s/both/all

can you explain for a casual scroller-by with a less-than-mild interest in both?

if anyone on the left has to root for Marx's infidelity, do all capitalists have to root for Perdue pharma's intent to fatally supply Oxy? Or slavery?

The idea is absurd, and yet...

They're cryptic crosswords, so there's more of a puzzle to the clue. e.g. with a proper noun

1D: Confused ham set London flower? (6)

Answer: Thames. (Confused Ham set = "this is an anagram of ham set, which is Thames"; London flower = a thing that flows in London = Thames)

e.g. without a proper noun

5A) Perhaps hawk’s attempt to catch rook (4)

Answer: bird. "Perhaps hawk" is a bird; another word for attempt is "bid", if "bid" captures the rook - for rook in chess notation you'd write "r" - so bid capturing r is bi + r + d = bird.

when I was poor I struggled to have non-0 savings. I have a graph of my savings from the last decade. I was really excited when I could sometimes get it to nearly $500 before it crashed to zero

I'm doing better now. I hope I never forget where I came from

I had to look back at the graph after the explanations so here's the shortest version

• "politicians say it's good you've gone from the left line to the right line - an increase in nearly $1000 on average"

• "they ignore line 2 in the middle which shows that people went up more than twice as much before coming down again to nearly where they were before"

• so while it's true to say there's been an increase, it's equally true to say there has been a massive decrease too.

• people who actually have to live like this won't find it helpful to make a comparison to when they had slightly less money when there was a more recent time that they had a lot more money

when you get good at crosswords join the dark side with the Guardian Cryptic XW

https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/series/cryptic

I grew up in the UK, learning on stick, moved to us drive an automatic.

i live in a city, I work in an office, I don't have any hobbies that require something I can't lift with two hands (except my piano, but I hardly take that around with me).

I can't for the life of me think of a reason why I would need a stick. its so pleasant to be able to drink coffee or water while driving, have an arm out the window, or even just being at rest driving.

I dont get the appeal.