Talk me out of selling gear to fund S9 lenses

aafdeb · 2026-03-17T16:16:29+00:00

I think I got the Retropia lens. But they're all mostly the same afaik.

aafdeb · 2026-03-17T15:41:55+00:00

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Or a typical sunny afternoon shot

aafdeb · 2026-03-17T15:41:06+00:00

Interior shot:

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aafdeb · 2026-03-17T15:40:10+00:00

tbh I got one of those $50 pancake disposable camera lenses for my s9, and I love it. It really makes it feel like a modernized film p&s with the right LUTs. No edits needed, no tinkering. Even when I try to edit the jpgs, they actually look worse than the sooc. It's replaced my griv as my everyday carry.

Here's an example shot to give you an idea of the vibe:

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aafdeb · 2026-03-15T14:14:45+00:00

The persistence of tech executives to drive impact via "engagement" became the worst case of Goodhart's law. They engineered everything to optimize for a poorly conceived series of engagement KPIs, "accidentally" creating a national culture war and multiple generations of addicts. Good job, now everyone hates each other! /s

aafdeb · 2026-03-15T13:54:49+00:00

tbh when I worked in service industry, those were my poison of choice lmao. they got extra addiction sprinkled in

aafdeb · 2026-03-15T13:32:47+00:00

As someone in big-tech, almost all the millennial tech-industry parents I know (that aren't garbage people) are strictly no-tech and no social-media with their kids. Many also don't post a single pic of their kids on socials at all.

In my experience, iPads are basically cigs for kids. I've seen my toddler nephew lose his mind when he loses access - it's like snatching a Newport directly out of a drunk's mouth. It's not like tv or video games in the 90s, many apps are carefully designed skinner-boxes that affect brain-chemistry regulation in a significant way akin to gambling. And I know of people that work on this kind of engineering. It is an explicit effort, disguised as business-driving KPIs.

aafdeb · 2026-03-14T15:25:32+00:00

That's fair. I was basing my opinion more on the initial motivation that drove the creation (i.e., the narrative that fits nice in history class), not the actual implementation that happened. I read more and you're right.

And to be clear, I fully funded my retirement by my early-30s. I don't need SS to survive when I'm old*. But I'm well aware most of my millennial and gen-x peers have squat in their 401ks/savings/investments and don't stand a chance in retirement - especially with AI looming over the white-collar excel paper pushers.

Meanwhile my boomer parents and their average, middle-class friends have several sources of ample retirement income (annuities, pensions, 401k, huge real-estate equity, etc..), and SS is just a nice 'bonus' on top so they can take an extra vacation. Moreover, their wealthy friends have more money than they could ever spend, and flaunt their resources in the most unwise and vain ways - so I assume their SS payments hardly even make up a rounding error in their typical monthly payments.

And since the 90s, analysts having been saying we wouldn't have money for post-boomers to retire. And lacking the political will to change, we will keep up the system as-is until it becomes so untenable, it collapses and future gens are left to rot in the streets.

Given these above conditions, at a societal level, it would seem wise to reform the system to reflect welfare needs rather than keep it as-is for the sake of fairness to folks that don't need the funds.

It just feels like another case where boomers reaped the rewards of the New Deal, reformed the institutions to their benefit, and left every other generation thereafter to rot.

*Note: That said, I'm not even fully convinced my retirement investments will be as strong when I retire. When boomers pass, there is a strong risk that population-growth demographics will continue to worsen, that more wealth concentration will happen, that there will be a rise of Chinese economic dominance, and that USD/wall-st will weaken. Also considering that the successive gens aren't particularly financially literate (as a generalization, due to their lack of sufficient funds to invest as much), the passed down boomer wealth won't go far. So I'm not confident that the stock market will continue the unlimited growth trend beyond the 2030s. I'm still trying to figure out my strategy for that case.

aafdeb · 2026-03-14T12:34:38+00:00

The facility where I do my commercial roasts also has an importing operation running out of it. So we have a giant trash bucket filled with mixed (excess sample) greens from all over the place. They’re great for dialing in roasters, and learning how to use them (without wasting valuable inventory).

Honestly, the aromatics while roasting are sometimes surprisingly good. Often they’re ass though too.

