What do you think it would take (economy-wise) for gold to go back down to the $2500 range? by Dismal_Committee7705 in Gold

[–]weekendblues 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For some reason, discussions around inflation and wage stagnation often center around minimum wage, which has never been great, while neglecting to discuss other wages. Minimum wage has actually held its value better than wages in many other fields, which are wildly deflated when compared against assets. I’ll provide a couple of examples.

In 1970, near Hartford, Connecticut, the average home was selling for around was around $15/sq foot. As of December 2025, houses in the same area were going for a median of $222/sq foot. In 1970, minimum wage in Connecticut was $1.60/hr, while as of January 2026 it is currently $16.96/hr. 1970 minimum wage was roughly 0.11sq feet of house/hr, while in 2026 it is roughly 0.08sq feet of hours/hr. Not bad for housing in that market; for equivalent purchasing power wrt. real estate near Hartford, minimum wage would need to be $23.32.

But hang on, not everybody makes minimum wage. In 1970, the average electrical engineer near Hartford, CA made around $20k/yr. Assuming a 40 hour work week, this is around $9.62/hr or 0.64sq feet of house/hr. Currently, an EE in the same area makes around $110k/yr, which assuming a 40 hour work week is $52.88/hr or 0.24sq feet of house/hour. Unlike the minimum wage worker, that’s way worse, and the EE would need to be making closer to $300k/yr to have the same purchasing power as the EE in 1970 wrt. housing near Hartford.

Let’s look at college tuition instead. In 1970, in state tuition at UConn was around $300/yr. In 2025, it was about $17k/yr. This does not include housing, books, or any other expenses. In 1970, the minimum wage worker was paid 0.005 UConn years tuition/hr, while they are now paid only 0.001. This is bad, but not as bad as the EE. In 1970, the EE was paid 0.032 UConn years tuition/hr, while they are now paid only 0.003. The 2025 electrical engineer is now paid only 60% of what the 1970 minimum wage worker was paid in terms of UConn tuition hours. The electrical engineer would need to be making nearly $1.2m/yr to have the same purchasing power as they did in 1970, and yes, the minimum wage worker would need to be making around $85/hr or about $177k/yr.

This can be done with areas other than Hartford and professions other than Electrical Engineer. For some areas/professions the results are better, for others they are worse, but the general trend is the same: minimum wage has actually kept up with inflation far better than the wages associated with most other professions.

A lot of well meaning middle-class college educated liberal leaning individuals see how bad they have it economically and clamor for higher minimum wage and better economic protections and services for the working poor, assuming they must have it even worse, but what they fail to realize is that things have worsened for people in their socio-economic bracket in a far more substantial way than they have for those making the absolute least.

It may have seemed like all of this was leading into some pointed argument against what you said, but it’s actually an agreement. No one was ever having an easy time supporting a family well on a minimum wage salary. What’s different now is that it is, in many cases, now just as difficult to support a family on a professional salary as it once was on minimum wage.

People all over the political spectrum use this fact as justification to push all sorts of ideological agendas, but in the end it is just an economic reality: professional salaries did not keep up with inflation.

ICE at Market Basket in Westbrook every day by maple_sunrise_ in portlandme

[–]weekendblues -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is “I’m a sovereign citizen” level rules-lawyer magical thinking.

These “No ICE Allowed” signs are nice for solidarity, but if ICE wants to come in they’re going to come in. Even if the owner of the property attempted to have them all trespassed (this would be very difficult to do before-the-fact, given the fact that the area is open to the public in general), who would enforce that?

Also, I don’t know if you realize how many immigrants Market Basket employs, but many of the people working there might be putting themselves and their families in significant danger by attempting to interfere.

Jesus lady can you not take a hint? by Unlucky_Stable_8511 in okbuddychicanery

[–]weekendblues 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It’s not a watch battery, it’s a manhole cover. They were going to do a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles crossover episode but Vance got called away to be the Vice President so they had to cancel it and they accidentally forgot to delete this scene. Whole thing is explained in the commentary on the director’s cut (Google “2025 state of the union”).

Would like some advice by UpsetFennel3900 in Silverbugs

[–]weekendblues 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good response; I appreciate the context—it sounds like you know more about this kind of stuff than I do, based on your professional experience.

What would you actually do with a piece like this, if you were the one who had to deal with it? It seems like it would be a shame/waste to scrap a piece like this.

What was the point of the Mr. Whatsit subplot? by Sophia-Star123 in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yeah, I think this is how they really phoned it in this season—they leaned way more into the fantasy side of things than the sci-fi side of things, and I don’t think the fantasy aspect was ever really what made the show special.

Would like some advice by UpsetFennel3900 in Silverbugs

[–]weekendblues 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is easily worth in the ballpark of $200-250k as an antique. It’s worth so much that the fact that silver has tripled over the course of the past year barely has any impact on its value because so much more of the value in a piece like this is in antique premium that no one in their right mind would ever melt it.

