dukeleto
7d ago
I think the “asking civilians to leave a combat area” is doing a lot of work when the whole territory (minus Rafa for now) is being reported as being a combat zone.
dukeleto
8d ago
Me to, it’s a ridiculous sum of money, especially when considered in the context of our previous spending
dukeleto
5d ago
Thanks I’ll look into it. Its value to the company is that I may be able to give this employee some of my basic tasks, giving me more time to do harder things. As for his resume, we are a government contractor and management still cares about credentials/certs so it might benefit him.
dukeleto
24d ago
I’m not really sure if this counts as small but it’s definitely been on my mind and id like some advice on whether or not I am thinking about this clearly. I have lived in the Las Vegas metro area for the past two years and plan to remain here for the foreseeable (at least 5 more years) future, im thinking of buying a small house in a nice part of town and can just barely afford to do it.
I find myself hesitating on actually pulling the trigger because it would result in my current housing expense increasing from the 1.9K a month I currently pay to rent to 2.8-3.3K a month depending on what I actually end up buying.
I just can’t shake the sense that I would be buying at the top. This wouldn’t necessarily be an issue (I think its unlikely I would be laid off except in a case of extreme economic hardship) except that I am concerned that if the economy does dump I will be stuck in a high interest (looking at around 6.5%) loan which I wont be able to refinance if my home value drops enough.
The thing that’s annoying though is that this really is just a feeling and I cant find any actual evidence to suggest this area is actually about to undergo any kind of correction. Prices have increased a lot in recent years (up 40-50% since 2021) but this has happened in a lot of places, the regional unemployment is low and houses that get listed are selling.
Does anyone know what kind of metrics people who follow single-family real-estate sales actually follow? I appreciate that very competent people working at large financial institutions spend a lot of time and $ trying to price real estate accurately and I don’t expect to develop an institutional level understanding of these things. Im just trying to enter this with my eyes open and want to feel slightly less clueless, before making what will be my biggest financial decision to date.
Here are some metrics I have looked at:
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Regional unemployment https://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.nv_lasvegas_msa.htm (which is basically flat).
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Permits for new construction https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LASV832BP1FHSA
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Case Schiller index calculated for Las Vegas metro area https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LVXRNSA
dukeleto
1mo ago
This is the most obvious and correct thing to do. My health insurer would save 500-1000 dollars a year if this were permitted
dukeleto
1mo ago
Is there actually punishment for buying non controlled drugs from abroad? A quick google search makes this seem like it would be trivial to do.
dukeleto
2mo ago
I suspect a lot of it has to do with the numbers of uninsured and unlicensed motorists. I can’t actually find good #s on this so could be wrong, but im sure that the # of unlicensed and uninsured motorists has exploded since we no longer enforce laws against this in most large cities.
dukeleto
4mo ago
You can grow hay/alphalpha on extremely marginal land, which is largely unusable for other crops. I’m not arguing that these crops never displace food commodities, but in general I would expect that farmers favor food crops which are typically more valuable.
I don’t really understand the judgmental tone. Few on this forum would have a problem with using adderall to enhance performance or Lipitor to reduce blood pressure. How is this different?
dukeleto
8mo ago
I had a similar experience when I was in grad school, I’m a white guy with middle/lower middle class parents. invariably the people whom were getting (I assume, i didn’t see their records) affirmative action benefits were overwhelmingly attractive women from more privileged backgrounds. It was one of the lived experiences which completely turned me off on the left and on academia more generally
dukeleto
5mo ago
I think that’s good news, anyone who thought it was appropriate to launch an 80 billion dollar startup under the auspice of a “non profit” belongs in jail for abusing non profit status.
dukeleto
7mo ago
It makes me wonder what the governor’s motivations are. I don’t know anything about New Mexico politics (besides the fact the the state is inexplicably left wing). This seems like a totally bizarre thing to do in an off election year for a politician who can’t possibly aspire to an office outside of New Mexico. I wonder if she is trying to get ahead of a scandal or something.
dukeleto
4mo ago
Can anyone recommend any good books about the 1980’s and early 90s with a focus on what caused the Soviet Union to collapse ? I have just finished reading the Walter isacson Kissinger biography, and while Nixon/kissenger effectively curtailed Soviet influence in the 70s, I’m still amazed at how completely the Soviet Union collapsed by 1991. The usual story is that the ussr was unable to compete with the west and this somehow led to its collapse. I’m sure economic decline contributed to their decline, but would love to learn more about the other external and internal pressures which brought it about.
dukeleto
3mo ago
I have always wanted to read Bruce Edwards Ivins book in the 2001 anthrax attacks, which has been completely impossible to track down. For this who are unaware, he was probably responsible for them but I would still enjoy reading his defense. I have no idea if the book is actually coherent, he had numerous mental health problems
dukeleto
1yr ago
China essentially applies a blanket ban on US tech companies attempting to enter their market. Issues of privacy and national security aside, I have always felt that this is hugely unfair. While I wouldn’t support building up internet censorship capabilities to block Chinese websites I feel that ordering advertisers and tech companies to ban an app adds some much needed symmetry.
