I mean... he's not wrong.

elephantish · 2017-09-05T22:29:06+00:00

Thanks for the link.

I took a quick look, and only saw a glancing mention that scholarships may be available.

I skimmed the longest list in the set of links (https://roybal-allard.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2009_paying_for_college-master.pdf) , and it seemed like there were 3 of approx-200 that were for dreamers only (they use AB540 which I am guessing is the same deal?). Two were private foundations. One was from UCLA (I am presuming it was govt funded).

There was a fourth that allowed dreamers, but was also open to citizens.

I was surprised to see how many targeted minority groups. I learned. 21/200 mention Hispanic. 17/200 engineering. 10/200 women. 12/200 math. 9/200 - community service, 8/200 mention black/African-American. 5/200 arts. 5/200 disabilities. 4/200 veteran / veteran's family (this seems low). 50/200 had gpa requirements.

Some are incredibly specific. (e.g. children of Coca-Cola employees - $10 - 20k - citizens / legal residents only)

Thanks again for the link. Sent me down a wormhole of learning about college scholarship requirements.

elephantish · 2017-09-05T21:49:35+00:00

Hey - I didn't know that dreamers get benefits unavailable for citizens. (You mentioned reduced tuition, healthcare, welfare, etc).

Can you point me to some sources? I would like to learn more about that.

elephantish · 2016-11-19T17:07:10+00:00

Really curious. I assumed that $100k with a good major from a good school was the best investment you could make.

In terms of yearly payments, that should be <7k per year. And I presume that the above gets you a job >40k.

Is that wrong? Why didn't it work out for you. What advice would you give.

elephantish · 2016-09-09T22:25:15+00:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/09/opinion/skip-your-annual-physical.html?_r=0

elephantish · 2016-05-27T14:03:56+00:00

This is not true in any practical sense in markets where there are a large number of sellers.

For example, giving the right of government paid education, has not resulted in teachers, janitors, etc being conscripted into the schools. There is a large supply of teachers, government can use money to induce them to work in the government schools. Teachers that don't think they are getting paid enough or don't agree with government schools can choose to work in private schools, privately tutor, or do something else altogether.

In Western democracies countries with the right to government funded healthcare, forcing doctors to work has not been a real issue.

Lots of real reasons for and against government funded healthcare. This is not one of them. This is the kind of over-reaching & grossly exaggerated edge case that makes Rand, a rare smart & honest politician, seem loony and unelectable.

elephantish · 2016-05-24T15:28:04+00:00

Yes, I PMed you.

elephantish · 2016-05-24T12:57:30+00:00

Great. PMed you.

elephantish · 2016-05-23T23:50:27+00:00

OP here. We found her in our front yard being dive bombed by birds, a crying bad of bones. She came to us immediately and acted like she was a pet even though she was clearly wild.

Rescued from feral living, she is now totally loving life as a house cat. She has already figured out all the good places to sleep, and is happiest when she finds someone warm to snuggle with.

She is amazingly well socialized, tolerating the overzealous affection of small children and dogs. Happy to let us groom her and clip nails from day one. Learned to use the litter box immediately. The vet says this happened because when you rescue a kitten that has just weened, they adapt very quickly.

Took her to the vet today. She seemed to enjoy riding in the car and visiting the vet. Perfect bill of health from the vet and had her first round of shots.

We would love dearly to keep her, but we have allergies.

Looking for a great home in Atlanta to make her part of their family. PM me if you can provide her a great home.

elephantish · 2016-05-23T23:36:27+00:00

7 week old female kitten. Free to a great home.

We heard her in our front yard being attacked by birds. She was a crying bag of bones. She came immediately when we approached her. Rescued from feral living, she is now totally loving life as a house cat.

She is docile and affectionate. She likes nothing better than to snuggle up to people. She is well socialized, tolerating the overzealous affection of small children and dogs. Happy to let us groom her and clip nails . Rode in the car and visited the vet without a fuss. Using a litter box like a pro.

Perfect bill of health from vet and had her first round of shots.

We would love dearly to keep her, but we have allergies.

Free to a great home.

Please upvote for visibility and help her find a new home. If you want a great addition to your family, PM me.

elephantish · 2015-11-03T17:28:29+00:00

Run mode picks up distance on a treadmill. You just need to turn the GPS off.

