zabadoh

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

My point is that the US used to have a lot of rail infrastructure, both inside cities and for intercity travel, but scrapped most of it, and neglected what was left, mostly in favor of building freeways for automobiles.

Therefore, as relevant to this subject, we don't have bullet trains.

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

What strategy?

More like geography. Iran is on the Strait of Hormuz on 2 sides, and no amount of firepower can overcome that.

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zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

This, right here.

US cities used to have terrific streetcar systems. Just look at San Francisco in 1940:

https://ani.social/post/13225809

Los Angeles' legendary streetcars' demise was the plot of the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

In fact, LA's streetcars were bought by a conglomerate of automobile companies in order to destroy them

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/25/story-cities-los-angeles-great-american-streetcar-scandal

A similar story is in the history of US intercity passenger rail, which is in Amtrak's wiki

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak

Which starts with:

In 1916, 98% of all commercial intercity travelers in the United States moved by rail, and the remaining 2% moved by inland waterways.[9] Nearly 42 million passengers used railways as primary transportation

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

To get instructions from your refrigerator that is already part of a botnet.

1

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=gJLIiF15wjQ

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

Straight, white, and male are all optional if you're corrupt.

2

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

You can see patterns in carpet if you stare long enough at it.

Not that they're real.

Brains are weird in finding patterns that way.

2

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

Geocites is no more, but there are multiple archives of those web pages:

Internet Archive

Oocities

Geocities.ws

1

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

Those ultrasonic pest repellers are useless.

Shawn Woods of Moustrap Monday fame demonstrated this against various rodents.

He has other videos demonstrating the futility of other ultrasonic devices as well.

I doubt that opossum will be affected either.

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

8 and 10 inch wheels from Grainger

More wheels at Grainger

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

That's doubleplus goodthink!

1

zabadoh @ani.social 2mo ago

The Tick was such good stuff!

Here's a summary with the good pages from #3: https://cokeandcomics.com/the-tick-3/

zabadoh @ani.social 3mo ago

Way back when I took a short class in investing, and the bottom lines were:

Diversify your investments. Nobody, not even the pros know which individual stocks, or even sectors (small cap, mid cap, large cap, international, bonds, etc) will go up over any given year.

Individual stocks are risky, because you really don't know what's going on inside each company. A sure thing today may collapse tomorrow. The more different stocks you invest in, the lesser your risk.

1a) Index funds work according to that principle of lowering risk by investing across hundreds of different stocks.

Choose the ones that have low expense ratios, because they're automated, and fees will eat into the fund's earnings.

Vanguard is famous for their index funds, but other brokerages have copied them, but those others still have higher expense ratios somehow.

1b) Also these days, ETFs are similar, but you will be paying stock commission fees to buy and sell them, taking a hit on your initial and parting investment.

Portfolio balancing once a year. Since you don't know which sectors will go up or down in any year, balancing your portfolio is how you capture gains.

Let's say you have set a target of 70% large cap index, 10% international stock index, 20% bonds, and you balance your portfolio on July 1st every year.

In a fictional example, this year, the large caps did well and now constitute 75% of your total portfolio's value, internationals did okay and are now at 11%, and bonds relatively speaking didn't go up as much, and are now 14% of the total value.

That means that bonds are relatively cheap, and a relatively good buy.

So sell the "extra" 5% of your large cap, 1% of your internationals, and put that total 6% of your portfolio into bonds, rebalancing your portfolio back to 70% large cap, 10% internationals, 20% bonds.

Next year on July 1st, the stock market has tanked, and bonds are now 30% of your total portfolio value. That means that you should sell the extra 10% total portfolio value of bonds and re-assign them to your large cap and internationals, however that works out mathematically.

edit: There's no need to watch your portfolio like a hawk and rebalance every time you glance at it. Just do it once a year, but be consistent.

etc, etc.

Reduce investment risk as you get older.

As you get older, and closer to retirement, your tolerance for losing value gets lower because you're approaching the point where you have to start using your accumulated retirement nest egg.

Lower your risk of the stock market, and increase your holdings of fixed ~~income~~ return investments, such as actual bonds (NOT bond mutual funds) that are (practically) guaranteed to pay you X amount of interest.

But holding 0% of stocks still carries risk of inflation wiping out all of the bonds' earnings.

It was said that holding 10% of your portfolio in stocks is the lowest risk that works.

There are index funds that automate this rebalancing and risk reduction for you: Multiple brokerages have "Target retirement funds" These types of funds have years in their names, stating when these funds will reach a minimal risk portfolio. Once again, shop around and find which ones have low expense ratios.

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zabadoh @ani.social 3mo ago

Above a certain size, they're classified as prawns.

zabadoh @ani.social 3mo ago

LA is relatively close to the Mexican border.

Nobody's interested in a 72 year old's organs.

I'd be most worried that it's a kidnapping for ransom, since seniors generally have savings and retirement assets, since they'd be alone with strangers in unknown territory.

zabadoh @ani.social 3mo ago

Cutting a second notch on a 360KB floppy to make it double sided, doubling the capacity to 720KB

Also, taping over the notches to protect the floppy from being overwritten.