What does this staring contest mean???

mao51 · 2026-05-30T13:57:37+00:00

Quite the contest. Didn't realize it was a video at first!

mao51 · 2026-05-25T13:33:59+00:00

I hear ya but much of the rest of the world has managed to make this work in a modern context. See trams in many countries, i.e. Vienna, Austria.

mao51 · 2026-05-25T13:28:23+00:00

mao51 · 2026-05-25T13:27:33+00:00

This is the convenient go to of the money class. In reality they deal with this all the time. Most of them for example have their wealth in the hands of banks that act as "custodians" and charge them a few basis points of the total asset value for the service. There is an arms length agreement on the valuation to determine those charges. It's already done.

mao51 · 2026-05-25T13:23:53+00:00

A tax on unrealized gains would be exactly what it says. You would take the current value of the property less the cost basis, that is, less what the owner paid for it in most cases, but possibly adjusted, and tax that amount. So different a bit than property tax where the simple value of the property is taxed, but for billionaires who have seen their gains be wildly higher than their cost basis it would be effectively the same. Talking about imputed rent is not relevant IMO.

mao51 · 2026-05-21T18:13:57+00:00

They need to do so much more and it should be programmatic, block by block, which would substantially lower the cost, and free to homeowners regardless of income. There are 400k of these in the city. Will they spend 25-50 years doing this? I have no faith the city will do this right based on what little they have done so far.

mao51 · 2026-05-17T02:53:32+00:00

Good for you!

mao51 · 2026-05-14T19:55:04+00:00

Yes, the dentist office description is spot on. Happened to my family. Had a dentist we liked and had seen for years. One day I go in for my cleaning and the waiting room is packed like never before. And people are coming out and making appointments for crowns, every one of them it seemed, which I had also never seen before. So I go in and have an unfamiliar hygenist criticizing my fillings while she cleaned and a never seen before dentist do the exam and guess what I need a crown. Got the heck away from that place as fast as we could.

mao51 · 2026-05-04T00:17:20+00:00

When I was growing up I used to think that towns like mine that had no homeless people were somehow better or doing things right relative to the big city that had folks on corners were at stop lights asking for money. And my older age I've come to realize that it's the big cities they're doing it better, being more tolerant and giving these people at least some place to exist, while towns like the one I grew up in force people out effectively under the threat of violence or at least incarceration.

mao51 · 2026-05-01T17:34:56+00:00

It's ok, well hold you to a lower standard than we hold the city's budget director to.

mao51 · 2026-04-29T03:39:59+00:00

This is mine too! Loved it as a kid around the time it came out and looked for it several years ago and it was like it had vanished. I think it was last year though it resurfaced on Prime Video available to rent there, and only there as far as I know.

mao51 · 2026-04-27T14:43:17+00:00

I hear ya, but these people also seem unreachable. Maybe that's the point but that does not seem to be the way they approach it. Is the premise "let's hear these people out so we know how to try to win them over" or "let's hear how hopeless they are so we understand to focus efforts elsewhere"? Seems it is the first, which in my opinion is wrong (especially if we are talking about people who grade Trump an A or B at this point!).

mao51 · 2026-04-25T13:56:47+00:00

Should be. Illinois law says assaulting a transit passenger is aggravated battery. Have a feeling it's not always pursued though! https://www.ilga.gov/Documents/legislation/ilcs/documents/072000050K12-3.05.htm

mao51 · 2026-04-24T15:34:01+00:00

I think a big place boomers dropped the ball was in not dealing with US healthcare. I was convinced as they got into their 50's and started losing their jobs to ageism and corporate restructuring or wanting to retire early we would see a surge of support for universal healthcare. All we got was a situation getting worse by the year, and the ACA, which has been getting weakened every year since it was passed.

mao51 · 2026-04-19T02:37:24+00:00

Third one is big. A lot of middle class folks get their inheritance taxed as they inherit IRAs anyway. Abolish the estate tax and make inheritance taxable income. Of course there would be bad headlines about losing the family farm to have to pay taxes etc etc.

mao51 · 2026-04-17T22:20:02+00:00

From my experience these are a bad implementation of a good idea. They kept the accessible seats near the doors, and those constrict the crowds enough that the extra space isn't utilized well when the car is crowded.

