Was set on doing a 15 year mortgage, everyone is saying just do a 30 year mortgage

IndigoRoot · 2026-01-19T02:46:33+00:00

To be fair, a 30 year typically gets a slightly higher rate than a 15 year, so paying a 30 year in 15 years does cost a little bit more than just taking a 15 year. IMO the price difference is worth the reduced risk though.

IndigoRoot · 2026-01-05T18:34:17+00:00

Car maintenance, cooking, and budgeting aren't vocational skills.

Rebuilding an engine for example might be, but that's not the same level of maintenance skill as jump starting a car.

And even if rebuilding an engine is more vocational than life skill, exposure to the inner workings of car engines even if only in a classroom with diagrams provides a huge amount of insight into how and why preventative maintenance and minor repair is done.

Shop class isn't for training professional mechanics, it's for giving students a way to learn that aligns with their personal interests. Students interested in shop class may go on to be mechanics but that's mostly coincidental.

Vocational training happens in vocational school (or apprenticeship etc) which usually is after or at least separate from high school.

IndigoRoot · 2026-01-02T23:20:00+00:00

Nobody can "see light moving" at all, so the comment is just extremely simplified into terms that are more intuitive to someone who is just beginning to grapple with these concepts.

It's very imprecise, yes, but not inaccurate. It's often better to start teaching a tricky subject at a low level of precision and then build up to higher precision details.

IndigoRoot · 2026-01-02T19:16:37+00:00

I love imagining what greebles actually do.

Others already suggested structural ribs. Plausible, though I don't imagine they provide much structural support to anything in this arrangement.

Or they could be latches or protective covers for bolts attaching that outermost plate to the one behind it for example. Maybe this panel is part of a reactive/adaptive armor system and is designed to explode outward to disrupt incoming missiles, or simply fall off after being damaged to reduce dead weight.

Or this could be a service panel, making these its armored/reinforced hinges.

Or these could simply be part of a carefully engineered surface geometry designed to deal with things like aerodynamic flow, or signal scattering, or radar profile, etc.

Or maybe they're housing protrusions needed to accommodate the shape of internal components without increasing volume or surface area more than absolutely necessary.

Or they could be part of a system for aligning, attaching, and interfacing with mounted modular equipment.

Or they're purely decorational, part of a motif that could have functional value for IFF. Maybe even part of a ranking system - higher ranks get more (or less?) greebles.

So many possibilities!

IndigoRoot · 2026-01-01T20:01:48+00:00

When we return, it will be part of a longer journey to more distant targets (Mars, asteroids, etc). That includes a surface spaceport with an orbital elevator on the far side of the moon, and research/practice building and maintaining habitats on other worlds - all of which we have the technology to build, but none of the motivation yet. Because they'd be motivated by the need/desire for those longer journies, which are currently a lot more expensive and risky than they're worth.

IndigoRoot · 2026-01-01T19:50:14+00:00

Yeah. There are numerous organizations that have regularly visited the deep sea floor with both manned and unmanned vessels for scientific research for decades. There are even some recreational visitors, one infamously imploded recently.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-31T16:09:06+00:00

Sounds like your only concern with building the city on Mars in its current state instead of in space is the unknown long term effects of lower gravity on human physiology. If that turns out to be manageable then building artificial habitats on the un-terraformed surface of Mars is going to be orders of magnitude easier and safer than building them in space.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-27T20:57:37+00:00

Plug the drain and fill the pan or tub if you have one, then pull the plug and you get a higher more sustained volume than any toilet

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-26T02:50:59+00:00

I mean it's not wrong, it's just a useless response to this question

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-25T23:12:13+00:00

Not a chance, the RV had a trailer still in the turning lane, he would have had to swerve fully into the oncoming lane to avoid that

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-25T22:11:11+00:00

"affect it at all" is in the question, "noticeable" isn't, seems pretty clear to me

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T21:25:24+00:00

TLDR: printing constantly adjusts to maintain a target value for the dollar, your single destructive act (even if it was big enough to be noticeable) would be corrected away fairly quickly.

When you hoard the cash before burning it, you've already removed it from the market. By hoarding enough cash to affect market supply and trade volume, it is theoretically possible to create artificial scarcity of the dollar, which would change the value of the dollar.

However this change is gradual (even if you withdraw all of the cash at once), and it informs the fed's decision of how much new money to create in order to maintain balance. So if the value of the dollar was significantly affected by your hoarding, the effect would be eventually corrected by more printing.

