germyj

Really feels like a subtle signal that if you don’t toe the line on every EA organization decision, you must be an outsider.

Bingo. I like Scott's writing in general, I've interacted with him a few times, and EA criticism is one of three or so topics where disagreement gets you the outsider treatment.

He's slightly more amenable if you can provide an example that would've been "more effective," but "this was a bad decision"-type critiques will default to "the bigwigs are smarter than you."

I have found it somewhat... amusing... how this decision resulted in downgrading the entire community discussion section at EA Forum.

to have all of their line-items exhaustively audited

Historically, yes, that's the entire point of the movement. Audit everything in the goal of doing the most good and not wasting money on frivolities. The auditing approach faded as the movement has grown and became more longtermist, though I (somewhat) expect it to come back now that we're post-ZIRP, post-SBF.

On stagnated wages they're likely thinking of WTF Happened in 1971 (https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/) where productivity/wage growth detached from GDP.

On credit card interest, per Forbes this week (https://www.forbes.com/advisor/credit-cards/average-credit-c...) the average APR is 24%, indicating that there are rates above 24%, potentially well above.

On childbirth, don't forget the tails as the distribution shifts. 25-29 isn't too late, but as the average age increases you're raising the risk of various issues and you're going to have more people in "too late" side of the distribution. Add in egg-freezing and IVF turning out to not have such a success rate as predicted, you can wind up with a lot of disappointment.

OP is being rather... histrionic, but it doesn't do to overcorrect, either.

Seconding the 51! Excellent pen for the price.

If one doesn't mind jumping through a hoop or two regarding shipping, vintage Montblancs are just about as cheap from Japan as the 51 is in the US, and sometimes cheaper. The 12/14/32/220/etc are smaller than the flagship Meisterstucks, but they're also about 1/10 the price and really quite nice quality. Recently I've paid 30-50$ per pen to develop a little collection; the 220 was most expensive at 70$.

Piston fillers that are still going strong after decades, minimal maintenance, pleasant gold nibs.