Yeah. He's a super nice guy. I mean- every time I saw him, I just thanked him for his music, especially the string quartets. He probably was like, "oh it's the guy I see in K-mart who likes my string quartets." So, maybe he's not nice, but he was nice to me. I know someone who knows someone who says he is experiencing cognitive decline - so if you want to write him fan mail, now would be the time.

I need this on a T-shirt

I would

LOL. Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

I will assume you live in the midwest. Maybe some suburbia.

NYC is entirely different than suburbia and actually is also entirely different from SF, DC and Tokyo. I don't know about other cities.

Within 30 seconds of biking from my apartment, I will already have seen.

1. A car go through a red light.
2. A car parked on the sidewalk.
3. A delivery truck parked in the bike lane, and part of the street.
4. Multiple people crossing the street randomly, not at crosswalks.
5. I will have passed maybe 3 other bikers.

Within a minute:

1. Massive construction on the street.
2. Cars parked in the road.
3. Dodged deep pot holes.

Within 5 minutes

1. Multiple cars going through red lights, I would maybe guess 5.
2. Multiple cars doing u-turns that are not allowed.
3. Maybe 30 people walking across the street in random places.
4. Some drugged up guy standing somewhere in the street.
5. Hit an area where the streets are purposely laid out so, if you want to go the "right way" you have to ground around multiple blocks. It's a peculiar place.

This is the base line.

All of this works together because there are basically no laws. A car goes through a red light, as long as it doesn't hit someone it's ignored. Same for u-turns, same for illegal temporary parking. You want to gun your car, make the wheels squeal and accelerate as fast as you can until the next red light? Nobody will care if you don't hit someone.

It's a zoo. The normal thinking of laws doesn't really apply. If you get upset about every car that runs a red light, you'll be upset all the time. If you get upset at people doing stupid shit, you'll be upset all the time.

Holy cow. I didn't think people spent money on orchestras anymore. That's like maybe 40 pieces. If recording was over 6 hours, that would be what around 25K.. Plus studio space plus recording equipment and engineers, microphones, admin, maybe 50K. I guess it's not as much as I thought. Huh, I wonder what the budget was.

Huh, interesting. I wonder how many anime use live orchestras. I read many many years ago, that video games were using eastern european orchestras, but that even those had become too expensive. I guess I really have no idea.

t wasn’t really a good run. Wages didn’t keep up with inflation. Even though wages are higher, the buying power with those wages is less.

Generally averages, in my opinion, are not a good measure.

Here is the median:

Employed full time: Median usual weekly real earnings: Wage and salary workers: 16 years and over https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LES1252881600Q

Edit: Maybe this is even better:

Real Median Personal Income in the United States (MEPAINUSA672N) https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N

I don't know exactly how to put this, but I feel personally embarrassed by this.

I think this is going to shift world order more than expected. Every country now must be nuclear. Trump is going to try to install himself as a dictator. I think violence will have to be the answer. Man it's depressing.