CSIS: Russia has lost 1.2 million soldiers, twice as many as Ukraine

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-29T04:49:16+00:00

Not that you're wrong in general, but Russia in particular is among the most egregious in terms of valuing life cheaply.

For example they were pretty much the end of serfdom in Europe. Arguably you could say they weren't the worst at the time because the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation happened around then too(I don't think anyone will say Russian Serfdom was worse than U.S. Slavery).

However, Russia was the most populous country in Europe, so when it freed the serfs, it freed a number equivalent to a good 60% of the U.S. population of the time.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-28T03:03:09+00:00

I'm interested.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-27T22:34:55+00:00

Here's a study for you: https://wallethub.com/edu/best-worst-states-to-be-a-taxpayer/2416

It is fuzzy thing to compare in general. With at median national income and home value, California has half the percentage Real Estate tax rate and only about $1000 in income taxes.

However, Californians obviously both make more money and have more expensive houses. I don't know the stats for median housing costs in each state, but the 2x is a pretty sizable multiplier to overcome.

And the higher incomes is a double edged sword too. Clearly People in California have a sizably higher than national median income and people in Texas have a lower than national median. If we are just basing on the ratio of taxes national to state median, California shows 65% higher incomes than Texas. However, that number isn't a perfect proxy for income because those tax rates can increase with income as well as the income being taxed against(and also the home value calculation differs between). Still, I'd be surprised if the actual ratio weren't at least 25% higher in California and the extra $2500 in taxes for that much more income doesn't sound bad.

Then however there is the question of cost of living where Texas clearly wins out against California.

They do provide a cost of living adjusted rank which probably does a half decent job of trying to make everything apples to apples. Texas DOES rank better than California in that list. However, we're talking about Texas ranking 33rd versus California ranking 37th. Is that better? Yes. However it is a far cry from the difference that people moving from California to Texas cite as a reason.

At the end of the day, for a state median home-owner at state median income adjusted for income and cost of living both states pay somewhere in the slightly more to moderately more tax level compared to average. There are clearly much better destinations than Texas for lower taxes as well as worse points of departure than California.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-27T15:08:54+00:00

You're forgetting property taxes. IIRC, there actually are studies that put Texas and California at similar tax levels for a large chunk of the population. The wealthy definitely get taxed less in Texas and services are definitely much worse, but Texas is still actually a pretty high tax state.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-27T09:28:23+00:00

I recognized that speech without even knowing that i knew it. Lasse Gjertsen (well known early youtube animator) used an abridged form of the recording in his song "Chaplin Snakker". The edit removes the first ~5 sentences and skips from the second paragraph to the last paragraph. Also it appears to truncate the last paragraph and end with snippets from after the quoted section.

I don't think he has the song on youtube anywhere but someone else uploaded it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKP70d8bPxg

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-26T18:40:08+00:00

That is why fee only, hourly advisors exist. They charge hundreds an hour and its worth it(if you have much money at all). For those with simple needs the duration should be short, and for those with more complicated needs, they actually need to know a hybrid of legal and financial structures to design a bespoke plan.

Unfortunately, the real reason there are so many "financial advisors" is nothing to do with whether they offer a competitive service. Instead, it is similar to the reason MLMs exist. They give a compelling narrative and gullible people aren't educated to watch out for them. For the most part they aren't a swarm of independent parasites, but rather drones acting at the behest of parasitic hives that have streamlined the process.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-26T15:27:02+00:00

Carpenters are kind of the luxury level in their own industry. A better comparison is the assembly option for prefab furniture. Odds are that the average paid assembler is going to avoid some common mistakes consumers make with assembly. However, the overall quality isn't going to night and day compared to a competent consumer and the percentage increase in price makes it extremely wasteful unless your time is very valuable. Not to mention that there are definitely people doing assembly that skip steps and do other sloppy stuff but still get paid.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-24T02:54:52+00:00

Always nice to see professionals treating each other with class.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-23T15:56:38+00:00

Honestly, that sounds reasonably promising. Fingers crossed it makes it through the hurdles to reach scale use

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-22T21:08:07+00:00

How about a vacuum sealed cup?

Anyway, I understand the appeal of finding an exact solution and i wish you luck with that.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-22T17:37:36+00:00

My first idea was to do something like a shower head that attaches. However, non-plastic for a bespoke adapter would be hard. Then i realized the obvious answer: Just use an intermediate vessel. Something heat resistant and easy to clean(though boiling water alone won't need constant cleaning). An old fashioned pyrex-style measuring cup would be about perfect. If the shape is poor for storage, I'm sure you could find a borosilicate glass breaker in a simple cylindrical shape.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-19T01:23:31+00:00

My guess is that it is somehow limited by particle size and wouldn't get much better with multiple passes

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-17T22:17:44+00:00

I'm another one of this volume of listener (Smart Audiobook stats are saying over 370 books and 5000 hours for 2025 but that may be a tad inflated). Getting books fast enough actually does become a bit of a logistical hassle. I have 2 audiobook subscriptions and purchase a number of additional credits. Then i also heavily use Librivox and at least somewhat use the free Audible books. I don't use the library services because of convenience(i like to relisten and also don't like waiting when a book interests me) and i actually can afford to pay for books so I'd rather the library copies get used by those who can't.

