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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   2140 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 30, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I've found myself in the position of being responsible for my elderly mother's finances. She has 800k to her name and has to earn approximately 20k per year off of it for necessary expenses.

I have a totally different risk tolerance in my station of life than she does, so all of my knowledge kind of goes out the window.

For now I have about 300k of her money in a HYSA, earning 4%. Not really sure where to park the rest.

JP Morgan keeps hassling her about some of their managed funds. Gotta admit I'm kind of attracted to allowing them to manage it (with a 1.3% fee though). They also are pushing an annuity which I just went ahead and declined.

If I just put everything into a CD at this point, it'll more than cover her expenses, but who knows what rates will do in the future and it seems like leaving money on the table (which at her age might be fine to buy some security). Also, she'd love to maintain as much as possible to leave to her 4 children. How would you handle this?

One thing to keep in mind is step up basis. Keeping most of her money in stocks means her heirs don't pay capital gains on the value accrued during her life. That's especially important if you and your siblings are high earners.

My old man's portfolio is all stock. If he ever needs cash I'll gladly cover it so he doesn't have to sell stock that's 3xed, which will magically drop to zero capital gains when I inherit. But the math on that is easier as an only child.

Depending on how old she is, she might be comfortable with withdrawal rate that's greater than the normal 4% that's usually thought of as the "safe withdrawal rate". As others have said, a managed fund is almost always a bad call.

but who knows what rates will do in the future and it seems like leaving money on the table (which at her age might be fine to buy some security)

It is! you're managing your mother's finances, not running a hedge fund

If you don't mind me asking: how old is she? What kind of health coverage does she have? Does she have any sort of pension already?

In her 70s with health problems. She has decent health coverage with medicare and a private supplemental.

Vanguard Target Retirement Income Fund

The Target Retirement Income Fund is designed for investors already in retirement. The fund seeks to provide current income and some capital appreciation by investing in Vanguard index funds. This fund’s allocation to stocks and bonds [30∶70] is the allocation that all Target Retirement Funds are expected to assume within seven years after their designated retirement dates. Investors in this fund should be willing to accept modest movement in share price and be able to tolerate the market risk that comes from the volatility of the stock and bond markets.

Or, if you're feeling risk-averse: Vanguard Total World Bond ETF

  • Seeks to track the performance of the Bloomberg Global Aggregate Float Adjusted Composite Index.

  • Broad, diversified exposure to the global investment-grade bond market.

  • Unique ETF of ETFs structure.

  • Intermediate-duration portfolio, with exposure to short-, intermediate-, and long-term maturities.

  • Provides current income with high credit quality.

Comparison page

Parking all of the 800k in a 4% HYSA will give her 32k per year. What's the problem?

Do not ever go for an expensive, actively managed fund. 1.3% is absurd, unless you've somehow discovered the next Buffett, Lynch, or Marks. Nearly all of them under-perform the index! Of course they're hassling her to go for it, they want her money. Doesn't mean she'll benefit from it. They don't GAF. The vast majority of active managers are even worse at their jobs now than 20 or 40 years ago.

If you want to make the money grow for the next generation rather than just produce 32k per year (probably not enough to beat inflation), put a few hundred thousand in an index fund (the cheapest passive index fund that covers either the US or the world).

Any interest in bringing back the user viewpoint focus series? I'm willing to get it started but only if there's at least a few other users interested in following on.

I am intrigued by your idea and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Seriously, I did a post once on my working life and I've got another one brewing on my experiences with my community from a small HOA-like perspective, but even so, I'm interested in contributing more to The Motte, it's just that IDK what the larger forum would find interesting and what it wouldn't.

I’ll be honest, I was always terrified of being nominated for that. I have my particular areas of interest, about which I’ve done a moderate (by this forum’s standards) level of research; however, there are a ton of topics of interest to the Motte user base about which I know little to nothing, and thus have no valuable opinion. (What do I know about the future of LLMs? Why are you asking me?! I work a dead-end normie job! I’m just a guy!)

If we were to bring it back, I think it would need to focus on the selected user’s specific areas of interest, and maybe probe those in a sort of interview format. Otherwise it would just end up selecting for only the users who feel most confident at expounding upon the widest range of topics.

however, there are a ton of topics of interest to the Motte user base about which I know little to nothing, and thus have no valuable opinion. (What do I know about the future of LLMs? Why are you asking me?! I work a dead-end normie job! I’m just a guy!)

Why would you assume that to be the exception, rather than the rule? Even the local 'polymaths' have their lanes that they mostly stick to, and occasionally deviate from with a relatively bad take.

Would a template for the user viewpoint focus make you more comfortable? Something like a 'two to three paragraph sketch of ideology, answers on a handful of proposed questions, particular areas of interest, any items you feel comfortable doing an AMA on?' That's just a dumb example, obviously.

Kudos on LLMs; I usually but not always minimize those threads because a contraction of white collar labor demand /= the apocalypse.

Yes, this could potentially work. Maybe also have that user select 3-5 of his or her Motte posts which are most representative of that user’s output, or about which that user is most proud, and maybe also have that user select either a specific post or, more broadly, an idea about which he or she has had a change of heart or been persuaded out of by another Motte poster. This could showcase not only that user but also highlight the value of the Motte as a place for genuinely valuable intellectual exchange.

What are Americans most zealous about and willing to fight someone over? Sports? Not counting politics.

Like... literally brawling? I would say sports would have to take the cake, with the city of Philadelphia holding the crown for most unhinged sports fans.

Heated verbal arguments? I would say politics, but you disqualified it. Even local (city) and hyper-local (neighborhood / HOA) disagreements fall under politics imo... So that leaves anything to do with work or family: coworker or boss mistreating you, or cheating and dishonesty.

Good-natured disagreements? Definitely food, or other regional cultural rituals. It's almost like regional culture is advanced during the small wins and losses during those disagreements, "No, we're going to do things this way." Then suddenly 200 years later your county is known worldwide for having high quality whiskey.

The perceived lack of driving ability of everyone else on the highway and the best kind of barbecue sauce.

Religion!

Once upon a time, but not anymore. Almost a third of Americans are religiously unaffiliated, and the remaining two-thirds includes a high proportion of nominal believers and Christmas and Easter attendees.

Whether or not chili should contain beans.

I think that's just Texans. The rest of the country doesn't much care.

I make a lot of shredded chicken, beef, pork, etc. What's a better solution than shredding it with two forks? Gets a little tiring when you're doing multiple Instant Pots' worth.

Food processor

KitchenAid stand mixer. Paddle attachment.

You can buy a meat claw.

Does anybody have any questions about working in a semiconductor fab is like? Is there a market for writing up an effortpost on how semiconductor manufacturing equipment works? I met a handful of techy people this weekend who were fascinated by it and asked non-stop questions, so I figured there may be some interest here.

