is perfectly fine being somebody's slave, at the mercy of government. When the government tells us that we should be proud to work hard for little pay he does it! And he expects you to too! Well into his 70's I think?

:P

The system is run by the wealthy. We're the pawns. They give us just enough comfort to keep us from revolting. Not too little, but not too much either. They need us a little bit on the brink of collapse at any moment. Keeps most people too busy to think.

Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006

Another reason the government and businesses tell us to accept little pay is they don't want us to earn enough money to buy weapons to revolt. I was told in American history the Revolution was funded by the middle class. The rich liked the way things were going because they made money and the poor had no money to fund an uprising.

By reading this sig, I, the reader, agree to render my soul to Bob Keane. I, the reader, understand this is a legally binding contract and freely render my soul.
"Love thy neighbor as much as you love yourself means be nice to the people next door. Everyone else can go to hell. Missy Cooper.
The advantage to learning something on your own is that there is no one there to tell you something can't be done.

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
avatar

bamccaig said:

Arthur is perfectly fine being somebody's slave, at the mercy of government.

When it comes right down to it, I've had many opportunities to get "ahead" in the normie world.

I was maybe 12 years old when I was asked by a judge at least once if I'd rather live with foster parents rather than continuing to live with my dysfunctional parents and saying no, and my sister having already been shipped off to live elsewhere telling me to do it.

After that, I joined the USMC, and got 99 percentile on several of the aptitude tests, but being interviewed for communications brought up thoughts of listening to dots and dashes all day and I told them I was a troublemaker etc. in high school. Maybe that's why they made me a cook. Then a couple years later being recommended to Officer Candidate School in the USMC (I didn't bother going to the interview).

After I got back into the real world, I quit a restaurant gig when I was told I was being considered for a beginning management position.

I went to a local community college to learn to be a card walloper because of an article I'd read in TIME magazine talking about how programmers were such a scarce resource, but didn't push hard enough to actually get a bachelors and quit maybe 4 classes short. OTOH, AFAIK, nobody actually got a good job out of their degree from this little non-accredited school except one guy who answered the frequent ads for DeVry on TV at the time.

And women, I won't even get into that beyond wrecking a relationship because I got the idea they deserved so much better than me.

It's like when push comes to shove, I have some sort of anxiety attack and purposely shoot myself in the foot to avoid the risk.

I saw that movie "Good Will Hunting" and kind of identify with the lead character (although I'm not nearly that smart) but I never threw my junk in a car to head across country to achieve a life worth living.

Given all that, I don't see how it's "the government" keeping me down, although I'm certain we'd all be much more prosperous if we didn't have the Federal Reserve, the innumerable "feel good" entitlement benefits and now "ruin the countrys economy with lockdowns and tell the masses that it's Trumps fault"

Bob Keane said:

they don't want us to earn enough money to buy weapons to revolt

ORLY? That's about the silliest thing I've read here in weeks. Supposing you really couldn't give up your cable TV bill for a couple of months to buy a firearm, there are tons of videos on youtube about how to make your own firearm from scratch, as well as dozens of alternative weapons.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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ORLY? That's about the silliest thing I've read here in weeks. Supposing you really couldn't give up your cable TV bill for a couple of months to buy a firearm, there are tons of videos on youtube about how to make your own firearm from scratch, as well as dozens of alternative weapons.

The government doesn't just have guns. They have highly trained soldiers whose day job has been training for this for months, if not years. Those soldiers also have gunships, attack helicopters, and other air support, including unmanned drone strike capabilities; plus your tanks and heavy armour, then your light armor and men, not to mention the ocean is theirs as well.

What do you think your $600 rifle is going to do to them? This is what debunks the 2nd amendment clause about the right to bears arms. If you're going to uphold that civilians need enough weaponry to defend against the powers of government then we need to legalize heavy armor and seriously cut the price into bits. Everybody can just fly an F-15 to work. Fuck it. Make America Great For Once.

Is it just me, or is it that every time America seems great throughout history they're really covering up some really, really unforgivable truths and only telling us the best talking points? I wonder if it were possible to survey the dead if the average American would describe the country, people, and government as great when it's all said and done (you know, in a hypothetical world where there was an afterlife from which to reflect on your life from a state of omnipotence because why the fuck not?!).

Arthur, I'm sad you don't believe in yourself. '(

It's OK to get ahead.

If you think about it that's the right's teachings. You don't get to get ahead. That's just the way it is. Tough Real men don't cry. Deal with it. Man up.

It couldn't possibly be that the systems that fallible men developed organically over millions of years while crossing the threshold from semi-intelligent animals to philosophers with zero manuals discovering every truth about every moment of life the hard way might have been flawed or biased in their decision making. It couldn't even be that the rules have changed thanks to technology and we need to reevaluate all of our rules given the significant, sudden changes that we've been faced with.

Along the way, various people have had power over the others for various reasons. It seems to mostly have been a mix of luck and even more luck. It has been a very slow and costly experiment figuring leadership and inter-group cooperation out, but it has also been very rewarding. Seems to me that usually it was just one group of people was more powerful than the other group of people thanks either to genetics (luck) or prosperity (luck) and so they got their way and made everyone else follow their rules. From what I can tell that hasn't changed at all. We've just gotten a bit more civilized about dressing it up in fancy ribbons and subtle gestures to hide it behind the scenes.