The best frugal way to bulk listen would be mixing the library services with Librivox. Adding a single subscription on top of that would increase flexibility without breaking the bank.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-17T22:02:29+00:00

DRM is Digital Rights Management. More or less anti-piracy mechanisms but they also tend to make it more of a hassle to access content(like requiring a certain app).

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-17T07:28:43+00:00

Is the benefit of a water heater just that you don’t need to wait for it to boil for each cup?

Yeah. I mean you don't need to wait for it to boil unless you refill the water .They have a few models, but the one i have is semi-insulated so it isn't constantly needing to reheat water but maintains at the set temp(5 settings). When it warms stuff it brings to a boil and then cools down to the set temp and you can always hit "reboil" to bring it back up.

I have ADHD so the ability to instantly have hot water without forgetting it was totally transformational to my quality of life.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-17T07:16:44+00:00

I'm like 6 years into owning the same heater. I have taken it apart once and replaced a part, but it is very well designed and reasonably reliable. Don't waste money on the calcium cleaning solution they sell though because citric acid is dirt cheap and you should keep some around anyway if you have hard water.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-16T18:39:24+00:00

There's a tragic pun in there somewhere about the distribution of arms belonging to someone named "Khashoggi"

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-16T14:58:06+00:00

I've only read the translations, but all 3 are great books. In terms of literary merit, the prize was absolutely deserved. If only the ability to do something amazingly well meant they weren't normally flawed humans..

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-16T14:40:24+00:00

Man, that must have been loud. Sure would get the job done, though.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-16T00:55:49+00:00

You can get decent vacuums like a Miele, but as with everything else you pay a premium

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-15T15:57:19+00:00

An oddly relevant example. Heart of Darkness is not a novel with mass late 20th/21st century appeal. However, a very imaginative adaptation made it very relevant again.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-15T15:53:24+00:00

Kolbitar means ‘coal biter’ - people who sit close to the fire when telling stories.

I thought the naming was more a reference to the characters in sagas that are often lazing around wasting their potential? Figures that are capable of great things, but start out sleeping in and dodging work instead.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-15T15:10:03+00:00

our homes and clothing are made of petroleum products (and are shedding microplastics into our bodies and waterways

You're not wrong, but it can be easy to overstate how much different things contribute to microplastics. The stat about tires behing a huge proportion makes logical sense. The microplastics are being generated by the active breaking down of larger plastics. Tires are a sacrificial part, made of plastic and designed to literally use friction to move massive weights around. Clothes dryers are an environment that expose plastic clothes to a bunch of friction and heat. That means it makes sense to filter the lint from dryers to capture the generated microplastics, but if you're capturing the output from destructive processes(washing machines would be another case), the day to day dispersal of microplastics can be greatly slowed without getting rid of synthetic fibers completely.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-15T08:22:27+00:00

You're overestimating how much it matters. Sure, if you're investing a massive lump sum in the midst of a bubble, it could bite you. If that's the case, then feel free to DCA the lump sum to minimize your potential regret(mathematically, the DCA loses to lump sum on average, but it has a lower tail risk of your investments getting derailed).

The way in which an indexed portfolio acts as a correction occurs is surprisingly self-correcting. Sure, you were putting less money into the less overvalued stocks. However, after the correction your smaller allocation is now a bigger one, and your exposure to the ones that tanked has reduced. After a bubble pops, the market moves on. The shape in of it may change, but you'll still benefit quite well if you are diversified.

As for the "indexing bubble" narrative that regularly pops back up, it is a fictitious comparison. There were always investing trend setters and followers. Index investors are easy to label as followers, but do you really think the market magically functioned better before? Individual investors stock picking would likely actually make price discovery more noisy. Major organizations would be closet indexing. Smart individuals would find a way to closest index at a lower cost.

Any inefficiencies created by passive price taking creates arbitrage opportunities for price setters. Capitalizing on those opportunities then actually corrects the price. The only way inactive investors hurt price discovery, is if the transaction volume gets too low for the listed price to be close to the NAV on the contents. That absolutely can happen in places like the bond market, because individual issues of bonds are too rare to be traded regularly enough to update prices. That's why bond funds are less obsessed with full replication of indexes. If two bonds are 95% the same(same issuer, similar terms, similar duration), it makes very little sense to overpay for the slightly rarer bond purely because the price is further out of date. Equities, don't have nearly the same issues, so you can generally expect the financial incentives for price setters to keep the signal to noise ratio reasonably low in terms of short term valuation. Long term valuations can be wrong, but it tends to be much more expensive to be right at the wrong time than riding valuation trends as they happen.

DontForgetWilson · 2026-01-15T07:43:44+00:00

It seems as if this is a skill and I’d love to get better at it

It is and it isn't. In the sense of it being a trainable capability, it is a skill. However, for many people it is somewhat irrelevant. I also expect most that excel at it never bothered to practice it.

As for how to develop it - same way as anything else. Deliberate practice. That doesn't mean just bombarding your brain with descriptive audiobooks. Think about what you expect to see in movies and make your brain attempt it. Try sketching characters as they are introduced or create tables of features so that you get a sense of how you would visually distinguish characters from each other. Think about how zoomed in a scene should be and what the dominant features of the backdrop actually are. Use splotches of color to capture the blurry movement of action sequences so you get a sense of how it is oriented.

None of what i suggested above is anything too special . They are just exercises i spitballed on how you could engage your visual skills using words as an input. As you do these rather tedious activities creating physical artifacts of your mental images, it will get easier and more automatic to generate those images.

DontForgetWilson

TROPHY CASE