Ken came over, I got my check, we talked about everything under the sun, and I worked on getting things ready to list. I'd pulled a lot of fiber optic cables out of the bountiful dumpster and only two ended up being worth listing - the rest were messed up or even damaged, with the result that I had to vacuum fibers up off of the carpet and was sure to hunt them all down with a flashlight.
Plus I sorted and counted out a bunch of ICs so in the end I didn't get any listings actually done. I'd also taken a thing apart I thought might have good parts inside to list but it didn't, really.
Yesterday it was announced that President Biden is forgiving $10k/$20k of federal student loans and there's going to be a payment plan something like they do in Australia, based on your income. It applies to everyone making less than $125k a year with their degree, and the number of people actually making that much has to be vanishingly small. With 80% of college victims not even working in the field they studied, and with tech pay so low other than a tiny portion of well-connected "winners", this is going to apply to just about everyone who fell for the college scam.
Not long ago, one of the actual baddies in the Middle East, like one of the main baddies, got killed off by, essentially, President Biden Himself. I didn't remark on it here but I thought, "Isn't that just like the Democrats. The Republicans will make a lot of noise and spend a lot of money and even start a war or two, saying they have to get this or that baddie, and they never do after all the dust has settled. Meanwhile the Democrats will decide they're tired of this or that baddie's shit, and just go get 'em". It was this way with Obama, a good Democrat (you could tell by how much the corn-pone types hated him).
Someone against giving anyone any break at all ever, said the plan doesn't keep colleges from keeping on raising fees and if doesn't rein in the banks, and those are very good points. But it's a step in the right direction. The biggest single thing that can be done is to educate the public on how much of a scam college really is. What started off as a "finishing" process for the brats of the rich, has ended up being pushed as a necessity and even that would be OK if it were made somewhat possible for the people who need college the most, the smart but poor, to actually get through to get a degree, and if in the end that degree conferred a decent standard of living.
It's failed on both counts, and has come to resemble a scam or a cult more than anything practical for living. As I like to put it, the only difference between college and a 10-year meth bender is, at the end of college you probably still have most of your teeth.
I got out of here the usual time, and rode right over to the bank and put my pay check in. I was off by less than $4, and as I rode off I thought ... say I have $4000 in the bank, 10% is $400, 1% is $40, 0.1% would be $4, and that's really accurate. I can't think of any electronic components that are accurate to a tenth of a per cent.
I rode over to Whole Foods and got some chicken wings and mushrooms, and it seems the only near-beer they have now is the Lagunitas "Hop Refresher" which I was cautioned "isn't a beer" by the guy upstairs, where I had to go to get one. I ate, then shopped but all I could think of that I wanted to get was some butter, so I got that.
I went by the Amazon place for a few bubble mailers then visited the little free libraries where I got a copy of "The Good War" by Studs Terkel so I can start that when I finish my copy of "'Tis" by Frank McCourt. Both books made their authors famous and are real page-turners.
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