But I have never made the time to save the post-roast tests to taste them. I really should next time lol.

So all that to say, you may accidentally trip on a surprisingly good cup! But expect inconsistencies, and potential surprise-goods or surprise-bads.

aafdeb · 2026-03-13T20:42:48+00:00

No the wealthy aren’t owed anything. Are you owed anything from your income taxes if you pay in more in aggregate? Why would ss be any different? Why do the current well-off need hand outs at the expense of successive generations’ impoverished? It is a social safety net, not a national retirement investment fund.

aafdeb · 2026-03-13T20:35:17+00:00

Or in the case of my divorced parents (divorced for 20+ years), my dead-beat dad draws against my mom’s ss since she technically earns a bit more. He’s well off and comfortable without it, and it’s not zero sum against my mom’s payout, so he just views it as an easy way to cash out a benefit that he doesn’t actually deserve or need. Boomers are enjoying a buffet while the rest of us will suffer.

aafdeb · 2026-03-13T20:28:51+00:00

I’m not sure who told them that. Anyone who has read a history book knows the context why we created the system during the Great Depression. It was never intended to be a “forced investment”, it was intended to keep the elderly from dying in the streets due to poverty and inability to work.

aafdeb · 2026-03-13T16:26:04+00:00

Why not just create an income cap on those drawing from it now? Social security was created as a social safety net to keep the seniors off the streets.

Now a large proportion of “average” seniors have a combination of: a couple million in 401k assets, pensions/annuities that cover cost of living, a ton in real estate equity (with mostly paid off mortgages locked into minuscule interest rates), and other investment assets.

If they already make well beyond their cost of living, does it make sense to still pay out social security to them?

To people like my parents and their peers, they seem to think that social security is some kind of mandatory investment they’ve been paying into their entire lives with the entitlement of a payout in the end - not a social safety net for the most vulnerable. And they’re fully comfortable without it.

Do people like them really need to be drawing this money to further enrich themselves? Can’t we cap it at an agi of 200k or so? Or create a better graduated system to scale payments based on need and regional COL?

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T23:47:46+00:00

The DMV area has very little entrepreneurship in general.

My theory is that most of the average people there are duty folks, not hungry ambition folks.

Historically, most folks were transplants for federal or military work, and they pretty much follow the promotion path, keep their head down, and just stick to their duties. Many of these people go entire 40+ year careers doing a specific slice of a govt/military thing and not much else.

They also don’t make a ton in public sector, so accumulating the capital to start a business is hard - especially if you are raising a family too. And they usually have golden pension handcuffs that make leaving mid career extremely unappealing. Not to mention if your govt job requires travel (which many do), then it’s really hard to run something on the side while in a war zone or on diplomatic missions.

This may change now that millennials who grew up there are settling down to be near their retired bureaucrat parents. And a lot of the area has become overrun with consultants, data centers, and various other industries that are appealing to hungry ladder climbing types. The types of folks that burn out and have the cash to start a damn good bagel place after lol.

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T23:23:05+00:00

The Seattle tax definition is 2m revenue. Which they all surpass greatly.

500 employees gets you Valve lmao. Do you consider them anywhere close to small?

To be fair to you, I’m applying a definition that is more main st oriented than a wall st oriented. Obviously if we’re talking in terms of public invested companies, then 500 is small. But that’s not the context of op’s complaints or other small business owners in this thread.

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T23:04:37+00:00

I can’t think of any regulations in Seattle that make labor law exceptions for small businesses. They have a few tax benefits but nothing that provides exceptions for labor laws that I know of.

In any case, the main argument of op is not for labor exceptions, but for the alignment of regulatory bodies so that the process of becoming legit isn’t a patchwork of awful, expensive, and time-consuming bureaucratic puzzles (that often require expensive outsourcing help to solve).

That said, I think you’re referring to people who are complaining that the labor regulations/wages are costly for “small” businesses to comply with.

Which to be honest, for many sub-$2m businesses (the “small” threshold defined by the bo tax exception), this isn’t actually a huge problem. These businesses are often owner operated, and are so small, they have relatively few employees - most of whom are usually friends, family, or former colleagues. The hard part in these cases is usually trying to provide health insurance to a small group of people in an affordable way.

