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Friday Fun Thread for September 12, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Born rural low/middle class. Parents are mailman and daycare worker, in a time/place when those were perfectly fine jobs to hold long-term and could afford you a house & kids. From my father's side, my ancestors all seem to be lower class employed menial workers, while my mother's side were farmers (though lost/abandoned the automation/upscaling race) and upper middle class artisanal workers owning their own store. Fittingly, one maternal uncle gifted me a book recording the lives of several generations of my maternal heritage, while my paternal side has maybe a few old fotos where my dad knows the names of most but not all people.

On paper I've moved upwards substantially - my parents didn't finish high school (and older generations barely even did elementary), while I'm a postdoc researcher at a reasonably prestigious but small university, and my wife is as well. Most would consider that upper middle class. But especially compared to my mother's ancestry, it does seem like a move downward in practice. We don't own anything (not our apartment, certainly not our work place) and nor do we even earn that well. Maybe we'll cobble together enough to buy our own house. Though yet otherwise, we personally know world-leaders in certain fields, so I guess you could say we are effectively just paying for the privilege of having a serious shot at the very top.