secnarf

1/5 for me, saved by the Washington Monument - I couldn't even think of anything else the clue could possibly be referring to.

I got Downton Abbey, never having seen it, because following Maggie Smith's death, her character with the last name Crawley was mentioned approximately 40 times on the news/radio and in articles I read. So it didn't take much for me to connect the name Crawley to Downton Abbey while watching Jeopardy that night. I was half expecting Maggie Smith herself to come up in a clue, per the J! curse.

0/5 this week :(

1/5 for me - just Albright. Started off strong, at least...

I never said I lived in NYC or the US - you actually started by generalizing to all millenials. You said you were tired of millenials blaming the older generation, which is what I was responding to. I was specifically referring to people still working full time jobs. After you retire, it does get a bit harder to gauge things like that as your income typically will decrease. Whether or not something like housing should also be treated as an investment is a whole other debate. My personal opinion is that treating housing as an investment to secure one's financial future is a large part of why housing is so unaffordable now - because yes, it then needs to appreciate in value more than salaries but this has the effect of eventually pushing everybody out of the housing market. This is fine for things that are "optional" but housing isn't - and even if you argue you can rent instead of own, this also has the side effect of increasing rents quite a bit too. This is also why there is little appetite by those in government to do more than pay lip service towards fixing the housing crisis - because a good chunk of the population, those who already own homes and have seen them appreciate in value, does not actually want housing to be more affordable. I think the big difference here - as someone also in mid-30s - is that you were eventually able to achieve more. You had hardships initially but were able to overcome them and as you have mentioned children, I will go ahead and make an assumption that you were eventually able to afford a place that would house said children. Many people this age nowadays have no prospects of ever being able to achieve more, no matter how much hard work they put in. This isn't short term pain for long term gain - it's the endgame.

I couldn't even parse the FJ clue today - too many he/him/his and I couldn't figure out if they were referring to Monroe or who turned out to be Lafayette. I was please to instaget "periodic" though.

My area is nothing like NYC. There are some family and work factors that have prevented me from moving provinces, which I have considered and actively looked into, in order to find an affordable place to live. Not everybody can pick up and move wherever they want. I have aging parents and a sister with medical needs, and there are the complexities and expense of re-licensing. In my province, I have four city options for work, and then I am actually required to live within 1 hour from work. I could not afford to have a small townhouse in any of those four cities. I did move to one of the less expensive cities, when I was able to find work there. I don't know what your income bracket is, but when they were buying a house, they were lower middle class. They are now upper middle class. I'm not trying to compare, simply giving other examples. I think it's more relevant to compare my parents to me, than my parents to you. I would also appreciate if you stopped making assumptions about my situation. Again, nobody (including Mabel) was blaming the older generation. The problem is people saying to "get realistic with your expectations" when the only thing realistic is a 1 bedroom condo that is constantly in a state of disrepair. How am I supposed to have children? I don't have decades to make that happen. If I don't have sufficient housing, it's irresponsible to choose to have kids that I cannot house. Or is it an unrealistic expectation to want children? And if it is, what does that say about our society? I might feel differently if I were working a minimum wage job. The reality is that my single income is more than the median family income in my city. It has reached a point where the vast majority of people would not be able to afford their own houses if they had to buy it at market value today. Mostly I'm just sad I wasn't about three years younger - it could have made a world of difference for me in terms of what I could afford.

I guessed China and Mongolia :(

I would kill to have a small 2 bedroom condo for $410,000 today. In my city, they are double that. A larger 2 bed 2 bath in a nicer area of the city is over $900. My parents - born in 1955 and 1959 - cannot believe the state of housing and how much worse it is today. When they were my age, they often tell me, as long as you had a full time job you could get a house. Maybe not a very big one, or fancy or anything like that, but you could get one on a minimum wage job. Now, you can't get one on four times minimum wage. My dad was the kid picking up pop can tabs to exchange for money to buy food, he was by no means rich, and my mom was an immigrant whose family lost nearly everything in the war. They didn't come from money. When they bought their house, it was certainly difficult for them with the 18% interest rate. They didn't have an easy time, but it was at least a possibility for them, unlike today. I talk to many of my older coworkers, those nearing retirement - universally, they say they would not be able to afford their current houses (at current market value) with their current salaries. Many of them have children around my age or a bit younger, who are facing the same struggles, so they get it. Maybe it's different in the US than here - Facebook sometimes shows me houses for sale in the US and the prices are astonishingly cheap, but I don't know how real those are. Any objective measure states that it is worse today. That doesn't mean that, if you compare an individual person 40 years ago compared to an individual person today, that the person today will always be worse off. The statistics aren't meant to invalidate someone's experiences. However, OVERALL it is harder now for 20-30 somethings to buy a house than it was 40-60 years ago. My personal experience aligns with the statistics. I have a coworker around my age who came into a large inheritance from the loss of her parents very young, who obviously had a different experience and owns a house that I will probably never in my lifetime afford. Her experience also doesn't negate the statistics, but that doesn't mean her experience isn't valid or real.

