Because of the electoral college, my vote doesn’t mean much of anything in a presidential election because I live in a very blue state, not a swing state. I still vote, though.

I do that because I used to work in grocery stores and can noticed even small, incremental price changes on many items. Most consumers don’t do that and hardly notice 3 cents more on this and 2 ounces short on that. We are already accustomed to toilet paper and laundry detergent mega-size and “concentrated” bullshit.

The only reason I remember that I’m 64 is that I will be 65 on my next birthday. That’s kind of a milestone for a number of reasons and it’s easy to remember. The same was true when I was about to turn 50. Other than that, anything after 30 is kind of blurry

No need for ad hominem attacks. Profiteering has always been a part of inflation but it’s never the cause or the underlying reason that inflation occurs. There are a host of things that go into what drives inflation but during Covid it was the Fed dumping tons of money into the system and post Covid it was wage inflation and low unemployment. Do corporations still use predatory pricing? You bet. The only thing that will really work now is either very deep recession or a depression.

I don’t stream much but being disabled, I can’t get to the store so I do order stuff from Amazon. What I’ve seen in the last few years is an influx of Chinese sellers with tons and tons of garbage and all of the reviews are completely worthless, of course.

I always knew Arthur C Clarke was an agent of Satan, especially after the disappointment that was 3001: The Final Odyssey.

I can just hear some people going, “WHAT? Are you crazy?”. I was a little tike in the early 60s and the only monitor my mom had was me screaming or the “THUNK” of me falling and hitting the floor.

There was no catalyst specifically but I deleted my shortcuts and uninstalled the app a couple of weeks ago because there just isn’t anything for me on Twitter, X or whatever. Have not gone back since.

The last time I saw a Wizard of id comic strip was in the early 70s.

You broadened the term so much you turned it into a huge amorphous blanket that covers generations of invectives. I’ll stick with Merriam-Webster, thanks https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/woke

As with most property management companies, they’ll just tell you, “Hey if you don’t like it, move”. I think they may have put a small blurb in the apartment complex newsletter a month prior but nobody reads those. Also, I had just upgraded to a phone that had mobile data, otherwise, I could not have used the machines because they no longer had coin slots and the app must connect to the Internet to use it. I also had a large bowl of quarters left over that I ended up using at the car wash… Which will soon be cashless also.

Who cares about downvotes? That’s a Reddit thing. I’m an old white guy but I vote Democrat all the way down ticket every time. I was a big Bernie Sanders supporter. What I do not like is virtue signaling and forcing diversity into various media when it’s not necessary. Call that anti-woke if you want.

They put Bluetooth in our apartment complex laundromat and if you don’t have a smart phone or Internet service on your phone, you don’t do laundry.

I’m aware of that, I was referring to how the extreme left tends to overcompensate for social injustices.

Granted, the actual definition of “woke” is a far cry from what the media, especially you tubers and the Twitter mob make it out to be. People on both sides but especially the right call it the “woke virus”, when wokeism is basically just being aware of the societal pressures put on people of different races, genders etc.

I stopped watching network television because of ads, then I stopped watching free streaming because of too many ads (Pluto TV, Crackle), I get a basic subscription to Paramount through Walmart and I stopped watching that because of the ads. I have an Amazon prime subscription because I get it for one half off but I rarely use prime video an if they start showing ads, I won’t use it at all.

I’m 64 and still pretty far left, except I don’t get into the whole “woke” thing. The extreme left is a bit wacko but not as wacko as the extreme right.

Understood. Whether or not we are replicating economic conditions from 1929 is another story entirely. Other than AI, there really isn’t too much of a stock market bubble. The S&P 500 P/E ratio is lower than pre-pandemic and the Buffett indicator(US stock market value divided by GDP) is still well within a safe range. 1929 was pre-globalization, pre-SEC and there were next to no banking regulations at the time. The Internet bubble of 2000 with its insane speculation more closely resembled the crash of 29 than does the current market conditions. The 2008 housing debacle was primarily too much leveraged mortgage debt.

I’m not a student of economics and haven’t studied much of it but I have owned stocks for quite a few years and have a basic understanding of how money works.

I’m not an economist but anecdotal evidence that I’ve picked up from a number of different sources in the last couple of years lends me to believe that consumer debt is pretty darn high. This is from the Federal Reserve and what else is an average schmuck supposed to look at?

You can look up delayed gratification all you want but the majority of American consumers will never actually understand it.