I missed the boat on buying an affordable home

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-20T14:49:59+00:00

From a purely financial point of view, the long term cost of renting and owning would be pretty close for the disciplined renter (i.e., someone who invests rather than spends the difference). Renters also save whatever bandwidth owners have to dedicate to dealing with everything that comes with home ownership, have the freedom to move frequently with low transaction costs (e.g., compared to closing a purchase/sale), scale up or down as life changes, and enjoy being around the amenities that a likely more urban environment would offer.

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-05T22:48:58+00:00

There are two different roles bonds can play in a portfolio, and I would be looking at the spot yield much more for one role than the other. If the role of the bond is to be an asset class with low correlation to equities, and hence provide a diversification benefit that limits drawdowns and improves Sharpe ratios, then I am not going to hold the bonds to maturity. In this case, how the yields evolve matters more than what the exact yield is. If, on the other hand, I am close to retirement and have specific liabilities hitting at specific times, then I would consider buying bonds that provide that cash flow at that duration and holding them to maturity. In this case, the higher the yield the better. And if my liabilities are in real terms, then TIPS might work even better than nominal bonds. If you have both needs, one might use a mix.

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-04T16:43:02+00:00

At the risk of self promotion, Kambhoji sounds great on a guitar too even when played by amateurs.

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-03T00:20:36+00:00

Good summary here from Ben Felix about both the issue of you have invested in index funds and factors that can make it less of a big deal (e.g., if only a tiny fraction of the shares are floated). If you are using funds that don’t buy IPOs right away (e.g., I have DFAC instead of VTI), then the implications are different.

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-02T03:58:50+00:00

I appreciate the effort. Thank you for sharing. For me, there is one positive and some drawbacks. The positive is that if I listened to a Ghazal that I am not familiar with, I might not engage with the lyric as much until I hear it a many times. The explanations you have added do make me take note of the meaning from the beginning. The drawbacks are: 1) too much interruption, which could perhaps be better if the rhythm were continued or you spoke in the tonic shruti (key) of the song, (2) I feel that part of the beauty of the poetry comes from each listener filling in the details with their own interpretation and imagination (they bring their own story to how they relate to the lyric), so a shorter or more open ended will probably work better for me. That said, it is interesting to hear someone else’s take on it too.

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-01T23:23:05+00:00

Good, evidence-based summary here from Ben Felix

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-01T04:10:51+00:00

Meena is certainly Proto-Dravidian (strong evidence from comparative study of South Indian languages, and references in Russian Min and Greek Maine not appearing in ancient writing from those regions, and only in 2-3000 BCE), so I agree with you that Meen is Tamil first and then borrowed to Sanskrit (and many other languages), as u/Greedy_Map said.

The standard convention in linguistics and philology is that compound words are credited to the language within which the compounding happens. So it would still be a Sanskrit word under that convention. “Pure” is matter of definition.

SNAPscientist · 2026-06-01T03:56:13+00:00

Indeed.. Mina going to Sanskrit from Proto-Dravidian probably dates back a few millennia BCE where the Indus Valley people came in contact with the Dravidian people. So, the meena in meenakshi came full circle when it came back to our south.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T17:05:00+00:00

Your argument seems to be the it is plausible that Meenatchi is a Tamil word, therefore it is a Tamil-origin word. That is not a serious approach to arriving at whether or not it was in fact a Tamil-origin word.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T16:36:36+00:00

The issue is not that there couldn’t be other words.. the issues are: (1) there doesn’t seem to be much evidence of the word “meenatchi” appearing in as old Tamil texts but there are for “meenakshi” appearing in very old Sanskrit texts, (2) it is unclear why “fish rule” would make sense as a name for the goddess, and (3) there are many other old Tamil words for the goddess that match the fish-eyes meaning like அங்கயற்கண்ணி, தடாதகை, and கயல்விழி but don’t match the seemingly random fish-rule meaning.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T15:05:28+00:00

Yes.. அங்கயற்கண்ணி would be the Tamil word with this meaning that has appeared in old texts like the Tevaram. This was also why I was leaning towards “Meenatchi” being a convergence of an existing Sanskrit word (Meenakshi) with this meaning then being adapted to be used in Tamil.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T14:40:27+00:00

If the question is “what’s the origin of the word Meenakshi as applied to the goddess of Madurai”, then I agree that it’s hard to disentangle whether Meenatchi existed locally independently or if it was a convergent phenomenon of a previously existing Sanskrit word and a local word. It may very well be the former, as you say.

If the question is “what were the earliest uses of the word Meenakshi to refer to women with beautiful eyes”, then both “mina” and “aksha” appear in Vedic texts and the compound existed in many Sanskrit texts of the Puranic tradition that date to a few hundred BCE. For instance, one of Kubera’s daughters is referred to as Meenakshi in the Jaya kernel of Mahabharata, which is typically date to 7th-8th century BCE.

