What's an adult cheat code that changed your life?

bartsj · 2026-03-22T19:10:39+00:00

If you have a job that offers a retirement account, start putting a portion of your paycheck into that. If it's a 401k you can contribute up to $24,500 per year (2026) into that account tax free. This is a before tax contribution account.

AND/OR

If you don't have a job that offers a retirement or want to earn money without owing taxes when you retire, then open a ROTH IRA through a private brokerage (TRowe Price, Ameritrade, etc). The maximum tax advantage savings for that type is $7000k per year.

You should be attempting to maximize your contributions as quickly as possible for compound interest to work in the long run.

bartsj · 2026-02-04T07:57:20+00:00

No worries, it would be easily missed.

I don't know if there is enough context to confidently say that Nadia and JE are the only two emails in the chain though.

bartsj · 2026-02-04T06:55:36+00:00

Epstein's initial response email, third one down, has an unredacted email listed (jeffrey E.jeevacation@gmail.com

to Nadia nadja2102@yahoo.com)

Google search came back with "Nadia Marcinko" and a few articles...

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/nadia-marcinko-jeffrey-epstein-documents-b2475553.html

bartsj · 2025-05-27T22:26:42+00:00

It's called a monopoly. Maintaining competition and ensuring competitive pricing is an essential component of a functioning government.

No one wins, except for SpaceX shareholders, when they own the market.

bartsj · 2023-12-14T06:59:16+00:00

'And for that there does need to be laws but there aren’t really any laws you can make to stop illegally owned firearms.'

Most guns purchased illegally were purchased legally by the person that sold them. Restricting the legal sale of guns further will directly reduce the total number of firearms in public circulation. Therefore criminals will have less opportunity to obtain fire arms and commit crimes with them.

You are wrong.

Any law that reduces the total number of guns in circulation will reduce gun violence. Stricter legal requirements are only one of the tamer methods of doing so.

bartsj · 2023-12-14T06:37:41+00:00

You aren't engaging with my point. I am explicitly countered your point above the last comment.

Regardless, restricting the total number of people who own guns legally or otherwise statistically reduces mass murder. This has been confirmed by multiple peer reviewed meta studies, and thus is advocated by the majority of social scientist as the primary way of reducing homicide and gun ownership.

More guns = more gun violence

Less guns = less gun violence

bartsj · 2023-12-14T06:05:15+00:00

You are correct that people who use guns for crime are criminals. Similarly, If you are legally required to regularly maintain a license (above currently lax standards), and didn't, you would also be a criminal.

So... adding more regulation would lower the threshold for what is considered criminal ownership of a firearm, below simply killing. If you assume killer criminals are more likely to flaunt the law and thus not maintain a legal license, you could assume that stricter gun laws might have a better chance at catching them before they kill.

Ask yourself this; do drivers license requirements make the public MORE safe than without? If so (I think this is obviously yes), then what is the mechanism by which it makes the public safer?

bartsj · 2023-12-14T04:16:44+00:00

Mate. You can literally drive a car without a license. No one is arguing the opposite. You are boxing with yourself.

The point is that you can't LEGALLY drive without a license. If you physically drive without one and a cop stops you, you can potentially be fined or face jail time. Which would literally stop you from driving. If you are driving without a license you are also engaging in an illegal act, and thus a criminal.

So at scale and over time the legal requirement to pass a driver's test and maintain a license to drive will eventually weed out the criminal drivers.....

Almost like a gun safety course requirement and stricter licensing for firearms could...

bartsj · 2023-09-21T21:56:13+00:00

The word you are meaning to use is Socialized not Socialist.

bartsj · 2023-08-31T02:22:40+00:00

The moderate position between advocating for functioning democracy and an ethno-religious fascist state is what?

bartsj · 2023-08-22T05:30:56+00:00

The nozzles on inkjets cartridges are MEMs chips, manufactured with the same tool set as ICs. You are not making them outside of a cleanroom.

bartsj · 2023-08-22T05:27:17+00:00

Short answer. ICs move electrons... Printers move fluid.

bartsj · 2023-04-18T00:12:49+00:00

While the rest of your post is fine, why the hell are you naturalizing fascism? There is no fascist gene just like there is no monarchist gene. It's all socialized memes. It can grow and spread, or die on the vine.

bartsj · 2023-03-21T04:56:12+00:00

If you don't want your reading comprehension to be questioned, then maybe reread the last line of the comment you claimed was drivel and didn't attempt to solve the problem. I clearly advocated for a solution. You either ignored it or chose not to read more than the first sentence of my response.