I'm very interested and would enthusiastically read as much as you're willing to write about the subject.

I always assumed the career prospects weren’t that good since you often end up getting tied to one highly specialised machine/procedure of one company and then they have no incentive to pay you. Is this correct?

Career prospects are better than you describe and the specialization actually helps. Most companies use the same baseline tools with exceptions existing for high-end tools (see EUV in my other reply) and what we call "legacy" tools, or extremely old tools that aren't sold anymore and OEM and second-hand support availability is minimal. For example, almost all companies own a fleet of AMAT Endura tools. So if I were to work at company A for 10 years specializing on Enduras I could easily transfer over to company B and work on theirs. Even if your exact toolset isn't there, the principles stay the same across the board, enough so that you can make up for lack of experience and knowledge quickly.

Experience is also a major consideration. Where I think intelligence reigns supreme in more "theoretical" roles (research scientist, low-level chip designer, etc), experience is king for equipment and process engineers. Intelligence helps and there's definitely a minimum requirement, but you don't have to be a genius to create extensive personal or company-wide documentation on how your tools work, understand major events that had a long troubleshooting process, come up with improvement projects, or run basic process experiments. By this, the longer I stay working on these tools the more I see, the more I learn, and the more pieces I can connect together to make improvements. I can then jump ship and immediately start contributing to another company, especially if I've uncovered or implemented things they haven't yet.

Regarding actual pay, one of my colleagues got a 40% raise by moving from company C to company D. COL was the same. He already had 20 years of experience at company C!

I would presume that this depends greatly on what role you have. Research scientist? Engineer? You have plenty of flexibility and good pay, albeit places like TSMC have an abysmal work culture. I'd expect that the kind of technicians who are skilled enough to work in a fab have options too, and can re-skill.

I'd really like to hear about the day to day procedures, clean room process and whatnot. And an overview of stuff like how new your machines are, what's needed to switch to making different chips, etc

Daily work varies wildly. My title is equipment engineer, also known as tool owner (equipment is interchangeable with tools), so I'm responsible for making sure certain pieces of equipment (about 25 in total, which is a decent amount of anybody) in the fab are running properly. We also have 24/7 equipment technicians that will fix the tools. As my old boss described it, my job is to make sure the tools don't stop working, while the technicians want to get them working again if they're broken. When they're all working well or the techs are handling it themselves, I work on self-conceived projects to make them run better, faster, or longer. The manufacturing environment can be a bit brutal since I'm technically on call 24/7 for issues the technicians can't handle or aren't involved in, which requires the occasional weekend laptop log-in.

So what are some things I've done over the past few weeks? (Apologies for the vagueness)

  • Troubleshot a gas leak on my equipment with technicians from my group and another
  • Helped with a preventive maintenance procedure I had never seen + wrote documentation on it
  • Sent a fuckton of emails
  • Standardized settings across my fleet to ensure product is processing as similarly as possible between equipment
  • Installed a monitoring system on vacuum pumps to detect abnormally high temperatures and currents
  • Analyzed and summarized data to support making a change that will save costs

Cleanroom protocol is surprisingly lax compared to cutting-edge fabs. There's no air shower to remove particles from the bunny suit, nobody freaking out that your nose is out, and plenty of dirty-ish parts and hand tools lying around all over the place. This is allowed because a) wafers are almost always contained in their own mini environments, whether it's inside the tool or inside their carrier (called a FOUP and pronounced foo-p), and b) our technology node size is a bit larger and a few particles here and there isn't catastrophic.

You'd be surprised how old our equipment is. Semi equipment is notoriously expensive, so when you combine that with a company that is notoriously cheap and processes that don't require the best equipment on the market you get some old equipment that we're just forced to take care of. Plus if ain't broke, don't buy a new one. A few of my tools are almost 20 years old now, and Theseus doesn't own them—many still have original parts on them! Thankfully the OEM still does a decent job of a) offering spare parts to support part failures, and b) offers replacement parts for obsolete parts. My newest tool was manufactured in 2019. The fab regularly installs new tools as we remove old ones and ramp our production levels.

Preventive maintenance is critical to ensuring parts on the tool last a long time (like how your engine lasts as long as your oil) and preventing product from scrapping because the process' tolerances are all out of whack.

Different chips generally means smaller chips, which require more advanced tools, especially in the photolithography department (also called photo or litho for short). I think this video, this video, and this series offer an excellent overview of cutting edge litho methods that are required to manufacture low nm nodes you hear about coming from Intel, TSMC, Samsung, etc. It's important to note the insane capital required not to just invest in a fab itself, not just the tool that go inside, but the litho tools themselves. New SOTA EUV tools cost around $200MM, or over 1% of a (higher end) fab's cost, and that's just a single tool. Ouch!

How many processes depend on gravity at all? How many require specifically 9.8 m/s^2?

Thanks for taking the time, this is fantastic. A couple of questions, I'm sure I'll have more if you're willing to write more:

  1. What kind of inputs (like industrial gases, chemicals, etc.) go into the tools? Are they connected with fixed pipe or are they manually loaded in?

  2. How is the entire end-to-end process controlled at the fab? As in, is there a centralized control room that oversees the entire operation, or is it understood that the individual tool stations run as close to 100% utilization as possible?

  3. What kind of redundancy is built-in to the process? For example, if a tool went down, does it cause everything behind it to grind to a halt, or are there tools in parallel? Can wafers be stored until they need to be used, or do they have a short "shelf life"?

  4. Do you know where your finished products are used? (i.e. do they go into cars? consumer electronics? defense tech? communications? etc)

I think we have a very similar professional role. I'm manufacturing-adjacent (oil & gas, electrical engineer working in maintenance of power systems) and had an idea of doing a similar type of Q&A. Because of the nature of the industry there aren't a lot of people who have both firsthand knowledge and are able to publicly write about it. There was an interesting book I read a while back from a former controls engineer called "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Control Room" which might be of interest to you or anyone else following this thread. It's unfortunate that there's so many interesting anecdotes that can only be disclosed after one retires.

Edit: It looks like there's a similar version of that text here: https://www.emersonautomationexperts.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/Process-Control-Case-Histories-Greg-McMillan.pdf

Happy to answer any other questions. I really enjoy talking about this and find it equally as cool.

  1. Fabs use a combination of bulk gases (N2, H2, O2, Ar, etc) and speciality gases (AsH3, PH3, SiH4, SiH2Cl2, etc) depending on the process. Bulk gases are fed from massive canisters and get distributed throughout the fab to points of use. The piping is normally located directly underneath the main fab floor in an area called the subfab to save space, increase convenience of maintenance, and prevent particles from contaminating tools. Speciality gases follow the same path from their source canister, but instead there are valve manifold boxes (VMBs) between the point of use and source to allow for safer operation and improved monitoring capabilities. MKS has a decent fab facilities overview here. (As a side note, welding gas lines is preferable to minimize the chance of leaks or contamination. This comes at the risk of the line being completely custom and having long leadtimes in case it needs to be replaced. I prefer parts to be as modular as possible so we can replace the part itself and not the entire subsystem with it.)

