A couple of years ago I got my wife to finally play Portal and Portal 2 for the first time. Its been long enough she was entirely unaware of any of the memes about the game so she immediately fell in love with the companion cube and cried when she realized she had no choice but to incinerate it, even going so far as trying to find a bug to exploit to bring it with her

When they do you can still play 2009scape! Has up to 5x XP modes in case you want a less grindy experience, a single player mode and a brilliant community

Worth noting that OSRS is really just a fork of RuneScape from around the mid RS2 days, (if I remember correctly it’s based on a full backup someone found of their codebase, so it started as “hey look we found this old version of the game in a box in one of our offices, wanna play?”) and now it contains more new content than original content. Heck way back in the day the idea of a sailing skill was always a silly joke that nobody took seriously, and I’m talking back when Hunter and slayer were being added. Yet here we are.

I hate to say it, but I almost appreciate the honesty that comes from multiple different alphabet soup brands selling the exact same item often with the exact same photos. Additionally, unbranded items aren’t always poor quality.

I’ve actually got some unbranded Christmas light strings I bought because I just wanted to put some lights on some columns at my wedding and wanted to spend less than $100 doing so, and those light strings have outlasted every commercial Christmas light string I’ve purchased. Heck I have a couple of those strings which have been on for 3+ years straight.

Most unbranded items are made by factories that do OEM and ODM work for actual brands that we’ve all heard of, so they know how to make quality products and they can get more ongoing orders if they make products that are worth restocking. Sometimes you get burned but far more often than not I end up with something that’s relatively decent quality and fullfills the need I have for the item

I mean it would be very space efficient to build such a space on some of where the parking lot is. A smallish parking space is 8’x16’ so take 3 spaces, assuming each pod needs an exterior space of 4x8, stacked 2 high you can easily fit at least 32 pods in just 3 parking spaces with enough space leftover for hallway and a communal kitchen or something. They already have a public bathroom and shower facility so they’d only need the sleeping space and some communal recreation space that they can keep open 24/7 for their students staying in the pods

I do genuinely wonder if some amount of vaccine skepticism comes from a place of just not wanting to get a shot.

Would a safety deposit box at a bank be an appropriate option for your off-site backups?

This is the real consideration, depending on your career so far, such a role might be easier just left off the resume. But they did say it was an internship so they likely have no good career experience to speak for. Personally, I’d aim for purely talking about the experience and just say that “the internship ended”

Good luck running your steam engine without it!

Its actually pretty common practice when restoring a steam engine to run it on compressed air to test it’s a ability to hold the amount of pressure it needs to. Much less of a catastrophic failure if compressed air leaks out without warning than 400° steam

So I recently looked at both Girlscouts and Scouts of America for my daughter. Honestly when I tried to compare with Scouts of America the folks from Girlscouts were very sexist and very quick to bash on their competition while Scouts of America was just like “yeah were gonna go hiking and make pinewood derby cars and have a good time” both organizations have their problems but Scouts of America was noticably the less toxic of the two at this point

What are you even arguing anymore? Is it that important to “win” at this random internet argument?

Show me the place where you can both earn the $100k AND afford the homes

That was your original comment. I listed off major cities with decent supplies of housing stock available below 500k

You responded

How many $100k jobs am I going to find in Milwuakee and Detroit?

As well as pointing out that

median household income in Pittsburgh is in the low $60k

I pointed out that major cities tend to have high paying jobs available for highly skilled workers. You specified working in tech and demanded real world data, so I provided real wage data showing tech jobs and highly skilled jobs paying over 100k and in the interest of fairness I included some where the median isn’t a full 100k but many workers in that field do make over 100k.

So in conclusion, I listed off major cities where one can both make 100k and afford homes. Let’s not move the goal posts anymore please.

Okay lets dig into some BLS data then!

Since you brought up Pittsburgh, one of the largest cities in Pennsylvania let’s look at the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for Pennsylvania in 2024

• Web developers in Pennsylvania make a median annual salary of $92,930, and the 75th percentile make an annual salary of $117,000 which oh look is over 100k
• Network and Computer Systems Administrators make a median salary of $94,420 and the 75th percentile make an annual salary of $104,210 which again oh look is over 100k
• Database Administrators make a median annual salary of $105,100
• Data Scientists make a median annual salary of $107,450

Is that too tech heavy?

• Funeral home managers make a median annual salary of $100,080
• Transportation, Storage, and Distribution Managers make a median salary of $119,550
• Clinical and Counseling Psychologists make a median salary of $103,980
• Pharmacists make a median salary of $133,720

And because I listed the two largest cities in Wisconsin lets look at Wisconsin quickly as well:

• Web developers in Wisconsin make a median annual salary of $92,930, and the 75th percentile salary is $117,000 which oh look is over 100k
• Software Developers make a median annual salary of $114,030
• Computer Programmers make a median annual salary of $104,080

Too tech heavy?

• Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers make a media salary of $92,790 with a 75th percentile salary of $104,430
• Human Resources Managers make a median salary of $148,000 with a 10th percentile salary of $93,450 (so its not just super-high earners skewing the data, by the way the 90th percentile is $213,680)
• Veterinarians make a median salary of $118,030
• Pharmacists make a median salary of $141,090
• Air Traffic Controllers make only a median salary of $108,330 (which is shockingly low for how famously high-stress of a career that is!)

And lets just for the heck of it look at Montana!

• Sales Managers make a median salary of $138,210
• Software Developers make a median salary of $120,950
• Data Scientists make a median salary of $111,490

So my point still stands, looking at states with much lower cost of living and highly skilled professions are still highly compensated, many folks well above 100k/year

Oh and before you bring up the median salary for all occupations in these states being 60k (an amount firmly in the middle class that you can live comfortably off of in these states) the median salary in New York and California, states with famously unaffordable housing in their cities, the median salaries are only $80k and good luck getting a house in these cities at that salary!

How many $100k jobs am I going to find in Milwuakee and Detroit?

These are literally major cities with populations measured in the millions. There’s plenty of high paying jobs to be had. And the best part is, since home prices aren’t measured in the millions you can survive on a lower income.

Also I work in tech too. I’ve interviewed for jobs making $80-120k in some of the listed cities. I know people making over 100k in some of the listed cities. Median income is just that, the median. Some people are going to make more and some people are going to make less. Highly skilled workers in any major city will make high pay. Sure you might shave off 10-20% from your expected wage in your sector in a lower cost of living city but your housing costs will likely be literally be half or a third of that when compared to LA, New York City or the San Francisco Bay Area, plus with that lower cost of living comes more options if you become burnt out from your highly paid and likely high stress job, you can afford to jump ship and change careers

I meant it not in terms of pay but in terms of personality. There’s a few too many Salesforce admins with personalities like what SethTaylor@lemmy.world described

So the thing with Salesforce Admins, is its a sub-career within IT that requires minimal technical knowledge to be good at, plus by the nature of the job you end up working with vendor support, so if you’re really not good at your job you can simply pass everything to the vendor to do and just get paid to manage the projects and pass them between the business and the vendor.

I worked with a Salesforce admin who did exactly this and he collected a crazy salary for about a year while his boss tried to convince his boss’s boss to fire him for not being able to demonstrate the skills that his resume implied. I also later learned that he was also working at his brother’s Salesforce consulting firm at the same time, so extremely unprofessional and a clear conflict of interest.

Anyways, my point is, I’m not at all surprised that your sister who sounds like they’re kinda disconnected from reality works as a Salesforce admin. That’s just the aura that some Salesforce admins give off!

It’s all a numbers game really. But chances are the savings and spending you made while working a high paying job will greatly work in your favor when shifting to a much lower paying job. 5 years of 12% 401k savings (6% plus employer matching) while working at 100k will save equivalent to 10-15 years at 50k thanks to compound interest. Nice furniture, clothing and electronics you bought while working a high paying job will still be there while you work a lower paying job. Ultimately if you can downshift your spending, you can downshift your income, and cost of living is going to be a massive factor. If you can move from a HCOL area to a LCOL area you can kinda become a big fish in a small pond. I know a person who works remotely for a bay area tech company while living in rural Wisconsin. They have the biggest house in the town they live in because they make 4-6x what a local middle class household would want to make to live comfortably.

But for such a shift you have to be prepared to make changes to your spending, to how you view values of money, etc.

One side note: if you do move to a rural area, you have to plan on spending more on your vehicle. When you live in a rural area you might easily find yourself with a 40 mile daily commute, or going to a town 50 miles away for a specific store or service regularly. When you look at a rural area vs a city the age of folks’ vehicles drops dramatically because of the sheer number of miles people are putting on their vehicles

My in-laws are the country version of that. They make around 100k living in the sticks outside of a tiny town nobody outside of the area has heard of. The kind of place where you can live comfortably on a 30-40k family income with a bit of budgeting.

It all gets spent. ATVs, brand new cars, a camper, a gigantic 3k sq foot house. Heck after their very reasonable and modest house burned down they spent $3k in one go just on Christmas decorations. My mother in law is constantly getting scammed and constantly buying so much shit they don’t need nor really seem to want. My father in law will probably never be able to retire either due to the way she spends (she has been living on disability for quite a few years and now that that’s expired she’s just retired). I feel sorry for them but these are ultimately problems that they’ve made for themselves

There’s quite a few major cities in the US where houses are averaging around 300k which a 100k salary would easily cover the purchase of. Pittsburg, Detroit, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, St Louis for examples just off the top of my head. And if you look in rural areas between these major cities you can easily snag a 100k home so if you ever find yourself burnt out from your high paying career there’s that option too

She works in IT. Her main tool is Salesforce

Why am I not surprised that she’s a Salesforce admin?

Their first show (Knights of Guinevere) features a floating amusement park that rains garbage all over the workers below, and robots that have orbs on their heads that produce a silhouette strikingly similar to that of Mickey Mouse

Oh shit is Knights of Guinevere out?