That's 10 times more than I'm willing to spend on a phone.

That's fair.

But do remember, there are a LOT of people out there with a LOT of disposable income.....

I don't trade phones often I currently have a 12 Max Pro....and it's looking a bit long in the tooth. Not holding a charge long enough, and the lightening connector isn't dependable for charging, so I've been using nothing but magnetic charging past year or so.

While I'm quite interested in hearing about and seeing the "fold" Apple phone.....from my early understanding, it will NOT have the camera specs they 18 Pro Max (or whatever they call it) phone will have.

I'm MUCH more interested in camera than folding...

Just a couple weeks ago, I replaced the battery in my 6-year-old Lemur Pro. Not very hard, and now it's great at holding a charge again.

Yes, getting this thing in 2020 cost me 2-3 times as much as today's new Macbook Neo, but I needed a machine I could rely on, that wasn't designed as though I'm the manufacturer's adversary.

At Walmart, extremely low quality everything is available year-round.

It's been ages since I was last in a Walmart.....when I looked at the extreme poor quality of meat and even most veggies/fruit I could not believe how bad it was, and not significantly cheaper than one of the "real" grocery stores around the area.

I just can't believe people regularly shop at Walmart....at least for food....???

Could the point of the brag be that it's newer hardware? My understanding is that successive generations of earthling chips are more vulnerable to malfunction from cosmic rays, etc due to their much higher density.

But I've totally not kept up. Is this still a problem?

Why do they disable the GPU core....?

Sure, maybe nice to live in... how about a job so you can afford to live there? Pretty sure Mayberry (that sort of town) doesn't have many $100k+ jobs around.

See that's your problem....there aren't 2 choices....NYC or Mayberry.

That's been dead for a 100 years.

I've never lived as an adult in a major metropolitan area, but in what I term "normal city"....mostly in the SE of the US.

I've worked in IT for most all of it...various things, lead DBA, some sys admin Linux....etc.

I've made well into the 6 figures area and lived in areas where there was plenty to do, cost of living was more than reasonable....and great folks to live with a next door to....

Nothing remotely resembling "Mayberry" nor anything remotely rural....but nothing urban either.

And around here, making $133K+ can buy you a nice house and a pretty sweet life.

End-stage capitalism is real, and we're in it. We will course correct, or we will collapse. Commentary like yours makes me think we're too stupid to course correct, and collapse is the only tool Darwin has to wash you out of the decision making process.

So, what does "course correction look like to you?

Socialism? Communism?

If not those....then what?

Clarence Thomas is another great example, George Bush was angry he was going to have to nominate a black man because he was as you might imagine kind of racist so he picked the most incompetent and corrupt black man he could find and rammed him through the Senate.

I think Judge C has had some of the most brilliant legal reasonings in the past century...thank God for him on the court.

I rate him second only to Scalia....

They do point out that it varies by location, but really their number range is terrible. "classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class." From the HUD Section 8 income limits [huduser.gov], expensive places the lower end of that is considered low income, like San Jose 143,600 qualifies for Section 8, versus cities like Akron where 72,250 is low enough to qualify. Location, location, location.

You know, there is a TON of land and cities between the coasts,,,,,with tech jobs and reasonable costs of living....

You do not need to live in NYC or Silicon Valley or anywhere in CA for that matter to earn 6 figures and have. A VERY comfortable life and work in pretty much any industry you can name.

Aside from a very few outliers, like NYC or the like with ridiculous costs of living...across the vast majority of the USA, $133K - $300K+. Annual income is VERY easy to live off of.....

There are plenty jobs of all types with good pay in areas with reasonable costs of living....

Remember the US is a very large country....there's opportunity everywhere...and living outside of NYC doesn't mean the alternate is rural and on a farm...lots of smaller cities out there that are much nicer to live in, not only fiscally, but healthier and calmer too.

I'd say the better argument is that we should be evolved enough now to know that a highly successful capitalist economy is maybe not the best goal for human happiness, even if it does seem, empirically speaking, to produce the most powerful economies on the planet.

Well...I'm pretty happy,

But sure, you can say capitalism sucks...BUT, it sucks a whole lot less than every other type economy ever tried on earth to date.....

The outage may have been caused by an overload in the filtering systems run by Russia’s communications watchdog

Overload? It's probably an overly-excited inference, but that sounds like a basket with too many eggs in it. Anyone know?

"Ukraine, if you're listening..."

2) Police officer hides, catches unsuspecting driver speeding, stops driver, issues summons.

This is the very best approach. It's got the perfect tension leading to the greatest safety.

When you're expecting such an ambush (getting caught a few times will teach you to do that), and you're really paying attention and playing "spot the ambush" then they won't catch you. But because you're being so damned focused and alert, you're also a safer driver.

OTOH if they nail you, that means you weren't paying attention. So you weren't merely speeding; you really literally were speeding unsafely, and the ticket is the proof. (If you were so safe, then how come you didn't see the guy with the radar gun in time?)

Every. Single. Time. I got ticketed, my mind was wandering and not fully focused on the road. I wasn't looking for a speed trap, so I didn't see it in time. Busted. And those times I was looking? I didn't fall for it. I slowed down and avoided a ticket.

The ideal system (in terms of safety) happens to also be downright sporting! The ol' classic speed trap was almost .. a game?

Hmm....over the years, I've had several girlfriends report loss of appetite after trying to watch a lot of Monty Python with me......

It is something to do with 2 X chromosomes...?