  2. The process is controlled by the brains of the fab, the manufacturing execution system (MES). Some fabs build their own custom MESs to match their needs and others go with out-of-the-box solutions that have dedicated company support. Full-stack MESs generally handle most of the calculations when decided what to do, whereas not-full-stack MESs require other programs to assist.

  3. Redundancy is crucial to a fab's success. We try to minimize OAK (one-of-a-kind) paths else everything grinds to a halt directly in front of that tool and I get yelled at for why my tool isn't up. Industrial engineers are able to model a fab's capacity abilities and determine how much of what technology is able to run given the number of available tools and their qualification status. For example, I have four tools (E1-4) and four technologies (T1-4). E1 can run T1-4, E2 can run T2 and T4, E3 can run T3, and E4 can run T1 and T4. Thus, T1 has two paths, T2 has two paths, T3 has one path (OAK alert!), and T4 has three paths. T4 material would likely be fine since it has three different options to run through. T3's OAK is a bit dangerous and unOAKing it should be a priority if its loadings (how much T3 we run) is high enough. To put it more simply, think of it as tolls: if there are 10 lanes and 10 consecutive tolls (so 100 stations total) and all of set1's tolls can handle Toyotas, but only one of set2's tolls can handle Toyotas, then Toyotas will get through set1 quickly but get really backed up at set2 because they're all forced to the same path that has a fixed throughput and may be dealing with other car brands! Some wafers require processing within a certain amount of time after finishing their previous process for various reasons (e.g., native oxides).

  4. I will kindly abstain from answering this for opsec reasons :)

Thanks for the excellent response!

What're your favorite pieces of "classical" music? A few recent discoveries:

Ravel's Mother Goose Suite has been listed in both French and English, so I'll add Le Tombeau de Couperin, the spelling of which I did not check. Both suites were originally written for piano and later adapted for chamber orchestra (smaller than a post Beethoven 3 symphonic orchestra, but larger than a baroque ensemble), though only four of the latter's six movements are included in the orchestral suite (one of the movements not orchestrated is a "tocatta," meaning a very technically challenging piece, traditionally for keyboard, but the opening of the orchestral suite is famous for featuring the oboe as the melodic instrument, despite the melody being much more technical than an oboe would usually play).

Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D minor is great - the main theme of the first movement was plagiarized for the heroic theme in the score of "The Right Stuff." (Listen to the Julia Fischer recording)

Brahms's violin concerto in D major is also great - a recording of it was used in the score for "There Will Be Blood." (Unfortunately, the film came out before Julia Fischer's recording of it - the Julia Fischer recording is always the best recording of a given violin piece)

For a piece by an English composer, Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Lark Ascending single-movement violin concerto-like-composition (If there's a recording with Julia Fischer as the soloist, that's news to me, but there's a famous recording with Iona Brown, and the Iona Brown recording of a violin piece is the best recording of any violin piece not recorded by Julia Fischer)

Pretty much any Haydn string quartet. (Beethoven considered symphonies and string quartets to be the two great forms in classical music, and Haydn was his teacher)

For fun, here's one of Debussy's most popular piano preludes played by a 20th century great, a famed 21st century pianist, adapted by the giant of Spanish guitar, ... and re-adapted by if-you-know-you-know legend Ted Greene.

The classical era was very short, typically starting with the death of Bach (1750) and ending with Beethoven's 3rd (1803). Lipinski would be a romantic composer, almost certainly, while Ornstein was more avant-garde. Listen to the piece you linked, there's little classical about it. This isn't just pedantry: if I asked you to play classical music, I'd accept romantic, even impressionistic, but this Allegro Barbaro, or the more famous one would barely count. I'd be upset if you played Schoenberg or Berg, because they aren't classical at all. God forbid you play Penderecki, I'd revoke your aux cable privileges.

Similarly, I'd be surprised if you played Zefiro Torna, because Monteverdi was too early to be Classical, or even Baroque.

Classical, or rather neoclassical, would be Stravinsky's Sonata for Two Pianos (I like the 2nd movement best), but not his Rite of Spring (linked elsewhere).

I am quite partial to Beethoven 5, but my favorite part isn't in the fantastic first movement, it's the transition from movement 3 to 4, and the recap of the same within m.4. There's nothing quite like landing on that C Major arpeggio in the full, glorious triumph or the brass section.

I'll suggest two pieces I haven't yet seen, from one composer you've heard of in the neoclassical style, and one you probably haven't that's either neoromantic or minimalist, depending on your tastes.

Stravinsky - Pulcinella Suite

Vladimir Martynov - Come In!

Seriously, check out Martynov's work. I can't recommend it enough.

One more minimalmist piece from the 21st century, Ludovico Einaudi - Fly. Another from Eric Whitacre, Cloudburst.

Most of this, but not all, is from my 20th century music history notes. I can transcribe the listening list later if there's interest.

Like it or not, the term "classical" has become the term used to describe all music that emanates from the European art tradition, from Gregorian Chant to John Cage and beyond. Several other terms to describe this overarching meta-genre have been proposed, but none have really stuck. Art Music and Legitimate Music come with the implication that other kinds of music are somehow of lesser value, and can be confusing to the general public. Professor Feinberg from the Great Courses Series uses the term European Concert Music, which is probably the best term from a purely semantic point of view (it comes from Europe, was intended to be performed publicly rather than privately [as with folk music], and doesn't contain any implied superiority), but it's a mouthful and hasn't been widely adopted. Furthermore, the term "classical" has also been widely used to describe music that comes out of similar traditions from other parts of the world, e.g. Indian Classical Music or Chinese Classical Music.

not classical

Indeed, it is "classical". Those are load bearing quotation marks!

listening list

Gladly!

Credit to my wife for keeping the syllabus in a nicely organized binder.

