So while on the one hand, being pro-business and anti-government intervention is a very conservative trait, what happens when private business like Monsanto and Syngenta are adultering the food supply in ways that are destructive to consumers? The Ayn Rand libertarian answer would be for consumers ...

dualstow wrote: ↑

Sun Jan 29, 2023 8:47 pm

Elon’s tweet reminded me of Tortoise twice over.

B0060801-7894-43AA-8AD7-20E4FA130773.jpeg

Ohm gonna pretend Elon didn’t make such a corny joke about electricity.

The California Department of Public Health still requires masks in "healthcare settings, long-term care settings, and adult and senior care facilities". And therefore my dutifully compliant county department of public health requires them also. My dentist and all of his staff and patients comply wit...

2022 was the only year since 1989 that had negative returns for both equities and bonds. Equity and Bond Scatter Plot.png Interesting chart, thanks Mark! I found a similar one on this page that goes back even farther, to 1929. The only years since 1929 in which stocks and bonds both had a negative ...

Whoa. That one I have to try. Hard to believe. ~80% ! I tried downloading the research paper linked on the website "heads.pdf" but got a dead link and couldn't fiind it on the web. If anyone has the paper... They may have been referring to this paper by Diaconis. This seems to be the relevant passa...

Next time you flip a coin for something, instead of the more usual heads or tails call, call "obverse or reverse" ... and then claim you've won as most wont know the difference. Or, instead of flipping the coin, spin it on its edge. A new penny that's spun on its edge will land with tails facing up...

One of the best Black Mirror episodes ("Be Right Back", S2E1) explored this concept in the context of AI imitating a dead loved one by training on their digital footprint. It was rather creepy. Hard to believe that episode aired 10 years ago...

The Soviets launched significant attacks on Christmas (Dec 25th one) during WW2 against the Germans/Romanians/Italians/Hungarians/Bulgarians/Croats etc. They assumed a lot of the soldiers would be recovering from extra wine rations or otherwise not 100% vigilant. I think the Germans launched counte...

That Bullion DNA looks pretty cool -- https://www.mint.ca/en/bullion/bullion-dna -- That is pretty cool. Gold is such a great metal for that type of a security feature. I think that stamping a diffraction grating or something into the coin is a great idea. Something that you could never hope to acc...

And money can keep getting laundered back to crooks in the USA, probably via crypto. Weapons go to Ukraine, weapons get sold to God knows who for crypto, crypto payoffs get transferred back to US gov't officials and the shadow government, some money goes into political campaigns to keep the scam go...

I see they suggest not buying 22K gold coins and sticks with 24K for the reason I mentioned above. Is your timbre check what will help me detect a fake if it passes this plastic test? Yes, the ring test needs to be done in combination with the size and weight test. It may be possible to construct a...

Train your ear. Use known good coins. If it meets size, weight and timbre (rings true), it is as good a gold. You've found the philosopher's stone if you can make a base metal match gold for size and weight and timbre. And even the most wretched man can check that with a scale, an eye and an ear. N...

Dec 7 (Reuters) - Vanguard Group Inc is pulling out of a major investment-industry initiative on tackling climate change, the world's biggest mutual fund manager said on Wednesday, explaining it wants to demonstrate independence and clarify its views for investors. https://www.reuters.com/business/...

Someone else on the forum, I can't remember who, pointed out that cash lost value to inflation this past year, therefore cash sucks and stocks are the way to go. That was the gist of the poster's point anyway. I thought to myself, well, wait a minute. Cash has a steady nominal value and has lost va...

Either way, I am less psychologically burdened by a given drop in portfolio value when I'm 4x25 than when I'm, say, 60/40. The "firewalls" between the asset classes do their thing. The firewalls are a good thing, but they do seem to break down during tight money recessions like the one we're in. St...

Hal wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 21, 2022 3:19 am

The picture says it all....

It actually doesn’t. What time period does the plot represent?

One credit union is listing 4% for 5 year cd. https://www.depositaccounts.com/cd/5-year-cd-rates.html At some point these rates start looking really tasty. 4% is 40k income per year on 1m deposit. 4% interest also happens to be a -4.5% real return (current CPI is 8.5%). Meaning you're effectively l...

If you drop LTT, when would you see yourself buying back into them? Not sure. I suppose a good time to buy back in might be when LTT interest rates are high enough that (1) they exceed inflation, and (2) there would be decent annualized price appreciation if interest rates were to drop back down ne...

I taught my first girlfriend how to drive stick on our first date. Had a blast and scored major points.

Get your minds out of the gutter, you reprobates!

What kind of allocation are you considering switch to? This is a game that I love to play, because I enjoy tinkering with portfolio backtesters. I haven't done enough homework to identify a better allocation, but the basic idea I've been toying with is to drop LTTs and reallocate that piece to othe...

dualstow wrote: Have you all read the b’heads thread on Yubikey & Vanguard?

Searching "Yubikey" on the Bogleheads forum just now turned up multiple threads. If your sig comment is referring to a particular one, could you provide a link to it?

One of the assets in the PP is almost always going to be rat poison, often for a decade or longer. Right now that is LTTs. There is nothing new under the PP sun. [...] Thanks, Blue Ruin, I always enjoy reading your thoughtful, philosophical posts about the PP. Over the past couple of years, I've be...

Mass Shootings seem to be capturing attention. I believe there is something like an average of 10 mass shootings per week in the US. https://www.npr.org/2022/05/15/1099008586/mass-shootings-us-2022-tally-number https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/reports/mass-shooting Back in less propagandistic tim...

I'm trying to wrap my head around something. If rising rates are deflationary, when do bonds benefit from it? Because we all just witnessed bonds get slaughtered amidst the prospect of rising rates. Who says "rising rates are deflationary"? I think it's important to distinguish between cause and ef...

He has more posts about the war in Ukraine if you go past the first page and look at older posts, or even better, just search for the label "Ukraine":

http://ad-orientem.blogspot.com/search/label/Ukraine