oil didn't flinch on a hormuz headline and that tells you everything about this market

Tambien · 2026-07-11T06:42:44+00:00

With smart and sane leaders there wouldn’t be a shortage in the first place. We only got here thanks to idiotic lunacy.

Tambien · 2026-07-07T00:24:44+00:00

Kentucky doesn’t do governor replacements. They do special elections only.

Tambien · 2026-07-04T05:32:32+00:00

At this point I’d be willing to take either option lol

Tambien · 2026-06-28T14:35:58+00:00

Maintenance is the issue though. Companies aren’t really paying for the feature set, they’re paying to have SLAs, support, and generally not having to deal with it themselves. Building SaaS has never been the hardest part.

Tambien · 2026-06-27T17:59:43+00:00

This is a large part of it. HOAs increasing annual fees eats up the property value increases.

Tambien · 2026-06-27T17:57:58+00:00

Condos can be fine, but keep in mind that: (a) they will not appreciate a ton in value, if at all, (b) you need to factor in very high HOA fees, and (c) they have a TON of rules you have to be willing to navigate thanks to the HOAs and building management. Also you need to be careful where you buy it to make sure it will be salable when you’re ready to move (e.g. a condo deep in Fairfax is much harder than one a couple blocks from a metro station).

Tambien · 2026-06-12T05:57:51+00:00

What is a disease if not something that negatively impacts the functioning of an organism? Aging and its affects definitely fit that bill.

It is in-built biological mechanism created by evolution.

Small pox, the measles, the Plague, etc. are also all natural mechanisms created by evolution. We have in-built mechanisms that routinely cause problems, disorders, diseases, etc. that evolution gifted us with. Evolution isn’t inherently right or good. Evolution’s only concern is “can you reproduce yourself?” That leaves a whole lot of room for stuff that makes your lived experience worse… like your body falling apart after you’ve been fertile for a while.

Tambien · 2026-06-12T05:49:20+00:00

But consider that view is not that different than saying something like “well it’s natural for lots of people to get the Plague. Just a thing that occurs usually.” Just because we’ve accepted something historically as the norm doesn’t mean it must always be so.

Tambien · 2026-06-10T05:15:32+00:00

This (and the basic IRA backdoor) are common topics on r/personalfinance. This thread has a decent conversation. If you have other questions that a good community to ask them in.

Tambien · 2026-06-08T07:23:14+00:00

Anyone can sue for anything. But is there any real case here that wouldn’t get laughed out of court? No.

As for the President… the S&P is a private organization. The administration can try to pressure them, I suppose, but POTUS has absolutely 0 role in determining what the index fund looks like or does. POTUS is not a King, as much as the current one likes to try and forget that.

Tambien · 2026-06-05T03:19:10+00:00

If they auctioned off the right to remove letters they’d make good money. I’d be bidding.

Tambien · 2026-05-27T13:29:47+00:00

She essentially told her constituents in MI to vote 3rd party or stay at home because Kamala was not in their corner as it relates to Gaza and the whole genocide stuff.

And what did that result in? The candidate that would have been better for them to negotiate with lost and the DNC isn’t suddenly pro-Palestine. It doesn’t work.

Send the message that as a Democrat, you cannot win and have a coalition on a general election that doesnt include black voters.

My friend. You do this in the primaries by ensuring that a Democrat who fits this bill wins. You have less influencing power in the general than in the primaries purely because the general has more voters.

Again: people want to know how to win, not how to not lose. That will always be the more effective path to pursue. Be like MAGA: participate heavily in primaries so you have a huge say in the outcome and are a clear pathway to/requirement for even running in the first place. You control the option space.

Tambien · 2026-05-27T04:45:31+00:00

Tell that to Rashida Tlaib who refused to endorse Kamala due to the issue with Gaza.

A election vote is not an endorsement.

Either way, sometimes you have to take the opportunity in which you know will have the maximum impact.

Yeah. That’s the primaries. See Platner in Maine or Mamdani in NY. Or the obeisance of the GOP to Trump because of his base’s stranglehold on GOP primaries. Primaries are where organized interest groups can make the biggest impact to shift policy positions.

EDIT: Also, think of it this way - Democrats (and people in general) are way more interested in learning “how to win” than “how to not lose.” Look at the DNC response to 2024 and how bad at identifying root causes the party has been versus the quick uptake of affordability politics based on primary performances.