Impressionism: 1890 - 1920

Claude Debussy - Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894)
Claude Debussy - Reflections in the Water (from Images 1905)
Claude Debussy - The Sunken Cathedral (#10 of Preludes, Book 1; 1909)
Lily Boulanger - In an Infinite Sadness (1916)
Lily Boulanger - Spring Morning (orchestral version; 1918)
Marion Bauer - "Druids" (m.2 of Three Impressions) (1917-1918)
Maurice Ravel - Water Games, or, Fountains (Jeux d'eau) (1901)
Maurice Ravel - Daphnis and Chloe Suite No. 2 (1912)

Four Revolutionary Works: c.1910
Bela Bartok - Allegro Barbaro (1911)
Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps / The Rite of Spring (1913)
Arnold Schoenberg - Pierrot Lunaire / Pierrot in the Moonlight (1912)
Charles Ives - Fourth of July (1913)

Satie and 'Les Six': from 1920
Erik Satie - Gymnopedie No. 1 (1888)
Darius Milhaud - Sonatine for Clarinet and Piano (1927)
Germaine Tailleferre - Outdoor Games (1919)
Francis Poulenc - Festive Holiday (1943)
Francis Poulenc - Gloria (1959)

AURAL EXAM #1 INCLUDES ALL PRECEDING WORKS

Second Viennese School: 1900 - 1945
Anton Webern - Five Pieces for Orchestra (Op. 10; 1913)
Alban Berg - Wozzeck (1921)
Anton Webern - Wie bin ich Froh! / How Happy I Am (op. 25 #1; 1935)
Arnold Schoenberg - Variations for Orchestra (Op. 31; 1928)
Alban Berg - Violin Concerto (1935)

Neo-Classicism: from 1920
Igor Stravinksy - Soldier's Tale (1917)
Igor Stravinksy - Pulcinella Suite (Orchestral version; 1920)
Igor Stravinksy - Symphony of Psalms (1930)
Igor Stravinksy - Sonata for Two Pianos
Bela Bartok - String Quartet #4 (1928)
Bela Bartok - Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936)
Bela Bartok - Concerto for Orchestra (1944)
Paul Hindemith - Nobilissima Visione (1938)

AURAL EXAM 2

Nationalism: 1900-1950
England
Ralph Vaugn Williams - The Lark Ascending (1914)
Ralph Vaughn Williams - Serenade to Music
Gustav Holst - Mars, from The Planets (1914-1917)
Rebecca Clarke - Passacaglia (1943)
Rebecca Clarke - The Aspidistra (1929)
Benjamin Britten - War Requiem (1961)
Benjamin Britten - Peter Grimes (1945)
Benjamin Britten - Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings (1943)
Russia
Sergei Prokofiev - Piano Concerto #3 (1922)
Sergei Prokofiev - Symphony #5 (1944)
Dmitri Shostakovich - Symphony #5 (1937)
Dmitri Shostakovich - String Quartet #8 (1960)
Germany
Carl Orff - Carmina Burana (1936)
Eastern Europe
Bela Bartok - Six Dances in Bulgarian Rhythm from Mikrokosmos Vol. VI (1926)
Zoltan Kodaly - Psalmus Hungaricus (1923)
South America
Heitor Villa-Lobos - Bachiana Brasileira No. 5 (1938)
Alberto Ginastera - Estancia (1941)
Spain
Manuel de Falla - Ritual Fire Dance from Love, the Magician (1915)
Mexico
Carlos Chavez - Sinfonia India (1936)

AURAL EXAM 3

United States - Nationalism Continued
George Gershwin - Rhapsody in Blue (1924)
Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings (1936)
Samuel Barber - Knoxville: Summer of 1915 (1947)
Aaron Copland - The Cat and the Mouse (c.1920)
Aaron Copland - Fanfare for the Common Man (1942)
Aaron Copland - The World Feels Dusty, from Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson (1949)
Aaron Copland - Appalachian Spring (1944)
Aaron Copland - Hoe-Down from Rodeo (1942)
Leonard Bernstein - Candide Overture (1956)

The Second Avant-Garde: 1945 - 1975
John Cage - Root of an Unfocus (1944)
Elliot Carter - Woodwind Etude #7 (1950)
Mario Davidovsky - Synchronism No. 1 (1963)
Kryzystof Penderecki - Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960)
George Crumb - Ancient Voices of Children (1970)

Minimalism, Neoromaniticism, and other current trends
Steve Reich - Come Out (1966)
Phillip Glass - Glassworks (1982)
Phillip Glass - Satyagraha (1980)
John Adams - Nixon in China (1987)
John Adams - Lollapalooza (1995)
Henryk Gorecki - Symphony No. 3 (1976)
John Corigliano - Pied Piper Fantasy (1980)
Gwyneth Walker - An American Concerto (1995)
Arvo Part - Fratres (1992)
Arvo Part - Rejoice, O Mother of God (1990)
Kryzystof Penderecki - Lacrimosa (1980)
Vladimir Martynov - Come In! (1988)
Eric Whitacre - When David Heard (1999)

AURAL EXAM 4

I only linked one song, because that's the only one that where I care about the performance. Listen to the Susan Pickett version of An American Concerto. The rest should be easily found through searches.

Going through, some of my favorites include the two John Adams works (I am the wife of Mao Tse-Tung, I speak according to the bo-OK, the bo-OK!), the Martynov I mentioned earlier, Fratres, and Satyagraha. I also quite liked Come Out, but I wouldn't call it classical music at all. It's recorded loops that slowly go out of sync (I let the bruise blood come out to show them, Come out to show them, Come out to show them).

That should keep you going for a while. I can do the 19th century list next, but it's going to be a lot more of what you've already had suggested. Yes, Beethoven 3 and 5 and 9, and Mahler and Wagner.

I think you’re confusing the Classical Period of classical music with classical music as an overarching genre. The latter encompasses everything from Gregorian chant to John Williams.

If I asked for Romantic music, or Impressionist music, or Avant Garde music, or Baroque music, I would be asking for music from those periods.

Bach - pretty much everything, but the catalog #1052 keyboard concerto stands above the rest. Glenn Gould is a wonderful choice here.

Mozart - Sonata #8, symphonies #25 and 40. Probably anything else he composed in minor key is brilliant too.

Beethoven’s violin and third piano concertos. Appassionata. Symphonies 5 and 7.

Schubert’s Death and the Maiden.

Chopin’s first piano concerto.

Grieg’s piano concerto.

Dvorak’s cello concerto.

Sibelius’s violin concerto. You want Oistrakh’s recording.

Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto.

Shostakovich’s 5th symphony.

Sviridov’s Snowstorm suite.

Chopin, Prelude 4, Op. 28 in E Minor

Rachmaninoff, Symphony No. 2 in E Minor

St. Saens, Aquarium from Carnvial of the Animals

DeBussy, Arabesque 1: Andantino con moto

and Clair de Lune ..sometimes depends on whose version.

Fauré In Paradisum

And Ravel, Le jardin féérique from Ma mère L'oye Yes it is a fey title.

I'd put Wagner in there as well. particularly Tristan und Isolde.

For Wagner, I'll suggest Siegfried Idyll in addition to the very good Tristan.

At the moment, I like:

Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

Tchaikovsky's ballets

Anything by Chopin

Holst's The Planets, as others have mentioned

Heliotrope Bouquet by Scott Joplin

And for variety's sake here are some pieces that are "classical" to non-Western instruments:

Tsugaru Jongara Bushi for the shamisen

Liu Tianhua's erhu compositions

General's Command for the yangqin

Gotta toss in Shostakovich's 11th and basically all of Chopin's nocturnes (but yet also his prelude in E minor).

