kfwyre's recent activity

  1. Comment on Trackmania: Launch trailer in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    They have also released a community trailer for the game which I think does a better job of showcasing it than the launch trailer.

    They have also released a community trailer for the game which I think does a better job of showcasing it than the launch trailer.

    2 votes

  2. Comment on Trackmania: Launch trailer in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Totally understandable if you're not up for that. They did the buy-once model with the whole Trackmania 2 line of releases, so if you're interested in the series they're definitely worth getting....

    Totally understandable if you're not up for that. They did the buy-once model with the whole Trackmania 2 line of releases, so if you're interested in the series they're definitely worth getting. Trackmania United Forever, while dated, is also great value for your money.

    For me, I don't mind the subscription model given that Trackmania is a multiplayer-focused game that has continual costs for server upkeep. I'm also hoping the free-into-paid model will help bolster the playerbase like it did back with Nations. One of the downsides of the TM2 series is that they didn't pull in a lot of new players. Consequently, some are dead or close to it. I've recently been playing Lagoon and only once have I seen other players on multiplayer servers.

    Furthermore, I don't mind the cost, as the total price and duration of the subscription are far from onerous in my opinion. I paid the equivalent of a single full-priced AAA game and am fully subscribed for the next three years. Even if the game dies after that (please no!), I'll still have gotten far more than my money's worth in that time.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on Trackmania: Launch trailer in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Yeah, the tutorial levels are really just there to teach the concepts. I think it's actually a bad introduction to the game, IMO, as they're very un-fun. The Summer 2020 levels by Nadeo do a...

    Yeah, the tutorial levels are really just there to teach the concepts. I think it's actually a bad introduction to the game, IMO, as they're very un-fun. The Summer 2020 levels by Nadeo do a (mostly) good job of incorporating the gimmicks while being much more fun but, like you, I tend to prefer levels that are more just about driving and navigation. I spent a couple of hours on a fullspeed club server and there was nary a gimmick block in sight (save for the turbos, which I don't mind at all).

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Trackmania: Launch trailer in ~games

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    The new Trackmania title is finally out! I've been playing it since it released a couple of hours ago, and it's a nice update to the series. It's a bit buggy at the moment, but the issues will no...

    The new Trackmania title is finally out! I've been playing it since it released a couple of hours ago, and it's a nice update to the series. It's a bit buggy at the moment, but the issues will no doubt be patched soon.

    Some quick pointers for anyone interested:

    • The game is free! Kind of! Its intro tier (far more than a demo) gives you a good amount to do in the game which will definitely let you know whether or not you want to pay money for it. As someone who loves the series, ponying up the full cost of the game was the easiest of decisions for me, and I'm very happy it's a single cost and the game isn't filled with microtransactions.

    • It's available through Uplay and the Epic Game Store, but apparently the EGS release will just launch Uplay, so it's easiest to get it through Uplay unless you don't mind nesting launchers.

    • If you decide you want to pay for the game, here is the needlessly confusing breakdown of what you get. Here is a better breakdown, but I still put it on Nadeo for making things unnecessarily confusing.

    • I haven't tried it out on Linux but plan to do so soon once I figure out how. It did not work for me. This person got it working though, so YMMV, Linux users.

    • The game has a very low skill floor and a very high skill ceiling, so it is easy to get into and stays fun for a long, long time as you improve at the game.

    • Trackmania isn't like a regular racing game and is more of a multi-player time-trial challenge. Racers all together get a finite amount of time on a track to try to post the best time, starting and restarting whenever they want. You can't collide with other racers, and the game's physics are very precise and replicable, so it's all about skillful driving. Shaving millseconds off your time as you master the controls and tracks is an amazing feeling.

    • Because the game was just released, there aren't a ton of great custom maps, but Trackmania is known for its user content. In a month or two there will be thousands of amazing user-made maps across various different genres. It's the Mario Maker of racing games.

    • If you want to watch someone playing it live, check out Riolu on Twitch. He's one of the best TM players in the world, and even he is struggling with the new ice blocks they added!

    • Keep in mind that the game, while highly competitive, isn't entirely serious either. Sometimes maps are meant to be funny or ridiculous. It's part of the game's low-key charm. :)

    • This series has the chillest multiplayer community I've ever experienced. I've never seen the kind of rage and bile that are common for other games.