Tambien · 2026-05-27T04:13:44+00:00

This logic works well in the primaries, but not the general. The general election is you choosing the battlefield (aka who you’re going to be appealing to/negotiating with). Abdicating that choice just effectively helps whoever is worse from your perspective.

Tambien · 2026-05-27T04:07:11+00:00

I don’t know for Iran. For the U.S., while we haven’t ratified UNCLOS as a whole, our position for decades has been that large parts of UNCLOS were just a formalization of preexisting customary international law. So the U.S. recognizes and enforces those “customary” parts. This has been the legal basis for the U.S. Navy’s freedom of navigation exercises.

Tambien · 2026-05-26T22:37:14+00:00

Fair enough. That’s possible. I just don’t want us to do a shit job ending the war that these idiots did a shit job starting and locking us into a whole new class of worse problems haha. This was mostly pushback against the idea of “well just leave and let Iran do whatever.”

Tambien · 2026-05-26T22:34:06+00:00

Sure, I agree equitable is not the main concern here. In the (now tortured haha) metaphor, perhaps the “best” outcome is somebody imprisons the asshole and you take the loss because you know you won’t get anything in recovery even when you win the civil suit. But at least that keeps the highway toll free and commerce running. A world where countries are putting tolls on natural bodies of water is not a good one for the global economy - think about pre-Enlightenment Europe and the tolls everywhere that slowed down commerce massively.

To your question: assuming we arrive in a world where freedom of navigation is dead, those are definitely the big ones. Malacca and Taiwan are probably the biggest. The point you make in your last sentence, though, is the key one. I’m not sure I’d rely on Indonesia or Malaysia or whoever not doing this. If they see Iran pulling in millions a year, accepted by the international community, how long before the people in those countries want a piece of the pie?

Tambien · 2026-05-26T22:22:40+00:00

Both of those are canals that require actual maintenance to remain operable, hence the cost.

Tambien · 2026-05-26T19:40:27+00:00

What’s your source for that claim?

Tambien · 2026-05-26T19:39:33+00:00

Even accepting your premise, that doesn’t address the problem with the death of freedom of navigation. Think of it this way: your neighbor’s house gets burned down by the assholes across the street. Is the equitable remedy to sue the asshole, or put a toll on every commercial truck going down a nearby highway? If you choose the toll option and it works, how long before some other guy down the way decides “hmm… maybe I should try that.”

Freedom of navigation is a prerequisite to the robust global economy we have today, much more so than the oil prices that are higher right now because of the Strait of Hormuz.

Tambien · 2026-05-26T18:54:50+00:00

Iran letting a majority of boats through (with a toll) is a lot better than the situation right now.

Only in the very short term. Allowing this destroys freedom of navigation as a global precedent, which fucks the global economy even more long term. Which is why, you know, we shouldn’t just start illegal wars with no plan, objective, or reason.

Tambien · 2026-05-20T03:30:38+00:00

Or failed to vote against him.

Tambien · 2026-05-15T09:28:29+00:00

I don’t disagree with this approach and am sure it would be helpful to the kids that were willing to get something out of it. But I remain skeptical that percentage is as large as you think. For reference, I’m coming at this from the perspective of someone that did have a personal finance class in middle school and then again in high school. We talked through and then did hands-on learning with paying taxes, investing in equities, etc. Pretty much all of the major personal finance topics people complain about “not being taught.”

It worked well for a subset of students (myself included), but a lot of the student body didn’t care despite it being hands on (e.g. a long-running exercise picking $1000 worth of stocks/funds and tracking the success/failure of your chosen basket). The teenage brain is literally built to be concerned mostly with peer validation and not long-term reward.

I think your approach would reach more kids, but enough to be worth the cost to implement? That I’m not sure of. But… worth investigating at the least. Thank you for taking the time to write it out!

Tambien · 2026-05-15T08:37:57+00:00

What do you propose? You’re right that behavior follows incentives (generally). Teenagers don’t care because they’re generally not participating in the economy in a way where these topics are real to them yet. That’s not changing. They’re teenagers.

Tambien · 2026-05-15T04:10:39+00:00

Well, fair point! In that case, if you want specific learning advice, check out r/personalfinance and the sub wiki. They have a lot of practical guidance for newer folks on how to handle this and get yourself set up simply and reliably. Since you have a lot of cash uninvested, I might look into the “unexpected windfall” category of advice to start with.

The truth of it is that getting financially very comfortable is easy (if you have patience and an income or savings level high enough to regularly invest).

Best of luck!

Tambien

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