I have a clinical doctorate and can make about 110k. I have also chosen to work on a PhD for research in my field. When i finish at the end of the year, my additional doctorate and an entry research job should bring my earning potential to… 110k. Or I can do a post-doc and earn 65k. I can also go into industry and make about 170k. I did my clinical fellowship at NIH and saw the research first hand and know how needed amd impactful it is. Science in this country was already getting strained, under trump it has become a joke.

The really crazy part is when you look at it as a percentage of the budget and compare it to pre war levels. It isn’t what you think. In 2000 the budget was $304 billion, a total of 16.7% of the federal budget. Then 2 wars later of ballooning costs and it grew all the way up to $962 billion (the 2025 approved budget. Not counting the random $500 billion he is trying to add in). But this is now only 13.7% of thr total budget. Somehow the percentage has gone down.

Now, if you know numbers you should know that percentages get messy and are misleading to look at. The real question is what the fuck is going on with the giant ballooning budget that has gotten spending so out of control that this monstrous defense spending is now somehow a lower percentage than pre-war spending??? And the real kicker is that we are ballooning on spending, but none of it is going to actually helping the people paying the taxes! None of it is helping built up infrastructure, invest in education, build communities -nothing that helps build this country.

Trump is blowing through money and we doing even get anything out of it.

If anyone wants to look up the test, there are only two screeners that he would have done, both have some strong overlap. There is the MMSE and the MoCA. it is more likely he did the MoCA, it is the more popular, more commonly given, and slightly better for detecting MCI (mild cognitive imparement). With that said though, you can have dementia and still pass these. There really isn’t a ‘best’ screener developed. This exact problem gets brought up all the time in dimentia research. Basically, if you have strong suspicion they have to go to a neurologist that specializes in memory care and do a full evaluation. Good luck telling trump to do that.

If you want to see them, do a search for it (MMSE or MoCA) and select images.

When I hire contractors, if they are good at the job is the first thing I check. Then, if they are fascist sympathizers is the second thing i check. I want to know and google is stopping my from knowing.

I love a good impossible burger over a normal burger for the big reason of how I feel after. Eating a normal burger as I am getting older means that I feel full in a gross way after, like I can feel the fat from the burger slowing me down, and I feel tired both physically and mentally and I sometimes feel borderline sick for an hour or so after. But with the impossible burgers I can just feel full in a healthy way. I love it. I will admit to also getting it with bacon though for that extra flavor.

I an pretty anti factory farm and love the idea of cutting out at least burgers from their industry. I also enjoy their sausages. Highly recommend them if you have not tried them. I try to cut out bulk meat eating for the environment and keep it to occasional, smaller portions, and even then it is normally chicken. Impossible meat helps scratch that itch if I want some meat but don’t want to commit to blowing my personal weekly allotment of red meat.

To be fair, gas stoves put out a lot of benzene and are known to increase cancer rates in those who live in homes with natural gas stoves. If anything they should be taxed to pay into cancer healthcare costs.

Increases in other contracts that funnel tax money into oligarc pockets but provide no value to tax payers, decrease in revenue collected to offset expenses due to IRS cuts and tax code changes, and the other big one is from judicial fund settlements that have already surpassed pre trump levels.

I miss HEB. family owned and private. Thus why they get away with treating their employees so well, paying them well, and supporting their communities all while also being the largest private employer in the state of Texas. That company is a great example of how a company can both grow to a large size and not be evil. If they ever go public you know all of its charm will instantly get cut in the name of shareholder value.

I have a bunch of coworkers who were contractors in a position for about a decade, then transitioned over to GS employees doing the same job. They were classified as probationary due to being “new” to their positions and were put on notice.

While I have progressive ideas and believe the Republicans rule with malace, I also strongly believe the democrats rule with incompetence.

I would love to run for president on the party of burn down the two party system and restart from there. Make politics boring again and not some partisan winner take all spectacle. We keep pushing to out ‘wing’ the ‘wing’ and it is driving us to some bad extremes.

So yes, I will vote straight ticket Democrat for 99% of the time, but I am also disgusted by the fact anyone is even allowed to do that and people have little party letters by their name. If you didn’t research your candidate to at least know their name, then you shouldn’t be voting for them.

