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One year of marriage. <3

11/15/2025

Today, November 15th, 2025, marks one year legally married to my wife, Kelsey Marie Lewis. We were legally married on Friday, November 15th, 2024. While we effectively eloped, leaving for a vacation a week after tying the knot, it still marked what has been a defining part of our journey through life together. We're still planning to have a proper wedding ceremony down the line, but the day of our dreams didn't need to happen for us to commit to spending the rest of forever together.

The last year has been marked by many challenges and setbacks, many of which will continue, and some which will even get worse. But it has also been marked by renewed dreams and hopes. Our marriage has brought us to raising and taking care of our puppy, Parker, who brings us endless amount of joy. He makes us laugh and he is very loving and smart, giving hugs and kisses and is learning how to even cuddle with us.

We have in the last year done a lot to set the groundwork for a better future for us, and while a lot of it hasn't gone as we wanted and there's a lot more work to do, the journey has been one which I have been filled with endless amounts of happiness to embark upon. kels has made me pursue dreams I had previously given up on, and encouraged me to live as my authentic self. They have given me the strength to stand up for myself and the courage to confront problems rather than run away from them.

They have given me so many experiences I never would have even thought about experiencing, and their sense of adventure has broken me out of my shell. They are how I have begun to reconnect with things and people I love, and have given me perspective on what matters most in my life. A lot of what I had taken for granted, I have a newfound appreciation of thanks to them, and their passions are enthralling to watch them pursue.

They're nerdy, they're ambitious, and they're a great planner. They always know how to make life be more interesting, and for them, I would do anything. Their loves have become my loves as well, and they have done more than anyone could possibly know to give me a level of fulfillment, enrichment, and contentness I never thought possible. They bring me comfort and give me encouragement and life I could previously only dream of. I love them so much, and while this may be just the first year legally married, I wish it to mark a lifetime of our future together. <3

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11/9/2025

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I've got oh so many things I should update people on but blogging isn't a priority in my life.

Still, tonight I decided to kinda just...express a few ideas and I figured, hey, these ideas might be stupid, but I still wanted to share them with my audience.

So, without further adieu;

Stupid political ideas I personally would love to see tried, despite the flaws:
-Cap rent at 30* the minimum wage per month for Studio apartments, 40* the minimum wage per month for one-bedroom apartments, 60* the minimum wage per month for two-bedroom apartments, and 90* the minimum wage per month for anything larger.

My idea here is that if you assume someone is working 30 hours at minimum wage, they should pay no more than 1/3rd of their monthly wage for a one-bedroom apartment. So, if they're working 30 hours a week then that's 120 a month. 120* the minimum wage would be their entire monthly paycheck, so 1/3rd of that would be 40* the minimum wage.

If the minimum wage is $10/hour, then that would mean monthly rent is capped at $300/month for a Studio, $400/month for 1-bedroom, $600 for 2-bedroom, $900/month for larger.

The law could be worked to offer incentives for landlords to make rent cheaper than these amounts, too.

-Make it illegal for phantom job offerings to be posted. If businesses advertise they are hiring, they must fill the position listed after they have candidates apply within 30 days of the posting. They may not take the posting down and then re-post it. Require every business listing a job to actually hire for the job they are listing.

-Make it illegal for businesses to throw away products that are still good. Require they go through a process of offering them at a discount and if they still can't sell the product of giving it away. Potentially provide incentives to businesses to donate these products.

One particular area to target for this would be food products and similar living products that come with expiration dates. Make it so that half-way through their shelf life they're discounted and offer incentives for them to be given away before the end of the shelf life, so that places like food banks are receiving food that isn't already past its expiration date. (I admit I don't know how to handle the particulars of this or the logistics involved, but the idea is to increase the amount donated and decrease the amount wasted and to make sure the donated products are still usable.)

-Make it illegal for businesses to hire externally before offering internal promotions. We were raised on the false pretense that anyone could work their way up the capitalism chain to the very top, but these days instead of promoting employees to higher positions companies vastly prefer hiring externally to fill vacant higher positions. Force them to work the way we were promised they would, and make it so they can't hire externally until internal options have all been expended.

This would pair really well with the phantom job offering being illegal, too.

-Make it encoded in law minimum wage increases by the expected amount inflation will. This wouldn't work perfectly, but would prevent minimum wage from remaining stagnant for decades/generations while inflation and the cost of living continue to increase.

-Make it illegal for anything to be resold unchanged for higher than 200% (double) the price it was originally bought for. This one would likely need fine-tuning to account for items that are of extreme historical significance, things deliberately designed to be limited in number, etc. But for every-day goods, make it illegal to price gouge past a certain point. Vendors need to turn a profit but they shouldn't be able to make that profit 500-1000% the amount they spent to get the product.

-Make it illegal for anything to be sold for higher than 500% or so the combined price of its components. This would similarly need fine-tuning to not stifle hand-crafted artisans' products, it would need to be targeted towards big businesses and corporations and industrial mass-produced items, with the aim being the same, to prevent them from large markups in a way bypassing the above.

(I do have more ideas for tackling inflation, shrinkflation, etc., but I don't have the words for them tonight.)

-To handle internet safety, instead of requiring IDs (coughcoughUK) in a way which is universally despised and leads to authoritarianism, make the law instead require companies/websites/games/etc. to recognize devices/internet connections/etc. which are in "family mode"/kid mode/have parental guidance controls turned on. We have the technology to do this already, they already collect that data, this would just require them to regulate off of it rather than allowing them to collect data on everyone. (I might not be wording this well but I hope you get what I'm going for.)

This would also pair well with education reform in making it mandatory for kids to learn internet history in an age-appropriate manner similarly to how sex ed is done in age-appropriate stages. Stick to really basics at younger age, scale it up to more details for tweenagers, as kids become young teens give them more info, etc. (Again, not worded well but I think you can catch the drift.)

Make it mandatory for places to also give this information and make it available to the adults/parents. Meetings, as public service announcements, etc.

Are these ideas pragmatic? Probably not! Good? Who knows? Unrealistic? Very likely! Incredibly naive and overly simplistic? Undoubtedly! I called them "stupid ideas" for a good reason! I'm not a lawmaker!

But I'd still love to see things like this tried, because I personally like the ideas.

Now granted. These don't touch on a lot of other areas which probably should be.

How to help local communities, particularly farmers. (I have ideas for that, too!)

How to help disabled folks who can't work a minimum wage job for 30 hours / week.

How to make sure media is preserved.

I've got a lot more stupid ideas for those and many more, too.

But I figure, hey, what harm is there in expressing these ideas? They've been sitting in my head for years now, I figured I might as well voice them as things I would love to see tried. Despite how stupid they probably are.

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One year of marriage. <3

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