I always liked Bolero.

And this is the perfect time of year to remind ourselves that spring isn't free. Spring requires blood.

You get dinged for not being hip if you say Beethoven's No. 9 Symphony, Mozart's Requiem, etc. but those are all truly great.

Shoutout to @Hoffmeister25 for mention of Dvorak's No. 9 Symphony and all of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite, and @FtttG for Holst's Planets Suite.

Some personal favorites:

And if we can sneak in choral works, an excerpt from the last piece, above: the Gesualdo Six's arrangement of O Sacred Head Sore Wounded.

if we can sneak in choral works

...but then, we could go pre-"classical" and just head straight to the source: When David Heard. Even recorded by the same group.

Touché.

Beethoven 5, 6, and 9 are the best obviously. Everybody knows them because they really are that good.

This is Beethoven 3 erasure.

“I’ve been working on a symphony to celebrate Napoleon doing away with monarchy and the influence of Rome!”

“Have you heard? He’s proclaimed himself emperor and cut a deal with the Pope.”

“As I was saying, I’ve been working on a symphony about heroism, just in general.”

A perfectly fine symphony that will adorn the Hall-of-Very-Good for eternity to come.

It's his second best symphony, and it quite literally inaugurated the romantic era.

There are not many composers who have ever written a piece better than Beethoven 3.

Symphony 1 is in the hall of very good. #3 is epoch-defining.

3 is not even better than 7, which only has one really good movement.

There are not many composers who have ever written a piece better than Beethoven 3.

Not many worth talking about. Any composer worth remembering 100 years later has at least one piece better than Beethoven 3.

it quite literally inaugurated the romantic era

Okay, I’ll bite. I don’t like the C# in measure 7. It’s not set-up, and it doesn’t go anywhere. I know people always talk about how it “changed classical music forever”, but really that just means that everyone else used it as a jumping-off point for ideas that work much better.

Have you heard Bernstein's analysis of the first movement?

Great video and cool website!

I mean, it goes to D, but it's also a diminished chord that doesn't resolve hardly at all, and that's the point of it. You don't have to resolve everything, you don't have to be like Mozart forever. Someone had to be first, and it happened to be Beethoven, who was probably the greatest ever, and cast a shadow as long as anyone.

I also quite like the third movement.

I will always have a particular weakness for Claude Debussy's Arabesques.

Seconded - I used to play piano, and Arabesque no. 1 was one of my favourite pieces to perform. It's almost unbelievably beautiful.

I can barely listen to recordings of it though, because so many interpretations of the piece play it way too fast.

I like piano music. If a professional is playing it, then Scriabin, such as Fantasie Opus 28. If I'm playing it for myself, then it needs to be within my technical ability, for example Clementi, Opus 36 no 3 which has an impressively high ratio of happiness&fun to technical difficulty.

When I was taking piano lessons, my teacher showed me a video of a Japanese 4 year old playing that Clementi Sonatina and dared me to do better. At the time I was infuriated to be shown up by a toddler, but it's probably the reason I still remember and enjoy the piece.

Beethoven - König Stephan

Ibert - Ouverture de fête

Ifukube - Japanese Rhapsody

Moroi - Sinfonietta in B flat

Nobutoki - Kaidou Tousei

Bedřich Smetana - The Moldau

Edvard Grieg - In The Hall Of The Mountain King

Sergei Prokofiev - Symphony No. 1 “Classical”

Maurice Ravel - Mother Goose Suite

Antonín Dvořák - Symphony No. 9 “From The New World”

Ottorino Respighi - Pines Of Rome

  • Gabriel Fauré - Pavane in F#m
  • Gustav Holst - The Planets (especially "Jupiter". My brother once told me that the "vaporwave" genre is intended to induce the sensation of nostalgia for a time one never personally experienced. By the same token, "Jupiter" makes me feel patriotic for a planet I'll never set foot on.)
  • Edward Elgar - "Nimrod" from the Enigma Variations

I recently discovered the deliciousness of toasted croissants, which is not a type of bread I would have expected would be improved by toasting. In light of that experience, I’m wondering if there are any other types of bread that are not conventionally toasted but that are improved by the process. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Neither are unconventional but....

  1. Banana bread should always be toasted. toasted till the (salted) butter burns. Heaven on earth.
  2. Pain Perdu = French toast. But, instead of adding sugar into the mixture, you sprinkle it on the soaked bread and then toast it in butter.

I suspect Brazilian cheese bread will toast great.

My wife and in-laws are Mexican and I've come to learn that Mexicans love to toast all forms of bread and find it a bit weird to eat untoasted bread. It seems like basically all forms of bread taste good toasted, but I still prefer sourdough and good french breads untoasted to preserve their chewy texture.

When I have day-old homemade muffins on hand (admittedly a state of affairs that occurs less and less often as my children grow larger) I've been known to slice them in half for toasting and buttering.

Also, do you consider banana bread to be something not conventionally toasted? Because toasted banana bread is pretty great too.

I have to thumbs up this - those who have not toasted sweet breakfast breads like the above are missing out. A muffin cut in half and then fried in butter like this is absolutely sublime.

I have never thought to toast banana bread before, but I’ll have to give it a shot the next time I buy or make some. Thanks!

Try toasting croissants open with ham, cheese and tomato filling.

I just discovered that Lidl sells fresh baked croissants 2 for a dollar and that they are f'ing amazing right out of the oven!

Croissants are f-ing incredible. I used to be anti-croissant because of how messy and crumbly they are. I preferred a muffin or a bagel, something that caused far less of a mess. But after trying some outstanding croissants, I am a huge advocate. Croissants in Europe are particularly delectable, it’s hard to find anything in the US that rivals pastries from Italy or France.

If you live in the US and have access to Trader Joe’s, they sell sliced sourdough bread that is excellent toasted and combined with TJs cultured salted butter. The butter is the key, it’s honestly the best bang for your buck delicious butter you can buy, and this combo makes a great snack or dinner pairing.

Do you know if Trader Joe’s butter is anything like Kerrygold butter? I heard from many different people over a span of about 15 years that Kerrygold butter is the best butter. I finally bought some, and I have to say, I wasn’t impressed. I actually prefer regular old American-style salted butter.

I definitely agree. Kerrygold is wildly overrated. The only thing that's really different about it to me is the color. I can't say I notice a difference in taste.

It's different. Kerrygold butter, to me, tastes like any normal butter. Trader Joe's carries two types of butter: their normal "typical" butter (for which Kerrygold would be a one-to-one replacement) and their specialty cultured butter. The Trader Joe's cultured salted butter (comes in blue packaging) is better than any butter I've ever had.