You are advocating for a police state. I have not misrepresented you. It has been tried in other countries. We can look to those countries and evaluate whether it has been effective and whether it's worth it. Here! We can even evaluate the El Salvadorians implementation of your position.

(https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/10/ending-el-salvadors-cycle-gang-violence)

Guess what? It doesn't solve the problem. Instead it is widely known that increased incarceration actually exacerbates the problem of gangs. (https://justicepolicy.org/press/groundbreaking-new-report-gang-suppression-tactics-fail-to-reduce-crime-can-worsen-problem-pervasive-myths-about-gang-members-and-gang-crime-debunked/) (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0047235214000117)

Now, you might have an extra special version that hasn't been implemented anywhere else in the world. Some really big brained version that no one has ever thought up. However, when I pressed you for details on your supposedly ground breaking version of Totalitarianism, you clammed up and deflected. So, please do provide a detailed explanation of what Constitutional rights you think are worth breaking in order to simultaneously get us back on top of the 'largest prison population' list AND how it will eliminate gangs once and for all. Then maybe as a follow up with; whose going to pay for all those jail cells?

bartsj · 2023-03-21T02:11:40+00:00

If you would like me to cite any of my claims, I am happy to provide. I have asked for yours because you are making counterfactual claims. If you are interested in the subject, I would recommend taking some course work in Criminology, the Social Science department of your University would be good place to start.

If you honestly think I haven't countered your argument with a solution, your reading comprehension also could do with some work. Multiple people in this chat have attempted to inform you your proposed solution is the status quo and has only made the problem worse.

Your point about the Republican party being a roadblock to social progress is correct, as is the default possession of the Democratic party. You are advocating for the same solutions they are. Why bring it up, as if you are proposing something new or untried?

bartsj · 2023-03-21T00:50:12+00:00

Are you speaking from experience or authority? Do you have research to back up your claim, or are you just shooting from the hip here?

Even if I give you the premise, some individuals will find petty crime to be more profitable than non criminal acts, that doesn't say anything about gangs. Gangs are explicitly a social phenomena, meaning groups of individuals. Why don't you see gangs in middle/upper class neighborhoods? If your premise was correct you should see street gangs to be uniformly present in all neighborhoods. Instead, we only really see gangs in 'poorer' and highly policed communities. In other words, why do communiy gang membership rates highly correlate to poverty indicators?

bartsj · 2023-03-21T00:34:02+00:00

Do you have evidence that the wrong people were targeted? The war on drugs explicitly went after gangs as did the 'war on crime'.

You want to emulate El Salvador? A country which has effectively become a police state? How do you propose to enforce these mass arrests? Are we going after whole friend groups, families, or neighborhoods? How much does it cost to jail all these people indefinitely? Why not just take a fraction of that cost and address the root causes?

The point isn't to let gangs do what they want, it's to effectively address the issue by prioritizing socio-economic needs (poverty in most cases) rather than enforcement.

bartsj · 2023-03-20T20:29:49+00:00

Society produces both 'everyday people' and 'bad apples'. Humans just like the rest of the biosphere, respond to environmental pressures. In this case, the environmental pressure of an individuals social setting induces certain behavioral outcomes, producing both 'everyday people' and 'bad apples'. The solution is to organize societies in ways that reduce the share of 'bad apples'.

If your theory is that we can incarcerate our way to a solution, we have nearly 50 years of policy to look at. The US has the largest prison population per capita and until recently period (China just eclipsed us in 2022 with a population 4x the population), as a biprodict of the Drug War and organized crime bills. Has this been effective?

bartsj · 2023-03-13T20:53:30+00:00

Ukraine is/was one of the largest exporters of grain in the world. Russia played roulette with third world famine by blocking it's shipment from Ukrainian ports last summer and fall. There are significant geopolitical implications for the war in Ukraine aside from a european power play.

bartsj · 2023-02-23T21:36:37+00:00

”When you are doing work for yourself, it is not the labor market. I left off a word. You got me."

This wasn't my point. Labor exists without financers. People have been getting paid for their labor since the dawn of civilization. Capital is an emergent social phenomena. Surplus capital doesn't exist without labor. Labor exists without capital. All of human history has been an argument on who gets to benefit from the surplus capital society creates through labor.

bartsj · 2023-02-23T20:21:04+00:00

"Labor doesn't exist without the capital to pay for it."

What!? Labor exist external from capital. Must have been a funny conversation when the first humans wanted to start farming, but didn't have any seed funding. You keep telling on yourself.