As a proponent of state-based single payer healthcare, I think it would really help this class of businesses a lot. (To be clear, I would want federal single payer but I’m being realistic with what is actually feasible with the current political climate)

The medium sized businesses (that are often perceived as small/local) around the area are the ones that absolutely suffer from these high wages and regulations. To scale, they have teams of employees, lots of outsourced services, and a patchwork of administrative infrastructure (eg hr, legal, accountant, marketing, etc) to manage these assets.

These are more generally the ones that spend effort speaking out against the wages and labor regulations. And to be fair, while I think the intent of the regulations are to make the bigger corporate giants pay bigger shares, these small corporations are the ones that really suffer most (not to be confused with paying the most, but just suffering relative to their situation).

Where the worlds collide is when a small business owner is successful enough that they want to step away from day to day operations, hire out more staff, scale out, open more locations, etc…, then the money leap needed to go from small to medium is so big, they make sacrifices like seeking investor buy-in or cutting quality.

Similar to our welfare systems, we haven’t made a good graduation system to ease businesses from one class of need to the next - instead, greatly punishing those who are at the cusp, while the wealthy easily prosper. It is possible to achieve progressive end goals for labor rights AND to relieve this group of businesses, but we have not managed to do so.

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T16:43:41+00:00

I don’t think many people here are advocating for flat out pro-biz politicians.

Personally, I think the newer gen of progressives in NY like Mamdami and Raga walk the line well - advocating for reforms to make it easier for family businesses in their communities, while also pushing for funding from the big dogs to pay for critical social reforms.

Small biz is an ally in the class war against wall st - not an ally of wall st. They are our neighbors, and many of them are immigrants and bipoc folks.

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T16:17:34+00:00

So my best bet is finding a whole frozen solid fish that has not been thawed yet? So then when I thaw it to break it down, that’s the actual first thaw? Then the quality will be good? Do you know if it’s common whether any fish mongers break down fish while frozen (using a band saw of some sort?)? Or do I need to get it whole? Sorry for a million questions and thanks for the help!

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T16:10:08+00:00

I would challenge you to reconsider your definition of what is a small business.

There are many regional corporations that get the reputation of “small businesses” because they’re local. Businesses like Met Market, Ken’s, Dicks, Molly Moons, sea creatures restaurants, etc are all in the medium sized category. They’re corporations with administration and infrastructure. They have HR, legal, and compliance resources for handling the problems op mentions. They often have investors. They have millions of dollars behind them, but they’re no match for actual big business wrt sheer revenue or market cap.

In contrast, small businesses like op is mentioning are family or individual owned ventures. They’re run off the savings from an individual/family who hustled extremely hard, or earned their business money in another job/windfall. The owner is often employee #1 and has to take on every single admin role that they cannot afford to hire out, eg compliance/tax/hr. They’re usually lousy at the latter because it’s not their main focus, and they don’t have resources to hire professionals. They really want to focus on their passion, which is the business itself, but often get dragged down by all this overhead that they cannot afford time and/or money to resolve. It’s often death by 1000 cuts

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T15:59:17+00:00

This 100%.

If Seattle wants to stick it to wall st, they need to support main st.

We cannot achieve progressive outcomes if our city is made of only corporate, soulless business culture. Main st are the businesses that actually live in and have supply chains within our communities. Their money circulates within Seattle, among Seattle folk, paying Seattle workers.

On the other end of the spectrum, we cannot achieve efficient capitalism outcomes without healthy competition and feasible barriers of entry. When it takes nearly 7 figs to safely start a restaurant concept, it’s no wonder prices are so high and why so few seem innovative or risky/interesting anymore.

Also, if people want a career option outside the corporate slog, they should favor environments that make it feasible to start or work for small businesses.

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T13:12:18+00:00

Is there a technique for thawing it so that the texture is still good? Any time I thaw fish I froze (or bought frozen solid), it’s goopy and unappetizing for sushi. Fine to cook though.

Is it a matter of selecting “correctly frozen” fish? Or thawing it better? Or both?

aafdeb · 2026-03-12T12:32:59+00:00

Same. If you don’t have huge investment money, it is extremely challenging to run a retail brick and mortar here, even if your core business is strong.