Forgive me for hijacking your post but I just recently discovered that actual croissant bread is a Thing thanks to Costco and I have to agree that it's incredibly, decadently delicious when toasted and buttered IMO. I've also done grilled egg and cheese sandwiches with it that are decadently divine. I want to do some straight grilled cheese and maybe even french toast with it before it's all gone. If I had the recipe and was feeling grave, I might even go so far as to try cinnamon strudel french toast with it, but the resulting sugar high/crash scares me. Anyway, carry on!

Does anyone have any recommendations for a soundbar? Not looking to break the bank or go crazy on features, but don't want to totally cheap out either, willing to go for anything in the <$200 range. Just something fairly simple, to make movies/music/games sound better (especially bass) than through my TV speakers.

After a very cursory search, the Sony S100F (which goes for only about $100) seems like basically what I'm looking for... but I'm curious if any of the tech-y people here have some personal recommendations. I'm not afraid to spend a little more money if the product is worth it.

https://www.costco.com/samsung-hw-b73cdza-5.1-channel-soundbar-with-dts-virtual%3ax-and-wireless-subwoofer.product.4000280108.html

I got this with my new Samsung tv

It’s great - makes a significant difference.

Would highly recommend

As the resident audio enthusiast, I can only think of a couple use cases for soundbars, neither of which would seem to apply here. The logic behind soundbars is that, with televisions getting ever thinner, they lack the internal real estate to produce decent sound. This may be true enough, but I've sampled numerous soundbars at my parents' house and various vacation rentals, and I haven't noticed much of an improvement (and I say this as someone who can normally detect subtle differences between speakers). For soundbars to give a sleek form factor, they suffer from similar limitations as televisions, namely limited driver size and depth of cabinet. You simply aren't going to get significant bass improvement from 2" full range drivers, and models with subwoofers have to set the crossover frequency higher than normal.

There is an improvement in sound, but if you're the kind of person who listens to music streamed from Spotify over a small Bluetooth speaker, it isn't going to be the kind of improvement that's noticeable, and even a cheap stereo system is going to perform much better. This is especially true for movies, where most of the sound consists of human voice frequencies that are easy to reproduce. If you watch action movies with a lot of explosions and the like, TV speakers will have trouble producing deep bass, as you alluded to, but a soundbar without a subwoofer isn't going to make much of a difference in that respect.

The first use case I can think of is if your TV produces sound that is noticeable bad rather than merely inadequate, e.g if it sounds tinny or there is a noticeable resonance. In that case, it may be worth getting a cheap soundbar, but I wouldn't splurge for one. The other use case is if you're the kind of person who actually can detect minor improvements, but is prevented from using a stereo due to the spousal acceptance factor. But that person isn't asking about it in a non-specialized forum. I personally have my TV hooked up to a separate amplifier I use for music and speakers that are over 4 feet tall and weigh 75 lbs. apiece, but I only use it if I'm watching a movie, and even then not all of the time.

If you're looking for improvement in the $200 price range, a cheap stereo system is going to blow all but the most expensive soundbars out of the water. The used market is your friend here, especially stuff from the '90s and '2000s that's too old to have any value but not old enough to be "vintage". Pretty much any receiver you can find from the Big 3 (Yamaha/Denon/Onkyo) is worth buying, and even stuff from lesser brands like Pioneer, Sony, Techincs, etc. is going to be fine. Don't worry too much about wattage since anything above 15 watts is more than adequate at normal volume, and that's what budget receivers were running in the '70s. The speakers are going to be more important to the sound, though the brands will be different—B&W, Boston Acoustics, Polk, Infinity, Cerwin Vega, PSB, ELAC, Paradigm, and Klipsch are examples of what to look for, though these brands all sell new speakers with stratospheric prices so don't be discouraged if the prices on some used models seem high; I believe all of them have made inexpensive bookshelf speakers at some point that can usually be had for cheap on the used market, and they sold more of these models than anything else so they aren't hard to find. Avoid Bose; they sell cheap speakers that are marketed as a premium brand, and they always command higher prices on the used market than they should. If you find anything you're interested in locally, feel free to DM me and I can probably tell you if you're getting a good deal.

Thanks for the detailed response -- to be honest, I hadn't even seriously considered the used market. And you are correct that my TV speakers are "merely inadequate" rather than "bad". I had been drawn to soundbars because of the convenient form factor (it would fit perfectly below the TV, where I'd have to do a little rearranging to fit two speakers + a subwoofer... admittedly not much though) and the idea that it would Just Work through the HDMI ARC port. I'll never use "modern" features like bluetooth connection (when I'm playing music over the TV speakers I just use spotify or youtube on my PS5) so there's no downside to an "older" setup anyway. Again, I really hadn't given more conventional stereo systems a chance -- I'll definitely look into it.

Is there any benefit to [soundbar + subwoofer] compared to [2x stereo speakers + subwoofer]? Or is it all looking cool/marketing hype? I was under the impression that in the lower-end price range I'd get more value from the soundbar, but I'm realizing I didn't have any actual rationale behind that, lol.

If you don't have dedicated audio outputs from your television (or other device), there are not-awful soundbars that are cheaper than a used 2.1 setup, and sometimes cheaper than just a used receiver for a 2.1 setup. If the comparison was something like a TCL S55H versus a standard receiver, a pair of 8" or 9" speakers, and a sub, you're... probably going to pay nearly twice as much for the not-soundbar setup, even used. For new, even powered speakers are hard to get in your price range without being garbage. If you really just want some bass, it's a hard argument to skip.

The other argument in favor of soundbars is size and convenience. About the only support you need is an available electrical socket and maybe a tiny shelf or table that you're probably setting your TV on anyway. Cabling-wise, the single HDMI (or toslink, or yada) is ... actually still more complex than you'd expect (do you want lossless Atmos? Because then you need eARC, and a compatible HDMI cable), but it's at least less of a spaghetti pile if you don't want to spend a weekend on cable management, even compared to a relatively simple 2.1 setup.

A Great soundbar config's still a little bit more expense than a used standard receiver+2.1 channel configuration (Wirecutter recs this, and they're about the only part of the Times I trust), but it's convenient enough that it's okay, and you can rarely get nicer soundbars with fancier configurations that can approximate a 4.1 configuration without paying too much more or having to route wires through drywall. For someone like me, who's neither an audiophile nor has particularly sensitive hearing, it can be a reasonable compromise. Or at least would, if I didn't use headphones religiously, or lived in an apartment.

For audio quality, yeah, I'll second Rov_Scam. Soundbars only really provide better bang for your buck when you're in the bargain basement, and for a lot of that space you're only going to get noticeable improvements if the television is absolute crap. Even at the higher end of your price range, the used 'standard' speaker market will win pretty quickly. Audio isn't quite like motor behavior -- there are replacements for displacement -- but the parts here are near-universally fungible, and the soundbars have extra constraints.