    Anyway, if you've never played a Trackmania, this new entry is a great way to get in on the game and see if it's for you. Also, if you have any questions about the series, let me know. It's my very favorite gaming series of all time, and I've put thousands of hours in across its various releases.

    7 votes

  6. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    I've just been playing Snakeybus single-player, but I might try out multiplayer now that I've got the basics under my belt. As for TrackMania, Stadium and Canyon are my two favorite environments,...

    I've just been playing Snakeybus single-player, but I might try out multiplayer now that I've got the basics under my belt.

    As for TrackMania, Stadium and Canyon are my two favorite environments, and the new one is basically a Stadium remake (again). In true TrackMania fashion, the new release is a bit confusing. Essentially, it's free with limited features and you can pay up for higher tiers. This is what they did back with TrackMania Nations and that was their big breakthrough, so I'm hoping they see similar success with this release. I'm just happy it's a pay-once kind of model and not filled with microtransactions, which I was worried about.

    Also, it releases in less than half an hour! Not that I'm anxiously awaiting it or anything... :)

  7. Comment on [WARNING - transphobia] Gender critical has been banned - here are some links I’ve collected in ~test

    kfwyre
    Link
    This will likely be gone soon, but please take a moment to consider that one of the main communities for your ideology just got banned from a major website for contributing to a culture of hatred....

    This will likely be gone soon, but please take a moment to consider that one of the main communities for your ideology just got banned from a major website for contributing to a culture of hatred. Please reflect on why. I genuinely want you to understand why the ideas you're putting forth here are hurtful and damaging.

    18 votes

  8. Comment on Tell me about your living space in ~life

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Your mention of people walking on the roof reminds me of a story from my life. I had recently moved to a new city and wasn't comfortable being openly gay there yet. Part of it was that I wasn't...

    Your mention of people walking on the roof reminds me of a story from my life.

    I had recently moved to a new city and wasn't comfortable being openly gay there yet. Part of it was that I wasn't sure how accepted I would be, but part of it was also that I didn't want to pigeonhole myself as "the gay guy" for any social groups I'd join (which I'd had plenty of experience with in the places I'd lived before).

    I'd met a girl and we became fast friends and spent a good amount of time together. One night while we were hanging out she suggested we go up on the roof of her apartment building during the evening, so I did and it was absolutely lovely. It was twilight and the sky was still dimly beautiful from the sunset; you could see the city lights sparkling all around us; faint sounds from below filled the air with noise but the kind that makes everything feel far away. It was gorgeous and moving -- an ideal romance moment.

    She, of course, was feeling exactly that. Meanwhile I, being inexperienced in love and having no romantic radar whatsoever (least of all for women), was completely oblivious. It wasn't until she started making some roundabout overtures about "us" that the realization hit me like a slap in the face. I felt a rising and immediate horror as it became suddenly clear to me that she had probably intended the whole excursion to the roof in the first place as a chance to spark the kindling of a new relationship. My mind raced: I thought we were just hanging out! How did I miss this?! How long has this been going on with her?!

    Caught in this fraught moment, I hastily considered the best way to deactivate the momentum of evening. Outing myself would have been easiest, but I was wary of doing that because once you tell someone, you don't know who they'll tell, and I still wasn't ready for everyone to know. Not outing myself, on the other hand, might require dismissals that could feel callous or mean-spirited, especially because at this point it was clear that I'd completely unintentionally led her on. I didn't want her to feel bad in the slightest, but is that even possible when you find yourself accidentally a lot further along romantically than you ever intended to be?

    I was having my crisis of conscience while she was continually hinting towards intimacy, and it was exactly then that the door to the roof opened and a very unhappy person started yelling at us. The person's apartment was right beneath us and she was sick of people always walking around and sounding like elephants on the roof and she hated the super for never locking the roof door and so on.

    It was a more effective and timely mood-killer than I ever could have asked for, and we promptly left -- all hints of romance dissolved the moment some stranger began loudly chastizing us. I've never been so happy being shouted at.

    I eventually did come out to her, by the way, but that was not before I had the chance to be party to yet another unintentionally misguided event. Her very buff, very attractive brother tried to intimidate me one time I came to the apartment they shared. He no doubt saw me as the new "potential boyfriend" of his sister, and he, as the older protective brother of his younger sister, no doubt felt compelled to convey a domineering machismo as a warning to me, letting me know I shouldn't even think about treating her wrong lest I wanted to square off with him.