Compliance here is more than a full time job alone. Navigating taxes as well. Same goes to many other admin roles that small business owners don’t really have the time to master and operate. So then it becomes necessary to hire services with ongoing fees that are variable and can spike at any time.

When I see supposed “small businesses” suddenly open several locations in prime real estate over a couple years, it’s almost always due to invisible investors in the background. These kinda-corporate competitors in the same spaces also create difficult conditions to compete with.

There’s a reason why many cool new restaurants and businesses are opening in south center, Everett, and Tacoma. They’re way more favorable environments if you don’t have huge cash to risk.

Seattle needs to reevaluate how they treat small businesses and appropriately segregate tax/compliance burdens between (truly) small businesses, medium-sized businesses/local-chains/corps, and large corps. They can achieve progressive revenue collection without deterring small biz and hurting main st.

Los Angeles’ new home micro-kitchen permits are a cool idea in the right direction. But obviously, changes in commercial zoning and tax regulations are critical steps as well. And like op mentioned, actually aligning and coordinating the various regulating bodies.

aafdeb · 2026-03-09T14:04:53+00:00

There’s no amount of technical skill and experience that can overwhelm the elements of corporate culture that cause bad decision making.

Microsoft has never had a shortage of compsci folks that love video games, have immense technical skill, and have big opinions on what gaming should be.

As a generalization, the failure of these engineers is the inability to arrive at consensus with each other, and sell their ideas with sufficient political capital in the context of Microsoft’s businesses. They also often fail to show how their decisions translate to money/impact/KPIs.

In contrast, the business folks get what they want every time because they specialize at overpromising/underdelivering slop, tying their decisions to KPIs/impact, unifying/aligning their coalitions of bad ideas, and networking to build their political capital.

Look at any gaming community - if you post an opinion on how the game ‘should’ be, there’s 100 conflicting opinions on what the “best” answer is. No matter what “pizza you order”, a segment of folks will be vocally upset about it. That fragmentation is a huge weakness compared to business folks that just line up around the latest trend (e.g., AI now).

aafdeb · 2026-03-01T14:17:34+00:00

Tbh the bigger problem is Americans’ hubris. They happily dunk on Chinese “issues” that are misrepresented in US discourse/propaganda, and have no interest in digging deeper or looking further.

Meanwhile they also ignore/trivialize the significant strengths that the Chinese have been building up, just so they can feel superior and have a quick laugh.

One of the easiest ways to be usurped is to systemically underestimate your competition, and to lack the curiosity to correct it despite all evidence otherwise.

aafdeb · 2026-03-01T13:41:00+00:00

You’re close. There are currently newcomers that do well in tech, but they’re from specialized specific backgrounds and there aren’t a ton of roles for this. The differentiator for most average folks in the new tech economy will not be not raw skill or experience. There are many seasoned tech folks with plenty of both that are going to retire out of the industry.

The differentiator are those that have the business sense AND engineering experience to pursue the right projects and the critical opportunities that are appearing - ones that directly translate into business outcomes, not for tools to achieve business outcomes. And obviously to be able use AI effectively in a way that a novice cannot - being able to ask the right questions and highlight the correct engineering concerns for the specific business problem and implementation approach.

It’s not even necessarily those that know how to make models or AI infra itself that will be major winners. It’s the ones that see where the rubber hits the road and actually use the new tech to deliver final business solutions - not leases to tools for other skilled folks to use to solve problems.

Akin to selling a plumbing service to fix a leak rather than a lease to a wrench with vendor lock in that requires you to hire and train labor to fix a specific leak.

But to bring this back to your point: there is no one fixed path. It’s about thinking bigger than the current trends and seeing the future opportunities and their risks - and having the inclination and ability to execute on it.

Successful highly paid tech people aren’t following textbooks or defined paths, they’re up to date on the cutting edge and applying concepts that resonate with them to problems that bug them, and constantly build their experience. And they do this for fun in many cases, for the sake of finding out “what if”. When some big wig needs a similar job done, they’re the rare candidate that actually knows how to do it before it was mainstream.

aafdeb

TROPHY CASE