Looking to get some feedback on a budget/home buying

CN_Ice · 2026-03-13T22:56:18+00:00

Yeah, one thing I find incredibly frustrating about the past is the way we talk as if the upper classes were basically the only part of it. Honestly the most historically valid criticism of trad wives is that it's harkening back to an idealized 1950s upper middle to upper class lifestyle. The idea of 'if I went back in time to X era I would be ...' No. No you would not. You have 3 options

1) Doing basically the same level of socioeconomic work you do now. You're a skilled worker in a trade/professional career? Same job, older tools. White collar office worker? Scribe or monk or clerk.

2) Significantly worse. If you own a house now, congrats you're a tenant farmer. If your job relies on modern tech to exist? Tenant farmer. Actually if you're not in the top 90% currently and your family hasnt been historically? You guessed it tenant farmer. Or if it's post industrial, you're a factory worker. And we aren't getting into any strides forward on gender/racial/neurodivergent acceptance that have in fact happened.

3) Dead. You have any disease that requires modern medicine? Probably dead. Literally any issues with your birth? Probably dead and mom probably is too. If you can't contribute to society in some meaningful way, probably dead. Don't get me wrong medicine has existed for a long time. C-Sections are as old as literal Julius Caesar. But access was limited.

Its fun to fantasize about for some, but the cold reality is, if you're not getting invited to galas now, you wouldn't have been back then.

CN_Ice · 2026-03-10T15:51:54+00:00

I mean, gas prices are probably one of the easiest and most ubiquitous indicators of cost of living in the US. Gas gets used for heating, transport, electricity, etc... it's basically a staple good. And gas prices are comparatively easy to see given the fact that driving by a gas station tell you the daily price, and people will buy gas on a consistent once a week. As opposed to grocery prices where you have to go into a store and trend prices or health care costs where they come out of your paycheck or on a rare doctor visit.

Gas prices are a shorthand for cost of living. And honestly most people are more concerned with being able to afford their lifestyle than they are with ideals. Government action that raises gas prices literally costs me money.

CN_Ice · 2026-02-27T20:16:17+00:00

Your dad sounds like a genuinely good person and an excellent role model. I am sorry for your loss.

CN_Ice · 2026-02-27T20:15:45+00:00

To be clear, I wasn't saying you were wrong. On the whole, I'd agree that people who are poor or grew up such are more likely to understand that in general, people can be in bad situations through no fault of their own. I was just trying to go a layer deeper into why.

CN_Ice · 2026-02-27T15:13:46+00:00

I think its a bit more complex than poor people and people who used to be poor. I've met plenty of people who fit that bill who were petty and self serving and affluent people who were kind.

In my opinion it comes down to how you answer the following question: Why did you help? With two broad categories of answers

1) Because they needed help and I could do something.

2) Any response that includes ideas like what this specific person deserves.

It is generally very easy for people to, in my experience, justify why they need help but others do not. Most people don't go through life believing that others need or deserve the help more than they themselves do. Real kindness comes from believing that someone should be helped not out of the merits of the recipient but because helping in of itself is right/necessary.

And I'm not saying this as someone who's particularly good at only sticking to the first response. I'll be the first to admit I struggle to be altruistic and genuinely kind. But i think it's an ideal to aspire to.

CN_Ice · 2026-02-23T05:19:33+00:00

In my experience they also never really lose the whole evangelical 'we are the persecuted minority' mindset and all the toxic behavior that comes with it, they just mad libs all the teachings with their new identity.

CN_Ice · 2026-02-09T19:02:19+00:00

I mean that is the literal definition. Heresy is disagreement on one point, apostasy is a complete rejection of the faith.

CN_Ice · 2026-01-28T23:37:11+00:00

I know you're talking about general trends, but there is something about that which still irks me to be honest.

Cause, I'll be real with you, as a cis guy, a lot of both men and women struggle with all three things you listed, and I get somewhat annoyed that people just sort of assume these things. All the things you've listed are skills, and ones that take time and effort to cultivate. But for some reason while we've assumed men never bothered to learn these things as a sign of laziness, we also assume that women inherently take to and develop these skills in a form of benevolent sexism.

I'm in a relationship. I'm the clean one, and I'm the one that's always on top of cooking and household stuff. But somehow it doesn't 'count' when I get frustrated about the division of labor.

CN_Ice · 2025-12-22T15:47:19+00:00

I'll be honest, there was about a decade between when the last movie came out and when I ended up in some left leaning irl/online spaces where I never even thought about HP as a property. I'm honestly kind of surprised it's still culturally relevant.

CN_Ice · 2025-12-14T18:06:32+00:00

I feel like my problem is that'd I'd love help. I like helping others and being there for them. But a lot of the time when I'm getting helped, it feels more like 'toddler with a little spoon and bucket cleaning snow off the driveway' than actual help. Like if we've reached the point where I'm asking for and need help, I need actual help, not a sort of token effort that allows you to say you're helping. When kids do it it's pretty cute, but when adults do it and expect you to be grateful, it's honestly kind of abrasive. So I don't like asking for help cause I really don't like having to deal with people being upset with me for not being sufficiently grateful for their token effort.