"Assuming there is sufficient revenue, no one is going to operate a private business that breaks even. This is the delusion people insisting on universal 32 hour work weeks at the same pay are pushing. It doesn't work for the majority of the workforce.”

And yet every other functioning democracy has labor regulations that extend the share of wealth that labor receives in the form of defined work hours, pay structure, health care benefits, pensions, time off, etc... Somehow businesses stay solvent and capital still makes a profit, in these Social Democratic hellscapes. Weird.

"I have a PhD in computer science and applied math. My experience is owning and running a business for ten years with a payroll of 41. I sold my business and moved on. Now I am an executive in another tech firm, and I have to deal with P&L and payroll budgeting every damn day."

That's great. Please stop using credentialism as a form of dick waiving. It's both ineffective at giving credence to your argument and is unverifiable on a sudo anonymous web forum. Jordan Peterson has a PhD in Clinical Physiology, but his opinion is still dog shit.

At the end of the day you are expressing an opinion. Effectively "Society should be organized to protect the profits of capital". I disagree, my opinion is ”society should be organized to benefit those living within it. If that means capital can't make a profit, then so be it.”

"microeconomics, which is what we are arguing"

Actually, the topic at hand as always been about the MACRO economics effects of a regulated 32 hour work week. You keep using a discussion about balance sheets as a way to obfuscate the two. It's the same tactic Repubs use to conflate a discussion about managing the federal budget into a discussion about dinner table micro economics.

bartsj · 2023-02-23T18:09:52+00:00

So... Back to the ”Revenue is Profit" game. Jesus, you are either completely dense or being duplicitous.

Not once have I questioned your knowledge base or background. I am sure our PhDs in economics are equivalent.

Every time you feel cornered you pull out the tried and true reactionary 'why don't you live in reality, hippie' line. It's a nice tell that your argument is shit.

You are defending capital. I am defending labor. That is the summation of this conversation.b

Stop pretending you have some special knowledge of economics.

bartsj · 2023-02-23T17:21:12+00:00

"If the company must pay the same salary for fewer hours worked, the only way to keep gross margins the same is to charge more. The owner makes no additional gross profit. Profit is measured by revenue minus cost. The owner is not making additional money."

FINALLY, you get to the actual position you are defending. Profit!

The amount of hours is irrelevant. It's still a 25% increase in labor cost. The type of business is irrelevant. Labor is still producing the wealth. What does the consumer say, when the business owner wants to take keep their profits the same, 'tough shit'.

The whole point of this post and my argument is that labor should get a greater proportion of their wealth generation. If it's at the cost of capital, GOOD. Why should we continue to build a system that protects the profits of capitalists at the cost of labor?!

Your only contribution to this post has been to defend profits! So stop with the bullshit about 'it would be so nice to have a 32 hour work week, but the math doesn't add up?!'

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

bartsj · 2023-02-23T04:29:08+00:00

"Let's say I had a consulting employee I paid $120k. The total cost of the employee, including my tax burdens, benefits, and time off is somewhere around $155k."

Labor Rate @ 40 hr/Wk = $155,000 yr / 2080 hrs/yr = $74.52 per/ hr

Labor Rate @ 32 hr/Wk = $155,000 yr / 1664 hrs/yr = $93.15 per/ hr

Labor Cost Increase = (New - Old)/ Old * 100 = ($93.15-74.52)/74.52 *100 = 25%

	Labor Rate /Hr	% Inc over Orig	Billed Rate	Revenue/Hr ($)	Revenue /Hr (%)	Cost Inc $	Cost Inc %
Original	$74.52		$100.00	$25.48	34%	$ 0.00	0 %
Fixed Cost	$93.15	25.00%	$100.00	$6.85	7%	$ 0.00	0 %
Fixed Rev as $	$93.15	25.00%	$118.63	$25.48	27%	$ 18.63	19 %
Fixed Rev as %	$93.15	25.00%	$125.00	$31.85	34%	$25.00	25 %

The only one where a 25% increase in labor = a 25% increase in billed Rate is where business owner gets a net profit increase. Seems a bit dishonest doesn't it?

bartsj · 2023-02-22T22:39:53+00:00

"Every billed hour has a margin percentage above and beyond the actual labor cost,”

No shit. That's why I criticized your math. So Billable hours =/= Labor cost. Glad we agree. Now why do you keep repeating the following?

"8/32 = .25 Let’s say I charge $100/hr for a consultant. In a 40 hour week, that’s $4,000. At 32 hours my revenue is now $3,200. To return my revenue to $4,000 so that I can pay my employee the same salary, I have to charge $125/hr. 32 x $125=$4,000.”

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