Publius Maximus
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publiusmaximus.bsky.social
Publius Maximus
@publiusmaximus.bsky.social
2.6K followers 250 following 24K posts
Giant nerd. I will like your selfies and reblog your pets.
Jacobite Pretender for Tumblr clout.

DNI if Jim Sensenbrenner

I use a pronoun labler and would like if you did too:
https://bsky.app/profile/pronouns.diy
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publiusmaximus.bsky.social
I'm not sure what Stansil has a problem with here. This math seems REALLY legit. Granted "other essentials" is doing some work here, but $100,000 a year is at least the floor for middle class.

Americans feel like we're sinking, because we're sinking.

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The Real Math of Survival The official poverty line for a family of four in 2024 is $31,200. The median household income is roughly $80,000. We have been told, implicitly, that a family earning $80,000 is doing fine-safely above poverty, solidly middle class, perhaps comfortable. But if Orshansky's crisis threshold w were calculated today using her own methodology, that $80,000 family would be living in deep poverty. I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored the official stats and simply calculated the cost of existing. I built a Basic Needs budget for a family of four (two earners, two kids). No vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the "Participation Tickets" required to hold a job and raise kids in 2024 Using conservative, national-average data: Childcare: $32,773 Housing: $23,267 Food: $14,717 Transportation: $14,828 Healthcare: $10,567 Other essentials: $21,857 Required net income: $118,009 Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500. This is Orshansky's "too little" threshold, updated honestly. This is the floor.
November 24, 2025 at 6:15 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
A movie that takes place where you grew up:

(The murder of Oscar Grant took place when I was an adult. And the movie about it came out a few years later)
Movie poster for Fruitvale station. A black man stands on a BART platform. The train is arriving at the station.
November 23, 2025 at 5:45 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
This might be the single most unmoored thing I've read all day.

Humans FAMOUSLY have more ideas than we know what to do with. We're idea machines. Everyone has ideas all the time.

The scarcity has never been the ideas, but rather: the energy to implement those ideas.
We've transitioned from an economy constrained by the scarcity of ideas to one constrained by the scarcity of compute.
November 23, 2025 at 3:01 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
🤔
He has long pledged to return the nation to pre-President Donald Trump normalcy. But he and his aides have declined to address whether, if elected, he would run for a second term in 2024. He has said only that he would not run again if he were in poor health.
November 22, 2025 at 7:02 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
I'm pretty sure that works, yeah.
1D20 with the 4 showing.
November 22, 2025 at 5:01 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
This dude seems like real winner.
My name is Troy @enolaemanon.bsky.social 1.4K followers 641 following 8.7K posts I'm a 58 yo / 6'-3"/ 230 lb. divorced dad of two adult kids: SMM is 36, CEM is 27, and dog Lily Mae is 13
November 20, 2025 at 2:23 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
Not to compare Chuck Tingle and the Pope, but this is a good summary of Tingle's thesis in Bury Your Gays.

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Cultural facilities, such as cinemas and theaters, are the beating hearts of our communities because they contribute to making them more human. If a city is alive, it is thanks in part to its cultural spaces. We must inhabit these spaces and build relationships within them, day after day. Nonetheless, cinemas are experiencing a troubling decline, with many being removed from cities and neighborhoods. More than a few people are saying that the art of cinema and the cinematic experience are in danger. I urge institutions not to give up but to cooperate in affirming the social and cultural value of this activity. The logic of algorithms tends to repeat what "works," but art opens up what is possible. Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above all, an invocation. When cinema is authentic, it does not merely console but challenges. It articulates the questions that dwell within us and sometimes even provokes tears that we did not know we needed to express.
November 17, 2025 at 7:43 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
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Epstein Emails Reveal a Lost New York The disgraced financier's recently released documents are steeped in a clubby world that is all but gone.
November 16, 2025 at 7:55 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
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Francis Maxwell @francismmaxwell I've never seen a more American headline in my life. The Hill @thehill 1d After white students displayed Confederate flag at school, Black students suspended for planning protest hill.cm/SEQFPyJ (Tweet contains picture of a CSA flag)
November 15, 2025 at 7:28 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
A rubber ducky eating a pizza.
November 15, 2025 at 5:55 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
EA has spent a ton of money building an LLM system that's supposed to make gaming better while also saving a bunch of development money.

And apparently it's just not working.

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Valve Corp. issued a $69.99 USD refund
November 15, 2025 at 4:43 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
This might be the single cruelest thing I have ever heard a politician say.
the American people desperately deserve what they voted for.
November 15, 2025 at 3:14 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
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Alex Bolton @alexanderbolton Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said she stepped away from talks on ending shutdown because it became clear it wouldn't deal with health care crisis. Slotkin said deal “has got to do something concrete on health care and it's hard to see how that happens." 2:49 PM Nov 9, 2025 771 Views
November 10, 2025 at 12:19 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
The GOP has been saying for months "give up your leverage and then we'll negotiate".

Which is obviously stupid.

