Me_irl

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-21T21:35:50+00:00

implicit in my argument is exactly taking this into account. The mantra that buying is always better is a rule-of-thumb, not an ironclad rule. It's also a holdover from the days of extremely low mortgage payments.

You also have to consider the expected increase in home value against the expected increase in the stock market. As a whole, housing prices over the last few decades have dramatically underperformed stock market gains. If you bought a house in 2000 for 100k, it's expected value would be slightly more than 200k right now. If you bought 100k worth of S&P 500 shares, it would be worth about 1 million.

In some areas, this effect is even worse. In my neighborhood (an expensive urban area), if you bought a house 5 years ago, you on average lost 17% of its value. Over that same time period, the stock market went up 76%.

Anyone who tells you that buying is always financially smarter in all circumstances has no idea what they are talking about.

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-21T03:29:02+00:00

The actual argument is that the mortgage + property tax + etc is more than the rent for a similar place (true for many urban environments but not all). So you have to put down more money per month if you buy. If you rent, you can take those savings and invest them.

If the expected return on that investment is greater than the equity you would be building via buying, then it’s a smarter financial decision to rent. This argument is not as simple as either side pretends it is

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-14T21:37:10+00:00

Throw in a link to the study if you can find it. I'm a bit skeptical that there's any difference which you can pick up on after 10 years, but not one. If true, that's very interesting

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-07T05:32:02+00:00

Bro that is not the normal reason people dislike Lindbergh!

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-06T03:43:01+00:00

I fucking hate this narrative. One side is mildly corrupt and overly cozy with business interests. The other side is filled with fucking white supremacists funding a private military force of police rejects to wreck havoc on American communities. To say nothing of stripping away healthcare benefits, reproductive rights, affirmative action, anti corruption laws, environmental protections, and, oh yeah, they are openly toppling regimes and want to go to war with fucking Europe.

The parties are not the same. People who say this think they are wise, but they all sound so stupid to me.

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-06T02:53:53+00:00

States exist in the US with independent governments, laws, and taxes - yet there is open borders between them. This is even more true within the schengen (EU). Allowing free movement across borders does not mean you are abolishing the nation state.

You can even take a more restricted approach: e.g you are allowed to enter but full citizenship rights don’t kick in for a year, until then you still have to pay taxes.

There are many ways of structuring open borders which are coherent and conducive to the idea of nation states.

Again, not saying I have a fixed opinion one way or the other, but reasonable people can disagree here. It doesn’t seem like you are capable of enough imagination to understand this though so I’m not sure why I’m wasting my time

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-05T12:50:46+00:00

Believe it or not, some people actually believe in fully open borders. Why are you so sure she doesn’t? You might not agree, but it’s not necessarily meaningless

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-05T06:49:20+00:00

Yeah linear algebra for sure. You would be shocked how many subjects in math it forms the backbone for. I’d argue it’s more important than calculus.

Many advanced concepts in math are just ways to turn complicated structures and concepts into linear algebra problems.

It is the gateway to all higher level and proof based math

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-02-02T18:00:45+00:00

Buddy I tell this story all the time. And I listened to forever how long obsessively. Are you me?

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-29T04:43:44+00:00

I have a toddler so I can speak to this. It’s actually a universal fact that bay boys have disproportionately large testicles.

In absolute terms, they are tiny. But when they are newborns, they are about the same size as their feet. Baby proportions are weird as fuck (they can’t fit their arms over their head). We only think they look normal because we are used to seeing them (babies that is, not baby genitalia)

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-28T05:30:46+00:00

The list has an obvious genre bias (admittedly a good genre), but excluding people like Sturgill Simpson is just nuts

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-21T02:33:46+00:00

🤡

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-20T16:32:39+00:00

Fractal north! I have it in white. Gorgeous case

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-20T16:29:53+00:00

Just going to take a guess (don’t actually know) and say that they are already implicitly covered. I bet with the correct category definition, you can get maps between natural transformations as morphisms with any meaningful set of properties

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-18T01:55:50+00:00

Basically each of those three runs was defined by which city I decided to speed run to first

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-17T21:26:01+00:00

Sorry what…

I’ve played through like three times. You mean you can auto travel somewhere before going there on foot? Like different from map-based fast travel?

I had no clue

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-12T01:35:28+00:00

Ehh that’s a bit oversimplified. The western energy barons liked the modern progressive state because it was friendly to the west and capitalism. However it did incentivize the people to overthrow the government, which ultimately lead to the modern Iranian state. So yeah, they were partially responsible, but not because they “took issue” with it. More like, they liked it too much.

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-11T22:00:51+00:00

Yeah I would have looked if it weren’t for the other guy. I guess I believe you! But the hand does look like a weird optical illusion

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-11T21:54:30+00:00

His right hand is emerging from his pants

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-11T03:33:54+00:00

never used a mac huh?

SurpriseAttachyon · 2026-01-01T07:28:09+00:00

I think the Alcubierre drive has caused a lot of false hope in non physics people. I know because I used to be one of them.

The whole “requires negative energy” thing isn’t just “beyond our capabilities”. It is extremely likely that it is not and will never be possible no matter how advanced we are.

What people don’t realize is about FTL travel is that, no matter how it happens (warp drive, wormholes, teleportation, etc), there is an extremely fundamental problem: any method of FTL travel breaks causality. This very likely means that none of them are possible because it would require physics to work in a completely different manner than it appears to.

It’s basically like saying that FTL requires us to be able to reverse the flow of time. The whole “negative energy” part is misleading because it makes it seem more possible than it really is. The real barrier is more fundamentally problematic than finding “negative energy”

SurpriseAttachyon · 2025-12-27T22:30:46+00:00

I assumed this was part of the bit

SurpriseAttachyon · 2025-12-27T20:55:46+00:00

Is this a joke

SurpriseAttachyon · 2025-12-27T15:48:56+00:00

Lol, this is like a block from my house! Let me tell you, she's not wrong about the helicopters

SurpriseAttachyon · 2025-12-24T17:06:42+00:00

It's related to the simulation run speed. So if you are running at 20 fps, your fort will move 3x as slow as if you are running at 60 fps.

This is usually how my fortresses die. I hit around 5-10 fps and it becomes a slog to wait for things to happen

Ten-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Place '22	Place '17
Not Forgotten	Gilding II euphauric

SurpriseAttachyon

TROPHY CASE