It was me.

I think most people will interpret that as confessing a crush.

I understand that once a person has started a career, switching to a totally different career comes at a high price, so I suppose that instead I should ask “Why do you think that a person would choose to become a teacher, if he didn’t expect the satisfaction of teaching to make up for the relatively low pay?” The pay isn’t a secret and teaching generally requires a college education, which implies the opportunity to pick a different major and then start a different career.

I knew a woman from a poor background who was the first person in her family to go to college. She chose a major in English and a minor in Women’s Studies. I’m not saying that English majors can never get well-paying jobs, but I come from a “you can pick any career you want - doctor or lawyer” background so I was very surprised by her decision. Why would a person who didn’t have any money pick to study something that isn’t great for earning money? But she wasn’t stupid - she really liked English literature… Maybe she ended up working as a teacher.

But then why stay put, if the pay and the satisfaction together are not sufficient compensation?

Like teachers and artists produce way more value than they’re paid for.

They also receive more non-monetary satisfaction from their work. It balances out.

I used to work for a guy who was never wrong. He didn’t talk much but when he did say something, it was always correct. He still hedged a lot, so he would say “I’m not sure you’re right; I think the answer might be X.” What that meant was “You are certainly mistaken and the only reasonable answer is X.”

The PSF is (presumably) already required to comply with Federal anti-discrimination laws. Am I misreading the text or does it not actually create any new obligations for the PSF if they were to accept the grant?

Only the foreign objects need to be removed. British rectums are for British objects.

A shoehorn.

easy work in an air-conditioned office

despair

There’s a filter but I’d say it’s a “dedication” filter rather than a “sanity” filter. People on here generally seem to put more effort into understanding the causes that they support than the average person on Facebook does, so they avoid making the most basic mistakes. However, their causes are still often far out of the mainstream (“crazy” in a colloquial sense) and their understanding of why someone might disagree with them in good faith is often rather poor.

I think blaming billionaires for this is incorrect. Look at Lemmy: this place is very much a silo. I’ve been actively participating here for over two years and in that time I have encountered one or two people who supported Trump (the ones posting in /conservative/ before it apparently got taken over). I routinely get called a fascist for being a mainstream Democrat. I’m not complaining (after all, I choose to be here rather than in a more comfortable silo) but clearly being a federated open-source non-profit isn’t solving the problem.

Some billionaires got rich by enabling people to join online silos, but those billionaires were doing what the people wanted already.

Those look like rubber galoshes, not jackboots. Don’t settle for imitations. Demand the real thing!

(I’m joking. They look about the same in a drawing.)

I grew up in a big city so I didn’t learn to drive until I was 23, and once I did, I realized how much I had been missing. A car with a full tank of gas really does feel like freedom to me, so I enjoy having a car that is good at being a car. I’m not particularly interested in aftermarket modifications, but I am willing to pay more for a car that is fast, handles well, and looks good.

Having nice things is a display of wealth and status, but which nice things a person chooses to have still depends on what they enjoy and how they want to express themselves. Even among car enthusiasts, which sort of car one is enthusiastic about varies a lot. I know a guy who has a luxury SUV which is extremely comfortable. I, on the other hand, had a car which could go around corners really fast. Whenever my passengers bounced around as the car went over a bump, I would tell them “I paid extra for that stiff suspension.”

I’m glad to live in a time when full plate armor is no longer necessary to approach a woman safely.

I paid $15 a month to haul bulk cargo in a freighter.

I think my experience proves that succeeding without student loan forgiveness is possible, even in difficult circumstances, and that’s why I think the problem isn’t student loans.

Which family you’re born into is luck, and so is innate talent, but how hard you work in high school and which major you choose in college are deliberate decisions.

It’s not just luck. Most people I know who started out poor are immigrants whose families worked extremely hard for their sake, and who worked extremely hard in school themselves so that they could get accepted into colleges that offered them favorable terms. There they majored in well-paid fields like finance, law, medicine, or engineering, and afterwards they were able to pay off their debts without issue and live upper-middle-class lifestyles.

It’s a lot harder for people whose well-to-do parents refuse to help, but eventually those people do become eligible for financial aid without counting their parents’ income (easiest to do by either waiting until age 24 or getting married) and that financial aid will be quite large if they’re poor. As I’ve said, my family wasn’t poor by the time I went to college and my financial aid still covered 2/3 of the cost.

In the state I am most familiar with, a four-year degree costs about that much only if you live on-campus. The degree itself (without room and board) is $56,160, and that’s if you get no financial aid whatsoever (and need all four years to finish - I finished mine in three by taking no classes except the ones mandatory for my diploma, but that’s not possible in some universities). Most people are eligible for a lot of financial aid.