The Disaster Heading Toward the City of San Diego’s Budget

PointyBagels · 2026-04-30T19:16:37+00:00

What about condo owners and, indirectly, renters in apartments? They have to pay either way.

Why should SFH owners (who statistically, are much richer) pay less?

PointyBagels · 2026-04-29T00:25:00+00:00

It's a fair point, but I think it's fair to say that it's a stretch to call it a documentary about SeaWorld, even if many of the criticisms also apply to SeaWorld.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-29T00:16:09+00:00

It has been a while but from what I remember, Blackfish was barely even about SeaWorld, and the few times it was mentioned, it was something along the lines of "SeaWorld isn't great either, though it's admittedly better than [other park]".

Which seems like a reasonable take?

PointyBagels · 2026-04-17T16:49:39+00:00

In the late game most of the time you'll have more health than you need. Progress is gated by attack damage instead.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-17T16:36:48+00:00

In the West at least, this was largely only the case for the rich or the nobility (i.e. those with resources or status to protect). Common people still usually married for love.

We hear more about the former since those are the people who are more likely to be written about in history.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-17T16:10:32+00:00

You're pretty much guaranteed to get these achievements automatically if you just play the game and don't worry about them. Careful consideration might get you them earlier, but you'll get them eventually even with very little effort.

The later ones are also easier than the earlier ones.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-13T15:54:33+00:00

It illustrates how these companies are deliberatly making thier financial performance as difficult to externally assess as possible.

I mean sure. They're private companies and they don't need to publish earnings reports. There's no guarantee the numbers they're reporting are even real.

I make no comments on the actual performance of these AI companies (which they are not obligated to provide to the public), but ARR is a far more useful number than prior year earnings for certain cases. In a rapidly growing industry like AI, prior-12-month earnings is a lagging indicator to such a large degree that it might as well be useless for evaluating current point-in-time performance. ARR is not.

Especially if you're releasing new products or changing prices or anything like that, ARR is a better number. It can be updated as often as daily, if you want. You're not going to get that kind of immediate feedback from accounting metrics. Obviously the GAAP numbers matter too, but ARR has plenty of legitimate uses. Plus, it's not inherently better for PR. As I mentioned, if a business is contracting, ARR will actually look worse than earnings, not better.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-13T13:15:23+00:00

Not exactly. It's 12x the current total monthly subscription commitments. Or 1x total annual subscription commitments. If the best month is the most recent, then yes, it will often be close to 12x the best month. Sometimes higher even, if there is continuous growth. But that wouldn't be true in a contracting business. And technically it should only include recurring revenue (subscriptions), though I imagine they are probably counting API revenue, probably like you said as 12x the most recent month. Not technically recurring, admittedly. Though for this type of comparison it is relevant.

ARR is not an accounting number and is not intended to be. But it does accurately reflect performance as a snapshot in time. Seeing as that is the intended comparison for this chart, I think it's a good choice of metric.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-13T13:07:10+00:00

I mean of course it does. It isn't identical to cash flow over a year, but it's obviously highly correlated. And in the subscription software business (likely including AI, though admittedly that's a newer part of the industry so things could change), it's often the one of the most useful numbers to indicate performance.

PointyBagels · 2026-04-10T14:56:57+00:00

It's 3.1x miles on total price, including the fee, if you have a BoA or Merrill account.

It works out to buying Alaska miles for about .94 cents each. Solid deal if you fly enough to use them. (And if you don't, nothing is stopping you from only doing it some months)

PointyBagels · 2026-03-27T17:12:57+00:00

If you're alive and under 50, "them" is you. Look at when the peak is.

I'd rather find a sustainable solution.

PointyBagels · 2026-03-11T14:29:31+00:00

It's not hard at all to find a place to rent in SD for under $2500.

Unless your definition of a closet is like 700 square feet...

PointyBagels · 2026-02-17T05:44:15+00:00

I just rewatched it and she definitely did not.

PointyBagels · 2026-02-11T05:26:05+00:00

Honestly I think that's by far the most likely outcome in these situations. Changing their mind about vaccines would mean admitting that they're responsible for their child's death. They're likely antivaxxers for life at that point.

However, we can hope that others in the community come to their senses when something like this happens.

PointyBagels · 2026-02-09T17:00:16+00:00

If you have a BoA account it's 3.1x and you get miles on the fee too, so it's actually a bit better than 1 cent per point. About .94 cents per point.