    It was a paternalistic but also ultimately kind gesture. He was looking out for his little sis, and he was trying to do it in the best way he knew how: by giving me an unconditionally masculine show of force. Unfortunately for him, he made quite a strategic error. His attempt to intimidate the potential-boyfriend-of-his-sister-but-actually-closeted-gay-guy was to, one time I showed up at their apartment, deliberately answer the door for me wearing only a towel, leaving nearly all the large and rippling muscles of his body on full display. Masculine show of force indeed.

    I think he interpreted my shocked look as fear, so from his perspective, he probably felt that he was successful. Meanwhile, I can in hindsight appreciate the poetic reversal of the situation: now it was my turn to feel the one-sided romantic heat for a patently oblivious and unavailable man.

    10 votes

  9. Comment on Tell me about your living space in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    This is such an incredible reply! Thank you so much for being so thorough. It sounds like you're using your space very efficiently, and I love all of the little optimizations you've shared (e.g....

    This is such an incredible reply! Thank you so much for being so thorough.

    It sounds like you're using your space very efficiently, and I love all of the little optimizations you've shared (e.g. the lift-top coffee table, fitting things in nooks, hanging things on walls, etc.). Your space is lucky to have you. :)

    3 votes

  10. Comment on What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them? in ~games

    kfwyre
    Link
    Snakeybus I can't remember who (@Bauke, maybe?), but someone recommended this a long time ago in one of these threads and it's been on my wishlist ever since. I picked it up in the Steam sale, and...

    Snakeybus

    I can't remember who (@Bauke, maybe?), but someone recommended this a long time ago in one of these threads and it's been on my wishlist ever since. I picked it up in the Steam sale, and it's a delight. Crazy Taxi meets Snake. The best part of the game isn't even getting a high score; it's weaving your long bus chain in and out of the level and seeing all the parts of it moving simultaneously in a wonderful kinetic 3D knot.

    TrackMania 2: Lagoon

    I'm still waiting for the TrackMania reboot to come out (two days left!), and I'd never got around to buying this TM2 environment (I played it when it was included in Turbo but never bought the standalone). I picked it up in the Steam summer sale to tide me over until the new game and to complete my TM2 collection.

    Fan response is more negative than I expected, TBH. I think it's a great environment once you get used to the controls. It's definitely better than Valley. That said, it suffers from what everyone has always said about TM2: nobody's playing it. I was able to find people online once, and every other time I've checked in it's been dead. I'm still enjoying the solo play, but online TM is really where it's at for me. Here's hoping the new one, with its free-to-play option, is able to maintain a playerbase. ALSO EVERYONE HERE SHOULD TRY OUT THE NEW TRACKMANIA IN TWO DAYS. IT'S FREE.

    INFERNIUM

    So, this is an interesting one. It's very much an auteur-type gaming experience, quite unlike anything else I've played. The game is billed as a "survival horror approach to Pac-Man" which is certainly attention-getting but isn't very satisfying as an explanation. Basically, it's a first-person exploration game in which you harvest light balls while escaping ghostly enemies, but it bears very little resemblance to Pac-Man and much more to Amnesia.

    You can only harvest so much light (and there's only so much available in the world), and when you die, the light you were carrying is left where you died, and you're sent to an underworld with a limited number of lives that allow you to return to the overworld where, if you play your cards right, you can recoup the light that you lost. Light is used to restore lives, but you'll also need it to unlock barriers in the overworld. Basically the game is about you exploring, spending resources and gaining powerups to access new areas, all while avoiding deadly creepy things.

    If that were the only way to play the game, I would have stopped long ago. I don't enjoy horror games much, especially not ones of the "you can only run"-type. Thankfully, the developer has included an option, much like that of Soma, to deactivate enemies. This makes the game an atmospheric, non-threatening, exploration-based walking simulator.

    Playing it like this is far more enjoyable to me. I'm honestly a bit blown away by how much there is to the game. I thought it was going to be a quick 1-2 hours to finish, but I'm 3 hours in and I feel like I'm still just beginning. Plus, the environmental design is very compelling, with unusual geometry and aesthetics. In places I was reminded of The Witness, only with a much more gritty and surreal spin. I generally have a good sense of direction but I've gotten legitimately lost multiple times, which has been enjoyable rather than frustrating. The levels are labyrinthine and overwhelming by design.