Will once again support this. The performance of my $200 bookshelves is lightyears beyond any soundbar I've heard

I second all of this. The correct advise on soundbars, in almost all contexts, is "don't"

Not an audiophile but have made a few speakers as a hobby project. Probably most important is it doesn't have stupid features you don't want and isn't a general pain in the ass to use. Re audio quality speakers benefit quite a lot from a good sized acoustic chamber to improve the efficiency of the exciter particularly for bass and a bit of weight to them so they don't resonate in the audible range.

If your tv speakers don't make a tinny noise (kinda like if you imagine the speaker playing through a long tin can) or peaking (the sound of someone yelling into a bad microphone) they are probably doing fine in the range of sound they can produce and you might just want a bargain subwoofer. There are some for about $100 on amazon which'll serve you just fine (although usually all-in-one subs are set up as passthroughs, so they are supposed to receive the primary audio output and pass one what they can't reproduce to another device which may be tricky to use with the build in audio).

I might be buying an audiovisual setup for a new living room soon. Can you get it good enough to make badly mixed modern movie dialogue understandable, or should I give up and accept the bane of subtitles?

I assume you've already checked you're not playing 5.1 audio through a 2 channel system, I struggled through a number of films around the time 5 channel rips got popular before I remembered to check and set my software to force 2 channel playback. I'm not sure if dedicated separates have that option.

On the other hand something like Tenet was irredeemable.

I haven't had success in modern cinema comprehensibility but I've only spent about $300 in parts and thus probably ~$1000 market value for new hardware

I assume internet forum syntax like "$Thing_Description" are taken from various programming languages... but which ones? Anyone know of an etymological dictionary for forum-speak?

ETA: oops wrong comment.

I wish more of you bastards read fantasy and sci-fi. Feels like I'm always the only one posting recs!!! If you have recs please let me know.

Just started A Requiem for Homo Sapiens it's pretty dang good so far if a bit info-dumpy.

Had to quit the Foreigner series, the main character was just such a self-righteous, annoying, immature jackass I couldn't deal with it. It's a shame, I got halfway through the third book because the world and aliens are quite cool, but damnit Bren you are such a fucker I just couldn't do it.

The $variables, I think, come from PHP (which used to occupy approximately the role that Javascript does now as the lingua franca of amateurs making things that run on the internet), with acceptance being helped along by their older use in Perl (though it is manifestly not Perl: you never see @thing, %thing etc.).

The Jargon File is trying to be this, but thanks to the biases of its shepherd(s) it generally underrepresents anything from cultures that do not have a direct lineage from oldschool Unix hackers.

The $variable syntax originates from Unix shell scripting, which Perl, PHP and others have taken after.

So, what are you reading?

Still on my backlog. Trying to go through some Lovecraft.

I wish more of you bastards read fantasy and sci-fi. Feels like I'm always the only one posting recs!!! If you have recs please let me know.

Just started A Requiem for Homo Sapiens it's pretty dang good so far if a bit info-dumpy.

Had to quit the Foreigner series, the main character was just such a self-righteous, annoying, immature jackass I couldn't deal with it. It's a shame, I got halfway through the third book because the world and aliens are quite cool, but damnit Bren you are such a fucker I just couldn't do it.

Legacy of Ashes: History of the CIA. While I am not super convinced the book gets every detail right, still a very interesting look into how total institutional failure and incompetence works when you also have almost total power to hide it and resist any correction efforts and infinite funds. I get out of it the impression that almost every successful CIA action either involves bribing allied country politicians or spying on Americans illegally

Currently reading My Brilliant Friend. It's been interesting so far; I think I came across the recommendation from Tom Holland on The Rest is History. I don't think I've read non-science fiction in a while.

Recently finished The City and the Stars which I think came recommended here. I was interested in the interesting bifurcation in the concept of transhumanism, which felt pretty relatable as someone aesthetically opposed to non-essential/restorative body modifications. I can see a splinter faction opposing Managed Immortality™ in a nonviolent capacity like the book shows. The overall "We Stopped Dreaming" plot also feels relevant in these times, but it's not the most novel element (see Moana, for a pop culture example).

I had some time while working on a home improvement project recently and made it through a few out-of-copyright LibriVox audiobooks (free, reasonable quality in my experience). Finished Moby-Dick, then started and finished Kim, The Jungle Book, The Man Who Was Thursday (this forum likes Chesterton). I think audiobooks are a great medium for some things, but it's harder to backtrack and re-read parts if your mind wanders or something else happens, especially if your hands are full. I'd estimate it's about 70% as in-depth as normal reading for me.

I just started The Warden by Anthony Trollope. Hits some of the same humorous notes as e.g. Dickens, but in an attractively smaller package that I can realistically finish in a week.

Prior to this I read The White Nile by Alan Moorehead, which describes the hunt for the source of the Nile River and the subsequent efforts of Europeans to open up the region to trade and civilization. Really enjoyable to read, and now I understand who Dr. Livingstone from the famous quote was, what he was up to, etc.

Finished Kiki de Montparnasse last week. It was okay.

Around Christmas I found a slim volume containing five short stories (including "The Garden of Forking Paths") by Borges, who I'd never read anything by before. I read the whole thing in one day and enjoyed it, it's easy to see how influential he is.

Currently on The Door by Magda Szabó (I read her book Katalin Street earlier in the year).

Around Christmas I found a slim volume containing five short stories (including "The Garden of Forking Paths") by Borges, who I'd never read anything by before. I read the whole thing in one day and enjoyed it, it's easy to see how influential he is.

I've also been reading Borges short stories. I'm still not resolved on whether I find him meandering and self-indulgent, but overall his writing is pleasant to read.

I'm halfway through Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. So far, I'm mostly surprised by how unpleasant and unattractive everyone is, compared to the adaptations. Also seemingly worse at keeping secrets than me, even though I'm not getting paid to do it.

People who become spies are generally really weird. Being willing to lie and sneak for your masters tends to come with a cluster of pretty grim characteristics.

Oddly enough that’s why so many spies are flamboyant exhibitionists like Arthur Ransome (who was either a Russian agent, a British double-agent, or a Russian triple-agent) or Burgess of the Cambridge Five. The narcissism and fantastical thinking gives them the ability to persuade themselves of whatever narrative they need in order to be convincing.

Took a few months off reading, but I’m back! Going between Grant by Ron Chernow and Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. I’m also listening to the audiobook Incidents Around The House.

So far the most interesting thing about Grant is how absolutely mediocre his life was up until the breakout of the Civil War. He was essentially a 38 year borderline alcoholic (with long strings of sobriety) shopkeeper who went from being a nobody to running the military within 3 years. Wild stuff.

The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, first novel by Sarah Brooks.

I'd compare it to China Mieville, without his penchant for downer endings, or Jeff VanderMeer without his tendency to reduce his characters to broken, traumatized shells of their former selves. (Coincidentally, both this book and Mieville's Iron Council involve trains traveling across crazy mutating wastelands, though the direct similarities pretty much end there.) Anyway, I recommend it.

