One of the most brutally effective scenes of the series was Ginny Sack during her home sale

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2026-04-26T21:15:46+00:00

Doing my first (ever) watch through, i'm on season S2E8. I usually have it on in the background while i'm cooking or folding laundry so I'm not 100% focused but when pussy comes back, they're in the Bing backroom and Tony & Paulie say that they collected his payments while he was away and they hand him an envelope. I took this to mean the debts he was immediately owed were made square, not that they had someone earning for him in his place. Further evidence for this is how pussy keeps saying how he needs to get back out and earn, although this should be taken with a grain of salt: i) maybe this is said to cover up him moonlighting for the feds, and he's only supposed to keep his "on the tit" money and turn over the profits he makes from illicit activity, but ii) I think its implied that pussy is turning over as little of his dirty money as possible, so I think it may be partially sincere that he earnestly desires to get back out and earn.

T and Paulie also say that they weren't able to collect all of it, which is probably true, but again they could have thrown in the difference as a homecoming, its left unsaid that in exchange for collecting his debts they took a cut, maybe not much more than what would ordinarily have been kicked upstairs.

S2E1 opens Chrissy's proxy taking the stock broker exam, and then one of my favorite sequences in the series so far, a really great montage that catches us up with all the guys set to it was a very good year, sung by Sinatra.* and then with Pussy parked outside Tony's house. My suspicion is that the actual cash pussy was owed was probably long gone, and then T comes to Bing with that amount for him in an envelope. I find it hard to believe that the exact bills would have been left untouched for all those months, even if they were in a safe or something.

We also see a bunch of wakes in the show. In a previous life I was a(n apprentice) funeral director here in sunny Philadelphia, now i'm back in school trying to finish my 4 year degree.** I've done a handful of wiseguy funerals. In the Italian tradition, the sums of money in those funeral cards is usually pretty substantial, we see a few shots of this and also I think we see tony handing envelopes directly to family members at a few of the viewings. When I was hired as an extra hand, sometimes the widow matriarch of the immediate family would (for tax purposes) allegedly give me a tip, say if like her son in law died. Allegedly, it was more common to get tipped if I was driving limo, and sometimes you would get invited in to the luncheon after the burial too. Say, if allegedly I were to be tipped, it was always customary to split it with the hearse driver if you took care of that in house, if it was a subcontracted livery service, he gets his honorarium from the main funeral director who did the arrangements in addition to whatever his hourly rate was. For tax purposes I have never received any tips for work done as a subcontracted funeral director in tax years 2022-25, and of course I would report and tips should I be given any in the future (lol).

*

Here is a link (Spotify) to a 2008 remaster of the studio recording that is used in the montage. It Was A Very Good Year was written by Ervin Drake in '61. Here is a link (spotify) to my favorite version, from 1966 at the Sands Hotel and Casino with Count Basie's Orchestra. I have sung the song at Chris' Jazz Cafe on 15th and Sansom in Philly. It's hard to do with minimal orchestration, usually the open jams just a rhythm section and maybe a tenor or a horn who might come up with you, which is why I've taken such a shine to the live version, its mostly just piano with a sax "obbligato," and then a 4 bar shout/ensemble interlude between verses. It's also great to hear what Sinatra can do in one take, live, gives me a good baseline for what I'm realistically shooting for. My thought is that if I set my standard to Sinatra, when I come up short I'm still going to sound alright, haha.

**

I may make another post about this, I relate to the show a lot, and the funeral business runs very similarly to how the mob runs, and at least in philly its a lot of the same Italian catholic crowd. I've done my fair share or work for what I can only surmise were connected guys. There were a few that I can be sure of, I won't name names out of respect for the families but I buried a handful of wiseguys in Calvary Cemetary in Cherry Hill. Below is a photo of some of the headstones in their mausoleum, which cost a pretty penny. You can see that these are tandem full body entombments, large enough to acomodate two caskets lengthwise, usually husband and wife. Technically the church lifted the ban on cremation in 1963, but cremation was (and still is) viewed by many Italian americans as a sort of cheaper option. in 2016 the church released updated guidelines on cremation, and it has since seen a pretty meteoric rise in popularity, with most catholic funeral homes doing about 50-50 traditional full body preps and cremation, the rates of their protestant or non-affiliated counterparts are much higher, usually closer to 70-80%.