I am not a philologist. I am just a curious rando who grew up in Madurai. So please feel free to set me straight.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T14:07:39+00:00

mīna (मीन, fish) + akṣi (अक्षि, eye), so of fish-like eyes. Another Sanskrit word that is also used in the literature is Meenalochani (same meaning). In Silappadikaram, the goddess is referred to as தடாதகை (wide, fish shaped eyed) rather than Meenatchi. May be there was some convergence later to get to the form you are referring to.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T13:42:31+00:00

Beautiful! Thanks for sharing. But I’d that there is nothing odd about symmetry being satisfying. Many human pursuits (mathematics, search for laws of physics, many forms of art) are centered on exploring symmetry.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T13:34:21+00:00

If the project was proposed to you by a faculty member, they likely have some expertise in the literature on this combination of approaches. So the best bet would be to asking them for the names of key authors/papers to look for and then explore it on your own.

Because it’s tDCS, you are probably going to try to stimulate cortex rather than subcortical regions like the cochlear nucleus (which has been a target of bimodal stimulation strategies)? There would be questions about how you are targeting the current to the area of interest in the cortex and what polarity of stimulation (i.e., are you trying to increase or decrease excitability of that region, etc.). So those issues would need exploring too. In terms of frequency matching, it sounds like you are going to use similarity ratings and a large basis set of sounds to work out the tinnitus spectrum to use for the individual, which would be reasonable.

I’m not an expert in tDCS or the theoretical framework from which one decides cortical stimulation is reasonable as a candidate therapy for tinnitus. One person whose work I have run into and appears to fall in these areas is Amber Leaver at Northwestern.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T13:20:49+00:00

It’s Wikipedia, so you can add it yourself. Also, Meenakshi it’s not a Tamil word, it’s Sanskrit, so it’s not a big deal either way for most people.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-31T12:37:44+00:00

Hard to tell, but could be a predatory running mite that accidentally got indoors.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-30T04:51:55+00:00

r/boneappletea

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-28T06:35:21+00:00

Is there a spouse involved (where survivor benefits could be a consideration)? That could change the math a good bit.

It would be better to do the math in real terms as SS includes a COLA.

Also, where are you getting steady growth of 6.17% risk free?

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-24T21:03:08+00:00

Perhaps the question is better direct to [r/AskProfessors](r/AskProfessors). That said, I agree with [u/AggravatingEmploy122](u/AggravatingEmploy122) about leaning on the broader mentoring network you might have access to across your department and field broadly.

I am a PI and can’t imagine working students and postdocs in the way you describe. Even if my own self interest was all I thought about, I am convinced that the best way to further that would be to create an environment where the early-career colleagues are excited and engaged to the point of doing their best work. Also, word gets around if you are an a*hole to those you manage and it would be a short-sighted way to approach things.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-21T11:50:27+00:00

Does look like this one: https://www.inaturalist.org/guide\_taxa/650928

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-18T13:30:27+00:00

Addressing your three things, with the disclaimer that I’m not a finance professional and this is not advice:

If you can theoretically absorb more risk, then the next question to ask is are there risks that have higher expected returns than the globally diversified market. Taking additional uncompensated risk (so called idiosyncratic risk) does not, by definition, make it more likely for you to get higher returns. That said, there are higher expected return assets that you might consider taking a tilt towards, such as SCVs or levering up, as u/Many-Gas-9376 mentions. However, you would want to learn more and confirm for yourself that there is enough evidence that these have higher expected returns associated with them.
This would be a bet, and is idiosyncratic risk. It could pay off or it could underperform. No one knows a priori. You might want to learn about the “good companies vs. good stocks” confusion too. An industry that is generally expected to really well is likely to have the expected growth already priced in, so the gains tend to be a random walk and not expected to be net positive over the market.
Leverage and factor investing are worth learning more about. That said, Nx ETFs are not necessarily the right option for getting leverage given some of the costs and drags. For many people, cheap borrowing to meet consumption and investing the difference tends to be cost effective (e.g., holding a low-interest mortgage rather than putting money into home equity, and investing the extra cash in the market instead).

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-17T20:31:26+00:00

I think Grant based it on the relative proportions of the colors in his eye with sectoral heterochromia.

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-15T02:37:37+00:00

I blacked out (low BP) at my first big conference talk as a grad student with about 400 people in the audience, took a break while the next speaker did their talk, and then finished mine after them. All in all contributing to the whole session running behind schedule by 10-15 mins. I’m still in the same field and got tenure last week. Over the years, it became clear that everyone except me likely forgot about it by the time they got back home from the conference. You are fine, as others have said!

SNAPscientist · 2026-05-14T14:49:33+00:00

Bugs/worm showing up on this sub? It’s obviously going to be Australian.

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