    I can't give a blanket recommendation for the game as it's definitely not for everyone. It's very slow-paced, and is deliberately antagonistic to the player with its design (the developer actually prefers players play the game without knowing what's going on so that they can learn the game's systems as they go, so I've already said way too much with my post here). On the other hand, if you want an unusual experience with compelling environmental design and you've got a good amount of patience, consider this a hidden gem.

    5 votes

  11. Tell me about your living space

    ~life Ask (survey)
    With widespread lockdowns and quarantines having been in place for awhile now, I imagine many of us are more intimately familiar with our living spaces -- houses, apartments, rooms, wherever we're...

    With widespread lockdowns and quarantines having been in place for awhile now, I imagine many of us are more intimately familiar with our living spaces -- houses, apartments, rooms, wherever we're stuck -- than we ever have been. We know them inside and out, along with all their positives, negatives, and quirks.

    Tell me all about:

    • What's the breakdown of your living space?
    • What do you appreciate about it?
    • What bothers you about it?
    • In what ways have you made the space "yours"?
    • Do you share it with anyone: pets, plants, or people?
    • Are you happy with where you are?
    • Is there anything you'd recommend for others regarding their living spaces?
    26 votes

  12. Comment on An open discussion related to time and/or the aging process in ~talk

    kfwyre
    (edited )
    Link
    I don't know if this is part of aging or just simply my own unique emotional situation, but the amplitudes of my emotions have compacted over time. When I was younger, my low points were 0s and...

    I don't know if this is part of aging or just simply my own unique emotional situation, but the amplitudes of my emotions have compacted over time. When I was younger, my low points were 0s and they were absolutely devastating. Meanwhile, my high points were 10s and they were breathtaking.

    Now I've settled more into what feels like the 4 to 7 range. I still have relative lows and highs, but they're nowhere near the magnitude of what they used to be, good or bad. Undoubtedly major life events have the ability to push me outside of those limits (e.g. when COVID-19 first started spreading in the United States I dropped well below a 4), but outside of major, significant happenings, I coast in what is, ultimately, a very comfortable range.

    It sounds like I've been deadened somewhat, but I actually prefer it -- especially because a lot of my earlier life was filled with a lot more lows than highs. Where I'm at is comfortable, manageable, and expected, and that's very much my speed.

    15 votes

  13. Comment on What do your bookshelves look like, and how do you organize them? in ~books

    kfwyre
    Link
    As others have done, here are pictures of my shelves from the last topic. The books follow a rough Type > Size > Alphabetization hierarchy. The library as a whole is split into print books and...

    As others have done, here are pictures of my shelves from the last topic.

    The books follow a rough Type > Size > Alphabetization hierarchy. The library as a whole is split into print books and graphic novels/comics. I don't own a lot of print books (ebooks all the way!) and the ones I do own are mostly because they look nice on shelves or they don't/can't have ebook versions (e.g. I have a copy of House of Leaves that's on loan and not pictured).

    Everything else is graphic novels because you can't always get digital copies of them and I find that I appreciate the artwork better on paper than I do on screen -- especially for those where the art crosses the fold of the page and is meant to be seen side-by-side instead of one page at a time.

    For my comics, I simply tried to put the bigger editions higher up and the smaller volumes lower down for good aesthetics. Then, on each shelf, I alphabetize by title, unless books "go together" (e.g. all of Alison Bechdel's works are in one spot) or I need large books at the ends to keep the books from falling off the sides of the shelves (this is visible with The Encyclopedia of Early Earth and The One Hundred Nights of Hero which should be together but instead are making sure the books between them stay where they're supposed to).

    Embarassingly, there are a large number of books on these shelves that I still haven't read. My husband jokingly challenged me to finish them all during quarantine, and given how long that might go, it's become less of a joke and more of a genuine possibility. I've been slowly chipping away at them (I'm in the middle of Scott McCloud's The Sculptor right now).

    The upside to my collection, aside from the fact that I just enjoy its presence visually, is that almost nothing on this shelf cost full price. In fact, many of these I own only because they were going for dirt cheap on used/remaindered book sites. I was less interested in the specific title and more interested in the fact that there was a copy of it for, say, $3. The others I would get whenever one of the chain bookstores in my area would put out good coupons. They'd often have something like a "50% off orders over $50", and since graphic novels are expensive, I'd toss one or two in the cart, hit the threshhold for the discount, and get some very pricey editions for far cheaper than I should have (see: Absolute Watchmen).

