MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
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User ID: 600
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
3mo ago
My favorite of his is https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/83045/weeaboos-unfortunate-isekai-the-necromancers-gacha - charming and macabre.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
5mo ago
This works pretty well with universal free school lunch in my area. Rather than having to load money on cards and check everyone's meal each day, the kids simply present their school ID and get food. Those who don't want it on a particular day (or ever) can eschew it, or give it to their friends. I'm not sure how well that will scale, but it definitely agrees with my internal fairness adjudicator.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
5mo ago
My non-Hispanic US middle schoolers have been talking about kids at their school doing this for at least two years, for what it's worth.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
6mo ago
I did previously, and paid off the mortgage about 10 years early. At the time the interest rate was several points above anything from a Treasury, so it was a clear winner in terms of present value. Since then I have invested the monthly payment+extra according to my overall strategy and have no regrets about my decision.
Having a family with two school-aged children and a fairly risk-averse wife did play a small part in the strategy.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
9mo ago
People who are poor in virtue are better off if virtue is redistributed. They're virtue-communists.
People who are rich in virtue are better off if allowed to capture that value. They're virtue-capitalists.
That is an outstanding way to put it and gave me much food for thought. Thanks for the jolt.
On a personal level I am an advantage player at some types of gambling (mostly poker and sports betting), but have a tendency to tilt when losing at other games (e.g. craps) and have found that online gaming is really bad for me. So I've self-excluded from online gaming platforms, most of which are currently quasi-legal at best in my state anyway. If they ever are legalized fully, that will be a harder decision. It's simply too easy to throw electrons at a website, and I am much less averse to doing so compared to a brick and mortar casino.
All that said, I am still in favor of allowing access to gambling from a freedom perspective, but much less interested in state-sponsored gambling such as lotteries. I could certainly see an argument for restricting advertising similar to what is done for cigarettes. That's probably the easiest practical method at present.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
9mo ago
The term originates from sabrmetrics (Society of American Baseball Research), which is a set of derived baseball statistics developed starting in the 1980s or 1990s. In baseball terms, 'replacement level' refers to the average player that you could get at a certain position from the next league below - basically the default freely available player if you had no other options. Then the associated term 'value over replacement player' (VORP) would be how much better a specific player is than that freely available guy from the lower league. It is possible to have negative VORP if you are worse than a random guy from the lower league, which does happen (less frequently in modern times) due to contracts/non-performance factors.
MiddleAgedMan
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way.
10mo ago
I believe the larger bills were discontinued largely to inhibit illegal activities, making it more difficult to store and move large quantities of cash without tracking. As with many goverment regulations, it had the unfortunate knock-on effect of making life more difficult for law-abiding citizens.
I can remember having a $500 bill in the late eighties, having colored up a summer's worth of high school job savings. I ended up dropping that in the church collection plate as one of my last acts as a believer.
I generally have 500-800 in my wallet and another 1000-1500 in the house, but I play poker regularly so there is an actual use case. Absent that, I would probably keep 200-300 in the wallet and 500 in the house. I'm Gen X though and almost exclusively used cash (with the occasional check) until my late 20s, so it's a habit.
Interest on $1000 is what, $4/month tops? I'd rather have the flexibility.
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