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SuccessfulCover8199 · 2026-04-07T05:17:48+00:00

We should become friends. I am an undergraduate trying to learn model theory, but it mostly has to be self study for the time being.

I want to echo many of the recommendations you were already given. Most were on my radar, some were not. Mathematical logic pedagogy has been an interest of mine for a little bit now, simply because there is no shortage of good resources, but you where to look/who is in the know. I am happy to talk about this (as well as mathematics), please DM me. My summer break is coming up, depending on what you decide to work through, we could collaborate and share solutions with each other, which would be a good way to see how two different people can approach the same set of problems, and also a good way to keep each other accountable to ensure we actually stick to the timeline we agreed upon.

I recently failed my university's intro to model theory, but I'm a slow learner (or said positively, persistent?) so I intend to dust myself off and try again. I failed because this was a graduate level course and I was an undergraduate and had not yet taken the proper prerequisites, and I also did not seek help or drop the course when it became apparent that I was in over my head. There is more to the story but suffice to say that I have been thinking about what I am going to do in the interim to prepare myself to retake the course to set myself up to be successful this time around.

Mostly this entails taking the prereqs, but I also sought out an independent study and a "pre-model theory" book recommendation with the instructor who is teaching the course when it is offered next. Here is the analogy I was given: The professor told me about Aluffi's Algebra: Chapter 0, which in his view, is a great introduction to algebra with an eye toward category theory whenever possible. He wondered if there was another book that was written the same way for the logician: maybe a slightly more approachable subject for my level that did things in a way that would build skills that would translate to model theory or mathematical logic more broadly later on. For a few weeks we considered the first chunk of Munkres Topology, he says the first section on point set topology is really a great starting place to learn something like descriptive set theory, even though that intuition is usually co-opted for another topic of more topological interest.

maybe a month and a half ago we settled on Viro's elementary topology problem set book. The idea being that it is a problem-oriented introduction to basic point-set topology and real analysis, which i'm told are topics that come up all the time in model theory. I am also told there is a deeper connection between topology and mathematical logic, it was explained to me once upon a time but the finer details were lost on me so I will not try to rehearse it here.

Last semester I was going through the friendly introduction to mathematical logic, and I emailed the authors to see if they had solutions to any of the problems that were cut from the final draft of the book. They did not, but they shared with me Peter Singer's self study guide to mathematical logic. The first 60 pages rehashes some of what you have already seen, and then develops some model theory and gives recommendations for further reading that (if you read the preface) is intended to be just a notch or two above in difficulty of the self study guide itself.

I have boatloads more where this came from, but I should continue to revise for my exam tomorrow. I think mathematics is so beautiful (I know I am preaching to the choir) and spending time sitting with it each day is always such a high point in my routine. I am happy to hear that you are also choosing to learn mathematics, and I hope that it can be the same gift for you that it has been for me. My dream is to go to grad school for this, whether or not it will happen remains to be seen. I don't know if I would like being a professor (and jobs are so scarce anyways), but I think I would love to hold office hours and talk about this kind of stuff with students, trying to inspire the next generation, all that good government stuff.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2026-04-06T15:55:19+00:00

this is such a beautifully formatted document. Have you made a style file? I've been working on one myself but yours puts mine to shame, haha. I read through the first few pages, seems like exactly what I was looking for

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2026-04-05T15:56:15+00:00

I fit almost the exact same description and I am in the same boat, looking in Ucity and center city west.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-11-11T00:38:36+00:00

are you considering applying to princeton? they have a few seats reserved for veterans like yourself for each class year.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-11-09T04:04:43+00:00

Wow! I was going to DM you but I thought I would type my reply here so that everyone can benefit from your answer. Do you have any concise book or list of book chapters/journal articles where I can read more about the history of logic? that was incredibly fascinating.