The fans also called them OMIT-B in season 2.

I read the "bag of beans" line as sarcasm, but even despite the insanely high interest rates in the 80s, housing was far more affordable relative to average salaries then - and has never been less affordable than it is now. I have watched and read many mathematical breakdowns comparing - usually they compare through the years from the 70s onwards. One of our local news stations runs it every so often also. And as for "boomers own everything" - which is not what Mabel was implying, I don't think - again the evidence is that since people are living longer, and wanting to live in their homes longer, there are fewer homes available for people wanting to break into the housing market, since supply has not kept up with population growth. I also don't know that Mabel was specifically referring to the 80s. The real "Arconia" building is from 1908, and if I remember season 2 correctly, the fictional Arconia is also from around that time. The youngest boomers would have been buying houses in the early 1980s, but the oldest ones were well ahead of that. The fact is, I could win a quarter of a million dollars tonight in the lottery draw, and I still would not be able to afford a small townhouse in my city, despite a 6-figure salary and a $100,000 down payment already saved up to add to the $250,000 in hypothetical lottery winnings. Obviously Mabel and I have very different situations, but I still chuckled at the bag of beans line, because I get it. Even the housing prices 5 years ago feels like a bag of beans compared to today.

I'm in!

Didn't he do that with Tina Fey's character? I felt like I had seen it before. I missed that line! Though now I am confused if that is what led the group to the incinerator, or if Gravey did?

Her issue is that the industry is failing to light actors with dark skin properly, even on a racially diverse show such as Bridgerton, and she is having to speak up on set to ensure that the lighting is appropriate for someone of her skin tone - which is well beyond the job that she is there to do. The article did explain this, but if you are more interested in the history of why this is such a systemic problem, this article explains a bit more.

Finishing off the season at 0/5. I averaged 1.2 per week (down from last year's 1.5) and got a total of 54 correct, down from last year's 69. Also fewer asterisks - 9 this year, 12 last year. On the plus side, I did get my first perfect week this year! In celebration - a tiramisu. Shaped like a 0 in honour of my most frequent score (16 weeks this year), but containing lady fingers shaped like a 1 in honour of my second most frequent score (15 weeks this year).

Me too :(

2/5 - McCain and Salk.

As someone who also said Congo (debated back and forth between DRC and Congo), it shouldn't be, because it didn't have a former capital whose name is Portuguese for "lakes". I should have approached the clue from the linguistics side, not the "country named for a river" side. I did get FJ today though - immediately thought polio, and took a beat to pull "Salk" out of my brain.

0/5 this week :(

I'm in my early 30s, and we learned about Helen Keller in elementary school and also watched The Miracle Worker.

1/5, just Helen Keller, but I very nearly overthought that one - was flipping between her and Anne Sullivan.

I said Pluto for FJ, although I was pretty sure it was discovered well before the 1970s. I googled to check, and it was discovered in 1930. Also, the little info bar on the side of the google page calls Pluto "Our favourite dwarf planet since 2006". Pluto was always my favourite planet. I refuse to accept its dwarf status.

1/6 - just the tiebreaker. I should have got Beirut - It was "on the tip of my tongue". Couldn't retrieve the name in time.

He is so cute! In my experience, that initial "safe" place becomes the safe place pretty much forever. I think the only way would be to totally block access. As for coming out for visitors, again some cats are just shy. I'm not sure there is anything to do there other than ensure he has access to a safe space.

1/5 for me.