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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • Not the lowest, for sure, but I’m going to put my hat in for auto technicians. Master techs can make over $100K in southern New England but the cost of tools can easily rival college tuition by the time you’re a master tech. Everything except proprietary equipment and the car lift needs to be bought by the technician, which can cost thousands of dollars. Health insurance is prohibitively expensive, the flat rate pay system means you only get paid when you complete jobs, and it’s an ergonomic nightmare because you’re picking up heavy objects and working in cramped areas all day.

    As someone who whose fiance was a mechanic until last year, I think it’s really disingenuous to hear so many people say that the trades are your fast track to making money. Very little of that $150/ hr that you pay goes to the person working on your car. For every lift the shop has they’re taking 80% or more off the top of that $150/ hr, and if the job takes longer than expected the mechanic doesn’t make any more money. In fact they’re losing money because they’re stuck figuring out a solution instead of moving on to the next car.

    And don’t even get me started on tool loans. It’s straight up worse than student loans because they’re classified as personal loans. My student loans all hover around 5% interest, but right now personal loans go up to 18% depending on the term. The only saving grace I can think of is that they’re usually dischargeable in bankruptcy.

    I really could go on all day about how broken it all is because I’ve lived it secondhand for a while now, and now that I’m trying to gain more of these skills for my classic motorcycle hobby it’s all so obvious. Not sure if the other trades like plumbing and welding have the same “take out loans to pay for tools to make money to pay for the loans, then learn more skills within the trade to make more money, and then take out more loans for tools to do the more advanced work” cycle but no one ever mentions this when they talk about how this kind of work is so lucrative.

    Don’t get me wrong, college is really badly overpriced in the US, but the trades absolutely can be just as expensive once you’ve made it your career. And I don’t want to dissuade people from considering it as a career, either, but it’s a monetary risk that you need to really sit down and calculate before you take the plunge, just like college.



  • That’s all well and good, maybe guns are inherently problematic. But since no one is paying attention to my wording I’ll just say it:

    Right wingers and neo-fascists commit the majority of gun violence in this country and will absolutely never give them up. They are not the poor and unsophisticated rednecks you’re told they are, they tend to be richer than average and their brand of violence is calculated. Many of them are current and former police officers and therefore won’t take their friends’ guns away just because the law says so.

    If you’re poor you’re less likely to be white and straight and therefore more likely to be harassed or killed by the aforementioned groups.

    This is not me saying that it’s time to give up on gun control laws or that we need more guns. Fewer guns in the US will mean a more peaceful country. I’m saying that laws that simply make it more expensive to buy and own guns will not deter violent people from buying them because they impose no restrictions on them.






  • The most expensive thing I’ve had that was really notable (as I’m sure I’ve ordered something pricier and thought nothing of it) was half an A5 wagyu steak from Wegmans. I think it was originally around $250/lb but it was on a manager’s special sale. I think it was around $80 for a ½lb, which is genuinely insane to me knowing that manager’s special means it’s the last chance to buy something before it goes bad.

    Anyway, it was really good. A very odd experience though because afterwards I kinda stopped craving/ cooking/ ordering beef for a couple months. It was like I achieved some superlative thing and was just done with the concept of beef for a little bit. A strange reaction to such a positive experience, that said I do still eat beef occasionally.


  • He doesn’t just “give a platform to everybody” for the sake of free speech, that’s not how free speech works when you’re a host and/ or owner of a media company. He hosts a certain crowd because he wants to. It’s his show.

    Literally all media is biased. If someone tells you that they are unbiased or if some other show is, they are lying. Rogan is friendly to capitalism and drug legalization, and there’s nothing wrong in disclosing it (even if I don’t personally agree with the former).