It is mind-blowing to me that some things are not seen as human rights and are instead seen as political posturing. In Texas we had barbed wire intentionally strung up in the Rio Grande river with the intention to drownd people and it took multiple rounds of court cases to make them take it out. Somehow killing people is acceptable rather than booking, ticketing, and sending back. Politics have now taken a place above literal lives. At the same time, when I express this I have democrats immediately agreeing and adding “just let them in!” Or “just let them stay and we will figure it out” and that is where I stop them and ask, is that what I said? No. Simply that human life is worth more than politics. Again, stringing up barbed wire in a river to intentionally drown people it true malice. But saying let them all in and figure it out later is naive at best, and incompetence at its worst.

You were so right, let me tell you about it. If you can’t stop the entire genocide, then don’t stop it at all. If you can’t stop all of climate change, then don’t take any steps to stop any of it. If you can’t end poverty or income inequality then you shouldn’t even help the starving.

What a cunt.

You would be surprised. If you worked a decent job early in life, moved up the ladder, retired as upper middle class making $250k-ish, it is kind of expected to have about 2-3 mil in your retirement. Hell, if you work a half way decent government job and invested wisely your entire life and didn’t have stupid amounts of debt, you should have about a mil in retirement.

1 mil in retirement gives you about 5,500 per month at a growth rate of 6%, withdraw rate of 3%, and annual inflation at 3%. The current recommended retirement is a little under a mil.

As far as retirement funds counting as tradable assets, that is how your 401k accounts work. It is literally a stock market account. The question comes down to when the tax is paid, pre or post withdrawal. In a roth IRA you pay the tax coming in. In a traditional IRA you pay tax when the money comes out. Either way, as long as the money stays in the account you can make it liquid, put it in a stock, bond, mutual fund, whatever you want as long as the account can do it; but in the end it is in a trading account and short of the cash in there, it is a tradable asset.

Biggest argument people are going to have against this is reading the headline and then realizing most their retirement is in the form of unrealized gains. But if you then just read the qualifier of $100 million, you will quickly realize we are not talking about normal people here. We aren’t even talking about normal rich people. We are talking about the 1% of 1% people.

Alternative headline: US Supreme Court surprised all by agreeing with the bare minimum and not forcing partisan political opinions into laws.

As much as I say fuck the billionaires, they have actually already had methods of doing this for about 50 years. Only the dumb billionaires who registered the planes in their name were annoyed about the rules. They could have always registered it under a trust, like almost every other rich person private jet out there. People can still figure out the plane tail registration and track you through that, and that will never change. So the billionaires that are happy about this regulation change still have their tail numbers known by the public to be associated with them and can still be tracked. Now they just have to change their tail numbers (giant pain) and wait for people to do slightly more difficult digging to figure out what plane is theirs.

Tracking of a normal person by their stalker, preditor, or attacker, is just a normal problem?

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

What regulated American militia do you belong to? We have been so quick to jump to defend the later part of the amendment that we have completely dismissed the first part.

I am a gun owner. I love my ar-15. I was in the Army. I did 2 tours to Afghanistan. I am also very liberal. If a law was passed that expanded on the actual enforcement of the well regulated militia text, I would support it. Instead, we have no regulated militias in America at all, and a bunch of gun nuts that keep screaming “shall not be infringed!!” While ignoring all the rest of the text.

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command

I am on the lemmy Sync app. Select the post and tap in the profile icon. Then, on their profile page, at the top, under their name is a selection of other links. Scroll to the right and you will see an option to block the user. Refresh the page and this will all be gone, including your post and mine.

Some say “tricked” others say “activity plotted treason” but I guess we will never know…

I guess we have no way to investigate this and find out. If only we had some department in the government that was made to investigate into law stuff, you know, for justice.

Maybe we could also have a bureau, but on the federal level, that only helped investigate things for the law. Some kind of federal bureau that investigates. That would be nice. Then maybe some department that followed through with their investigations with Justice, and the two could work together.

But you know, that is all made up wishing on the internet. In the end we will never know if they were tricked like a toddler on Halloween, or plotted treason in meetings that lasted entire days that we have logs for and that their political party supported. We will never know…