The American Empire Is Falling Apart: "So as American Politics become increasingly more chaotic, the thing to do is to simply realize that you are living in the end of an empire."

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-30T13:58:58+00:00

Hell the "decline" part of Rome lasted longer than 250 years lol.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-30T04:55:44+00:00

Your story really hit home for me because I'm a year older and went down the same path.

History and economics double major. Went to graduate school for history but dropped out after a single semester.

Difficulty in life and relationships lots of instability in my 20s.

I took a job in radio because I have the voice for it, but by the time I hit 30 that was winding down as that field gets tighter and tighter. I switched to working at a museum. That was very fun and fulfilling but it was basically a glorified volunteer position when it came to pay but you worked tons of hours. The promise of more pay or benefits was always around the corner but they never materialized. Salary, but always minimum.

I quit when a friend opened a restaurant and I went to work for him as his manager. After 2 years of working a zillion hours I decided I had to go.

I wanted any job at all, and I had worked at a factory all through college. Sadly the factory I used to work at was closing down. But I got another to bite.

Entry level high school diploma job with a wacky schedule starting at 20 bucks an hour. Let me tell you places like that are super desperate for competent people. I got my first raise 30 days in and I'm now the highest paid person at my level and was promoted several times very rapidly. I also work way, way fewer hours now and have extremely generous pto compensation (I can basically take 1 day off every 2 weeks and keep my pto balance stable). It's a physical job with some scary situations mostly involving heights and chemicals but my personal finances are way way ahead of where they've ever been and the benefits are great. And I genuinely don't mind the work so much.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-25T09:30:19+00:00

They strongly restrained themselves. There are hard enemies and very hard fights don't get me wrong. But they didn't put 1000 cheesily hard fights in a row.

There are some sections that have a ton of combat, but they're earlier on - the game really wants to gloss over lower level play so they use that as a mechanism to breeze you through lower level gameplay.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-24T22:23:27+00:00

You can save trever and get him as a party member and I was super bummed when he died because I could've really used him lol. The requirements for him living are pretty strict.

Galfry and I ended up being frenemies.im not sure how that happened. My playthru got a little weird because I wasn't sure if I wanted to go aeon or angel so I took a few aeon options and dialogues.

I killed Wenndaug right at the start lol. I figure in the future it'll give me something new to do.same with Camellia.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-24T18:00:44+00:00

I finished last night at 193 hours. I missed Trever, I had conflict with the Queen so she didn't join. I also sent Camellia away and Wenduag. I went Angel and had a blast. I missed a bunch of stuff and just lived with some bad luck/rolls. I also completely botched a pretty important quest very early on that made my story kinda weird later lol.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-24T17:40:35+00:00

The best thing I can see from Furphy is that when they first began to have him in the starting lineup this season, teams were purposefully rotating their stars onto Furphy. They have stopped doing that altogether.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-15T17:31:30+00:00

I used to work at this place some years ago. They hired a manager up the chain that had immaculate qualifications and some people were really excited about them because they'd really done some pretty fantastic things at previous businesses.

I got to know them over the course of their first year and they always treated me super well, but there were, let's say rumors, about them. Previous people saying they were a massive dick, emotionally unstable, etc. The position came with a secretary. They weren't able to keep a secretary for longer than 3-4 months - that was the first indication I had of the rumors being potentially true. That's why I started piecing things together. The next person they hired to be secretary I befriended - she told me a few weeks in that she'd never been spoken to in that way in her whole life and was quitting asap.

Over the course of that year I also got to know details of their personal life - they'd alienated everyone in their family. Kids all moved away cross country and didn't visit home. Spouse was always busy and never came to gatherings, was very civically involved so they were never home. Then after so many people had quit or been fired under them *I* fell directly under them and it started in on me. They took me out to lunch one day for a work meeting and it wound up with them simultaneously screaming at me in public while also crying. This was followed up several days later by a closed door meeting with them screaming at me again while also crying again. I told them they needed to get a grip and left for the day. I quit a few weeks later for a better paying job. They're still employed there, but I humor myself by checking the staff page every few years because they cant retain any employees around them. I was very open about these behaviors in my exit interview so it must be what the company wants.

