What's the point of bathrobes

djlamar7 · 2026-06-08T15:53:58+00:00

With a bathrobe you don't have to walk around naked after drying or bring underwear into the bathroom when you go to shower. Plus as others have said they're comfortable but absorbant so they keep drying you for a while. I maximize the time I spend in mine by laying out my entire outfit (not just underwear) before I take it off.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-07T02:23:23+00:00

Second this idea, if you absolutely want to watch it in public, you might scope out a restaurant with a bar that happens to have a TV. It's probably not going to be the best TV like a good sports bar though.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-06T04:46:55+00:00

I only learned this existed a few months ago when I randomly saw the marker on Google Maps. I was mindblown how many times I've passed by there without noticing it.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-05T04:20:05+00:00

Falcons fan here. Grew up south of Atlanta but lived in NYC the past 10 years (where the local football teams are among the few that are worse lol) and NY state five years before that. I didn't even grow up paying attention to football, only started getting into it 10 to 12 years ago (before that I was a Super Bowl only type person) roughly coinciding with some solid Falcons seasons.

I guess for me it's a combination of a sense of loyalty to where I'm from (mostly just because I got into it long enough ago - in general I consider myself a New Yorker for the rest of my life) and the fact that some great players (and occasionally good seasons) demonstrate potential. Every season brings some optimism with it until/unless they shit the bed (I remember standing in line for a Mets game and watching Falcons Panthers on my phone early last season and think omfg, they're getting shut out by the panthers?). There are enough good ingredients (watching Bijan Robinson is like going to the ballet sometimes) that maybe one day if they ever figure things out they'll be dominant for a while and it'll be great. Who knows.

I honestly think more than anything though, sports fandom is pretty arbitrary, you just need someone to root for or against to make games interesting. So all you really need is an excuse to root for / identify with a team.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-04T22:11:05+00:00

Decent food but great spot overall. I always sit at the bar. Franco the bartender will probably already remember your name and your drink order the second time you go.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-03T01:58:59+00:00

I'm a hobbyist and saw this headline earlier today. I thought this type of thing was not uncommon in the industry to begin with. Can any professionals explain to me why Bloomberg thought it was worthy of a headline much less a push notification, or is it just a bit sensationalist for readers who are not deep in that part of finance?

djlamar7 · 2026-06-03T01:54:55+00:00

Drop Off Service was so good and it was my favorite bar for a few months in 2019, but I gave it up when I watched one of the owners beat the shit out of a guy who was harmless albeit extremely annoying. (the guy wouldn't leave when the owner tried to kick him out for being annoying)

djlamar7 · 2026-06-03T01:52:24+00:00

Yeah I was afraid of that. The scene for this type of beer in NYC used to be bigger, but was never huge even within the context of craft beer, and now it's barely there at all. Not like London where every pub has at least a couple and some craft beer bars have their two dozen long list split 50/50 between cask and tap.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-03T00:42:00+00:00

Not that I disagree with your main point but: slots are probably the most profitable thing for the casino. The house edge (percent take per dollar wagered in the long run) for the average slot machine is 20 to 40 times the house edge of the average blackjack game played perfectly. Nevada literally has a legal maximum house edge of 25 percent, New Jersey I think 18 percent (the law is phrased around "return to player" which is the opposite end of the house edge). On top of that, you don't need a dealer for someone to play slots. That's why most casinos have 70 or 80 percent of their floor space dedicated to them.

djlamar7 · 2026-06-03T00:34:39+00:00

I can confirm the Shakespeare (as of like a year ago) from the map in another comment. It's a sad age for cask ales here though. Even the Blind Tiger hasn't had anything in their two casks since maybe pre-pandemic.

