birb_cromble
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User ID: 3236
birb_cromble
1hr ago
I'm in a similar place - mid 40s, could theoretically retire today at my current lifestyle. The thing is, I actually like my job, and I'm not yet projecting a success rate where I actually feel comfortable making the plunge. Right now my plan is to keep working, and have "retire" in my back pocket in case I'm ever laid off.
birb_cromble
4hr ago
It appears that the US bond market is not the only one having problems right now.
The French/German 10-year bond yield gap last week saw its biggest weekly jump in decades, while the gap between Italian and German yields hit almost 130 basis points (bps), posting its biggest weekly rise since the COVID-19 crisis.
I'll admit that my understanding of European economics are somewhat fuzzy. My mental model is that Germany pretty much is the EU economy, but as an American I'm pretty sure that's a function of my own biases.
Does anyone have any insight into what's going on here? Based on the article, the issue doesn't seem to be unique to France - it mentions elevated yields in Italy as well.
birb_cromble
2d ago
Spending is $2,146.10 less than the same day last year.
Future check-ins may be a bit spotty from me. The commentary here is declining, and I'd rather take a break than develop a bad opinion of the site.
birb_cromble
5d ago
It needs at least a Russet to run. I tried it on a red fingerling and it just didn't have the horsepower.
birb_cromble
5d ago
If you're going to hold the position that Byzantium wasn't Rome, and that Rome ended with Romulus Augustulus, then when did Byzantium start? Would you put it at the partition, at Rome's fall, or somewhere in between?
birb_cromble
5d ago
That's the one.
birb_cromble
5d ago
Maximus Thrax, but only because the whole story is hilarious.
My understanding is that your mortgage on your primary residence doesn't count, but "capital improvements" on your residence do count.
birb_cromble
6d ago
As somebody who had some incidental cult interactions in his 20s, this "cow question" isn't really selling me on any of the "it's not a cult" arguments. It's almost a perfect encapsulation of the shared secrets, humiliation, and blackmail collection that high control groups use to further ensnare members.
"Don't worry, we're all cow fuckers here" can turn into "you wouldn't want your employer to know about your opinions on cow fucking" real quick if somebody pisses off the leadership.
Maybe I'm applying my past experiences to a different situation, but if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and asks bizarre questions that carry future social consequences like a duck, maybe the duck is in a cult.
birb_cromble
6d ago
I recently watched a podcast episode in which DHH got to plug his new Omarchy Quattro. He seemed almost manic at times.
I think it's a little more than almost manic.
I have unlimited tokens. We can fix everything, we can do anything.
birb_cromble
6d ago
I wouldn't blame Yud for them anymore than I'd blame the Beatles for Charles Manson.
At least a few of the zizians took courses at CFAR, and their the root of their schism derives from arguments with Michael Vassar.
If we take your argument at face value, this is closer to a student of Paul McCartney going on a killing spree because he didn't like Paul's performance in Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
birb_cromble
6d ago
I've been reading up more on the federal personal savings rate and it's a pretty interesting concept.
https://www.bea.gov/data/income-saving/personal-saving-rate
The U.S. personal saving rate is personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income. In other words, it's the percentage of people's incomes left after they pay taxes and spend money.
I haven't found an exact definition of what is included and what isn't, but that link is probably a good starting point.
Do you think it's a useful metric? On one hand, it's fairly coarse grained, but on the other hand, it seems like it's very difficult to game for exactly the same reason.
The fact that it's trending from a peak (excluding COVID) in the 1960s is interesting. I haven't found many explanations for why that is occuring. I've seen arguments that it's due to the real cost of living increasing faster than wages, and I've seen arguments that cheap debt and easy mobility make saving less important. I'm not sure if I believe either of them. I'd be interested in any other theories you might have.
I haven't read anything in the original koine Greek, so I didn't want to overstep my knowledge.
I can conclusively state that none of the gospels say "and lo, there was a great clapping of cheeks" in them.