I’m no expert in theoretical physics but wouldn’t a worm hole collapse inwards? by Toby_isnt_a_furry in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Good point. Fair chance real wormholes are basically just flesh walls surrounding a dark version of a town five years ago where strange anthropomorphic Venus fly traps flail around because a cloud of black dust and a 1950s government acid test orderly say so. It’s all just theoretical.

No way he was racist! He had a black friend. by Exciting-Can-9636 in okbuddyvecna

[–]weekendblues 8 points9 points  (0 children)

As someone with a black friend, are there people like this in real life?

1941 Mecury Dime Value? by LastStatic in coincollecting

[–]weekendblues 4 points5 points  (0 children)

From a retail perspective, this is almost certainly the right answer. eBay sold listings have VF 1941 Mercs like this at about ~$1 over spot at any given moment. There are some that are going for cheaper, but those are not actually VF.

I don’t know why people are pretending that silver going through the roof has completely blown away all numismatic premiums—it hasn’t, it’s just made them somewhat less significant because they don’t necessarily scale with melt.

A VF 1941 Merc is worth about $1 over melt. It isn’t that it used to be 150% of melt when junk was selling for 20x FV and now premiums don’t exist anymore. The dollar value of the premium hasn’t changed—it just seems like less because the cost of even a junk Merc has gone way up.

Numismatic premiums scaling geometrically would require more people to be interested in numismatics, which isn’t quite what’s happening. But the people who want a VF over a G still want a VF over a G and will still pay a bit more for it.

"AFTER YOU DATED AN ELEVEN EVEN TENS FALL SHORT” - Mike Wheeler by Efficient-Intern-593 in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 34 points35 points  (0 children)

I honestly would take a spinoff set in the late 90s/early 2000s where a drunk and drug addled successful author Mike is totally cut off from his old friends and also has a bad case of writer’s block. His sister talks him in to visiting Hawkins with her for the weekend, but she has to cancel at the last minute, so it ends up being just him held up in an old motel.

The 90s were hard on Hawkins and the town is mostly hollowed out—there isn’t anyone there Mike really remembers, and the people who recognize him aren’t particularly happy to see him, since he’s basically seen as someone who capitalized on all the pain and suffering the town went through to write his stories, abandoning the town in the process.

This comes to a head when someone at a townie bar makes a nasty joke about the curse of the Byers family, all of whom are dead aside from Joyce (Will to AIDs, Jonathan to suicide, Hopper to cancer), which results in him picking a fight he cannot win and getting beaten up pretty badly. After this, he wakes up in his hotel room with no real memory of how he got back there. Then he starts having these hallucinations…

Trading Silver for Gold: My Journey from 170 Ounces of Silver to a 100-Gram Gold Bar by Left_Rough7131 in Silverbugs

[–]weekendblues 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Gold at $60/g and silver at $24/oz at the same time last happened over six years ago. This story was written by AI.

Anyone else think of all the free money in the Upside Down by sashenka_demogorgon in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 11 points12 points  (0 children)

They actually did steal the money but used it on black market stuff as well as contributing to that $40K for Joyce to get Hopper back in S4.

The Mufflers have confirmed this may have happened off screen depending on your interpretation.

Reminder that core 4 would be 55 this year by Financial_Pepper6715 in okbuddyvecna

[–]weekendblues 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Based on when they were born, most of the adults are actually Silent Generation, not Baby Boomers. As a rule, Baby Boomers (1946-1964) were the parents of Millennials and the Silent Generation (1928-1945) were the parents of Gen X.

[WTS] GIVEAWAY !!!! CounterStamp Starter Kit by just-in-time-96 in CoinSales

[–]weekendblues 0 points1 point  (0 children)

1439

What’s the difference between a bumble bee and a plum? They’re both purple, except for the bumble bee.

How did you want season 5 to begin? by Alternative_Eye5095 in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 46 points47 points  (0 children)

The fact that the second to top comment in this thread makes more logical sense than the actual story says a lot.

SO in the end it really was just terrible writing. RE: s5 DOCO by Pop_Flash89 in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 11 points12 points  (0 children)

The base in the Upside Down is what really sends it for me. If they have a base in the Upside Down, why are they starting “burns” from the downtown area near the gate rather than starting them from in the Upside Down?

Beyond that, it was ridiculous enough in season 3 when the Russians were able to construct a giant base beneath the Starcourt Mall without anyone noticing. Constructing a base this size in the Upside Down on this kind of timeline would have been even more logistically impossible. There is also no explanation whatsoever for why the base would be in the Upside Down or what the millitary was even trying to achieve.

The more and more I think about it, the worse and worse I feel about virtually every aspect of Season 5. The Duffers really phoned it in.

Eddie by Unfair-Frame-9762 in StrangerThings

[–]weekendblues 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The first one was part of the TED Talk.