The last bear fatality in NH was in the 1700s. By and large they stay away from people.

A gun is less likely to stop a bear than a lot of other things.

If you bring anything and aren't hunting, bring some bells that jingle when you walk, or bear spray if you really want to be safe.

I realize that that stuff is inflatable, but even then, where exactly would they store all of their decorations?

I imagine their basement is basically a Spirit of Halloween store.

I don't have a PS 5, but...

Graphics improvements have gotten more subtle than in the past. If you double the amount of polygons on a model and make the textures a bit sharper with each generation, you're going to hit diminishing returns pretty quickly. Now, the biggest quality difference will be higher resolutions and better lighting, really.

The performance difference is substantial. If you don't care about 30fps vs 60, well, that's chewing up some of the performance jump too. If you do care, it's a revelation, though.

Look at the Switch. It is mobile hardware. It has basic 2016 era midrange smartphone levels of power. I'm not convinced that it is more powerful than an Xbox 360. And while there is a tremendous gap in capability and performance, the Switch still has a number of games that actually look pretty damn good on it, in spite of the fact that it is puny. Why? Because the art is good. Zelda might be overrated, and yes, you can see the hardware limitations of the Switch in full force, but the quality of the art in that game is exemplary, and for that it looks a lot more visually impressive than a lot of games that run on much more powerful hardware.

Hell, Half Life 2 still looks pretty good, and it's almost 20 years old now. Again, you won't mistake it for a modern game, but it aged well.

And then there's the realization that you don't need the new hardware to play a game. We aren't jumping from PS1 era graphics in to the early HD era. We are now limited more by the quality of the art than we are the power of the hardware.

Yeah, I think I was there when they were transitioning from the old one to the new one.

If you have enough money on hand, the frequency of being paid is irrelevant. I would recommend trying to have at least 3 months of expenses in the bank at all times.

You don't need to change your budget structure at all based on your payment frequency as long as you have enough money in the bank. The fact that your paychecks and bills will sync up less is not important so long as you have enough money.

If you move to a 2 week pay cycle, there will be a bit more variance month to month due to longer and shorter months. The "3 paycheck" month is literally irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you're paid on the 30th of one month or the first of another month. Your income is the same and the long term effect of being paid more frequently is that you get your money earlier. Some people treat the "3 paycheck" month like a bonus, but in reality, they are getting their first paycheck in the following month on the 12th or 13th instead of any earlier day, so treating it like a bonus is going to lead you to treat it unlike all of your other income.

We didn't even make it to the trail. The GPS was leading us to the wrong place and there were some signs that didn't lead us where we expected to be. We ended up in a housing development and very confused.

The only place I ever got lost in Iceland was trying to find this waterfall. Looks great!

I think that in general, we get more dysfunction in legislative positions than in executive positions.

There are certainly big exceptions to that, of course.

It depends on the state.

In some states, education is primarily funded at the state level, so the state collects the taxes earmarked for that.

In NH, education is funded at the local level, so depending on the tax base and budgetary needs, the costs per capita vary significantly.

This also applies to other locality based expenses.

The overall tax burden in NH is below average, but it isn't like it is miniscule compared to other states.

In NH, the overall state/local tax burden is 16th lowest in the country, at 9.6%. The lowest is Alaska (Which receives a disproportionate amount of federal support). The highest local/state tax burden is in New York, and the second lowest is Wyoming. Massachusetts is 11.5%, which is ranked 36th lowest.

Overall, more urban states have a generally higher tax burden, the northeast has a higher tax burden, and then some random states in the midwest fill in the upper echelon that isn't New England, NY/NJ Metro, or California. There is a correlation between more democratic states having higher tax burdens, but it is not as strong as one may think. There are other factors at hand, too. The states with higher tax burdens also tend to ship away a larger percentage of their income to the federal government - and some by very significant amounts.

Outside of the major exceptions to the rule, most states are in the 8-12% range.

This is from the Tax Foundation, a right leaning, fiscally conservative organization:

https://taxfoundation.org/tax-burden-by-state-2022/

Regarding donor states versus recipient states, the largest donor state is by far New York. In 2019, NY received $1172 per capita less in federal government money than the state sent to the federal govt. Per capita, Mass. is higher, but NY has been the biggest donor, year over year. Federal spending relative to the states can vary quite strongly on the basis of major expenses like military bases, so it isn't a 100% clean comparison, but generally speaking if a state is getting more federal money per person, its state tax burden is lower.

This report is from the Rockefeller Institue of Government, a nonpartisan but somewhat left leaning entity.

https://rockinst.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/2021-Balance-of-Payments-Report-web.pdf

I believe both of these sources are of adequate accuracy to understand the basic dynamic (though the latter is specific to NY and is much more detailed).

I don't think your experience is unique to central new Hampshire. We need more tradespeople, period.

I recently scheduled an electrician... For late November.

Everyone is booked.