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Higher ed: Enough already in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Yeah, as with anything so broad there's quite a spread, and a lot of it is dependent on age and development. As @Atvelonis mentioned, in general, the younger the students are the more adult...

    Yeah, as with anything so broad there's quite a spread, and a lot of it is dependent on age and development. As @Atvelonis mentioned, in general, the younger the students are the more adult guidance they need, and they increase in independence as they move up. By college, the expectation is that students are mostly independent learners, with adults filling expert and facilitator roles much more than navigator ones.

    Self-motivated learners of all ages will not have any problems with subjects they're interested in, but even they will have difficulty self-teaching in areas that they're less passionate about.

    5 votes

  15. Comment on Higher ed: Enough already in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    This is an incredible response. Thank you for taking the time to write it. I simply want to add that, as a career teacher, remote learning really showed me how much of my job is about having a...

    This is an incredible response. Thank you for taking the time to write it.

    I simply want to add that, as a career teacher, remote learning really showed me how much of my job is about having a "seat at the table" with my students. Sharing space, developing relationships with them, and navigating continual social and instructional moments is not just foundational but downright essential to my job and their educations. All of that is nonexistent when we're separated by screens.

    I'm dreading starting next year, which will almost certainly be partly remote, because at least with this year I knew my kids and they knew me before the remote lessons began. Next year I'll be starting fresh with students with whom I have no pre-existing rapport. That's almost impossible to build via video chat and is even harder than normal in-person. How can my students know that they make me smile every day when my face is hidden behind a mask?

    10 votes

  16. Comment on Three stories of people fired after being accused of racism in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    You bring up some important context, but I want to run for a moment with the idea that each of these stories is genuinely and completely true. Let's assume for a second these are all examples of...

    You bring up some important context, but I want to run for a moment with the idea that each of these stories is genuinely and completely true. Let's assume for a second these are all examples of overreaction and harm done to innocents in the name of anti-racism. I'm doing this specifically because I think there's an important point to be made about "the narrative" here: even if all of these show that anti-racism has genuinely run amok in certain circumstances, that doesn't mean that racism doesn't exist or that anti-racism is the "real evil". Acknowledging the former doesn't automatically yield the latter, though there are certainly many encouraging that kind of thinking. They'll likely be successful should we not deliberately interrupt this line of thinking.

    In short: we can acknowledge any genuine harms done here without negating or overshadowing much larger harms elsewhere. Furthermore, in discourse that heavily relies on a "narrative", we can have presence in that story by reinserting that which we find absent from it.

    The above is a bit abstract and not necessarily intuitive, so I want to expand a bit on what I mean here, and in doing so I'm going to have to wade into some difficult territory. I'm going to try to do the best that I can to be fair, intellectually honest, and centered in my values.

    What follows is a broad generalization which I don't love doing, but it's unavoidable for me in talking about this concept, so I'm just going to go ahead with talking about the "right" and "left" as opposed monoliths for a moment.

    Too often I see a sort of grappling for "the narrative" where people will be forced into absurd positions because to concede a point or acknowledge a wrinkle makes it feel like capitulation to the other side. In this instance, "the narrative" of the right says that racism isn't a real issue and anti-racism is the real harm, and so when faced with situations where anti-racism has contributed to overreactions and has done genuine harm, many people on the left will ignore or cast doubt on them because they don't want to feed into the right's narrative.

    This is the wrong counter, IMO, because it sets us up for rhetorical and ideological failure. On the ideological side, it makes us look like we're arguing in bad faith and often creates instances of "hypocrisy" can be used against us. We can see another example of this in how unions, which have largely been treated as unconditionally good by the left to avoid bolstering the right's anti-union positions, are now being critiqued harshly by the left for their role in contributing to police brutality in the US.

    Meanwhile, on the rhetorical side, in playing defense, we're essentially allowing others to set the terms of the debate in the first place. There isn't anything wrong with acknowledging that anti-racism has, in these instances, run amok. In fact, doing so bolsters our ability to highlight racism, because if someone's outrage about innocents being harmed is activated by these stories here, then it speaks volumes about their biases, blind spots, and prejudices if that same sense of outrage isn't activated by the harms done by racism itself. In hot take Twitter-speak: If people getting unfairly fired from their jobs grinds your gears, wait to you hear about people unfairly dying.

