MNByChoice

How are you preparing for Friday's general strike? (January 23, 2026)

I want to ensure I am not forcing someone else to work.

I am arranging PTO, shifting hours earlier in the week, and getting errands done by Thursday. Also, asking people how they are getting ready to remind people it is happening.

Edits: This is a distraction from the world crumbling near me.

I just want to talk equations as those are distracting.

Original: I have been thinking of Generational Wealth lately, and my thinking is ~~unrefined~~ muddy. I wish to get feedback and your thoughts.

Before I learned of FIRE, I had assumed Generation Wealth required a wildly high sum of money (hundreds of millions of USD). Anything less was just a nice retirement. (I had also assumed retiring was simply impossible.)

Like with many things about compounding, it matters critically to not spend all of one's money and to have time. Too little money or too little times and money goes to zero. Even a little more than the "balance" point, and the number go to infinity.

At 2 children per household, the number of households being supported grows at a larger rate than reasonable investment gains. The tripling time at 4% real gain is 28.01 years. (The tripling time for supported households is shorter than this. Tripling time chosen as the initial household will then become 3. Though in my scenario below the number of households in each 28 year period only doubles.)

If each new generation are comprised of twins, starts to receive on their 28th birthday, and sadly this is the day their grandparents die, then the balance seems to work out if the initial parents overshoot their FI number by about 66% either by over-saving or not withdrawing for years.

(Generational Wealth depends heavily upon how many children each generation produces. One under earner/over producer of children will sink the whole thing... )

It would seem the best I can hope to do is to give my children and grandchildren an education and a head start. They will have to live their own lives and make their own contributions to their retirements.

I finally started to listen to "Sold a Story", then in a panic reviewed how my school system is teaching children to read.

While listening to episode 2, "The Idea", I learned that many students were taught how to read with the skills that are certain to make them poor readers. (This made me reflect on the recent news that a great many Americans don't read at the 6th grade level.)

I hope that you all check what your school district is doing, and like me find that the school district is following a good plan. (Minnesota requires the reading plans for school districts to be made public. I read the plan, and then I ran it through Gemini to check against "sold a story" as this is not my area of expertise.)

As an aside many reading program have suspiciously terrible names, like "Read Naturally". While the google I use found the main site quickly, criticisms of that program are harder to locate. (There are many criticisms of other programs that use the phrase "read naturally".)

Actual video is far better then the summary and is on Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1q7w6sx/former_governor_of_minnesota_former_navy_seal/ (I am failed to locate the original source.)

What are American’s doing now to prepare for the next USA government shutdown?

What were pain points from the previous shutdown?

The next possible USA government shutdown is Feb 1, 2026, which is just over 45 days away as I post this.

Here is a countdown clock: https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/time/government-shutdown-timer.php

#Posting here for the politics focused replies.

What are American's doing now to prepare for the next USA government shutdown?

What were pain points from the previous shutdown?

The next possible USA government shutdown is Feb 1, 2026, which is just over 45 days away as I post this.

Here is a countdown clock: https://www.calculatorsoup.com/calculators/time/government-shutdown-timer.php

#Posted here for the non-political replies.

https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

This is part 2. Part 1 discusses the relationship between power and key holders. Part 2 discusses this in terms of dictatorships and democracies.

Today I learned that even in a democracy, there are key holders that those in power must keep happy. It is interesting to review this video and reflect on who those key holders must be.

This is prompted by a post over on "Comic Strips@lemmy.world" about what Photographic Memory was called prior to the invention of photographs.

Looking into it, it seems that perhaps it was not notable until recently.

Photographic Memory, Eidetic Memory, Total Recall, and Hyperthymesia are all currently used for the ability, though often with different connotations.

Does anyone know of ancient writing on the subject?

I am discounting the trained memorization of bards and storytellers of old, which I understand typically used memorization and not "Total Recall". Please let me know if I am incorrect.

The Wikipedia pages on Eidetic Memory and Hyperthymesia cover different aspects, but neither cites anything older than “Funes the Memorious”. Funes the Memorious was written after the camera was invented. “Total Recall” is also used for the ability, but also does not appear to have a long history.

Unrelated but fun: ‘Photographic Memory’ The story of how we stored digital photographs