What’s with all the downvotes on this post?

I like these a lot

It’s a sign from god…

Yeah, but it’s more of a pain, and I don’t have enough closet space for all my t-shirts in addition to pants and button-ups

You can probably get away with socks and underwear just being tossed in a drawer. I actually find button-up shirts easier to deal with than t-shirts because hanging is easier than folding.

I said that they haven’t been voting significantly more conservative than liberal. There’s this notion that Republicans won because boomers so vote red, and younger generations all voting blue don’t quite offset them. The reality is that, while more boomers voted red than blue, the difference isn’t huge, and younger generations aren’t all overwhelmingly blue either.

The youngest boomers were born in 1964 (the last year of that generation), so they were 60 for the 2024 election. So yes, there a little overlap because the poll age ranges aren’t exactly the same as the generational ones, but the older boomers would be 70, so mostly in that bottom bar.

Thank you. I’m always having to point out that boomers haven’t been voting significantly more conservative than liberal, and younger generations haven’t been voting significantly more liberal than conservative. It’s a stereotype, and an incorrect one. In fact, in 2024, GenX voted more conservative than boomers did.

Scrap metal sale?

Beautiful cat.

It turns out that when light travels through the mostly emptiness of space, it can travel amazingly far without being significantly diminished. So we see galaxies the same way we see stars - you can see some with the naked eye, in fact, but to see detail you need a telescope. They come in somewhat different configurations, but generally look like this:

We don’t know exactly how many there are, we have to estimate it, and the range of estimates is huge: between 100 billion and 200 billion!

How do we estimate it? By counting the galaxies in a teeny tiny area of the sky, and then multiplying by that fraction. There are an amazing number of galaxies that are viewable in an area of the sky the size of the head of a pin held at arm’s length. It looks like this;

By the way, the galaxy at the top of this comment is eighty million light years away. That means the light were seeing from it now left eighty million years ago; we’re seeing back in time.

Let us know how you like them.

By the way, I post most of my notes in the Science Fiction community - both individually as I read them, and as an annual compendium - if that’s of interest.

Recently finished my 40th book of the year, and it’s pretty hard to pick a favorite. It probably has to be a reread of Gateway by Frederick Pohl. Such an amazing book. Here are my spoiler-free notes:

• In Earth’s future, tunnels are found on Venus that contain alien artifacts left behind hundreds of thousands of years ago. Later an asteroid is found that is riddled with tunnels and studded with nearly a thousand small ships, most of which are in working order. The ships will travel faster than light to a preset destination, and return automatically, but no one knows where the destination will be, and a significant percentage of ships either never return or return with the crew dead. Of those that do return, many return with alien technology or data on valuable locations, making the crew very wealthy. This has set off a sort of gold rush, with people spending everything they have to get to the “Gateway" asteroid and gamble their lives on the chance to get rich. The story is told through the eyes of one such man, who has gotten to Gateway, but then is too scared to take a mission. This is an amazing book. I read it originally in the 80s (it was written in the 70s), and I believe this was my first reread since then. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.

For a first read that wasn’t the latest book in a series, I might have to say Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell. Here are my spoiler -free notes for that one:

• It’s a love story, except the main character is a shape-shifting, man-eating monster, and she falls in love with a woman who helps her, thinking she’s an injured human. I really liked this book a lot. It’s clever, and it has a certain joy and goodness to it, even though there’s a lot of terrible things going on all through it.

I recently finished book 3. Fun series.

I’m in my 60s. I’ve only been living alone for about a year and a half, but I do find that talking to myself (or the cat) is preferable to going ages without saying a word. I don’t do it when I’m out in public, but I could easily see it becoming a habit after enough years of it.

I’m honestly more concerned about farting loudly becoming a habit, since I don’t have to worry about farting quietly 90% of the time.

It’s all genetics, so there’s no way to know in the same way you can’t look at a 5-year-old boy and know if he’s going to go bald at 50. Just love your kitten regardless.

Why would you want to live beyond whatever age you are now? If tomorrow you were diagnosed with, say, arthritis, would you want to die?

I’m in my 60s. I’m enjoying life. Why would I want to die?

The only people I’ve know who wanted to die either had problems with depression or were suffering from painful, incurable diseases.

I imagine it makes them feel very vulnerable, and most cats don’t like feeling like that.

I agree with everyone who says it’s cat dependent with a lot of variation. My cat’s favorite way of being held is for me to stick my arm through both sets of legs from behind so she’s straddling my forearm, and my hand is holding her chest below her neck. She’ll happily sit like that for ages, especially if I’m moving around and she can watch the scenery.

A prior cat preferred to be held like a baby, on his back cradled in our arms, but my current cat hates that.

I live in the US, in Southern California, which is one of the more expensive parts of the country. $2k a month isn’t a lot in that it would be hard to live on it, but I made pretty decent money before I retired and it’s more than I could have comfortably given away.

Remember that anyone here talking about hourly wages is talking about gross income and not net income, and if you give money away it comes out of net income.

Let’s say someone was making $100 an hour, which is $200k a year, and fairly decent money. That’s $16.6k a month. But after taxes that’s more like $10k. Most people making that kind of money have a mortgage, car payments, home and car insurance. Also, employer sponsored medical usually only pays like two thirds of the insurance costs. And they likely have money coming out of their check into a retirement account. So the disposable income is going to be a lot less and $2k isn’t going to be a trivial percentage.

But if the person is making, say, twice that amount, then it’s starting to be more trivial. Not a ton of people are making $400k or more a year.