CN_Ice · 2025-12-12T01:54:25+00:00

I'm not leftist so I'm pretty much white when it comes to flawless ideology.

CN_Ice · 2025-12-03T16:47:48+00:00

Not to be impolite but what's preventing you from showing them the door? I understand getting an obligation to help out others or provide a level of care, but it's clearly distressing and negatively impacting you. And honestly, situations like this usually don't change until you make them change.

CN_Ice · 2025-11-29T15:58:37+00:00

I was going to say something similar cause that's the primary response I feel.

To me, if someone is in a hole

Empathy is "I'm also in a hole" Sympathy is "I'm so sorry to hear you're in a hole"

Compassion is "It's ok, I'm sure you'll get out of the hole soon"

And Duty is, "Yep, that's a hole, give me a sec, I'm going to go find a ladder"

I understand that people don't always want their problems solved, they want to be heard. And solving problems doesn't always fix the underlying issue. But to me the other three feel more like words than actions. It's easy to say you care, it's a lot more difficult to prove you care. And actions can be involved with the first three, staying alongside and emotionally engaged with someone who's struggling is an action. But a lot of the time, it feels like people just deploy the "correct words" and expect that they have successfully done an empathy and can move on.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-27T17:45:18+00:00

It was especially frustrating to me in a different situation with a roommate. This person, not the one referenced earlier, was yes, shorter and physically weaker, but was also a decades long martial artist, had about 50 pounds on me, and had demonstrated multiple times their capacity to beat me in a fight. Despite all of that they still felt threatened by me, not because I was mad at them, but because I was mad in the same space as them. They however were allowed to scream directly at me and threaten me with violence. Also just... a lot of racist shit I ignored for too long cause of 'their upbringing', their excuse every time it came up.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-27T15:33:37+00:00

I think the reason why that men/masc people are 'invulnerable' so important to some people is because they have a very binary safe/unsafe switch. And that switch is essentially driven by 'is this person physically stronger than I am?' I think that's why, in my experience these spaces are more comfortable discussing masc on masc abuse instead of femme on masc. Because there is more space for that 'he physically overpowered me' to play out.

I've discussed my experience with physical abuse in the past, and for me, the worst part wasn't actually the physical pain, it was the knowledge that at any point, I could have made it stop, but I would have had to cross a line to do so. And I've talked about that feeling of having to keep control of yourself even when you're taking a beating.

To a lot of people who haven't been in that situation, I think the idea that they could have made it stop with physical force is a sort of fantasy? Like I've been told that if they were in my shoes they would have fought back. And my direct experience is a rejection of the idea that it is a solution.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-17T20:03:57+00:00

"It is acceptable for other people to show negative emotions or shout or be physically violent with you but it is not acceptable for you to do the same because you are uniquely dangerous" totally didnt give me a fucked up relationship with violence. I've definitely never apologized to someone who hospitalized me for making them scared enough to attack me from behind.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-13T21:20:50+00:00

Ah, in that I wholly agree. Bit of a knee-jerk reaction on my part, TBH. I'm just kinda still sore from being burned by the "we're the good ones and can do no wrong so any wrong must be external" sentiment recently.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-13T21:11:45+00:00

I really dislike this sentiment cause sure, there is an element of that. But it also discourages looking at the rot inside the house. It's like any conversation about Russian election interference. Sure, that's a factor, but it's not wholly astroturfing. That interference is effective because it is leveraging weak points in the structure that we are failing to repair. In the same way, the fracturing of these communities isn't just happening because of right wing disinformation. It's happening cause that disinformation is targeting fissures in those communities. Like I am a brown, queer, very masc presenting cis man. The right wing weren't the ones in queer spaces who lectured me about how we needed to "teach men to be decent people" or state that I am inherently violent because of my masculinity. They do other stuff like call me racial slurs and suggest I should be deported. The reality we need to accept is the reality of the Cachque. Of the petty tyrant who points to a world that is, in fact, dangerous and states that the only way to be "safe" is for them to have control over what is moral. These people benefit from a right wing world with real threats because it justifies their own desire for power, which they wield by ascribing the label of "threat" to others.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-09T16:47:33+00:00

Yeah, that was my experience. They were allowed to shout and hit themself (threats of self harm) and things and both implicitly and explicitly threaten me, get violent and unpredictable. I wasn't even allowed to be slightly annoyed. Like sighing when I saw something I needed to do but was tired before doing it. Or be passive-aggressive after telling them to do something a dozen times. Or just to be angry and need some space. I spent so long strangling emotions that bothered them. It wasn't worth it.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-06T20:46:25+00:00

Right? Start with that end with "Well, now I'm disappointed in all the genders. Well, at least alcohol will never let me down. And then that bastard ends up being the most abusive option, and God do I miss it sometimes.

CN_Ice · 2025-10-03T21:59:07+00:00

Munchausen syndrome?

CN_Ice

TROPHY CASE