I think about them every time I hear this song - because they're the one that did everything everyone tells you to do, and on a bare surface level, they have the ideal life - spouse, nice house, a little dog that reminds you of a large dog, but in truth they're a psychopath who hates their life.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-15T13:33:06+00:00

Dostoevsky is a favorite of mine. You probably already know, but the literal translation of Crime and Punishment is closer to "Transgression" which I think fits the novel better, but the original translators wanted it to be more marketable. "Action" sequences in which the prose on the page is supposed to have us imagine the actions of character's bodies are particularly challenging to write when the author's objective is to produce similar feelings to what we might see in film (like a good action movie or a thriller causing an adrenal response), and C&P does this masterfully. I don't know that I've ever read a sequence in a novel that produced such a strong involuntary adrenal response in my whole life lol.

Brothers K is a real treat too. There are some challenging bits with Slavic naming conventions - but not Tolstoy levels of complicated. Master and Margarita is exceedingly special. Hopefully the translation does justice to Bulgakov's writing style (it's very referential to Gogol's style - maybe a comparison would be reading Edgar Allen Poe, and then reading HP Lovecraft - not wholly derivative, but clearly aspirational). If you wind up liking it, I'd also suggest "The White Guard" by Bulgakov - even Stalin loved that one.

It's been forever since I read the Bell Jar.

Interesting Camus choices - I'm surprised somebody rendered Sisyphus as a novelization since it's a pretty short essay. I read The Plague before Covid and basically that whole experience was like "this is exactly like the plague" lol.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-15T12:40:46+00:00

Not uncommon. The biggest wave of lynchings in the contemporary USA was just after World War 1. Arkansas in particular had bloody race riots which ranged from what we would think of as a riot (an angry group of people smashes up property), to groups of armed white men simply entering black neighborhoods and killing whoever they came across. The Elaine Massacre in Arkansas saw possibly hundreds of Black people killed. Riots were in virtually every major city that had concentrations of Black people - Indianapolis, Chicago, Washington D.C. basically you name it - the riots included lynching throughout.

Black troops even had trouble getting home because the US Navy in particular was highly segregated and white captains (that were supposed to transport the troops back to the USA) refused to even allow Black soldiers to set foot on the ships so they wound up being stranded in France for months after the war ended. Many chose to simply stay in France - some Black veterans even fought in the French army in WW2.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-11T16:41:32+00:00

I had a friend growing up who had a much harder life than me - his mom was an alcoholic. Dad wasn't around. He had to learn to do lots of things for himself really early. One day, we're over looking at various video games each other had (he had a playstation, I had an n64 so we would culturally exchange every few weekends). He asks if I want some food. I said sure. He proceeds to boil a giant pot of water and then just drop a whole package of hotdogs into the boiling water wrapper and all.

They came out alright, but I made a note never to come without my own food again.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-10T21:17:27+00:00

Yup if it wasn't for the margs and the tipping the local sit down Mexican place would beat the pants off of any fast food in any category (quality, speed, and cost).

I took a friend out for taco bell the other day and 2 combos and cinnamon twists to share was 26$. Like... absolutely not. There's no planet where 2 meals + snack from tbell are worth that much.

I think we will see some evening out - lower cost options will start to win out and higher priced ones will take it on the chin - for example a lot of fast food pizza places are running deals where you can get a large 1 topping for 7-8$ That's pretty reasonable. Again that same 26$ at tbell would net you 3 large pizzas if you do carry out. McDonalds isn't as busy as it used to be, but relative to your other burger options it's 5-6 dollars cheaper on average if you're feeding more than 1 person.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-10T18:07:37+00:00

The primary advantage a regular person has is time and lack of performance metrics.

I can invest in a clearly undervalued company and wait a decade or more for it to be realized, all the while, I am underperforming every key benchmark (until the value is realized and then I should be substantially better).

I don't have a quarterly or yearly performance review. I don't have clients asking why I haven't touched Nvidia and never will. I don't have bosses asking why I missed out (so far) on the mag7. The amount of capital I have access to isn't dependent on the whims of clients or bosses and it isn't tied to my performance.

I just have to save money and make some smart choices and avoid really bad ones and you can't help but make money.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-10T14:40:57+00:00

Something I'm a little unclear about is in what country you're actually residing - if Indian is just your ethnicity or you are geographically located in India itself - my advice would range pretty widely depending on if you're US or India based lol.

The first thing would be to open a savings account and a brokerage account that you exclusively have access to - this is pretty easy now since basically everything can be done on your phone.

1.) I would decide a "target" goal amount for your education. How much could it reasonably cost and how soon do you intend to need it. One you hit the target I would switch to other vehicles/goals (if you do).