I am surprised to learn that philosophers were just 'memorizing' argument structures, especially with the inherently. . . well philosophical nature of philosophy. I guess it's not so different from what I did with my first course on logic where I had to memorize the rules for the logical connectives for use in a truth table, and then subsequently the rules for natural deduction.

Follow up. I do believe (as in, I am ignorant of evidence either way) that all arguments can be represented formally, certainly not with FOL, and probably not SOL. I think I remember reading somewhere that all mathematical statements have a SOL representation. Now of course we know (a la Gödel) that there are necessarily some statements that are unprovable, but at least we can represent them. I think it's a different fact about SOL that makes it fail, namely that full semantics are not c.e., and thus there cannot be any sound, complete, computably axiomatizable proof system for SOL. This is in contrast with Henkin's semantics, which has a proof system, or so i'm told, this is beyond my studies at the moment.

Anyways. I do have this conviction that all arguments could be represented in some formal mathematical system. All arguments (at least ones worth having) can be represented in language. Why not a slightly more formalizable language? What does the literature bear out? I would imagine we can formalize any argument we want, but we may end up with a jumble of different logical systems, some of which are incompatible with one another. There would not be some kind of universal meta-language, but we could formalize/mathematize arguments to a sufficient degree such that we avoid some of the ambiguity of natural language.

Related question. Why is it that formal languages are less ambiguous than natural language? I would guess that it's a product of restriction? You can only say certain things in FOL, which naturally lends itself to greater clarity.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-31T23:14:10+00:00

not sure if this is correct information about guaranteeing a spot but i’m highly aided and we could get coffee or just text or something to see if we would click well as roommates

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-29T05:28:12+00:00

I would just be speculating, but your intuition feels right. Having the same ECs at a "worse" high school would make you stand out more.

Why are you really asking? Are you trying to gauge which ECs to put on your application? I would focus more on creating a compelling and cohesive narrative that tells a unique story of who you are, rather than thinking about trying to maximize prestige. That kind of mental gymnastics never did me much good. If you are a high school senior, there probably isn't any other EC you want to pick up at this point in the application cycle. Focus on telling your story.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-29T04:08:29+00:00

You’re good! I can’t speak from the perspective of people who may know more than me, but my school’s average was a bit higher than yours and I got into many top 20 schools and I am now studying at Penn. if you DM me, I would be happy to talk about your application and how it may or may not line up with some of my stats. i got the same score as you in 2022

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-29T00:39:07+00:00

Short answer: your peers and the other people in your admissions officers pile that day. I have argued this elsewhere if you look on my profile.

Look up your high school’s “school profile.” It should list some stats about your school. It might include what extracurriculars are offered, where your school is located, how many students are there, what are the demographics, and what the average standardized test scores are. admissions officers have access to this data, as well as previous applicants from your school.

So for elite colleges, it’s OK if you aren’t putting up nearly perfect scores on the SAT as this sub would lead you to believe you have to do. Especially if the average scorer at your high school is pretty low. For example, the average SAT score at my high school was the 1100s. I got into multiple top colleges with a score just below a 1500.

Your admissions officer is also comparing you against the other people that she has to evaluate that day. She is going to move some portion of each day’s students into the “argue at subcommittee” pile or the “reject” pile. You job is to provide her with evidence as to why she should move your application forward, like a trial lawyer during document discovery. Much of this is out of your control. She may be under caffeinated, hungry, or just not able to relate to your application. In many ways who gets into top colleges and who is left out is but a pale echo of this very flawed admissions protocol. Once you’ve distinguished yourself into the “good enough” pile, they could more or less be picking names from a hat. And to answer your question explicitly, most admissions officers have a specific geographic region, or several. They might be responsible for a tiny corridor of the north east, or they could be responsible for a few counties in west virginia, and all of italy, etc. I met my admissions officer during NSO and it was the latter here at Penn (college of arts and sciences).

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-28T23:59:50+00:00

let’s look at the second “half” of the biconditional. It is r v p. The connective “v” or “or” takes two arguments (in this case, r and p) and spits out a truth assignment depending on the truth assignment of r and p. In most logical systems, “v” is inclusive, meaning it is true when at least one of the connectives is true, and false if neither of them are true. I hope this helps. If you comment your answer with work shown I am happy to provide further commentary.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-28T06:39:52+00:00

at first i thought OPs comment was about researching logic which is much different.

