This article estimates at a 40kg sailfish uses about 2.7 megajoules per day of energy when hunting. That’s about 650 kcal.
An 80kg human weighs about twice as much and needs about 3 times the energy, without even exertion.
Warm blooded animals spend a lot of energy just maintaining body temperature. Plus water doesn’t have very much oxygen in it, compared to the atmosphere.
There’s not enough oxygen in water to support our metabolisms, even if we had gills.
Fish are adapted to conserve and use less oxygen, from slower metabolic rates to more options for anaerobic respiration that doesn’t poison oneself from within.
But some who has earned a penny in interest has spent time as both worker and owner.
I’m not talking about people who only make a small amount of interest or investment return over the course of their lifetimes. I’m talking about people who are already unambiguously middle class (between 25th and 75th percentile incomes), who end up relying on investment income to provide most of their retirement expenses.
I’m talking about people with half million dollar 401(k)s that return hundreds of thousands over the course of a retirement. Some of it is principal but most of it is gains/return/interest.
Basically if you’re able to retire in America, you’re an “owner” for those decades. Yes, there are people in America who can’t afford to retire, but most people in the middle class can.
Also, its not the conventional way. You 100% made that up and what you’re describing is petite bougouise.
Defining the middle class as middle incomes is pretty conventional. I think you’ve misunderstood my description of the middle class (people who fit the definition generally have income from both work and from investment) as a definition.
So let me be perfectly clear:
And hey, I was gonna let it go but it’s clear your autocorrect has now adopted it as a new word it will happily let you spell wrong repeatedly: it’s spelled petit bourgeois, or petit bourgeoisie for plural.
The median net worth of a 65-year-old in the United States is about $390k, so the income it produces is generally a modest supplement to social security. At the 75th percentile, which is also generally considered middle class, net worth is about $1.1 million and easily enough to provide a comfortable retirement lifestyle.
The idea that someone is middle class because they’ve earned a penny in bank interest is absurd.
No, the idea is that the middle class (defined in the conventional way) spends time in both the “worker” category and the “owner” category.
The ordinary middle class pathway is to work for 30-50 years and then retire on their savings (or a defined contribution retirement plan) or to rely on a defined benefit pension fund that is itself invested in securities, aka capital. This is the baseline expectation of retirement planning for the middle class in the U.S.: the investments/savings provide the cash to live on, while ownership of the primary residence shields the retiree from certain housing costs, or can provide cash flow through a reverse mortgage.
Through the power of compounding, a 40+ year savings plan generally increases its value over time so that the vast majority of the value comes from return on investment rather than invested principal.
If you want specific calculations, we can do that to show that the typical middle class path takes in more than “a very small amount” in their retirement savings/investments.
Or are you planning on coming back with a load of caveats
These details are obvious from my first comment in this thread, that the middle class in the United States works its way into an “ownership class” in time for retirement, through savings/investment. That’s exactly what I meant in that comment, and spelling it out makes it pretty clear what I meant at that time, and that I haven’t shifted my position in this thread.
Its not my definition. Its a different school of thought that has stood up to scrutiny. It is different to what a lot of people would refer to as middle class and, of course, different again from what you, personally describe middle class to be.
I’m specifically pointing out the problem with the “how they earn income” definition, that it seemingly assumes that the two categories are mutually exclusive, to try to argue that there’s no such thing as a middle class They’re not. Most people who are in what most would recognize as “middle class” under the traditional definition get income through both methods, especially over the course of their lifetimes.
So even under that definition, which attempts to pretend there isn’t a middle class, there is still a middle class: those who have income through both methods, or even hybrid methods (ownership of an actively managed business that allows them to earn money while working but wouldn’t earn money without their own labor).
Middle class generally means people whose incomes are in the middle half (ranging from 40th to 60th percentile to the 20th to 80th).
If you want to pull out your own new definition based on whether their income comes from work or from return on investments, then I’d still point out there’s a large number of people who do both, especially when compared across the entire life cycle including retirement. So if you insist on this alternative definition, you still have to account for the big chunk of the population who do both.
If you work for your money, you’re part of the struggle. If you own for your money, you’re part of the problem.
But the middle class is those who are able to leverage working for their money to accumulate capital to where they can live off of the proceeds of that owned capital. If you’re able to retire, you eventually become part of the ownership class.
There is a shrinking middle class but the actual people in it are those who split their adult lives into eventually retiring on their wealth, accumulated through working.
It feels so real in how disappointing the experience becomes for the straight characters.
This hits the nail on the head. It’s funny because of the point of view of the actual participants.
