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.
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Notes -
So, what is everyone watching (films, shows, even YouTube if you think it counts)?
I've seen two movies recently:
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017): This is the second Lanthimos film I've seen after Bugonia and Dogtooth, the former of which I loved and the latter of which was meh. KSD felt like it was awkwardly edgy and vague, but I very well may have missed the point. The actors did an excellent job of making me feel uncomfortable throughout. 4.2/10 enjoyment, give me those hours of my life back.
Train Dreams (2025): I've always enjoyed movies about everyday, simple lives (I don't have any others off the top of my head, but I know they exist). This one resonated with me because of a forest in my life, one that I half-seriously say I grew up in through mountain biking, trail running, airsoft battles, exploring, fort-building, and general elementary and teenage debauchery. 8.1/10 enjoyment, give me those years of my life back. I was a bit surprised everyone else's ratings were so high, though.
I politely but passionately hold the opposite view of Train Dreams. I can’t say anything positive about it, except that some of the shots in the beginning were gorgeous. It presents an anachronistic view of the past and past attitudes, and it doesn’t say anything important or beautiful or useful about suffering. It doesn’t even present a particularly captivating portrayal of maximal suffering, if this were its intended object, and it doesn’t show its catharsis in any worthwhile way. In effect, it does nothing, but in fact no, it does worse than that. Because the director took the time to ensure that as you experience vicarious suffering for no reason whatsoever, you also become misinformed about the past: the women don’t believe in marriage ceremonies and everyone is an atheist (except the guy who is killed right after reciting the Bible, for being racist of course, and the kind fellow who finds trees divine). But the inaccuracies extend further, and more noticeably. Our protagonist in actual history was involved in labor strikes that won him an 8hr workday with Sundays off; he formed relief for laid off and injured workers; he formed ad-hoc civic and biblical organizations in his free time. That’s what 1890 to 1920 was actually like: hopeful men forming civic organizations. You had 50k woodworkers striking in Washington and Idaho during WW1 when the movie took place. These men weren’t hopeless, weepy, wimpy, and ignorant. And they would not have been traumatized seeing Chinese laborers deported (lmfao), because those were his wage competitors. White laborers were the very party who lobbied for mass deportations and got them, to secure their quality of life, which worked.
As art, unbelievably horrible; as propaganda, extremely skilled.
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I have a confession. I have no idea how my salary works, and my efforts to disentangle it using LLMs has even them scratching their heads.
Why do I bring this up? I just got a 25% raise on my last payslip, and there is absolutely nothing different in terms of work, and I haven't moved to doing more nights or on-calls (or extra locum shifts) which pay more per hour.
Is it due to an increase in seniority? I don't think so, though I'm not certain. It's grossly out of sync with the annual bumps that come with becoming a more senior trainee. If that was the case, I'd have expected a raise in August.
Is it to do with a recent increased pay offer from the Scottish government? The last time it happened, it was a decent boost, but not a whole 25%.
I'm on vacation, and actually examining my payslips requires an NHS computer, so the mystery will persist. If anyone has a clue, I'm all ears, but I'm certainly not looking the gift horse in the mouth, mostly because I'm not a dentist or vet. For now, I'll wait to see if this is a one-off or a regular thing.
Depending on local regulations this could be end of year overtime/excess vacation days being paid out as cash due to you going over the limit for how much you're allowed to save on a yearly basis. So if you were like ~7 days over the limit it would show up as a 25% pay increase. These things often get sorted with the January pay due to Christmas and New year's holidays.
Hmm.. That's a possibility, though I've never actively applied for overtime. My understanding is that the NHS doesn't pay for unused vacation days, but I'll take a look at the finer details!
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Someone recently claimed that people here would greatly outperform the market given their higher-than-average intelligence. So let's run a hypothetical - you've got $1m and your goal is to 5x it (pre tax) in the next 2 years. Perhaps we can look back at replies to this post few years later and see how everyone does. Anything goes, from investing to leveraging your unique skills or connections if you have any.
My plan would be this: 900k into a leveraged Uranium long. 100k dry powder for any other opportunities - long Korean hardware stocks (Samsung, SK Hynix) right now, then rotate to INTC leaps and/or lithium, then try to time crypto bottom and buy a few good coins on spot (LINK, HYPE). I think Uranium position does a 3-4x so would have to do a magical 14-23x with that $100k.
This:
ie “if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” was a favorite discussion topic both on the SSC open thread and on this forum in the early days, and still comes up occasionally.
I don’t think it’s a hugely useful conversation. Almost nobody beats the market in the long term, and if you can consistently beat benchmark by a few percent a year for a decade or two you’re a star fund manager.
To make the kind of return you’re describing you need to gamble or cheat (or both, as the latter generally amounts to the former).
If I was gambling, I’d try to ride the comedown of the emerging markets bond boom of the last couple of years (which is inevitable whenever larger cracks appear in the global credit market).
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If I had 1m$ I wouldn't bother with investing in markets. Way too many good ideas to pursue in the military industrial complex that will pay off handsomely.
What ideas are those? Every big Euro and most US VCs and a lot of other private equity is super into early-mid stage defense now, the big private companies like Anduril and that German drone company are valued lik AI firms, and the big public companies are trading at tech-level multiples priced to perfection for insane earnings growth over the next few years.
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Valid, leveraging your know-how in specialized niche is a proven way for outsized returns
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