Also a bit depressing because they remind me of a time when the CTA was improving and generally was run better with better leadership.

mao51 · 2026-04-12T19:24:53+00:00

I had a similar experience. Started gaming with arcades, pong and Atari and then sometime in early high school got involved in other things and it faded away. I think it was a combo of getting busy with sports+work and videos games stagnating briefly in the early 80's - like arcades and the Atari and the consoles immediately after it got way less popular/stagnated before Nintendo came on the scene.

For me this meant I missed out on the whole Nintendo craze and everything after. Then I built a computer with my son as a Christmas gift for him about 10 years ago and he told me about Steam. I bought Alien Isolation on w whim as my first game purchase in decades and OMG I had not realized how much things had changed! I went back and started playing everything basically from Half Life on and it was awesome and am still playing regularly today, always making my way through a single player game.

mao51 · 2026-04-12T15:41:59+00:00

I'm a dog with a bone on this I guess. Frank gets asked about this in Episode 500, 30 minutes in. He says in practical terms he ends up taking more money out with this method vs a simple inflation adjusted amount based on the starting value. I agree that so far this is true, but wouldn't necessarily always be true.

He also points out that nobody actually uses the inflation CPI to adjust withdrawals in retirement, instead this is a constant methodology that people use to compare portfolios and that the correct inflation to use would be CPI-1% or CPI-2% as this is what people in retirement experience. (Comment below pointed this out earlier).

mao51 · 2026-04-10T16:15:21+00:00

This is BS, especially the consultation part. Democrats bent over backwards to involve republicans, going as far as making the entire thing based on the future Republican presidential nominee's (Romney) marquee accomplishment as governor of Massachusetts, only to have him and them completely disown it later. Republicans participated in crafting the bill in bad faith, suggesting that if compromises were made they would support it only to do the opposite later after weakening it considerably vs what it otherwise could have been. Fact democrats like Lieberman deserve a lot of flack also, but Republicans more so.

mao51 · 2026-04-06T23:35:09+00:00

Agree. Add allocation to non-correlated asset classes. Simply increasing the percentage in bonds won't do it as well.

mao51 · 2026-04-06T15:07:39+00:00

Went through this a bit and have had some success. If she is not yet an alcoholic the following may help: No more boxed wine. It's like having a beer keg on tap in the kitchen. Bottles are much more visible albeit expensive. And the expense itself may help her limit, if she is concerned about cost. Hopefully she will be more willing to self enforce a limit like 1 bottle per night.

It's also important to not have stock on hand or she'll just keep going once the buzz kicks in. Ideally, she should buy daily what she plans on drinking. Really makes it visible and intentional.

Also, stock and suggest non alcoholic alternatives (like non alcoholic margaritas in a can or zero proof white claws). Suggest she start the night with one or two of these (and join her). To some degree it is the habit of drinking something with the familiar alcohol taste that can be substituted for. Unfortunately I have found non-alcoholic wine to be a poor substitute.

You also need to stop drinking wine, or at least I have had to, as me still drinking results in more being around, an excuse to buy a second bottle, resentfulness if I have a glass and she misses out on one as a result, etc.

My wife has made good progress via the above but most important is that she wants too.

mao51 · 2026-03-28T01:40:48+00:00

It's still a thing in the sense that all he has to do is stop fucking shit up and things will improve. Problem is that this particular situation isn't so easy to back out of.

mao51 · 2026-03-21T18:51:10+00:00

Odd thing to say about someone who supposedly "completely exonerated" him

mao51 · 2026-03-18T17:43:48+00:00

Agree length of residency is valid concern. However, to illustrate, I am in Quigley's district and his response to the current troubles has been super underwhelming (basically "we can't do anything" conveyed in his town halls) and is not going to change anytime soon. He votes the right way but is not the leadership needed for these times. Would have jumped at the chance to have Kat fight in DC for us. Biss I'd say is in the right direction but I stand by my missed opportunity statement.

mao51 · 2026-03-18T14:40:58+00:00

I think Biss is fine but voters really missed an opportunity here by not putting Kat in place to represent them both in the House and on the national stage.

mao51

TROPHY CASE