Good stuff!1 CAT FAN wrote: ↑Mon Feb 01, 2021 6:28 pmThe best of times are when I'm alone with you
Some rain some shine
We'll make this a world for two
Our memories of yesterday will last a lifetime
We'll take the best, forget the rest
And someday we'll find these are the best of times
These are the best of times
The headlines read "These are the worst of times"
I do believe it's true
I feel so helpless like a boat against the tide
I wish the summer winds could bring back paradise
But I know, if the world turned upside down
Baby, I know you'd always be around
Actually, these are the best of times and getting better. We're just too spoiled in America or too oppressed in some other far away place to realize it. In 2000, I think it was the United Nations that pledged that by the year 2015 half the world's population would be lifted out of poverty.
The world, with America's helped managed to hit that mark two years ahead of schedule in 2013.
And every single day, another quarter-million people around the world, mostly in Africa, climb out of poverty as described as earning in US dollars $1.97 a day. Now that's a REALLY low bar and any sane person in a western culture would rightly claim that they could not live on $10 dollars a week.
Two points there:
1) They had to pick SOMETHING to define as abject poverty and in Europe in the late 1800's the averave person was living on todays equivalent of one dollar a day, less than what the UN defines as the poverty line.
2) I have a good friend in Uganda that I chat with every day on Facebook. I was scam-baiting about 6 months ago for the sake of entertainment and started chatting with this dude. Night after night I waited for "the ask". It never came. To be sure he let me know how destitute his life was and did not deny that it would be great if I could help out. But mostly he just wanted to talk about God and what the rest of the world outside of Africa was like.
He can testify that he can survive on $2 a day. It's a miserable life on that kind of salary but he can afford rent and food with $2 a day. With $3 a day he can afford rent, food, and data for a day on his old shtty cell phone. He loves music and Rock N Roll. Never heard of Queen, Kiss, or Rush until we started chatting and I sent him some YouTube clips. He thought Kiss was AMAZING when he saw his first KISS video which was, "I Was Made For Loving You."
Soon I learned to ask how much data he had budgeted for the day before I sent him any new clips because just a few music videos on YouTube consumes all his data for the day.
With $4 a day he can afford rent, food, 1 day of data, and put back five dollars a week for savings.
How do I know he's not scamming me? One, because I'm so broke I couldn't send him any money even if I wanted to. And two, because if I've chatted with 1 scammer I've chatted with 100 and within 5 mins they are begging for money and if you prove not to be a source they stop talking and move onto their next Mark (pun intended).