The apocrypha are probably another matter. They get wild.
birb_cromble
6d ago
I saw these comments as I was scrolling through the firehose feed, and thought that while my tribal knee-jerk reaction is against them, I suppose I can't deny that people often use the "doing the meme" quip to avoid addressing the actual argument. It's not like these things have no comeback
There's a symmetry of effort here. When somebody writes a badly-supported shitpoast, there's really not much value in spilling gallons of ink to pick it apart. It's clear that such discourse was not the author's goal. As such, an accusation that the author Did The Meme is is a comparable, tit-for-tat response that carries roughly the same amount of semantic signal.
You, on the other hand, have made an effort to explain your position in what seems like good faith. As such, I'll take a moment to explain my problems with this xweet.
I'm not a Christian, and other than a few exposures to Charismatic and Catholic churches when my mother was having one of her episodes, my only real exposure to the Faith has been from reading the Bible in its NIV, KJV, and Vulgates translations. I'm ashamed to admit that I don't read Greek, so my understanding may be incomplete. That said, even with only that book knowledge as a foundation, this is a bad take.
First off, let's talk about the Pilate thing. Pilate didn't particularly give a shit about Jesus. Hell, he wanted nothing to do with it. He famously stated that he washed his hands of the matter. It was the Jewish priesthood of the era that wanted him dead. Does Scott really want to extend that comparison to the modern day?
Moving on from that, the prostitute comparison is terrible. Three minutes of searching would make it clear that Jesus and his apostles were, shockingly, not regularly running a train on Mary Magdalene. The word "consort" is doing an enormous amount of rhetorical work.
Moving on from that, my first intuition when I read this post was that Scott was claiming that Yudkowsky was the antichrist. The way he framed it makes just as much sense as a Jesus comparison.
Put together, my problem here is that Scott is a thoughtful, well-read, smart guy who understands nuance and second order effects. I can either believe that he had a momentary lapse in every single one of these traits, or he full and well understood what he was doing. Charity is a useful concept, but it is not a concept with infinite elasticity. Eventually it runs up against priors.
birb_cromble
8d ago
The formulation in my head was more like "if you think you need to be in the top ten percent of men, go somewhere where you are that".
This works remarkably well. I do a lot of theater, and being a straight guy immediately puts me in the top 20% simply by virtue of availability. That last 10% got me my partner of 13 years.
birb_cromble
8d ago
I think a lot of it stems from the fact that he did the meme.
birb_cromble
10d ago
Spending is $1,863.17 less than this day last year. I hit my deductible for health insurance, so that might help moving forward.
birb_cromble
11d ago
professional training on and off the racetrack
What kind of racing do you do? I used to love doing dirt track. I have some friends who are deep into autocross these days and have been trying to get me involved, but I really don't want to buy a car for it.
birb_cromble
11d ago
I don't trust the IRS not to reclassify BOXX. The tax treatment is using some tricks that I don't think will stand up to regulatory scrutiny.
birb_cromble
12d ago
The hype of a mostly-successful launch is at war with the broader market anxiety about data centers and the cost of debt right now.
Remember that per their S-1, SpaceX is an AI company with rocket side business, not the other way around.
birb_cromble
12d ago
I maintain a twelve month emergency fund, and I recently got over my various trauma-responses to the point where I was able to roll half of that into a six-month CD that's offering 80bps over my HYSA.
While I know I could probably do "better", sometimes you have to have to take the small victories.
If anybody out there is reading this, don't get so hung up on the difference between"better" and "perfect" that you do nothing at all. Every improvement is a stepping stone.
birb_cromble
13d ago
An acquaintance of mine who lives closer to the city got a Tesla last year and took me for a ride to show off its FSD functionality. It mistook a crack in the asphalt for the median line and sent us swerving into the opposite lane. Thankfully it was a back road in fuck-off nowhere so we were the only ones on the road, but it did make me hesitant to rely on the technology right now. It probably works better in places closer to the core.
birb_cromble
13d ago
I appreciate you walking through your rationale on this. This is a huge topic and I'm still trying to learn as much as I can.
birb_cromble
13d ago
We should probably be cutting rates instead of raising them.
Isn't that what Burns tried back in the 1970s? What do you think is different about the current era such that it would lead to a different outcome?
Other than the currency thing, it looks like the US is on a comparable track. Are we getting a preview of what could happen here?
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