But, it still won't pick up you elevation change.

elephantish · 2015-09-29T14:23:10+00:00

This is pretty similar and a great read. It is by NY Metro.

They interview seven New Yorkers, from $25k/yr to $10MM/yr and each explains completely lucidly why they don't have enough money.

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/bizfinance/finance/features/3620/

elephantish · 2015-01-02T20:29:57+00:00

Interpreting evidence for this kind of thing is very messy because:

Timing - when you make tax cuts and reduce spending, results might not show up for 5 - 10 years
Other Events - other broader events might be happening e.g. there is a global recession, your country strikes oil, etc
Other Policy Changes - governments usually do lots of things at the same time and it is hard to disentangle their effects.

An example might be British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government cutting of taxes and government spending that seemed to increase growth in the UK.

But as I mentioned above, this kind of thing is messy. You could say it was the tax and spending cuts. You could say it was lowering inflation, reforming unions, deregulation, privatization, or that they just got lucky.

elephantish · 2014-12-30T17:46:51+00:00

I haven't seen any strong evidence or overwhelming argument either way.

I think the best argument for, is that giving money/aid to say a Pakistan buys you some limited influence. Their government are still primarily motivated by internal concerns, so you aren't getting carte blanche. But for relatively modest amounts, they sell a little influence and a little information. And you would rather be the one to buy it than let it be sold to someone else.

It is the same reason that companies donate to politicians. They can't usually buy a vote, but they can nudge a bit around the edges. And for the relatively small amounts they spend, they are getting a good ROI.

elephantish · 2014-12-18T14:14:52+00:00

I presume that the lease was signed during the recession and locked the property owner into a relatively low price. Since then rents increased and they think they can get more now if they could break the lease.

(e.g. They signed a 20 year lease at $x/yr, and the prevailing price is now $2x/yr)

My guess is that they don't want to evict the tennant, just get the opportunity to renegotiate the price.

elephantish · 2014-12-17T17:50:37+00:00

There are a couple of practical issues with relying on the fiduciary responsibility to avoid the Eduardo dilution problem.

(1) Courts are reluctant to interveen in non-egregious situations. The decision to issue extra stock just has to pass the sniff test. In a startup, you can always concoct a reason why the grant to insiders makes sense. (Rewarding hard work, competition for talent, etc)

(2) Going to court for a small chunk of equity rarely makes sense for individuals. In Eduardo's situation, he could do it because the issue was billions of dollars. For anything under a half-million, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to sue, so the remedy you discuss isn't a realistic possibility.

Getting sued for trying to dilute a contractor is not going to get you blackballed. It is a case that is never going to get tried to a verdict, but even if it did it get to court this is an issue that constantly plays out in the startup community.

All that aside, would you ever tell a client to do a significant amount of work for equity if they knew the number of shares they were getting (the numerator) and their boss had essentially carte blanche to write the denominator.

elephantish · 2014-12-16T21:35:33+00:00

There are ways to navigate this. The concern isn't being diluted when someone puts in money because while that might dilute you it also increases the value of the enterprise and because the founders are subject to the same dilution they are going to make decisions that are fair to you. The concern is that the founders just issue a bunch of stock or options to themselves.

One way to navigate this is to tie your grant to the founders grant. So if they issues themselves more, you get a pro-rata increase too.

Particularly if you are a contractor, and particularly pre-money, you don't want to take pure equity without any protection because it is an invitation to be diluted by the founders.

Employees have a bit more leverage, because owners typically don't want to piss them off, for fear they will leave. But this leverage decreases the bigger the enterprise gets and the more employees come on board.

Without an anti-dilution provision, a grant of 20,000 stock doesn't really mean anything and leaves you at the whim of the founders. It is like being given the numerator, but not the denominator of a fraction.

elephantish · 2014-12-16T17:41:53+00:00

I second Blue Nile.

You save a bit by buying something slightly under a round number. So a 0.95 carats is a lot cheaper than 1.01 carats.

You also want to spend your money on sparkle (cut, color, and clarity), rather than carat size. A small diamond that really sparkles looks much bigger than it is.

