Being in a theater opening weekend for Endgame, seeing The Royal Tenenbaums (that was the movie that opened up what movies could be, for me), maybe kind of a weird one but seeing War Horse with my parents and siblings (was in tears by the end), seeing Jurassic Park at 8 years old.

This year PMT introduced a new way to test if a team is good or not: Can you envision them on the Pats’ schedule. If not, then they’re a good team.

What I find interesting is that the administration’s deportation tactics are broadly unpopular, not just unpopular with lefties or Democrats. And in response, the admin just keeps cramming the worst of it down everyone’s throats.

This “the little piece of glass sticking four inches above the top of your booth separating your non-smoking booth from the adjoining smoking booth” erasure will not stand, man!

Also in keeping with him jumping on scams marking their top. Remember this?

Pre-COVID, wage growth far outpacing inflation was attenuating some of the pressures from the ever-rising cost of participating in the economy. Since COVID, that has evaporated and just added more pressure on households. Hence the vibe-shift.

I think that’s part of it, but another part is that for the five years from 2013 - 2018 cumulative inflation was ~8% while wages grew 22% over that time. From 2019 - 2024 cumulative inflation was ~23% while wages grew ~23%.

Will Stancil, in pushing back on this as an explanation for why people feel bad about a “booming” economy, asked what changed over the last ~5 years that sentiment shifted so much. The author mentions the brief respite that COVID shutdowns provided from many expenses being a wake up call to many.

If you adjust it for both parents working, then an extra car payment and child care adds about $28k in expenses, or $37k in pre-tax earnings needed, for a total of $116,209. Median household income is ~$82k.

Admittedly that budget wasn’t put together very scientifically, and it doesn’t include a lot of expenses it probably should (e.g. student loan payments, incidentals, etc.) but Census data from 2022 shows that even for that likely too-low number only ~22% of workers earn that much or more.

I slapped together my own budget using household medians from Google, assuming a family of four but only one parent works so the other can handle childcare, and using lower-priced goods where I could (apartment vs house, used car vs new). Came out to needing the working parent to earn $78k/year.