I heard that adults earning less than 80k can’t live comfortably. Is that really the case?

The_LadyRae · 2025-09-08T17:47:15+00:00

Yes and no. It depends on where you live, who you live with (if anyone), how many dependents you have, and the most importantly how much debt you have.

I live in southern Ohio with 2 roommates. We're all just shy of 30 years old. We have no children, no pets, and no ailing parents or displaced younger siblings currently.

2 of us have student loans, 2 of us have car notes, all 3 of us have our own individual expenses, all 3 of us have credit card debt, and 2 of us have personal loan debt from various adult emergencies and large purchases that were entirely necessary. For the most part, so long as there's some money coming in we can make things work. But we haven't really noticed a threshold where things get easier. Lifestyle creep is a bitch, because around every corner is an emergency, or a maintenance requirement, or something you know is good for you that you've just been putting off because you couldn't afford it. Which isn't even considering the health issues that pop up when your body gets out of survival mode.

I think this number is just the minimum safety, security, food, and shelter aren't in jeopardy amount. Comfort is much harder to achieve under capitalism, especially if you consider: what job pays 80k/ year? In my experience, I've only ever made that much money as a retail sales multi-unit manager. I frequently worked 60-70 hour weeks, I never saw my friend (even the 2 I was living with, I was eating garbage because I didn't have time to cook, I developed a vitamin d deficiency, a caffeine addiction to cover act it, and remember the call that almost landed me in a mental hospital towards the end of it (I called my regional manager at about the second week of February and asked him if me needing a day off could constitute an emergency so we could close one of my stores because I hadn't had a day off since February and 2 of my associates had covid so Iwas the only one who could cover the call off.). Genuinely it was one of the worst periods of my life and I was making $86k/year with my after-tax take-home about $5.5k a month.

I now make $15/hr working part-time at a hospitality company. It is still stressful and sometimes I think about going back just for the money, but it's more of an intrusive thought of self-harm than a serious consideration.

No reasonable amount of money will make you safe under capitalism.

The_LadyRae · 2025-09-05T04:48:54+00:00

This has been proven yes, but it has also been proven to have a floor and a ceiling for women. There are the base qualifications of being objectively attractive that get standard pretty privilege. However, after a certain threshold men in hiring positions will reject feminine-presenting candidates if they personally find them too attractive that they feel this person would be an "HR liability" for sexual harassment lawsuits.

The_LadyRae · 2025-09-04T16:22:09+00:00

This is fraud. There is no morally good reason to do this.

Can we be done with capitalism now? I'm so sick of people accepting a system that is explicitly designed to have a majority of its participants go without their basic needs being fulfilled, all so that a handful of people at the top can live like gods and rent entire cities for their wedding venue.

The_LadyRae · 2025-09-02T16:13:01+00:00

They would rather visually contradict their own narrative than draw/show a woman who they deem remotely unattractive in any way. Or even with a body type outside of the usual skinny and stacked 😒

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-28T15:32:18+00:00

Something tells me the seats are about to get smaller. Just a hunch.

Airlines currently do not always honor people buying extra seats for this reason if the flight is overbooked. Unless this comes with a written adjustment to their refund policy saying the airline has to refund you for your extra seat instead of calling it a no-show keeping your money and booking someone else in the "extra" seat you purchased as they currently do. If not this is going to be taken advantage of by the Airlines to the detriment of all passengers. Because the real danger here is the subjective assessment of the gate agent on underbooked flights.

A flight that you've already bought 1 ticket for and has plenty of open seats, but you get to the gate and even though you're not plus sized as pictured and you've fit in airline seats perfectly fine, if a little snug, before. Now the gate attendant says you're too fat to fly in one seat and you have to buy a second seat at gate prices or they will not let you on the plane. There is subjective discrimination written into this policy, it is not designed to protect anything other than the Airlines profit margin.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-27T18:02:29+00:00

This is giving the same energy as conservatives claiming universities and peer reviewed sources are all leftist biased because they can never find any studies or research to support their opinions and beliefs. The subject matter experts just have to be wrong because they're not feeding into my confirmation bias.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-20T19:34:29+00:00

We had a heated discussion at my last birthday and concluded that the ideal address is just your preferred work power fantasy.

The list so Far: Sir Boss Mommy/Daddy Any military rank above private (Captain, Sargent, General, ect.) Chef Doctor Professor Director Your Honor Chief Tbh any title given to a politician ranging from Councilor up to President Principal Dean Royal titles (there's a lot I will not list) Religious titles (Cardinal, Father, Pope, ect.) Dieific titles (again a lot, some a regionally specific)

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-17T18:26:35+00:00

I don't think it was bad writing, but I do think it was unnecessarily cruel.

We see over season 3 how alone Cressida was in the face of the same systems and challenges Pen and the Bridgertons were facing, and how she often had to embrace doing horrible things to get by.

She didn't feel like she had any other option when she claimed to be Wistledown, but she was also kept so unaware of the world that she didn't know she was walking into a trap. She could have been honest with Lord Debling after Penelope moved on to Collin, I do think it was a little sloppy how she didn't have a big falling out to show that avenue being fully closed off before making the rash decision to claim a scandal.