We've gotten a lot more civilized and life has gotten a lot more comfortable, but I wouldn't say it was thanks to the generosity of the upper classes. If anything it came about somewhat naturally and chaotically, first with the gradual and then sudden appearance of technologies that vastly changed the bounds of possibilities continuously culminating in the last 2 millenia and especially the last 2 centuries of amazing progress and also unthinkable horrors. Make no mistake, we're still little more than apes. Perhaps not individually, but collectively, we're more like apes than not.

Our brains are very powerful tools, but the degree to which we rely upon them is up to each of us individually (and especially up to the circumstances of our lives, at our place in time and space). So far it seems the vast majority of people throughout history, and continuing today, have been extremely susceptible to their primitive nature despite their theoretically exceptional brain compared to allegedly all other forms of life that we have discovered.

In the 1600's thousands of innocent women were burned to death by violent mobs because somebody (probably another woman, amirite?!) claimed them to be a witch and in those days I guess they did believe you? In the 1940's a different type of politician convinced normal people like you or I to take part in one of the worst stains in recent history. Towards the end of the 2020's another different type of politician convinced normal American people like you to take part in a rather embarrassing revolution attempt. ;D

Fuck, if that's all the 2nd amendment could muster in 4 years I'm afraid that's proof enough that it doesn't work. :D:o

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
avatar

bamccaig said:

The government doesn't just have guns. They have highly trained soldiers whose day job has been training for this for months, if not years. Those soldiers also have gunships, attack helicopters, and other air support, including unmanned drone strike capabilities; plus your tanks and heavy armour, then your light armor and men, not to mention the ocean is theirs as well.

What do you think your $600 rifle is going to do to them? This is what debunks the 2nd amendment clause about the right to bears arms. If you're going to uphold that civilians need enough weaponry to defend against the powers of government then we need to legalize heavy armor and seriously cut the price into bits. Everybody can just fly an F-15 to work. Fuck it. Make America Great For Once.

Yeah, that's why we won the war in Afghanistan in only a couple of weeks /s.

The locals know the terrain and buildings, and the government doesn't really want to destroy their source of income by killing off the population and infrastructure.

EDIT: After I left this thread, I saw this in my suggested videos on youtube. I had wondered about hiding from thermal devices on my own before. Good luck with the high-tech weaponry when there are still people who can think outside the box.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Matthew Leverton
Supreme Loser
January 1999
avatar

It's a complex topic. On one hand, you just need a lot of people to overthrow the government. You don't really need guns. But ultimately, the people with the best weapons are going to be the ones in charge. After the majority overthrows the government, whatever subset of that new group that controls the weapons will be the new leaders.

As it relates to US gun rights... The US constitution is outdated in many ways, and this is one of them. I'd probably be okay if we took it to mean you can own any kind of 18th century weapons you'd like. But to say in the extreme that you should be able to buy a nuclear missile launching tank at Walmart is ridiculous.

jmasterx
Member #11,410
October 2009

There's no way this thread is locking with ML getting the last word >:(

GullRaDriel
Member #3,861
September 2003
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X-D

"Code is like shit - it only smells if it is not yours"
Allegro Wiki, full of examples and articles !!

Bob
Free Market Evangelist
September 2000
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How soon until the page counter wraps around and crashes the server?

--
- Bob
[ -- All my signature links are 404 -- ]

Bob Keane
Member #7,342
June 2006

We can ask Randall Monroe. I'm pretty sure the "Time" thread crashed the xkcd servers.

By reading this sig, I, the reader, agree to render my soul to Bob Keane. I, the reader, understand this is a legally binding contract and freely render my soul.
"Love thy neighbor as much as you love yourself means be nice to the people next door. Everyone else can go to hell. Missy Cooper.
The advantage to learning something on your own is that there is no one there to tell you something can't be done.

bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
avatar

I've been spending money out of control for the last month or so. :-/ Not really sure what it is. In part, I think I'm resentful that my wife seems to get to spend most of my money. :P Or at least makes it overly difficult to track who spends what. Though in theory I could wade through the account transactions and get a good idea that way. I'm also just depressed and anxious and I think I find myself trying not to think about it by finding interesting purchases.

A few things I've purchased (most of them sound investments, but some obviously wasteful):

  • A metallic, insulated water bottle with a straw to help me stay hydrated. (USD$100)

  • An electric lighter, marketed for camping with a "waterproof" case. (USD$15)

  • A second electric lighter, much nicer looking, but much more questionable instructions and battery (USD$20).

  • A second (larger) cannabis rolling machine (USD$2), with papers (USD$2 * 5), and like 600 prerolled tips (US$7 * 3).[1]

  • Small tent for growing cannabis[2]. (USD$55)

  • A cheap "survival" Bowie knife.[3] (USD$20)

  • A Zippo lighter[4], refill, and maintenance accessories (USD$50).