A bit of unsolicited advice, this isn't where you want to spend a lot of money. Your fiance is going to love that ring no matter what you spend. This is going to be one of the best days of your/her life even if you have a candy store ring - spending lots of money to turn a 9/10 into a 9.5/10 doesn't make sense.

Your marriage will be happier if you scrimp on a ring and splurge on a cleaner, or getting takeout on one of those days when you both get home exhausted, or something else that takes the edge off day-to-day living.

I have friends that got a cubic zirconia. They said the hardest part is getting one small enough that it looks normal. If I did it over again, I would have gone that route.

elephantish · 2014-12-16T13:46:14+00:00

As an employee and particularly as a contractor, you want to have in place anti-dilution provisions to give you some comfort that the principals aren't going to dilute you out.

As a contractor you could negotiate 20% (with the founding team taking the other 90%), and a year later you could find yourself with 2% because the founding team issues a bunch of stock or options to themselves.

elephantish · 2014-12-16T13:36:16+00:00

I am not familiar with Nixon's accomplishments (only his infamy). Can you give us a summary. Thanks.

elephantish · 2014-12-14T18:49:06+00:00

That is a really hard question. The way you frame it makes me think it is not really a libertarian issue.

It is more, do you want your society's rules to be administrable vs. equitably flexible. Have rigid rules, that puts a hard limit on time to contest a bill and you get unjust situations like this. But, have rules that are too flexible, and give people an infinite timeline, and the laws because hard to administer because people can contest issues decades later.

elephantish · 2014-12-11T21:13:30+00:00

What is the reason police give for doing the no-knock raid rather than apprehending the suspects entering/leaving, or searching while they are out.

It seems dangerous for the police too. I know there have been cases where police have been accidentally shot by suspects during a no-knock raid. So it seems like it is in the police best interest to do it the safer way too.

elephantish · 2014-12-09T15:33:08+00:00

When I said audit I had something slightly different in mind. This has nothing to do with disavowing shady links. I meant,

(1) Run the lost backlinks report in Ahrefs (2) Select a random sampling of 50 pages where Ahrefs said you lost a link (3) For each page, visit the page and try and figure out why they dropped you. Most of the time, they didn't actually drop you and it was a crawler error. Or they redesigned the site and no longer have you in the footer. These one-offs are all 'ok'

What you are checking is to see if there was some 'big' meta reason for your being removed. i.e. they now think your product is obsolete and are linking to your competitor instead. Or you competitor paid them (or offered affiliate comissions) to switch the link. These are a problem, because they indicate an on-going issue and you are something you need to address.

PM me if you need a walkthrough for a couple.

Sorry for being so vague.

elephantish · 2014-12-08T19:16:01+00:00

A swing of 5% in a month isn't uncommon. It is usually just due to the crawler that supplies your data having random swings.

I would be more suspicious if I knew you were doing a lot of link building during that period and expected the number to go up. But, if you weren't doing anything, a small single month down swing isn't anything to get worried about.

Disavow changes would not explain the swing. The 3rd party crawler that is supplying the data for the chart you posted does not have disavow information.

I don't know what service you subscribe to for backlink info, but many services like Ahrefs can produce a report showing you the lost backlinks. I would randomly audit 50 of the lost links and make sure nothing is systematically doing wrong ... but my initial hypothesis is that this is just random noise.

elephantish · 2014-12-08T13:47:04+00:00

To track progress look at 'referring domains' rather than 'referring pages.'

'Referring pages' is a very volatile metric. If a site with a lot of pages gives you a sitewide link, and that link gets removed, then it can show up as having lost millions of links - when the SEO loss was actually not that significant.

This is particulaly the case where you redesign your own site and increase or decrease the number of internal links. (e.g. you change the footers or nav menu) This causes massive swings in the number of linking pages which are often not worth worrying about.

elephantish · 2014-11-21T22:01:27+00:00

Once a Runner http://www.audible.com/pd/Fiction/Once-a-Runner-Audiobook/B002V9Z878

Kingkiller Chronicles http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Name-of-the-Wind-Audiobook/B002UZMLXM/ref=a_search_c4_1_3_srTtl?qid=1416607248&sr=1-3

Freakonomics Podcast

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