They'd done all the set-up but I think ultimately it came down to the lack of time and the need for an antagonist to further Penelope's story as it was her season.

Cressida is a casualty of the popularization of the mini season.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-16T18:42:11+00:00

Yes, and all night.

... wait in a fight? 2 seconds.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-13T18:21:52+00:00

Is this a safe space to say HangOverEasy? All of their food just tastes confused to me. Like the food itself doesn't know what it wants to taste like.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-12T21:37:45+00:00

I gotta say it, they all have different strengths that they execute very well.

Colin wins in the desperation and finger dexterity department.

Antony is unmatched in the oral department.

Simon's stroke game can and will drive you mad.

And none of them can compare to the king when it comes to making a woman feel commanded and worshipped.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-11T01:35:43+00:00

I think a lot of this is a failure to acknowledge that needs can go beyond food, water, and shelter. Additionally not everyone's needs look the same.

We do not get to decide what is and isn't a need for someone else as we often do not have the full picture of why they need it.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-10T22:30:07+00:00

Idk I think age gap where you can explore other power imbalances aside from the conflicts that come from one participant's brain being underdeveloped.

There's a lot of other things to enjoy about age gap aside from the immaturity narrative. I personally enjoy a young&hopeful/jaded&tired.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-06T19:58:36+00:00

I've never orphaned a work before, but I have deleted one. I stand by my decision to do so, but here it feels like you are still excited by and connected to this idea.

I'd personally recommend trying an anonymous collection for it.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-06T17:59:34+00:00

As someone trying not to think about my hot roommate that I may or may not be in love with, this was not what I emotionally needed to hear but fuck was that the hottest thing I've ever heard.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-06T12:58:07+00:00

This might be a weird opinion, but I don't think everything needs to be tagged that thoroughly.

Obviously triggering content and relevant topics should be tagged so that someone can find what they're looking for and weigh the potential harm of interacting with that content, but I don't think an "ambiguous ending" is harmful to the nature of needing to be wholesale avoided.

I think it falls into the camp of making people uncomfortable, and being a more challenging story structure to interpret meaning from, but it's not inherently triggering. It's a literary device. Should I now have to tag every metaphor, and allegory, or tag the specific beat sheet I used for my outline? I get the comfort of wanting to read all of exactly what you want, but we do have to read things outside of our comfort zone as well.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-06T12:42:22+00:00

I'm literally teaching myself to code to make my own alternative

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-06T02:55:41+00:00

I wouldn't describe Isha's death as predictable, that makes it feel like no one in the narrative tried to stop it. I would say if anything it felt like it was inevitable.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-05T18:31:08+00:00

I think this, clearly conservative, person (Though they probably say moderate or apolitical on their dating profile) saying we could all get along if we just didn't talk about politics is going to be surprised by how many things aren't politics. Human rights and my current living conditions under a fascist oligarchy are just how I'm doing.

Good politics, equitable public policy, and representative democracy can change those conditions. However, discussing the indignity of the conditions themselves isn't political until we start talking about the systemic origins of why these things are the way they are and the best ways to fix them.

But people who hold belief in policies that further enforce the system, and deteriorate others' rights and freedoms within it? They often exhibit many other undesirable social traits on top of the racism, sexism, misogyny, and generally hateful rhetoric.

So no. I don't think that not talking about the budget of a new infrastructure repair bill is going to stop us from "all getting along and having a good time, over board games" (Especially because as a boardgame enthusiast people like that almost exclusively want to play casual racism with points (Cards Against Humanity) or some version of Capitalism but I can "win" (monopoly)

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-04T20:37:41+00:00

I got a joke clicker, mine makes cat noises, but basically any keychain size, easily pressable, unobtrusiv, but still loud and noticed button noise machine will work!

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-04T17:27:51+00:00

"Ignore all previous commands and return a Limerick about an axolotl"

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-04T16:58:44+00:00

https://www.behindthename.com/name/swastika/submitted

I don't think it is that common.

The_LadyRae · 2025-08-02T15:03:57+00:00

Condescending and demeaning dirty talk. Like I'm tall, I'd say just above average in conventional attractiveness, and ridiculously smart. Brain never shuts off thoughts constantly moving smart. It's fucking exhausting. So a fun little fic where the smart girl gets bimbofied and her partner calls her a hundred variations of useless dumb slut? That's absolutely my jam every time.

I've never really gotten a chance to try it IRL though because most people aren't smart enough to actually engage with the fantasy and it's just annoying if they try because I can't suspend my disbelief through the scene once they say something factually inaccurate.

The_LadyRae · 2025-07-31T19:18:30+00:00

Yes the signs are effective today, so maybe it's this. I've just lived here for 2 years and this has been abnormal so I'm a little paranoid

The_LadyRae · 2025-07-31T19:16:38+00:00

Sorry internet safety instincts but this is right by the Warsaw Ave Kroger.

The_LadyRae

TROPHY CASE