  • A new bong because I broke my first one after only a week, many months ago.[5]. (US$80)

  • (I may update the list if there is anything else I can think of...)

On top of cannabis purchases, which are easily US$50 a week now at least. :-/

References

  1. I'm outgrowing my original machine, which is 1 1/4" joints. The new one is King Size (and KSS), which should produce significantly larger joints. I still have lots of tips left, but my own tips are hit or miss and I figured I'd give the commercially rolled tips a chance. At ~4 cents per tip I think the cost is negligible, and if it makes the tips a consistent fit and filter then I think I'll stick to it. This particular order starting out with me attempting to buy hemp wick to light a bong or pipe, which I didn't even have at the time, just because it's inexpensive and handy for a stoner to have around. I didn't end up buying it because the only bundle the site had was like 100 feet for like USD$20 and I didn't need that much (and was already wary of my out of control spending).
  2. I've had seeds for over a year now, probably no good anymore. I need to get into growing my own because it could be much cheaper that way. I still need a light for fuel, and a pot to plant in, and some weed-specific fertalizer. At least. But I'll do a very basic grow the first time, and based on the results I'll see what needs changing.
  3. I didn't really have any use for one, but it was so cheap and I don't have anything this big or strong so I figured WTH. It's apparently "Mossy Oak" branded, though it's clearly made in China and at the price I really question its quality. Don't get me wrong, it's solid. Reviews are pretty good. Apparently it takes a lot of abuse. I just don't think the blade will last long for sharp cuts, but for blunt abuse in the woods it's probably great.
  4. I concluded that the electric lighters don't seem ready, and I might as well invest in a classy refillable lighter.
  5. New one is a simpler design to hopefully be easier to clean, but I might also just worry less about cleaning it. That's how I broke the last one. This one might alsos be stronger. I got the thickest glass the store had: it's a 15 inch basic beaker with 9mm thick glass. Hopefully this one last me a few years.
Edgar Reynaldo
Major Reynaldo
May 2007
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bamccaig
Member #7,536
July 2006
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I hope it's a very nice water bottle[1]. >:( It's not just a simple one. It is an insulated (to stay hot or cold all day) bottle made of aluminum or some other metal so naturally more expensive materials means more expensive product. Whether the price is fair or not I don't know, but it seemed like there was nothing of comparable value for less money. I really wanted to buy a nice one that will encourage me to use it. I just hope that it helps me consistently drink water and stay hydrated.

References

  1. The shipping is delayed for a couple of weeks.
Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
avatar

I spent $100 on a craigslist computer to replace the hackintosh I've been using since the previous computer apparently got zapped by a thunderstorm with the power switch switched off (I was going to unplug it as well but forgot).

I wanted to avoid the silly pauses that messed up my typing, and to install some MS stuff that didn't know what to do with OpenFirmware. So naturally I had to get another disk, 4 terabytes sounded good, and FreeDos and Windows 7 saw that and said "Aw, hell no!", so they're on an old 320gb disk now. But I can't seem to convince the bios that disk 2 should boot first... So now I can switch between Mint and Slackware via the grub menu when I access the bios on booting to specify disk 2, else it defaults to disk 1. I switch between FreeDos and Windows by copying the appropriate master boot record to disk 1. Put that in your smoke and pipe it.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

MiquelFire
Member #3,110
January 2003
avatar

FreeDos and Windows 7 doesn't support UEFI, and maybe the BOIS on the computer as well (without UEFI, boot drives are limited to 2TB)

A co-worker had built a computer, and had that 2TB limit imposed on him. I think he had a raid set, and he needed a 2TB boot volume, and used the rest for an extra volume. Don't remember how he had configured it.

---
Febreze (and other air fresheners actually) is just below perfumes/colognes, and that's just below dead skunks in terms of smells that offend my nose.
MiquelFire.red
If anyone is of the opinion that there is no systemic racism in America, they're either blind, stupid, or racist too. ~Edgar Reynaldo

Eric Johnson
Member #14,841
January 2013
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This is my third FOURTH attempt at posting this ("Sorry, but I gave up waiting for my turn to post your message. You can try again.")...

"A metallic, insulated water bottle with a straw to help me stay hydrated. (USD$100)"

$100 USD for a water bottle seems absurdly expensive. :o

Before I buy something, I ask myself whether it's a want or a need. If it's a true need (necessary to keep living or to continue working, for example), I'll usually get it, but if it's just a want, I'll sit on it for a time. Typically the desire wanes after a few days or a couple of weeks, and I'm glad I didn't make an impulse purchase.

Over the past couple years, I've toyed with "minimalism" and decluttering. Literally everything I own (sans furniture) can all fit into my car. I've tossed, donated, or otherwise gotten rid of 184 possessions this year alone. If I haven't used it in a long time, why keep it? Someone else could probably benefit from it. If I have an emotional attachment to it, I snap a picture of it before getting rid of it. It feels good, strangely enough, to be unburdened by excess junk. Going through my possessions has made me realize how I was lacking in some areas (for example, up until two days ago, I only owned two pairs of pants). There's still more I could get rid of--more I will get rid of--but some stuff (mainly electronics) I want to sell, so I'll take my time with it.



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