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.

I’d argue that TWBB is similar in narrative structure to a classic film like Goodfellas. Of the character of Henry Hill, Roger Ebert wrote “the man's principal regret is that he doesn't have any more soul to sell.” Daniel follows a similar downward spiral.

Honestly, I think I would want this as an option for the shows I rewatch all the time. Give me Star Trek TNG full frame, no post-production effects. Game of Thrones, full-frame, no CGI. It’d be interesting and educational!

When HBO reformatted The Wire into widescreen, wasn’t their response to the creators’ dissatisfaction to, essentially, tell them to pound sand?

I unfollowed a while back just due to the volume of tweets she put out, but seeing this now is sad.

This would set up Richard Jenkins as the ultimate choice (at least for the last 20 years).