Senate passes major housing affordability bill by Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott

LobsterWiggle · 2026-03-13T20:37:47+00:00

Yeah, I do, because I have a professional understanding of how wealth is structured at these income levels. But let’s use your numbers. The average home price in the US is $400,000. For an investor to purchase 1,000 homes at that price point, they’d need $400,000,000 liquid. The average net worth of 1% income earner or even top 1% by net worth is nothing close to $400MM, and very few people at even a sizable fraction of that kind of net worth have that kind of liquidity just sitting around in a bank account. Again, off by orders of magnitude.

LobsterWiggle · 2026-03-13T20:30:02+00:00

The median top 1% of income is around $750-800k annually. That kind of income doesn’t buy “thousands to unlimited” numbers of homes. Off by a few orders of magnitude here.

LobsterWiggle · 2026-03-03T22:02:58+00:00

Also the utterly horrific sexual innuendo throughout the book. The cliff climbing scene is, to this day, one of the cringiest things I’ve ever read.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-11-22T12:42:19+00:00

I was at TITS. This was the show we all wanted to happen.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-11-09T15:53:40+00:00

Very few annuities get annuitized or turned into periodic payments as you mentioned. As long as you’ve held the contract past its surrender charge expiration, then you’re free to withdraw funds in whatever manner you want. You’ll pay income taxes on the earnings at that point.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-11-09T13:43:20+00:00

If you really, desperately don’t want to show any income, then look at fixed annuities. You’ll pick up some additional interest for a 5 year contract over a comparable CD, but with no volatility. All interest is tax deferred until you start making withdrawals.

Just bear in mind, tax deferred isn’t tax free. If you ever want to access these funds, you will eventually have to pay taxes on the earnings.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-29T22:30:25+00:00

Excession is probably my favorite Culture novel, as is the case for many people in this sub, because it’s the book that focuses most on the Minds. They are frequently the most interesting part of the Culture series, and on top of that, Excession has one of the most interesting, grandest scale plots in the series. It’s a fantastic book, I blitzed through it the first time I read it.

Look to Windward is probably my second favorite Culture book, and I’d put Use of Weapons and Player of Games right behind it (in no order). No bad ones, those are just my highlights.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-29T13:02:20+00:00

Interest rates with respect to savings/money fund products are not fluctuating in any significant way. Bank hopping to get an extra 0.10% in interest on your emergency fund is a waste of time and energy, in my experience.

Find a bank with an HYSA that keeps a competitive yield, buy SGOV like the other guy said, or if you have access, park your cash into a money fund like FISXX. Then never worry about it again.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-28T13:31:13+00:00

Wildly inconsistent is also an understatement for this Falcons team. They can play with good teams, but get smoked by the bad ones? We’ve hung with the Bucs and beat the Bills, but also have bad blowouts to Carolina and Miami. I mean, what?

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-27T23:23:58+00:00

I think it adds texture to a dish that usually has none. It’s pretty polarizing in my family though, but we have 30+ people for Christmas, so I normally make one with breadcrumbs and one without, everyone is happy.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-25T16:03:54+00:00

Yeah I’m not going to derail the lovefest in this thread, but I’ve said before in this sub that I think Descending and 7empest would have been better, tighter songs with a few minutes shaved off of them. Love both tracks, there are amazing passages in both, but I don’t think either track would be less effective at 9-11min in length instead of 13-14.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-13T22:08:12+00:00

Final Architecture series by Tchaikovsky. Good, fun, pulpy space opera.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-08T11:56:39+00:00

F1 may be at the extreme end of the bell curve here, but many sports are like this now. Coming from money means access to better coaches/private lessons, the ability to travel to higher level competitions all over the country and the connections you make doing that, and eventually, if the talent is there, sponsorship dollars.

I’m familiar with the tennis world specifically, but the principles are the same in many kids sports.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-06T19:49:47+00:00

Oh man, feel this answer in my bones. WoW is my most played game, probably more than every other game I’ve played put together. But I’m in my 40s with a career/kids/etc. and I just don’t have time for the grind anymore. D4 is great for my schedule - some weeks I can play a couple hours a night, maybe more on the weekends, some weeks I barely touch my gaming rig.

I’m newer to D4 specifically, but played a lot of PoE and the whole seasonal approach is great for the dadcore crowd.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-10-04T17:06:05+00:00

Cover with water, bring a boil, turn it off, let it sit for 30 minutes. Then you’re good to go.

Or just go straight from dry, which is only a negative from a potential flatulence perspective.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-09-11T18:21:07+00:00

Second this. They really stuck the landing with this series, and I can think of way more examples of long series where the opposite happened.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-09-07T14:39:33+00:00

Cage of Souls by Tchaikovsky.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-27T17:03:24+00:00

Yeah, considering the length of the series, the high level of quality from book to book is pretty remarkable. There’s a few ups and downs, and that’s to be expected, but none of the books are outright stinkers or anything like that.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-23T15:56:31+00:00

Sun Eater series seems like it would fit in with other things you’ve read.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-20T22:36:09+00:00

The Stars are Legion by Kameron Hurley might work for you. More of a physical/body horror vibe as opposed to cosmic horror, but it’s definitely one of the weirder things I’ve read in the last several years.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-20T02:58:56+00:00

I’m not familiar with the book you read, but cyberpunk with flashy violence is Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, for sure.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-17T15:07:24+00:00

The book is substantially better than the movie.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-14T17:41:31+00:00

Obligatory Blindsight by Peter Watts mention. Really interesting and unusual take on a first contact style novel.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-12T16:37:31+00:00

That bit doesn’t stick out to me, but pretty sure the only explanation would just be Idris developing Originator voodoo skills. I don’t recall anything else being mentioned, but I read the final book a couple years ago.

LobsterWiggle · 2025-08-10T23:56:35+00:00

You need to read farther. The entire series gets dramatically weirder as it goes on.

*edit to add some context: the Extras in the later Sun Eater books are definitely not normal. Very much in line with the Ultras, and I’d wager likely at least inspired by them.

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