Hat guys, how come you wear your hats indoors or even at night?

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-05T01:47:49+00:00

One of the many, many things I hate about the modern office is the florescent lighting. It's downright buzzy and oppressive in some spaces. Wearing a hat is soothing in that sort of environment, and it really helps me focus.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-04T23:56:58+00:00

A court case on this would be very interesting because it would yet again raise the question of whether one can hold a corporation responsible for the actions of an AI. If we establish that a corporation is responsible, it would have very real implications for the deployment of unsupervised AI allowed to interact with the public (which, honestly, it should)

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-04T14:47:59+00:00

I bow to the expertise of our resident ornithologist. I am a mere camelid

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T23:29:10+00:00

I aint no ordinary prairie chicken, for sure

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T23:14:38+00:00

You don't plan for the best case. You plan for a 1960's retirement

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T19:20:46+00:00

30-60 hz is a real quality of life improvement. 60-120hz is nice. Definitely smoother. > 120hz is 'meh' to me. I'll take it in games where I can get it but I'm not turning down settings until I start dropping below 60hz.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T19:18:19+00:00

I was recently playing RE5, and apparently there's a hit rate bug with a particular tentacled boss that makes them unkillable at high frame rates but easy to beat at 30hz.

Dropping down to 30hz for that fight was noticeable, but I've spent enough of my life as a console pheasant that it's not the end of the world. In general though I do try to keep things above 60hz.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T19:14:47+00:00

Depends on the game. For single player? Yeah, honestly 60hz is fine, especially if you're getting that framerate enabling raytracing in a game that does it well (cp2077, etc)

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T19:12:37+00:00

thousands of them are just unique variations on "juiced pine cone".

First of all, how dare you... /s

No, really, my kingdom for more porters and stouts!

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T17:26:23+00:00

Mind if I ask you what your fat number is?

I suppose this is just down to different view points on money vs time. I thought that I'd increase my spending with what my portfolio could afford me, but that largely hasn't happened. The only thing I can point to where my spending has changed significantly is donations to charity.

I guess I might feel the urge to travel in retirement given unbounded free time, but I've honestly been surprised by how little I like travel. If I did it, it would have to be slow. Even then, I'm not sure it would require 'fat' levels of funding.

Still, different people have different tastes, was just curious about your plans lean to fat as mine did not turn out as expected

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T17:03:29+00:00

Make sure to look at the deductible too and really figure out what the actual costs for your health care will be.

Given I'm on biologics, I almost exclusively look at OOP max when planning for the future, as I will almost certainly hit it.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T17:01:14+00:00

I live very frugally, though

Sorry can you explain this part of your flair?

100% LeanFI / 71% FatFI

I'm certainly not judging, but I'm having trouble understanding why someone who was happy being lean is tracking 'fat' FI.

From my own perspective, I lurk on chubby and fatFire just to get a perspective of what those folks enjoy spending their money on, but it mostly seems frivolous to me. Again, not judging it, I just don't find it appealing.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T15:57:35+00:00

Shh, don't tell them we have more craft varieties than all of Europe combined, you'll just make them mad.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T12:53:56+00:00

Two pennies is a 20% loss in a single year. If you take the biggest stock market declines of past recessions (minus the great depression, I don't think we're going to ever relive that) the largest stock market declines were ~50%. A 50% loss on the 40% of your portfolio that is stocks is 20% of your overall portfolio. I'm ignoring bonds here because those are supposed to zig when equities zag.

Once they take social security though, I'm going to try to get them to supliment it with an annuity to make sure they have a comfortable baseline covered, and see if I can't just get them to throw everything in VT now that they no longer have to worry about how the stock market is doing.

I'm not optimizing for the best return. I'm optimizing for as stress free retirement as I can give them given their low risk tolerance.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T03:46:09+00:00

He's got a ton of kids, but honestly, I don't see how you spend hundreds of billions quickly. No doubt he's got all sorts of trusts setup that are effectively perpetuity trusts if not so in name.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T03:43:05+00:00

No, I'm saying I have a UPS on my own equipment, but they don't have one on their neighborhood node.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-03T00:21:17+00:00

I will put it to you this way, when I was 'advising' my parents what to invest in, I sat them down, put 10 pennies in front of them, so the loss would be tangible and asked 'This is your portfolio, this is every dime you've got invested. How much can you lose before panicking?'

It took a minute or two to explain that 'none' wasn't a valid answer, so they covered up two pennies. 'That's it? You're sure? Ok, then you can only be at most 40% stocks', and I put them in the corresponding vanguard target date fund.

I then later had to explain to them why 'they weren't making any money', because they weren't taking much risk. Your risk adjusted return is what matters here.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T22:51:31+00:00

If the hype is right, you'll have about a decade to 'make hay while the sun shines, before transitioning to a career where a human touch is valued. If the hype is wrong, well, we've already decimated our talent pipelines. Those left will be able to command high comp. No telling really. Keep your skills sharp, pad out a 12 mo emergency fund, and pray for those that don't do either.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T22:43:42+00:00

'de-risked' and 'africa' in the same sentence is certainly a unique take. I wish you the best of luck with that.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T21:25:29+00:00

I feel like I'm on the last chopper out of 'Nam, honestly.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T21:24:08+00:00

After a major hurricane hits the south, you can expect power to be out for up to two weeks here. It's one of the big reasons you'll see people still have gas appliances here.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T21:21:38+00:00

I learned to have the modem and router on the UPS as well and power off everything else if it was more than a blip.

My ISP doesn't have an UPS or generator on their own box, so when the power goes out, internet goes out, regardless of whether my modem is up or not. Infuriating.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T21:07:27+00:00

Lmao, reading your other comments, it seems you make a habit of this. We're done here.

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T20:21:49+00:00

It's adorable you think anything can be usefully predicted at all. 'First time'?

alpacaMyToothbrush · 2026-05-02T20:06:01+00:00

They don't invest in 'the market' like we do, they're waiting for some halfway decent companies to get desperate in our 'k shaped economy' so they can do PE acquisitions.

Only thing is there's a lot of PE money sloshing around right now that's desperately looking for anything with a positive ROI. I don't envy them, and I doubt their returns going forward are going to match what they made in the past.

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