The funny thing about this thread is that there are so many comments essentially agreeing with the central premise of the sketch, that it’s relatable and disorienting when you stumble onto some kind of established fandom and can’t seem to keep up with why it’s popular or what is or isn’t “part of it.” The popularity is confusing in itself, and the need to dissect the lore (as OP is doing, perhaps even unintentionally following the sketch itself) distracts from the original purpose of going there to be entertained.
In other words, the sketch is funny and relatable exactly for the same reasons why much of the audience doesn’t find it funny and relatable.
This is a counter to the Democratic party supporters you see everywhere who always get irrationally upset at third party voters, not about Republicans.
Plenty of us Democrats are very much in support of a ranked choice voting schemes, or similar structural rules like non-partisan blanket primaries (aka jungle primaries). The most solidly Democratic state, California, has implemented top-2 primaries that give independents and third parties a solid shot for anyone who can get close to a plurality of votes as the top choice.
Alaska’s top four primary, with RCV deciding between those four on election day, is probably the best system we can realistically achieve in a relatively short amount of time.
Plenty of states have ballot initiatives that bypass elected officials, so people should be putting energy into those campaigns.
But by the time it comes down to a plurality-take-all election between a Republican who won the primary, a Democrat who won the primary, and various third party or independents who have no chance of winning, the responsible thing to make your views represented is to vote for the person who represents the best option among people who can win.
Partisan affiliation is open. If a person really wants to run on their own platform, they can go and try to win a primary for a major party, and change it from within.
TL;DR: I’ll fight for structural changes to make it easier for third parties and independents to win. But under the current rules, voting for a spoiler is throwing the election and owning the results.
Why do you care if the person you voted for wins?
Because it’s an election with consequences, not an online fandom.
$83 billion per month is almost $1 trillion per year. That sounds about right.
Oh you can remember which one is which by remembering that they have a university named USC.
There was. If you map that onto the growth in population you’ll see that tickets per person has been dropping since about 2000.
if it’s immediately rewarding
Hell of a caveat there.
Anywhere strangers tend to be around each other long enough to where small talk might be a welcome distraction: waiting in lines for something, sitting at a community table or bar/counter with mixed groups (especially while waiting for the rest of your respective friend groups to show up), sitting next to each other at a public event like live sports or a concert with downtime, volunteer events where you might be set up next to strangers doing the same thing, etc.
It’s easier when there’s a natural end to the interaction (your turn in line, the start of the sporting event), too.
Smartphones and headphones have made it harder, but there are still opportunities when people are bored and sitting around.
The escalation of Starlink not complying comes from that, not the other way around.
I’ve looked closer (at other articles, too). You’re right - the freezing of the SpaceX accounts came from the same order that ordered that Twitter be blocked, and before SpaceX announced it would refuse to comply.
The proper thing to do is to recognize the legally distinct personhood of SpaceX, which isn’t part of Twitter, even if Twitter/X itself is wrong on the law.
The order to block Twitter went to all Brazilian ISPs, and Starlink is the only one that didn’t comply on Saturday. So the escalation stems from the disregard of an order that everyone was required to obey, but the intertwined nature of both companies being controlled by Musk is both part of the reason why SpaceX would even consider not complying with local law in a country it operates in, and why the Brazilian courts seem to be willing to aggressively enforce their own orders.
Edit: I’m convinced. This comment as originally written presented the facts out of order.
I think you’re right. The line blurring between corporate sponsorship and community support is pretty difficult to determine. If someone wants to build a community around a particular video game or movie or television show, of course the corporation that publishes it benefits from a bunch of positive discussion about it. But at the same time, that corporate-owned product is part of our shared culture, and a legitimate topic to discuss in a forum like this.
And it’s not even necessarily pure corporate stuff, either. There are nonprofit and trade and governmental organizations that rely on advertising for public messaging: a tourism board promoting their location as a good vacation spot, an agricultural trade group promoting recipes using their specific product, a government health department drive encouraging vaccinations, etc. They pay for ads through conventional outlets while also promoting their interests on social media.
It’s just an ecosystem. We should be aware that there are those who would seek to influence us here, whether for money or politics or other motivation, and navigate these spaces with that in mind.
I love how your two paragraphs, read together, slightly imply that banging is part of the job and not taking a break.
Yeah, evolving lungs ended up clearing the way to make use of the much more plentiful oxygen in the air compared to what is dissolved in water. Amphibians and reptiles have pretty low metabolisms, but birds and mammals basically evolved endothermy (aka warm bloodedness), probably in support of much higher muscular power output. Ectotherms (aka cold blooded animals) have metabolisms that are correlated to temperature, which means they can’t exert themselves as well when it’s cold. Endothermy allowed animals to be warm all the time, and therefore use higher muscular power output in any environment, especially sustained.
That means mammals and birds were able to cover more distance, and survive in places where reptiles and amphibians can’t, and all the advantages that carries.