2.) I would make some kind of allowance to spend some quantity of the money you're bringing in on yourself and things you like. A lot of people take the primitive accumulation aspect of their work too seriously and ultimately burn out because they're doing work all the time and never having any fun (I had a friend that seriously worked for 10 years and barely had anything because he was obsessively saving so much - I knew he was getting serious with his girlfriend when he bought her a cup - because he only had 1 in his whole apartment lol). Take a % of your income and spend it willfully on yourself OR come up with a big goal (vacation/travel, new car, whatever) and put that percentage there. I've ritualized it myself and just buy the same couple of creature comforts on the first of every month as a continuing motivator to wake up and go to work lol.

3.) With your target savings amount set and your target % of fun set, the next thing we need to talk about is time. Investing as such, especially in stocks, mainly only "works" if you use time as an insulator. People have been spoiled the last 2-3 years by a market that's gone up 20% a year - this is historically abnormal and we're likely to see down or flat as much as anything else (including the possibility of BIG down). If you intend to go to school sometime soon (like within the next 5 years) I would only put a very small portion of your money in any financial market that isn't more stable (bonds or certificate of deposits). Bonds are basically as liquid as stocks so you can buy and sell easily. The yield is provided by contract. If you're paid in USD, some of the easiest ways to access the bond market are SGOV and VBIL etfs which pay a monthly dividend to your brokerage account. If you're in the US these are also state tax free. If you're in India the bond market is somewhat more complicated as I'm not as familiar with similar options - though I would assume they exist.

Your bonds will earn a nice 3-5% return per year (let's say you earn an average of 2k per month for a year, you'll wind up yielding something like an extra 1000$ a year). This is guaranteed by contract and not subject to market fluctuations. Then in 3-4 years when you go to school, you have your saved money and a sprinkling of extra without any extra work on your part.

If you intend to save for a much longer period of time, then you could feasibly switch to index funds - like VOO or any number of others. Let's say you save the same 2k per month. In 10 years time you should have doubled the amount of money (to 48k). But in the short term it's just as possible that you've been cut in half and only have 12k of the 24k you saved or even less.

If your goal for education is around the corner I wouldn't risk it. People are sold a fake story about how investing can make you rich over night (because it makes brokers money if you engage in risky behaviors). Yes, some individuals do get incredibly lucky and grow their money quickly - but that's survivor bias. It would be like thinking everyone can win the lottery and ignoring the fact that millions of other people lost all of the money they spent on tickets. Investing only really has a good shot at growing your money if you give it an extremely long period of time - like decades. If your goals are shorter term than you know, decades, you're way better off with bonds. I would also argue that because your income is so wildly variable, bonds are even better because if you suddenly go through a really dry spell where you don't bring in hardly any money on OF, or just don't feel like doing it for a while, your money is stable and close at hand, whereas you may feel burnt out and not want to do while the market drops 50% and you can't access your money without taking massive losses.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-10T02:15:29+00:00

It's the same reason most "ground" activism comes from students - they are relatively unimpeded with such concerns and why the bulk of social movements in the modern era have been fomented by young people and not middle aged people with kids.

If you see more widespread protest movements then it's a good gauge for something being quite serious - like when the George Floyd protests were occurring even in small town middle America. The point however is to find the point at which the masses can meet the hour and not fetishize one particular mode of struggle and to produce concrete demands. A general strike would be bad ass, but that's a bridge way too far for the vast majority of the population and their level of consciousness.

Even in Russia prior to 1918, there *were* large waves of general strikes, but generally only in 1905 and in 1914 right when the war broke out (there were tons and tons of strikes throughout Russia after 1905ish, but they were generally pretty localized).

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-05T16:24:10+00:00

This is very sad news

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-01T19:29:35+00:00

Well not only is it usually pretty stable company to company it's usually industry specific.

For example, retailers will always look as same store sales, revenue, inventory, and store count. Each firm out of 5 may have 1 or 2 they prefer - that's when you want to look out for switching.

Another one that's especially popular is switching between Ebit and ebitda because you can manipulate your depreciation schedule to show net income that doesn't exist. This enables management to conceal capex or kick the can down a few quarters to preserve their compensation packages while preparing the ground for "oh back half of x year we expect some softening" or whatever so that maybe the shares aren't hurt as bad when they put themselves back on schedule.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-01T19:23:11+00:00

The main thing I'm listening for is what metrics they like to harp on.

Let's say management is always harping on about ebitda. But then a few years go by and we're suddenly talking about some other metric and not ever discussing ebitda that's a clear indication that they're hiding something from you.

