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The SSA has a great site showing projections into the future of various proposed modifications. That plan specifically does not on its own solve the problem completely (though it does help, extending the time frame for exhaustion of the trust fund out to 2060 or so). If we wish to avoid the exhaustion of the trust fund, we’ll need other measures as well.

Having played a few of these, yeah, you hear it a little better as the player. They don’t sound that much different out front.

If you think about it, on an acoustic guitar the top of the guitar is the “speaker”, driven by the vibration of the strings through the bridge. That thin plate drives vibration of the air it’s in contact with on both sides, front and back. The vibrations from the front are desirable, because you want the audience to hear the guitar, but the sound projecting back is only useful to the extent you can reflect and redirect it with the body cavity and sound hole(s).

So yeah, to the extent that sound coming out of the side of the body is useful, these make a difference. It’s up to you if that’s actually important to you though. IMO these are less useful for performance situations, more for people playing for themselves (practicing, etc.)

There’s a trick to using box graters that most people don’t know (I certainly didn’t until recently)

• Lay a towel or some parchment paper in a sheet pan (optional)
• Lay the grater on the pan
• With your non dominant hand, hold the handle of the grater and the rim of the sheet pan
• With your dominant hand, grate, pushing away from you + into the countertop

The mechanics of pushing down/away are much better than holding the thing upright, dangling it over a bowl or whatever. Easy to just push with your palm too (and keep your fingers out of the way).

Obviously it’s not for everyone, but I had this conversation with my parents after telling them I planned not to have children and it was… Fine? Kind of a bonding moment, even, we mostly just laughed about it.

Not every parent/child relationship trends this way, but for some of us there’s a point in adulthood where you just become friends with your parents, and the parent/child roles sort of fall away. If everybody’s mature and secure enough to handle it, talk about whatever the hell you want to.

scientifically proven ecological collapse

This is a pretty specific thing, but the general “we’re all doomed” vibe is definitely not unique to today. Boomers and older had the threat of nuclear annihilation looming over them, and before that… well, disease and famine and death and destruction due to war have historically been the norm.

Imagine how you’d feel living in the Americas in the 16th or 17th centuries and either watching the destruction wrought by European settlers firsthand or, maybe worse, watching your peers die en masse of the diseases introduced by those settlers. Imagine living in Eurasia in the 13th century and watching the Mongol army sweep through.

None of this is to say that today’s challenges aren’t real and serious. Just that we’re not the first to face such challenges.