I agree, I think the us should be deploying reactors asap, although I think the above poster vastly overstates the problems with shale oil. Shales are outrageously abundant in the US and break even costs remain far below current oil prices. https://www.statista.com/statistics/748207/breakeven-prices-for-us-oil-producers-by-oilfield/
(This is during a time period characterized by lots of inflation in the materials needed to frac)
dukeleto
9mo ago
One has to wonder what will happen if the unions succeed in getting this stuff banned. I mean surely someone else will use the technologies and maybe someday outcompete them.
dukeleto
1yr ago
My father was a serious alcoholic (like had a hard time holding a job down and our family lost a house) kind of drinker. This experience has given me a very negative view of the drug relative to some of its alternatives. For instance, there were two relatively pleasant years during my teens when he mostly stopped drinking and actually acted like a typical dad. During this time he taught me how to ski, helped me with my homework (which was something that had literally never happened during the rest of my childhood) and did other typical dad things.
Eventually he landed himself in rehab and we later discovered that he had been addicted to (or at least using regularly) hydrocodone for most of that time period. I still don’t really know what had happened (I think his doctor may have just cut him off, this was around the time they tightened up prescriptions or perhaps he just didn’t manage his tolerance effectively, it’s my understanding that it’s basically impossible to use opiates regularly without developing physical dependence issues). I still really don’t know how about the fact that my two most pleasant teenage years coincided with a time when my father was substituting opioids for ethanol.
I have spent a lot of time wondering about how he rationalized it to himself. He is actually incredibly sharp and was once quite handsome.
I also wonder about myself. I have tried getting drunk a couple of times and I really didn’t enjoy it. I only ever drink when I feel the social setting requires it and then usually as little as possible.
Basically the only drugs I have ever liked are stimulants and running (and especially running on stimulants). I have had adhd (diagnosed as a child) but I really don’t know if I believe that the pathology is a real thing. I would unquestionably be less successful on almost every meteric if I couldn’t legally take vyvanse. I tried being unmedicated my first two years of college which were a total train wreck. I had a high level of self loathing and insecurity mostly related to my relatively low levels of academic performance and lack of friends.
I eventually went back on stimulants, my grades improved substantially, I made more friends and got a masters degree. now have a high paying job which I love and my life is better than I ever believed it could be. And at times like this I ask myself if the stimulants helped (and continue to help) because they make it easier to focus on things other than my various emotional traumas (essentially making it easier to live in the present). If I had had a more functional family would I even need to be on them? Or is, it the case that some people are just genetically predisposed to be addicted to something. If I hadn’t been given prescription stimulants would I have become addicted to something else instead. Or put another way, if my dad had been given Ritalin as a child would he be more like me today? Do you fix an addict by finding the correct drug?
dukeleto
1yr ago
My experience since leaving graduate school a year ago has been the same, but let me tell you academia is so bad. That was an environment that really was as bad as or worse than twitter and I’m scared that it will some day come for the private sector.
dukeleto
1yr ago
I think this is a very naive take. For one thing hpc (high performance computing) has an absurd number of useful applications (I’ll pick drug discovery as one example) that have little or nothing to do with AI.
And unlike nuclear weapons, there isn’t any way to prohibit there use in warfare, it isn’t possible to nuke someone without the rest of the world noticing. Contrast this with AI, how could you prove that entity x is using ml for military purposes? Let’s say country x has a AI that analyzes satellite imagery perfectly, you wouldn’t ever be able to prove this they can just claim that they have very good analysts. You would effectively be creating a policy that military applications are the only allowed use for AI.
I assert that most people currently making a stink about this (I.e. Elon musk) are upset because they realize that they are behind the curve and want some breathing room to try and monopolize this technology.
I mean imagine these kinds of people suggesting the need for government licensesing for literally anything else.
Also to riff a little more on the analogy with nuclear materials (which I happen to think is a bad analogy, you need lots of gpus to build a super computer, a dangerous quantity of nuclear materials will fit in a backpack or purse): while it seems obvious to me that you need to heavily regulate nuclear materials it’s also possible to end up in situations like the one we have now where the only real innovation is in connection to the military (us subs and aircraft carriers are powered by amazing small modular reactors which the rest of society is only just now debating using else where).
dukeleto
9mo ago
The sad thing is that hunter would probably actually benefit from 3-6 months in a real jail (not club fed). It would force him to rehab and probably cause a lot of self reflection.
One could argue that this has extended to other domains, with exhibit 1 being Kamala Harris. Like she must be pretending to be dumb right? I need to find a video of her in court at some point, there is no way the California attorney general was this incompetent.
I have a non technical employee who I have taught some basic linux skills so that he can help me with some of my work. He likes it and is interested in learning more but I don’t really have the time to work with him.
I want to get my company to pay for some sort of certification course for him so that he can develop a little more. Does anyone know if there are any Linux certification programs where the credential is both useful (and where the course is also beneficial)?
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