    If our radar for injustice is one-sided, it means that justice isn't an ideal we hold but a sport we hope to win. People can use this against us by hyper-focusing on certain examples that are detrimental to our side and then revel in our discomfort as we grapple with whether to acknowledge them. Some of these are made up, which is its own issue, but in instances where they're genuine, we're falling into a trap by treating them as "sided". The trap is that, when they lob those amplified examples, we return the volley instead of refusing to play in the first place. The truth is that sometimes we are overzealous in our pursuit of justice. Sometimes we do cause harm to innocents. Sometimes there is collateral damage to our policies. Sometimes we do genuinely bad things. All of these do actually happen, but the message about them, provided they're genuine examples, shouldn't be to sweep them under the rug and make it look to everyone else like we have something to hide, nor should it be to cast doubt about them in the first place as a way of not having them stick.

    Instead, we can acknowledge the issues but contextualize these volleys as a way of redirecting focus to the larger injustice at play. Proportionality is key. Assuming the volley is truthful and not fabricated, we can speak through terms of recalibration rather than denial. Yes, these people losing their jobs is an outrage, and I get even angrier when I think about people who have lost family members and friends. That's why it's so important that we address this. Someone who's willing to amplify outrage but is uninterested in pursuing solutions isn't interested in justice but in winning. Someone who's view of injustice is limited to group membership isn't interested in justice but in winning. Responses to this kind of messaging is an easy way of outing people interested in winning and highlights either the limits of their empathy or the bad faith of their rhetoric.

    Harm does not erase harm, so we should not ignore the harm we do, even if it is from our own "side". In fact, our pursuit of justice as an ideal demands that we address it. However, it is equally if not more important that we push back when someone overstates its scale and reach, which happens frequently as a way of pulling focus from other greater harms. It is intellectually dishonest on their part, but if we are intellectually dishonest in return, they've beat us at their own game -- a game not even worth playing in the first place.

    You'll note that I began speaking about left and right but I deliberately moved away from that as I progressed because I do not believe this is limited to those roles or this particular topic. Treating justice as sided is detrimental no matter where you stand, and the rhetorical and ideological vulnerabilities it opens up apply no matter where you stand. This is not an equivocation of harm but an acknowledgement that it's counterproductive to treat the pursuit of justice as a sport rather than a struggle. We are doing a disservice to those that need justice when we miscalibrate our meters for it.

    23 votes

  17. Comment on The Go! Team - Semicircle song in ~music

    kfwyre
    Link
    I completely forgot that The Go! Team existed! I used to absolutely love Proof of Youth. Thanks for linking this. I'm going to have to see what they've been up to in the past ::checks dates::...

    I completely forgot that The Go! Team existed! I used to absolutely love Proof of Youth. Thanks for linking this. I'm going to have to see what they've been up to in the past ::checks dates:: THIRTEEN years?! When did that happen?!

    2 votes

  18. Comment on I just made my last ever student loan payment! in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Yeah, I've got a new mortgage, and my car is ~20 years old and will likely need replacing soon, and retirement is definitely something I can contribute more to, so I'm, of course, still on the...

    Yeah, I've got a new mortgage, and my car is ~20 years old and will likely need replacing soon, and retirement is definitely something I can contribute more to, so I'm, of course, still on the treadmill.

    And I agree with you that the student loan burden is ridiculous, and it's only gotten worse as of late. I consider myself lucky that I got into both undergrad and grad school before prices fully ballooned. A lot of my coworkers have kids who are soon-to-be college aged or have already started, and I've had to have a lot of conversations with them about how many of the even moderate-cost options out there will lock the kids into deleterious payoffs incommensurate with real-world salaries.

    The higher end is even worse. One of my coworker's sons was planning on attending a $50K-a-year school, and I walked her through her son's plans with a loan repayment calculator, showing that the minimum salary he'd need to pay off his loans, even across 10 years, was pretty much unattainable. Many other parents I know are continuing to work -- often doing more than they ever have -- in order to supplement their incomes to pay for their students' outrageous tuition costs. It's transparently broken. Rather than the loans being an investment in a future salary, they're a financial sinkhole. Something needs to change.

    4 votes

  19. Comment on I just made my last ever student loan payment! in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Lol, yup! I am also big on teaching them basic password and online account security.

    Lol, yup! I am also big on teaching them basic password and online account security.

    3 votes

  20. Comment on I just made my last ever student loan payment! in ~life

    kfwyre
    Link Parent
    Awesome! I'm so happy for you!

    Awesome! I'm so happy for you!

    3 votes