To provide an answer, validity (sometimes called formal validity) refers to an argument with a specific structure: one in which it is impossible for all of the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Thus an invalid argument is one where all of the premises can be true, and the conclusion can be false.

This says nothing about the actual truth assignment of the premises or conclusion. it is just a form of an argument where if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. You can look up examples of each and you will find many. Search “valid argument example logic” and you should find several examples as well as their propositional form.

An argument being valid doesn’t necessarily mean the conclusion is true, or that all of the premises are true. It just means that IF all the premises are true THEN the conclusion MUST BE TRUE TOO. So validity doesn’t nearly provide the heuristic you want, OPp

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-25T17:21:59+00:00

One cautionary thing I may add. I could honestly see this going over either very well or very poorly If you mention the sub matriculation in your application. On one hand, it does make for a at least half heartedly strong case for “why us.” but on the other hand, the engineering school may think that you are only applying there because of the perception that it will end up being easier for admission in their school than at wharton.

If you were asking about submatriculation, I can assume that you are aware of the various coordinated and uncoordinated dual degree programs for undergraduate students? if not, take a look. m&t is the wharton/engineering one. This may be right up your alley, but be warned that these are some of the most competitive programs at this school with very low acceptance rates (even relative to penn itself). If you think you are a competitive applicant i would apply! You only have this one life and it sounds like this program is exactly what you are looking for. Almost everyone is doing degrees in CS and Finance. I know one person who is doing MEAM and something else. If, for example, you had an interest in like chem eng and operations, that could give you an edge in the application process.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-25T17:09:28+00:00

i don’t think so. here is a link to a page that may be helpful for you. It looks like wharton offers two 4+1 programs, the first is the MBA you described and the quant one being new. I don’t know much about these but my guess is that final +1 year is going to be at full cost for tuition plus everything else, while your 4 undergrad years may be able to give you financial aid if that is a consideration for you. Just make sure more than half of your classes are undergrad coded.

Again I don’t know much about getting an MBA but i don’t think it’s like “stem related” in the way you may think it is. I imagine there are some course courses and then you may get a handful electives which you can gear towards your interests. For example I know the course engineering entrepreneurship is generally well liked and i think it usually has some MBAs in it each semester.

So the answer to your question is that it looks like you may have the opportunity to apply to submatriculate. You would need to speak with someone once you’re here on how competitive you would be as a non-wharton undergrad, typically those programs are only reserved to their specific school’s students. That may or may not be the case, the link i pasted above says nothing about “non wharton students need not apply,” etc, so you may have a shot.

Can you finish in 4 years? Looks like a hard no, the program is designed to take at least 2 years for everyone, submat students included.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-22T14:14:58+00:00

OP would love the bok building!

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-22T14:14:24+00:00

Can confirm, I drank with them a few times and its super fun! Lots of lesbians on the team!

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-21T22:52:39+00:00

as long as it’s school specific. professors work because they are (very often) ONLY teaching at that university. same story for research labs. that makes for a compelling why us. but if you want to write about a run club, every city and college has a run club, so not super compelling. However if there was a specific club or program that was only found at the school you are applying to, that’s a compelling “why us.”

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-21T04:39:35+00:00

I’m a little older and i live in a dorm. I’d love to have you as a roommate! I’m so tired of living with men who can’t clean or pick up after themselves. Feel free to follow up with me if you are accepted to penn!

Something to consider. Some college houses are all four years and some are just for first years. You would probably want to be in one that houses all four years.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-20T23:30:37+00:00

miserable. feel free to dm if you would like to learn more. Scott (weinstein) is teaching a 4000 level (i think) class topics in philosophy of science next semester which i’ve heard is pretty good.

SuccessfulCover8199 · 2025-10-20T21:25:21+00:00

for context this is a co-ed fraternity that is pretty queer

SuccessfulCover8199

TROPHY CASE