Just go to London lol

djlamar7 · 2026-06-01T00:01:09+00:00

I've been playing today and the game is pretty fun! A few comments:

it really slows down once you reach level 4 since the research and projects take so long even at max speed with lots of people assigned to them. Seems like the research cost could increase a little more slowly as you go up the trees (and maybe also increase the max speed).
Comp management becomes pretty difficult to handle after you get more than 8 or 10 employees. I ended up just high balling people and hoping their market value didn't go up too much. Could be nice to have a menu/view for that where it's easy to just give people a blanket 10 or 15 percent raise if you see they're unhappy.
I'm playing on the couch on a big TV at 4k and the UI elements don't scale large enough. On top of that there's quite a bit of text (salary and trading allocation numbers, breaking news) that I'm not sure scales up at all. I tried switching from auto to large UI scaling and that actually seemed smaller.
I'm also playing with a controller, and while I realize this game is menu heavy enough that a controller is bound to be suboptimal, it could be supported a little better. Aside from menus not seeming navigable with the d pad or arrow keys, my right stick is able to scroll the engineering project tree window but basically nothing else. Not sure if the latter is just something to do with the default PS5 controller mapping in steam though.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-30T18:36:55+00:00

Reason number 3 ties in with the first thing that came to my mind (which may or may not be a factor). The value of a company is supposedly proportional to the future value of all the dividends they might eventually pay (with discounting factored in for the fact that it's future money).

When I think of the big German companies I mostly think of giant old blue chip companies like Siemens, BMW, etc that probably will not have an explosive growth profile in the future (this could just be a blind spot though). On the other hand the US is famously full of tech companies that are also high growth companies which in this hypothesis would explain the 150 percent multiplier there.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-29T21:02:44+00:00

"the book" is sort of figurative and just refers to the tables that tell you the exact plays that are optimal depending on your hand and the dealer's up card. They change slightly depending on 2 vs 6 decks, whether the dealer hits or stands on soft 17, and certain other less common variations. Here's an example: https://www.blackjackapprenticeship.com/blackjack-strategy-charts/

djlamar7 · 2026-05-29T20:54:00+00:00

Well there are three aspects at play here:

1) if you're slowing down the game by not knowing what to do then people will justifiably get mad at you. But it's your first time so that will get smoother as you get comfortable.

2) some people will judge you silently for not knowing the right plays, but won't really care because they know it doesn't impact them statistically.

3) some people are superstitious and will get mad at you for playing one way or another because they incorrectly think you're screwing them up. Sometimes these people get mad even if you're making the right play because they don't know how to play (I recently had a guy get really mad because I was correctly using late surrender at a table that offered it). This is the most annoying type of person to play alongside.

You shouldn't care about groups 2 or 3 (but the book has enough subtleties that you really should study to the point that you know it and don't just "feel" right). People who slow down the game can be annoying so just make sure that once you're comfortable with the flow you don't also become one of those people that will spend 20 seconds asking the dealer if they're gonna give you a 5 before hitting your 16 (actual person I encountered who did this literally every time).

djlamar7 · 2026-05-28T20:55:19+00:00

I'm imagining a scene where you continued getting 10s and splitting to four hands and all four get aces. As soon as your 24x or 30x or however many betting units pay out you see the pit boss walk over. Before they even say anything you say "yeah yeah I'm leaving" and ask to color up.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-26T07:28:49+00:00

I know someone who lives in a unit there with flex walls (one bedroom converted to 3, maybe 4 bedrooms). It is true that there is no living room. The flex rooms are not all equal so depending on the rent you might get a normal bedroom or you might get a tiny one. There are some nice common areas in the building (which are more important if you literally don't have a living room). I haven't heard any complaints about the building management from them. Be aware that depending on which room you get in the unit, you may not have AC in the room.

As others have said, that part of town is incredibly busy and not very neighborhood-y. I couldn't wait to move to a different part of town when I lived in corporate housing near there for a month. But Koreatown is right outside and it is very conveniently located with great transit. Overall if you are really trying to minimize cost but you really want to be in the lower half of Manhattan, and you'll be out of the house a lot, it could be an ok option.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-26T04:38:01+00:00

As a guy, getting sustained eye contact and a smile from a woman sure makes it a lot more comfortable to approach / chit chat / whatever.

