Si tu veux qu'une chose soit bien faite, fais-la toi-même.

Moving the recent post list to the top looks like a simple thing to do.  It turned out to be a tangled snarl of string.



But it is done.  Mostly.

I'm sure my followers, the ones who follow my tracks, will have deleted my comment before I can post this.



So I took a screenshot.

  The patron saint of the people's justice.

The end of the video is great, Taylor seems to have been warming up to a conclusion well worth watching.  There is a point where she says 'collapse' and after that it gets more intense.  Saint Luigi,  reparata of the scales.

Are you on the side of the working class and a vision of socialism — or are you siding with capital and its enforcers?

Which Side Are You On" was written in 1931.  Employment was at 25%, massive poverty collapsed faith in the  American Propaganda Dream.  The struggle in Harlan County where the song was written documents class war.  Mine owners had private militias (Pinkerton's), the police, and politicians. The miners had nothing but solidarity. Florence Reece's song captured this stark divide.

The song I post was written in 1949 by Les Rice, a farmer from New York State, USA. It deals with the perverse injustice, exploitation and inequality Rice saw all around him. Pete Seeger wrote about Les Rice and this song:

QuoteLike most small farmers, he was getting intolerably squeezed by the big companies which sold him all his fertilizer, insecticide and equipment, and the big companies that dictated to him the prices he would get for his produce. Out of that squeeze came this song.

Quote from: K-Dog on May 19, 2025, 09:48 AMMy only real interest in 'am I rich' is to compare my situation to others with the deluded idea that if I and mine, have enough beans to be at least average, then we have enough beans to eat.  The idea being that when this Titanic goes down, you do not want to be below the top deck.  Not that it will matter if you do not get a lifeboat.

My main interest is more theoretical.  If you are going to view this as a Class War between 2 classes, Rich vs Poor, where is the line drawn, and on which side of the line does a given person stand?  Who do you fight with or for?  Do you have enough money to employ a Private Security Force to protect your property and life when the public police forces break down or become corrupted?  Will you attempt to maintain your wealth and position, or will you share it and freely give it away?  While others starve, will you hoard or share?  Are you with the crowd storming the Bastille, or are you one of the Royalty inside with their guards  defending the castle on the hill?  Which side are you on, boy, which side are you on?


When Warren Buffet said



Who was included in the Rich class?  Billionaires obviously, but also obviously it doesn't take a billion to be rich.  I think equally obviously $100M puts an individuals into the Rich class, but the line starts getting blurry below that.  At $10M a lot depends on other factors like nature of the assets, stage of life and family connections.

So, it's worthwhile to develop a decent idea of what "rich" actually means in Amerika in 2025?  This thread is examining that question.

My only real interest in 'am I rich' is to compare my situation to others with the deluded idea that if I and mine, have enough beans to be at least average, then we have enough beans to eat.  The idea being that when this Titanic goes down, you do not want to be below the top deck.  Not that it will matter if you do not get a lifeboat.

I am not about conspicuous consumption.  I'm only about conspicuous survival.  But I don't want to be too conspicuous about it.

We delude ourselves into thinking we can control events.  Those few who can are ruled by social pressures which make them act badly.

Fitting into the category of "Rich" in Amerika isn't as simple as a single number like net worth or annual income.  It also depends on where you live, your stage of life, debt load, how the wealth is distributed and used and intangible social factors as well.

This article does a little more in depth look at how much it takes to fit into the "Rich" category.  It's still not complete, but better than a reductive metric like 7 figure net worth.  His final conclusion:

If your net worth is under $2 million and your income is under $600,000, statistically, you're probably not rich—you're upper middle class. And in today's world, that still means you're doing very well.

https://www.benzinga.com/personal-finance/25/05/45483329/are-you-rich-or-just-upper-middle-class-heres-the-net-worth-and-income-it-takes-to-be-considered-wealthy

Are You Rich or Just Upper Middle Class? Here's The Net Worth And Income It Takes To Be Considered Wealthy

It seems cool, but how will you use it to get going on the new K9-AI Consulting Biz?

RE

Quote from: TDoS on May 18, 2025, 02:28 PMAnd what happened to my well calculated post on why K-Dog's $1,000,000 home, when sold, doesn't in any way make him homeless?

The same thing that just happened to the last post.

RE

Quote from: RE on May 14, 2025, 06:05 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on May 14, 2025, 02:36 PMIt seems to me a guy could make serious bank right now doing that.  Businesses do not know how to do it themselves.

Well then, make a biz card and drop in on some local biz you could write some AI app to improve their biz, explain how it will improve proffits and bill them @ $200/hr.  Call it K9-AI.  You can quit stocking shelves.

RE

Yeahhhhhhh,



This is an image, it runs in another window on my browser.

I just accomplished this within the last hour,  It is the result of so much effort I won't get into it.  But it mixes python php javascript code on a local web page that talks to a local server which runs a large language model.  I can switch the running model in and out.  Interesting to watch the personality of the responses change.  Nothing uses the web, (but I could not have built this without the web).

The leading edge of tech is referred to by those who actually are involved in the work as the bleeding edge.  I said I won't get into it but it is like Columbus landing on Hispaniola for me.  The concept is simple.  The language model is considered to be a bad student who has a cheat sheet.  In this case the entire Doomstead codebase has been placed into a vector database.  The Question is first sent to this database where semantic matches are made and returned.  This data becomes the cheat sheet which is then presented to the llm along with the original question, and like a cheating student the llm which knows nothing of the Doomstead codebase can answer the question.  Easy as pie.

Not so easy to actually do,  The number of software pieces that have to dance together to make this all work is huge.  Gigabytes of library code are used, and the webpage has about 1000 lines of code, most of it fancy-assed.  Getting all the software to all dance together for the first time is a major accomplishment.  And the vector database is written essentially from scratch using the fancy-assed code.  The buttons at the top do not do anything yet but are ready to wire up.  The send button sends and the toolbar text reports connection to the the LLM.  Essential operation achieved after days of wheel spinning.



* RAG  -- Retrieval Augmented Generation


A demo I ran across (and ran) uses a text 2000 lines long which is nothing but random facts about cats.  A simple chat LLM uses this text to be an expert on cats.  It may be fun to make an expert on doom and have people ask the doomstead questions.  We be an oracle!

Quote from: TDoS on May 18, 2025, 12:24 PM

Quote from: K-Dog on May 18, 2025, 11:40 AMSome people are rich enough to be nice.  It does happen.  I would be one of them.

You are one of them, based on net worth. As am I, and other various 7 figure net worth people Iimagine.

We have established that in today's economy in the FSoA, a low 7 figure net worth doesn't make you rich, merely comfortable, since the McMansion you live in by itself can be worth over $1M.

To be a lower end rich person, in addition to the McMansion, you need an annual income that puts you in the 1%, >200K or so.  I would add in addition to that other investments which provide enough annual ROI so that if for some reason you became unable to work, you could continue to live in that house, pay all your bills and live comfortably from the passive income.  A portfolio in the neighborhood of around $5M-10M would be about right.  In other words, you may work, but you don't HAVE to work.

RE