I value free time very highly and a 9-5 job that doesn’t demand constant OT results in a nice work-life balance, IMO. I personally found the transition very pleasant. Main negative was getting time off for chores that must be done during work hours. But, many places are pretty chill about that.

Or Biden is showing his age and needs to let someone else take the helm. Being left doesn’t mean yes-manning everything the party does.

It’s good they are continuing to stamp down on corruption. It is what you want to see.

Note how we are talking about how large of douchebags the activists are and just how much they damaged a cultural heritage site.

Fuck these people.

Ah, crap, that I do. I should look at a map whenever I talk about them. It’s stored in my head in this fashion:

• Russia’s buddy is in the west and gets disputed land taken by guy in the east.
• Both countries start with ‘A’ and are near Turkey.

The fun part is Russia leads the CSTO, which is the same type of organization as NATO. However, three members have left it, including Azerbaijan Armenia just this year as Russia failed to hold up their commitment when Article 4 (equivalent to NATO’s Article 5) was called when Armenia Azerbaijan took land Russia considered Azerbaijan’s Armenia’s in late 2022.

Edit: Flipped the names. They are now correct.

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110102-metrics-graphic.html

On that 20-year diagonal, there are only eight of the seventy squares that didn’t have returns higher than inflation. And in every one of those few cases, holding just a few years longer made the investment outpace inflation. When even black swan events don’t break the strategy, this simply is more confirmation that investing in an index fund for long periods of time is a proven strategy.

Note that light-red boxes are investments that outperformed inflation. No clue why they would color making more money than inflation red…

The key phrase is ‘over the long run’ and ‘holding them for years’. That 90yo wants to have long-ago moved their investments into bonds because, as you point out, a stock market downturn may not come back up before they die. Waiting out a downturn takes years and they are drawing down on their investments regularly.

Buying enough lottery tickets to guarantee a payout just ensures you lose money as the house always takes a cut. Investing, unlike the lottery, has the benefit of not being a zero sum game. There is wealth generated and buying something like an index fund and holding for years puts you in the group making a profit along with everyone else.

Example: If you bought VTI (an index fund) just before the 2008 crash (and subsequently lost a bunch of value during the crash), you would still be up 257% today. And that isn’t some outladish example; do the same with the S&P 500 and you are up 279% today. Purchasing for the long term and with a wide array of stocks is investing.

Edit: And in both of those examples you would be earning dividends the entire time as well, which is not part of the quoted %.

Spreading out stock purchases across the market guarantees returns over the long run.

Buying one stock is gambling, buying a wide spread of stocks (or an index fund that does so) and holding them for years is investing.

Americans wave to the Russians

Solar panels on the roof and hood of a car are dubiously useful. This car has panels on the sides of the doors? Those are going to get but a fraction of the light the roof ones will. This just looks like someone tried to shove as many on as possible with zero thought into the efficacy of the idea.

A few of them have. The core issue is it doesn’t add much range, while at the same time adding more cost, weight, and complexity. On a sunny summer day you can expect to get single digit kilometers added to the range, while on a cloudy winter day you won’t get even a full kilometer added.

They do make some sense on hybrids, as they are lighter so the range increase is a bit more and people are less likely to charge a hybrid. But, they still suffer from not adding much range, while adding cost, weight, and complexity.

Edit: Auto Focus did a re-review of the Fisker Ocean, which has solar panels. Linked to the timestamp where he is talking about them.

Russia continues their nuke threats, Putin just in the last day made another. It is only natural others respond.

Everyone simply saw the yellow ones as neutral toned. It’s a nice contrasting color to show the emotion and they have always done a good job representing everyone while serving their goal: to convey emotion in text.

The push for representation in emoji’s always struck me as weird since they already represented everyone. I rarely see people using them who aren’t a bit too focused on skin color in their day-to-day life.

This was Russia’s final warning. This time they will use the nukes!

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China’s_final_warning

At that point Russia is using foreign weapons in a country they invaded. Therefore there is absolutely no reason left Ukraine should be banned from using foreign weapons against the country invading them.

There should never have been such a ban preventing Ukraine from defending themselves. Even if you believe it made sense, at the latest it should have been lifted the day we confirmed Russia was using Iranian weapons in Ukraine.

Russia’s 254th red line.

You sometimes see some very minor variations, such as a mild taper on the thick part or a slightly different angle on the neck. But they all look basically like below. Pictured is a beer from the oldest brewing company in the US; established 1829.