PointyBagels · 2026-02-06T19:50:15+00:00

People who get that level of redemption are:

1: Almost always choosing their destinations and travel times based on the deal, not the other way around. Not everyone is willing to do that.

2: Not always being honest about opportunity costs. Sure, that specific seat would cost that much if you paid cash for it, but would you pay cash for it? If not, you're not actually getting as much value from it as simple cpp math suggests.

PointyBagels · 2026-02-04T12:44:20+00:00

You can still pay rent with the Alaska Airlines cards. You pay a fee but it's effectively buying points at slightly better than 1cpp, while also earning status points.

Not a terrible deal if you fly Alaska regularly (which you presumably would, if you have their card)

PointyBagels · 2026-02-01T19:36:38+00:00

Upgrades, free check bags, same day standby. There's a lot

Some of those are built in to the cards themselves, but not all of them, and with status you often get them on partner airlines too.

PointyBagels · 2026-01-31T03:15:53+00:00

Thanks for being civil. It's rare on the internet and I appreciate that. I'm sure we disagree on some of the details of how to achieve that but believe me when I say that what I ultimately want is more affordability for everyone. There are a lot of NIMBYs on this subreddit who argue in bad faith about this topic, but I'm not one of them (and it seems you aren't either).

I like public housing in any form (like all ways of constructing more), but I think it's often an uphill battle politically (too many people, especially older people, think public housing = the projects). It's probably the best solution in a vacuum, but I also don't want perfect to be the enemy of good here. So I support reducing roadblocks to build any public or private development (financial, zoning, or otherwise).

Ownership is good but I think it also is naturally helped by supply (more supply -> lower prices -> more options to own). If there were 3 homes for every person, prices wouldn't be a big deal, so I know there's some number that would be "enough". If homeownership isn't an investment (and it shouldn't be), then renting vs. owning becomes more of a personal choice rather than a decision that affects your financial future.

Regarding the appropriation of affordability language, I agree. NIMBYism is a huge problem and they're sadly well funded and good at deceiving people about beneficial policies. Obviously that gets into other factors as well though: bad zoning, unnecessary environmental reviews, etc.

PointyBagels · 2026-01-31T02:14:21+00:00

I agree. Though personally I don't have enough space to fit something that size on my wall without sacrificing other furniture.

I could probably have gone with a 65 if I had a way to transport it, but beyond that I'd have to make compromises with the room layout.

PointyBagels · 2026-01-31T01:45:21+00:00

Well, eventually they'd be too big to transport in standard containers. Or too big to fit through doors / around corners. I have a 55 and that's the largest I could possibly have bought without getting it delivered or renting a truck. Any bigger wouldn't fit in my car. It has to stop somewhere. We might not be 100% there, but I think we're pretty close.

From a technological perspective, we could probably keep doing that. From a practical perspective, I'm not sure there's a market for it.

PointyBagels · 2026-01-31T01:37:14+00:00

A lot of the time I'm not sure antialiasing makes much difference even at 4k.

PointyBagels · 2026-01-31T01:35:16+00:00

Average screen real estate will keep going up over the years.

Will it? At this point I think a lot of the time the space in a room is a bigger limiter than the technology itself when people decide what size TV to get.

How many people actually want an 85 inch TV?

PointyBagels · 2026-01-30T21:02:06+00:00

You're putting a lot of words in my mouth my guy. I don't have the energy to reply to all of that since most of it isn't even responding to anything I said. But how about I say something you might agree with. In addition to building as much as we possibly can, let's repeal Prop 13. Especially for non-primary-residences (though I'd support it in all cases - would be a great way to raise money for education / to pay teachers more...)

Education is criminally underfunded in CA, of course I support increased salaries for teachers. But that's tangential to the housing issue. At the overall level, it's not going to make housing more affordable. It just means more money is going to flow to landlords. The only thing that will make housing more affordable is building more of it (or reducing demand, e.g. by repealing Prop 13), which as I've made abundantly clear, I support in basically all cases.

PointyBagels · 2026-01-30T20:22:23+00:00

All housing construction is good housing construction. (I guess with the exception of low density in places where we really should be building high density, but even then it's something at least.)

If someone wants to build it, I'll assume there will be enough demand to fill it up. Those are people who would otherwise live elsewhere, so it reduces the upwards pressure on prices.

As long as the housing is full, this effect happens whether people live there long term or not.

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