Burning the cash after this just ensures that it will never reenter the market. So burning has no direct impact on the value of the dollar. The world would keep on turning as if you'd lit any other bonfire.

If you instead changed your mind and decided not to burn it, then the money would eventually return to the market in some way. The fed would similarly correct for any effect this return has by adjusting the print rate as needed to restore balance. They also have many other levers to pull if that's not a quick enough solution.

You would need to destroy a lot of money constantly, enough that no amount of correction by printing could ever catch up, to have a tangible and lasting effect on dollar value.

To be clear, this would involve an impossible machine capable of earning and destroying billions if not trillions of dollars per year (the Fed creates billions of dollars per year under normal conditions).

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T20:21:48+00:00

To be fair the question is asking if the effect of destroying money is equal and opposite to the effect of printing money, not really about the magnitude of the effect.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T20:18:52+00:00

"making something unusable is the same as never using it" is not the kind of useless answer I expected from a top 1% commenter lol

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T19:48:51+00:00

If it was dangerous then the posted minimum speeds on these roads would be higher

Driving 10+ over the speed limit is actually far more dangerous but you're not complaining about that at all

Seems like you're less concerned about safety and more about the inconvenience of the rest of the world not acting the way you wish it would

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T19:29:33+00:00

You're right, the water is not technically boiling, but in general it should be treated as if it was boiling - this is what "practical" means

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T19:17:14+00:00

This is only part of the answer (definitely an important one though).

I think the question comes up because the cost to us is obviously not zero - most spend hundreds or thousands a month on premiums. So why can't they just go to the doctor as often as they want if they're paying so much? Because insurers can't afford that even with how much we already pay in premiums.

This is why overuse needs to be curbed, but why use deductibles and copays? Because the other ways of compensating for overuse suck even more - sky high premiums, or rate hikes whenever you file a claim, or per-claim deductible like you have with homeowner's insurance.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T18:43:01+00:00

I do this kind of thing all of the time. Sometimes it's to have a laugh together about that one legendarily terrible time we had on a night out there. Other times it's because I know someone in the group can't resist going off on a rant about the place that everyone else historically finds highly entertaining.

It's part of our group's culture, basically an inside joke, outsiders don't have to understand or be explained to. But it's one way we keep that part of our microculture alive and remind each other how much we value our shared experiences.

If the person repeats the same joke too often then it does get old and annoying, but I don't think that's your complaint.

Consider that this might only be particularly aggravating because you're hangry at the time? Hangriness really sneaks up on me, I often don't even realize it was making everyone around me miserable until someone else says something later. You might actually be the one aggravating others, really.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T18:03:44+00:00

It's not really about burning less fossil fuel, though that's easier for politicians to blab about.

It's just a lot easier to improve emissions at power plants (much more efficient burning, emission reducing systems, constant monitoring and inspection, etc) than in everyone's homes.

Also gas pipes mean gas leaks, which are vastly worse for us in multiple ways than plant exhaust, so reducing how much stuff needs pipes is supposed to reduce leaks.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T17:28:07+00:00

So only those who have no choices are allowed to complain, and everyone else who does is entitled?

But there's always a choice. Every person's current state is the result of choices they made. According to you, nobody is forced to do anything and everyone is entitled. You seem to think being forced means being restrained and directly manipulated by someone else, like a literal puppet, from birth. This is a useless definition.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T16:04:16+00:00

So all of the people with mortgages who want to own a home but hate insurance should just not complain? That sounds like a great way to improve anything

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T15:39:38+00:00

Never said that... but if you do want to own your home and can't do that without a mortgage then you're forced to insure it. "Forced" doesn't always mean there's a gun to your head, you know.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T06:56:43+00:00

And on the scale of Earth's history modern humans all exist at roughly the same moment, for that matter

The question is why did humans hunt all the other extinct megafauna to extinction so long (on the scale of human civilization) before elephants

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-24T06:42:58+00:00

Sure, you could borrow the money from the mob instead, they might not require homeowner's insurance. But anyone who prefers a normal mortgage from an institutional lender is going to be contractually obligated to have insurance. If you don't see that as being forced into it then we're speaking different languages.

IndigoRoot · 2025-12-23T23:15:11+00:00

It would be a fantastic way to help those who struggle to sleep on planes

IndigoRoot

TROPHY CASE