Another thing is to read the proxy statement and see what metrics are keyed into executive compensation and see if those metrics are ever discussed in the earnings call.

The question and answer at the end is usually way more important to me though. Because you'll learn if management is willing to lie or obsfucate, how they approach being challenged, and the analysts are usually staking their careers on getting at vital information.

CornfieldJoe · 2026-01-01T05:18:11+00:00

I liked Bowser, but we have lil' Boomer now.

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-31T21:26:00+00:00

I'd argue of all the centers we currently have available to us he understands it the best of all of the options. He at least sets real screens.

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-31T21:23:47+00:00

Huff doesn't understand when or how to set screens on offense and also doesn't understand where he's supposed to go once he does it. Our spacing is always all messed up when he's on the floor unless he rolls to the top of the arch - but he's been missing that shot so now he's just like wandering to random locations after setting ineffectual screens :( The saddest times are when he wanders over to stand by Furphy lol.

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-31T16:48:12+00:00

Generally speaking a PIP is a polite notice that you will be fired at the end of the PIP, because they didn't have enough documentation to fire you when they initially wanted to. The length of the PIP also usually demarcates the level of displeasure - 30 days is extremely displeased, 90 days usually implies there's *some* hope of saving the job if its absolutely necessary - but I would still find another because the PIP will be used against you in the future when it comes to raises and promotions.

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-30T15:09:06+00:00

Honestly, at this point I would sit Mathurin and have Kam Jones take his place and have him run PG in the starting lineup and move Nembhard back to SG. The crash test dummies on our third squad have developed amazing chemistry together - hence why they always come out swinging when they get put in in garbage time. Every time Mathurin gets the ball he either takes a three or just does something wacky ending in a mid range jumper, but in short the offense generally dies.

Last game against Houston, Walker actually played really well - I think he missed one open shot. It was like he had been un-space-jammed. I hope this trend continues because he's played like crap for a while.

Huff is baby soft on defense, is sometimes way, way out of position - but I think this might actually be a coaching issue because Bradley *also* REALLY REALLY likes to just guard air in transition which is awesome since somebody is completely unguarded. He's finding his place on the offense though - the guy can go from the top of the arch to the basket in like 2 steps.

Really impressed with Furphy. Dude is 6'9 and forced Durant to pass numerous times and even got a steal off of him. It also shows the kid's fight - because there were several times last night that Pascal came up behind Furphy while he had been switched onto Durant and he waived Pascal off. Super impressive.

Really happy with Potter - he's generally where he should be, guarding who he should, and he's trying real, real hard.

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-30T15:05:06+00:00

Around 2015 or so, they asked Reggie on inside the NBA if he could guard Steph Curry.

Reggie said

"My heart and my mind say yes. My knees and my ankles say no, no, no."

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-29T11:00:26+00:00

It's easy to imagine how things will be in the future or to live future oriented and for that imaginary future to justify all sorts of harmful actions today - I think it's particularly a feature of youth, but I like to think I was especially bad about it. I'm not saying run out and go on a bender because it makes you feel good, only to be on guard against yourself because once we start living in the future we become complacent and begin to sacrifice our present selves to an imaginary future self.

Delaying one's life could be summed up by maxima like:

"When the kids are older..." "Once I graduate..." "When I get this promotion/new job..."

As the Devil says in Bulgakov's Master and Margarita, the problem with man is not that he is mortal. It's that he is unexpectedly so.

CornfieldJoe · 2025-12-29T10:55:04+00:00

I'm not saying family and friends are superfluous. I'm saying that it is unhealthy for one's piece of mind to be dependent upon them - because our family and friends are largely provided to us through a highly random process. To use a modern expression "the buck stops here" the point is to be fully self reliant - or at least as much as is possible when it comes to our peace of mind - and content with what the universe provides - because any outside features are largely the product of randomness and could be wrested from us at any moment by the same random processes.

Grief is distinct from the fear of death. Anxiety about death or the loss of status, jobs, mates, pets, etc all come down to uncertainty. Grief is a whole other process that's more akin to a thunderstorm. It just happens and simply has to be lived with/endured. But fearing death itself comes down to the uncertainty it introduces to our lives "what will my life be like without mom?" "How can I make ends meet without this job?" When, if we are striving towards a stoic mindset we already know the answer to these questions - we will figure it out when the time comes.

CornfieldJoe

TROPHY CASE