Bea Wolf, by Zach Weinersmith (yes, the SMBC guy)

This utter madman has translated and adapted Beowulf into a graphic novel about rebellious kids and the fun-hating grownup who assaults their treehouse.

The tie-manacled monster mounted the ladder, mad-eyed, malice-mawed, wrath unmoored, a middle-aged man-beast! He shot his black shoe, shattering the door! Sorrow came in tube socks, swan-white, knee-high!

The whole thing is like this, and it is fantastic.

Chip War: The fight for the world's most critical technology by Chris Miller.

It's quite fun and easy to read, and it's teaching me a lot about how the whole semiconductor and computer industries got started, and about the geopolitics of the last 70 years.

Finishing up Killing Commendatore by Murakami and starting probably either Gates of Fire or Ship of Magic this week.

Gates of Fire seems like something I’ll get 30 pages into and never pick up again but it seems to have great reviews - just worried about the prose.

Just finishing up Ardneh's Sword, by Fred Saberhagen. Next up is the latest in the 12 Miles Below series, which I hadn't realized was released!

How do I get someone to loan me say 500k for a house and I can just pay him 40k up front and make monthly payments to him rather than the bank?

There’s really no incentive for this on his end, just like a good will gesture to me and my family.

I feel if I can meet a billionaire I can talk him into this.

(Is this too dumb of a question for Sunday dumb question thread?)

What's the incentive supposed to be on your end instead of just using a bank?

That would be one of my first questions if you approached me for money!

I can tell you when I ruminated about this I wanted a person to make my interest, not a bank.

Then I realized that @Quantumfreakonomics had it right and nobody wanted to make less than the S&P 500 for 30 years, or if they did they'd buy bonds.

I also realized when someone asked for a seller's loan my very first thought was "fuck you, if you can't get a loan from a bank why would I trust you?"

I had my parents loan me part of a down payment at min interest and paid it back within 2 years. Your parents should be able to trust you enough to loan you the money and it's better for them to lever you up now than when they're dead.

"Banker won't give me money" due to bad history/cash business (often 'I make shitloads on grow-ops' IME) is the usual reason.

My immediate question would be 'Why do you need to spend half-a-million on a house?'

If someone handed me half a million dollars, I'd put 400k of that into investment and use the remaining 100k to start building a small home. (I'm already ahead of the curve as I have property to put said house on, but still.)

Besides, even if you did get the money, you're paying property tax, maintenance, insurance, upkeep on a house that costs half a million dollars. Talk about a bad investment.

How, uh, old are you? The median price of homes sold in the US last year is 400k.

I'm not a boomer, if that's what you're asking.

Doing a casual perusal of online available real estate shows prices comfortably in the 150,000 range where I'm at.

Not everyone on the Motte lives in a trendy international cosmopolitan area, you know.

Not everyone on the Motte lives in a trendy international cosmopolitan area, you know.

If you think that you can get anything in a trendy international cosmopolitan area for anything close to 500k...

Again, 400k is the median sale price across the entire country. 500k is, like, 25% "trendier" than the median. It's an absolutely unremarkable price. It's much closer to the norm than the 175k you see in your area.

For what it's worth, it isn't just the trendy international cosmopolitan cities (ie NYC, Chicago and LA) which have insane house prices in the US. I live in Denver (nice city but not really trendy) and we have the same problem.

FWIW, housing is ludicrously expensive in other parts of the world, too.

500k would just about suffice for building a bitch-basic one-family home here.

My immediate question would be 'Why do you need to spend half-a-million on a house?'

...because that's what houses cost???

I open Zillow for my city and I see the following listings:

These aren't McMansions; they are completely normal suburban houses in South Florida.

Even empty lots are going for a quarter mil, not 100k.

There is a reason millenials are waiting for a housing crash before buying our first house.

...because that's what houses cost???

Not where I'm at. I'm seeing houses in subdivisions for as low as 175,000, and that would still be stupidly over-sized for what I'd need.

Owner financing exists. That’s the closest to what you’re talking about.

Why not skip all this and talk the billionaire into giving you a house free and clear?

If you can meet a billionaire, someone who is currently a complete stranger to you, you could convince him to trust you a whole lot. Are you the most charismatic person in the world? How would that play out? Just curious...

I was thinking we would just have a nice rapport and we’d talk about work and the American Dream and he’d think about all the murderous hijinks he had committed in the past and he’d do this to make himself feel better.

Like the Catholic Church used to do … pay for absolution ?

The Catholic Church did offer indulgences for donating money to the church(indulgences now are only available for spiritual works). But this wasn’t because people thought that forking over cash just generally made up for their sins. It was because people thought that the Catholic Church, specifically, could obviate the punishment for sin. I mean I’m guessing you don’t believe this, but the people who bought indulgences did.

Lacking this basis makes your plan less successful.

The 30-year mortgage is not an economically sound transaction when considered as a bilateral agreement between a lender and a borrower. It only makes sense in the context of the greater financial system and with the explicit backing as a core policy goal of the government. No one would lend money under these circumstances

WHEREAS the real property generally known as 123 Main Street, Townsville, KS costs approximately 500 k$; and

WHEREAS the person generally known as Mihow wishes to buy the property; and

WHEREAS Mihow has liquid wealth amounting to approximately 40 k$; and

WHEREAS the person generally known as Elongated Muskrat has liquid wealth in extremely large amount;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that, not more than seven days after the signing of this agreement, Muskrat shall send to Mihow, by wire or by cashier's check, 460 k$, creating a debt owed by Mihow to Muskrat; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, not more than 60 days after the signing of this agreement, Mihow shall purchase the property; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, on the first day of every month after the signing of this agreement, the debt shall accrue interest at an APR (annual percentage rate) equal to the prime rate most recently published by Everytown Bank, NA (compounded monthly); and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that at least N/30 of the debt shall have been repaid by Mihow not more than N years after the signing of this agreement, for every integer value of N from 1 to 30; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that, if Mihow fails to repay the debt, then it shall be secured by the property first, and by the remainder of Mihow's property second.

In witness thereof, Mihow and Muskrat affix their signatures below.

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. This is a shitpost.

I think think this is a case of "knowing somebody": I know people who have had mortgage contracts to non-bank entities. Sometimes it's family with money doing the underwriting (there's an element of trust here not to be entered into lightly), but some older family have told me about buying a house from its existing owners this way to give them a fixed income to downsize. The latter seems less likely to find in this less-personal age.

Part of the problem is that mortgages are finicky contracts: you have to worry about getting paid (employment, cost of living), and the continued valuation of the underlying asset (2008 anyone? Or just vanilla gross property damage even). It's not a business I'd want to be in privately with the general public.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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