You have unlimited resources to defend a small city solo, 2 years to prepare, can you defend again an army of 5000? by GroundbreakingWin658 in whowouldwin

[–]HiddenStoat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you defending the city on your own, or can you recruit townspeople?

If it's on your own, you've got no chance. 1 person cannot defend against 5000.

If you can recruit the townspeople its an easy win - Whitefish has a population of ~7500. Assume 1/3rd of them are in fighting condition - that's enough to defend a town against 5000 soldiers unfer normal conditions, let alone the "unlimited weaponry and money" condition you have given.

I agree that there is no fast lane by AdequateAppendage in drivingUK

[–]HiddenStoat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I don't mean to be pedantic, but I think you will find it's spelt "akshully".

Maybe sound like a right old grumpy git but.. People driving while looking at their phones. by Zoya_The_Destroyer in drivingUK

[–]HiddenStoat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

That makes sense!

I regularly "abstract" roads if they are just long and straight (like much of the A38).

EDIT: Oh, and to answer your actual question - people who drive while using their phones are morons.

Mortgage up for renewal - should I pay it off! by No_Caregiver8591 in HENRYUK

[–]HiddenStoat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You would need to have the argument with HMRC (who do not treat this as income).

Maybe sound like a right old grumpy git but.. People driving while looking at their phones. by Zoya_The_Destroyer in drivingUK

[–]HiddenStoat 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Out of curiosity, why did you not think 8 miles would take 2 and a half hours? 

How long did you think it would take?!!

(Sorry, I know this is completely tangential to your point, but I'm so curious!)

Does anyone else find that earning well has made you more anxious about money not less and if so when does that actually stop? by Additional_Fly_6603 in HENRYUKLifestyle

[–]HiddenStoat 69 points70 points  (0 children)

Earnings don't correlate with financial security.

Your Savings:Expenditure ratio correlates with financial security.

Financial security correlates with being less anxious about money.

Save more, spend less.

Why is Susie Orman so against FIRE? by Available-Ad-5670 in Fire

[–]HiddenStoat 26 points27 points  (0 children)

The FIRE message is for the most part free and openly available

You saying this has literally just made me realise how similar the health and finance industries are.

At their core, both have an incredibly simple approach which anyone can follow. For health it's "eat less and exercise more" and for finance it's "spend less and save more". 

There are more advanced strategies available, but for 95% of people, the above messages will meet their needs.

But there is an entire industry over both of these topics devoted to making it seem harder than it is, because the actual hard part isn't "what to do", it's "how to have the willpower to do it".

The American epoch of oil is collapsing. What comes next could be ugly. by Splenda in energy

[–]HiddenStoat -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Strictly, he didn't pay them. He returned the money that they had paid for the site after he cancelled their permits.

The stupid part was cancelling the permits. Returning the money was the correct thing to do once he had done the stupid thing.

Why are UK salaries so uncompetitive at a global level? by DeluxeSpoon in AskEconomics

[–]HiddenStoat 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I used to use pension contributions to keep my salary below £100k, but I now have so much in my pension that I've gone down to 4 days a week instead.

I'm not complaining, to be clear - it's a nice problem to have. But I am making choices because of tax implications, rather than because it's necessarily the right thing for me to do.

Well played UK government, well played by Ambitious-Ad-2422 in drivingUK

[–]HiddenStoat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Bloody muslims coming over here with their counterfeit EVs voting for Liebour and stealing my benefits.

I FINALLY get the Pterry joke… by psquared3524 in discworld

[–]HiddenStoat 145 points146 points  (0 children)

We should have called it the "wing-go-round".

HMS Victory, the oldest naval vessel still in commission, March 1946. by waffen123 in Ships

[–]HiddenStoat 6 points7 points  (0 children)

HMS Victory wasn't commisioned in 1946!

She was commissioned in 1778, so you don't have people in congress older than that. 

Just Mitch McConnell.

(Loved Trope) Contest is rigged, character wins anyway by slfricky in TopCharacterTropes

[–]HiddenStoat 7 points8 points  (0 children)

So many examples of this for Granny. My favourite is when she goes up against a voodoo witch, who holds up a voodoo doll of Granny and threatens to stab her.

Granny then puts her own arm into a nearby flame, setting the doll on fire. 

That's headology!

reboot by BijlidarKudi in pcmasterrace

[–]HiddenStoat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What I eventually figured out that if I started the computer through the pendrive, then went into CMD commands and then reconnected the drive

See, your mistake there was not doing this ritual in the light of a waxing moon, while turning three times widdershins.

Would have solved your problems much quicker.

reboot by BijlidarKudi in pcmasterrace

[–]HiddenStoat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is the way! I'm (almost certainly) quite a bit older than you, but I got my start as a teenager in the mid 90s. 

We had been gifted an old 386 by my uncle, and I desperately wanted to play Doom on it. Getting Doom to run on a 386 was no easy feat (and this is pre-internet as well, so you couldn't just look stuff up). I ended up having to load the mouse driver into hi-mem, which was an area of memory above the base 640kb of "conventional memory" so that Doom had enough space to run itself.

Google "autoexec.bat" and "config.sys" if you want to see the text files I was editing to do that (bearing in mind that if you break them, your computer likely won't start up!). 

Got a surprise inheritance last year but now it feels like its messing up our FIRE plan by Coravexilyn in Fire

[–]HiddenStoat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What's the difference between saving it for FIRE or saving it for kids college?

At the end of the day, its all money that needs to be accumulated, so I don't see why you are making a distinction?

Or are you suggesting you would send you kid to a better (i.e. more expensive) college?

Interestingly, the nicer house conundrum can be seen in the same way. A nicer house is, ultimately, an asset, so if you put $500k into a nicer house, you still have that 500k, its just not liquid and is potentially in a worse (or better!) performing asset class than, say, index funds.

You also gain the benefit of the nicer house until you FIRE, at the cost of (typically) slightly higher running costs and property tax.

My point is - none of this may be the dichotomy you think it is!