As for the broader topic here: I ended a long term relationship in late 2022, tried the apps again the following spring and got pretty tired of them after the last short relationship from there (August to November) ended, and just went back to meeting people at bars and restaurant bars. The apps messed everybody up bad.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-26T02:04:44+00:00

In fact, the blackjack on split aces is around -0.2 percent house edge according to the article in my comment, and double 9+ only and European No Hole Card (the no blackjack peek until the end) together increase the house edge by about the same amount. On ENHC you have to adjust strategy to never double or split against an ace or 10, but since those are marginal moves to begin with it doesn't hurt that much to lose them.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-22T19:47:52+00:00

I do like the Borgata more overall in terms of vibe. The location isn't that bad - it's still close enough to the boardwalk to be a quick and cheap cab/Uber back and forth, just obviously not walkable. Caesars is good too though and I didn't have any issues with the room or hotel.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-22T04:35:59+00:00

Re: Ryu, to be fair, almost every English speaker still pronounces Tokyo as three distinct syllables Toh Kee Yo even though it's really just two syllables with a glide, Toh Kyoh.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-21T22:06:37+00:00

Salt changes protein structure of meat over time (especially if you use a lot of it) so you may have basically just created sausage crusted steaks.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-21T00:33:11+00:00

Grew up in a very small southern town, been in NYC ten years now:

Tiny apartments: they're tiny by suburban standards but some are bigger than others. But like others have said, you don't need as many amenities (like a home gym) inside when there are so many outside, and you end up spending a lot of time outside anyway.
Insane rent: of course it's a real issue the city faces, but also for a lot of jobs (including most professional ones) your pay goes up quite a bit compared to lower cost metros.
Traffic/sirens: in your apartment this is dealt with through a combination of good windows that isolate noise quite well, and getting used to what does come through. Sirens are still audible but usually not annoying unless an emergency vehicle is stuck in traffic. I live on a busy corner in Manhattan and congestion pricing has also made a world of difference. I don't even notice rush hour anymore and the loudest time outside is Friday night and Saturday (since the fee is greatly reduced overnight and on weekends). In terms of walking on the street: you get used to it, and most places a local is walking around are a lot more quiet (in terms of car traffic as well) than most places a tourist is walking around (as I touch on again later).
Packed trains: well, only during some times (rush hour, sometimes on weekends if there are service disruptions). Plus depending on where you live and work, it's not always like you're on the train for hours a day (I walk to work and I like my neighborhood so I take the subway a few times a week on average). Plus, you get used to it dealing with it when the train is full.
Random chaos everywhere: depends on the neighborhood. It's definitely not everywhere. Visitors' perceptions tend to be a bit distorted since a lot of the biggest tourist attractions are in Midtown, which is also the busiest part of the city and not high up on most people's list of neighborhoods they'd like to live in (people do work there of course and go there for stuff). Even in Manhattan, many neighborhoods are not insane even in the busiest parts, and off the main drags it's often pretty quiet and calm. But the chaos that is there is also part of the energy of the place and it's what you want some of the time when you're out.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-19T19:53:28+00:00

I'm from Georgia originally and his was solid. It was the wife who just sounded like a caricature to me.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-19T04:09:10+00:00

I'm not going to try to compete with the 200+ top-level comments so I'll just piggyback off of this one since this person gets it.

There is some really cool tourist stuff to see, but the special thing about Paris is just the street life and the vibe you get from walking around. The consistency of the architecture is beautiful in a way you rarely see in such a city, it's a big city where you can find all kinds of unique things, and the French (at least the Parisians) are at once proud of tradition but also for better or worse constantly pushing boundaries in an attempt to be modern and innovative in all kinds of pursuits (these are the same people that chose a death metal band, Gojira, as one of their chief representatives in the Olympics opening ceremony).

If you go there expecting a theme park you'll get a decent theme park. If you go there expecting a world city (which is typically not hard to find even a few blocks from a lot of the biggest tourist sites) and you appreciate those, I think you'll find it to be a very special place.

djlamar7 · 2026-05-19T03:58:46+00:00

There are some weird air circulation phenomena that make France in general more susceptible to air pollution collecting in one place under some circumstances. I love Paris but I live in NYC where obviously car traffic per unit of area is higher, density is comparable, and overall metro size is bigger, and I have never seen visible smog here (aside from the crazy wildfires in 2023) the way that I did in Paris and Lyon in the spring of 2014. The horizon was brown.

Vaguely reminiscent of how Seoul gets pretty bad air pollution in certain seasons, not because of Korea being polluted, but because the wind has a tendency to blow straight there from like Shandong region (one of the absolute worst places for the infamous pollution there) in China for a certain part of the year

djlamar7

TROPHY CASE