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NEW -- LINDSEY GRAHAM says no way they'll extend premium subsidies for even a year. "And to my Democratic friends, we're not going to extend this program for a year, because that would be unfair to the taxpayer. That would continue a health care system that's out of control. It would enrich health insurance companies even more.
November 9, 2025 at 3:13 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
This is basically what the Democrats have been asking for, right? Chuck's deal here is just "GOP capitulates and we all go home", right?

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Chuck Schumer standing at a podium in the Senate
November 7, 2025 at 8:00 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
One of the traps in ORCS MUST DIE: bees. You can drop bees on orcs.
November 6, 2025 at 3:53 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
I'm sorry. You.... Don't want to spend money to build new development????

I'm writing in Tiny Baby to vote against this clown.
Elected Experience It has been my privilege to serve as your commissioner and continue to: "Address your concerns, *Keep rates one of the lowest in the state, "Control financial sustainability during explosive growth, "Protect the health of your family and environment, *Use no ratepayers' money for new development, "Maintain secure water and cyber security infrastructure.
November 4, 2025 at 9:49 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
Been listing to West End Girl on repeat.
Meme of a woman using a tuba to press another woman up against the wall. The tuba holding woman is labeled "Lily Allen". The other woman is "David Harbour". The Tuba is labeled "Who's Madeline"
November 3, 2025 at 4:44 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
No. Blippi is a demon who haunts my nightmares.

Ms Rachel is his Nemesis. The chosen one to slay Blippi in solo combat via children's entertain.

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Tim Poole tweets: Ms Rachel is a demon who harms children. Keep your kids away from this shit Complex Pop Culture Tweets: Ms. Rachel criticized the government for cutting SNAP food aid. (Screenshot of Ms Rachel post on Instagram) PEOPLE WHO SAY THEY ARE CHRISTIAN AND WANT TO CUT SNAP, JESUS SAID TO FEED THE HUNGRY. -MS RACHEL VIA INSTAGRAM IMAGINE SLASHING SNAP, THE PROGRAM THAT HELPS CHILDREN IN THE US NOT GO HUNGRY. WHILE SENDING BILLIONS IN WEAPONS TO ANOTHER COUNTRY TO KILL CHILDREN. -MS. RACHEL VIA INSTAGRAM
November 2, 2025 at 7:05 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
Tag yourself!
4 dudes in tracksuits, holding baseball bats. They're standing in front of the logo from Matt Fraction's Hawkeye run.
November 1, 2025 at 3:05 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
This is absurd. Terrifying. We have a technology that doesn't perform as advertised, backed with the exact financial shenanigans that caused the 2008 crisis.

And the administration that killed 1,000,000 Americans with Covid.

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Here is where the bubble dynamics get complicated. Tech firms don't want to formally take on debt-that is, directly ask investors for loans-because debt looks bad on their balance sheets and could reduce shareholder returns. To get around this, some are partnering with private-equity titans to do some sophisticated financial engineering, Paul Kedrosky, an investor and a financial consultant, told us. These private-equity firms put up or raise the money to build a data center, which a tech company will repay through rent. Data-center leases from, say, Meta can then be repackaged into a financial instrument that people can buy and sell-a bond, in essence. Meta recently did just this: Blue Owl Capital raised money for a massive Meta data center in Louisiana by, in essence, issuing bonds backed by Meta's rent. And multiple data-center leases can be combined into a security and sorted into what are called "tranches" based on their risk of default. Data centers represent an $800 billion market for private-equity firms through 2028 alone. (Meta has said of its arrangement with Blue Owl that the "innovative partnership was designed to support the speed and flexibility required for Meta's data center projects.")
October 31, 2025 at 7:10 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
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The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy. Elon Musk The death of human empathy is one of the earliest and most telling signs of a culture about to fall into barbarism. Hannah Arendt
October 31, 2025 at 4:26 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
Uh oh! Someone confused their dad with the government!

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first-mate prance @bocxtop it's cool how the govt told us raising the minimum wage would make a burger be $20 and now a burger is $20. but min wage is the same
October 31, 2025 at 3:18 PM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
Hope this helps!
Demon, a black and white tuxedo cat, looking magnificent on a table she's not allowed on.
October 31, 2025 at 12:20 AM
publiusmaximus.bsky.social
It's interesting that the demand is for Democrats to cave, rather than for the GOP to expand ACA subsidies.

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New: @Delta calls for clean CR to reopen government "Delta Air Lines implores Congress to immediately pass a clean continuing resolution to reopen the government so that our air traffic controllers, TSA and CPB officers charged with the safety and efficiency of our national airspace can collect the paychecks they deserve. Missed paychecks only increases the stress on these essential workers, many of whom are already working mandatory overtime to keep our skies safe and secure. It's thanks to these federal employees that Delta is able to carry more than 500,000 daily customers on 5,000 daily flights. A system under stress must be slowed down, reducing efficiency and causing delays for the millions of people who take to the skies every day." 12:08 PM 10/30/25 3.6K Views
October 30, 2025 at 6:58 PM