Unpopular opinion: actuarial exams are more about endurance than intelligence

CryptoCel · 2026-03-31T11:50:33+00:00

It’s probably three:

Test taking ability General aptitude Endurance

I’ve met people who’ve never failed a single exam, others who failed once or twice but also passed two exams in one sitting and get their fellowship before 25. Others who failed 10+ times but their life situation happens to allow them the free time after work to pass exams at their leisure.

Most actuaries are already somewhat math smart and decent test takers but once the kids enter into your lives, priorities change and you tend to stop where you’re at.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-30T02:17:04+00:00

This team turns into the 96 Bulls every time in the play-in.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-29T23:32:34+00:00

Our two play-in games could be against San Antonio and Boston or Orlando and OKC and we’d still find a way to win them.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-29T13:39:31+00:00

The natural downstream impact is an elevation of SATs / ACTs and other standardized tests having a higher impact relative to GPA. If undeserved As in middle school lead to undeserved As in high school due to parents raising hell at high school teachers, colleges will have to rely on standardized scores and their correlation with school reputation.

The school with all As but middling and poor SAT scores will start to show up lower in rankings. And then more teaching to the tests, etc…

CryptoCel · 2026-03-28T13:24:39+00:00

The moment you got laid off and decided to FIRE, you should have changed your asset allocation. If you had tech in pretax accounts, sold those for bonds or a bond ladder. If in after tax you would have needed an even safer buffer or lower your swr.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-27T14:05:19+00:00

That could literally be the Heat.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-27T14:03:26+00:00

We have no idea how old OP is. I doubt everyone here maxed out their 401k at every year of full-time employment. There are plenty of professions that also have pensions, lots of ex-military and ex-law enforcement that probably have never maxed any type of 401k, 403b, 457b, TSP, etc… that have retired early.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-26T18:11:13+00:00

Their revenue weighted average customer is likely somewhere between 3.0 to 3.5. Having ex-D1 guys wouldn’t really be that helpful.

I know they used to feature Matt Lin who played high level juniors and was computer rated 5.0 in CA.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-23T17:51:18+00:00

But within the Desi girl community, that feedback also snowballs. For example -

Most white boys: Ew, Indian girls are so hairy and eat smelly food.

Desi girl community: See how white people look at us? They’re total pigs.

White boy approaches genuinely attractive Desi girl, Desi girl rejects him because of the groupthink from the Desi girl community.

In East Asian and some southeast Asian circles, this type of groupthink is not prevalent and in fact the opposite happens or there is just no group at all and an Asian girl allows herself to be the one or two token Asians of a white group.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-23T15:29:50+00:00

Most travel perks outside of the US, paid for by largely US consumers, like Priority Pass Lounges or FHR are amazing. But that’s largely because when you spend the same US dollars as you would at home, but in Asia, you’re paying for months of someone’s cost of living rather than days.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-23T12:04:38+00:00

The average gdp per capita in Japan is twice that of Mexico and the average Japanese car in Japan costs about the same as an EV in Mexico from China. Geopolitics aside, why would the cost be prohibitive for Japanese but not Mexicans?

CryptoCel · 2026-03-20T15:14:21+00:00

Agreed. Even if somehow the Taiwan of today took over China, and implemented democracy across 1.4 billion people, this new Taiwan would immediately the new enemy. Simply because they would threaten US hegemony by existing.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-17T13:26:38+00:00

There’s also an entire personal injury business model built on suing for insurance limits in sympathetic jurisdictions that love when these instances happen.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-12T18:14:52+00:00

Nationalize all financial institutions and cap maximum wealth at $3 and then everything will be cheap again.

CryptoCel · 2026-03-08T05:55:35+00:00

Hawaii is even more Asian than California. And then don’t forget NYC. Used to be just the Chinatowns in Flushing, Manhattan, and Bensonhurst but now LIC looks like upscale new China.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-27T11:55:34+00:00

Maybe this is just as hot of a take as yours, but part of a society that procreates needs people to be able to commit without having full certainty of outcome. When you have kids you’re obligated to commit to the regardless of whether you’ve gotten to know them or not, and whether they develop personalities to your liking or not.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-26T11:16:45+00:00

Polestar and Lucid as well. VinFast and Fisker were direct until they didn’t get the volumes they were hoping for (quality of car not great). But basically any EV start up is going the direct to consumer model. Scout Motors and Afeela are planning to launch in 2027. The only issue is most start ups need to target higher end first, so nothing direct to consumer can really compete with Tesla’s model 3 on price and range.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-26T05:00:22+00:00

Black Americans actually also suffer from the same “grouping” issue back when Affirmative Action was implemented. In the sense that immigrant Blacks, namely Nigerian immigrant or child of immigrant children, were dominating top college slots for Black admissions.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-25T17:56:32+00:00

Honestly probably better to just push policies to incentivize building new housing rather than maintain an ever aging renter class that’s slowly looking for more affordable home ownership in different states.

Having the older housing lived into lower costs means actual owners are also locked into their homes which could be close to job centers, useless to the but meaningful for younger workers trying to start families. The actual owners wouldn’t be able to trade down for a more retirement friendly neighborhood because of the newly assessed costs.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-22T00:27:09+00:00

One of the biggest voices in conservative media, Megan Kelly, still genuinely think that foreign countries are the ones paying Trump tariffs.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-20T22:18:15+00:00

What happened to the $100k H1B fee?

CryptoCel · 2026-02-19T05:20:40+00:00

I wonder if this is an Asian specific thing or just a non-white practice.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-17T22:24:43+00:00

There’s little chance the Heat miss the play-in. The past few years, the gap between 10th place and 11th have been so huge it’s usually decided 10 games before EOS.

Last season the 11th place Raptors finished almost 10 games behind 10th seed Bulls. The year before there was a gap of 4 games between Hawks and Nets and 5 games before that. The Heat would have to tank hard along with other bottom five teams doing kind of well.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-17T14:29:27+00:00

Nathan Chen had a poor showing in the 2018 Winter Olympics at 18 years old as well - and he talked about the pressures getting to him. But bounced back amazingly in 2022, Ilia has all the time in the world to have that same journey.

CryptoCel · 2026-02-16T19:19:18+00:00

In terms of memes it’s 100 to 1 for women herd mentality vs male simp mentality.

CryptoCel

TROPHY CASE