human civilizations throughout time and space have generally been quite fond of things like "colored fabric". Christopher Nolan? Not so much.

I get that there are a lot of very ill-intentioned people who try to mess with schools, but at the same time there are a lot of well-meaning idiots who implement things like getting rid of the SAT or advanced math classes in middle school basically because they personally didn’t like those things.

Caveat: you can kinda game the system if you just send your men at arms over and have them siege the castles that are most peripheral to the actual goal of the crusade.

Why does an opinion survey supersede the data showing what people’s finances actually are?

The median consumer is not disagreeing with will, you are.

Only the finer things in life.

Or raising taxes on rich people

Have they even heard of harm reduction?

Childcare is the most laughable thing here though, like imagine telling a middle class Victorian woman that childcare is a job people get paid for, instead of a thing that she has to do, for free, at the same time as she hand washes and mends all their clothes.

Utilities cost money. Nonetheless you are better off having them than not having them, like the average Victorian who had to budget for candles and firewood instead, and frequently died from things like typhoid that could speak in untreated water.

If your baby is born premature today you might get hit with an expensive medical bill. In Victorian England you will not get hit with an expensive medical bill because there is no treatment and your baby will just die.

But you didn’t, though. You vaguely hand waved at a bunch of stuff we have today, without addressing that all of these things HAVE VALUE and thus it is BETTER to have them, than to not have them as Victorians did. Like yeah not having internet does suck in modern times. Imagine if nobody had it.

You haven’t, though. You have no sources for what life was like in Victorian England besides a Christmas carol, which is very clear that the educated middle class family in question is much less well off than a comparable family today.

Having one GK under contract is probably why we did this. Hard to pick up multiple trustworthy backup GKs in an off-season. Having Stef back up Andy for another year while we figure out the pipeline is smart business.

“Uh-oh, they’re talking about Israel like it’s some kind of human rights pariah. Clearly this is a messaging issue.”

It is an outrage that poverty still exists. It is an outrage that people can die from lack of healthcare. It is an outrage that homelessness still exists. This because we live in a society that can afford to eradicate them, and doesn’t, not because Victorian England is somehow comparable.

I get that you think you are building “class consciousness” or something by saying that everything is miserable but it’s really not. We in a society that is very obviously better for everyone, even the poor (of whom there are far fewer) than Victorian England was.

I’m not “treading water,” life isn’t a video game where the goal is to max out your high score by the end. I am living. I enjoy my life. If I continue to work in my current profession and society does not collapse I will have saved up enough to retire. There are people who suffer far more than I do.