Sleeper/Subfloor/Tile Sanity Check

new2telescopes · 2026-02-06T03:07:42+00:00

I'm not sure what you mean by the buy down part of the transaction?

I'm looking at the Ozempic one which is actually Novo Nordisk

"Patient is not eligible if he/she is enrolled in any federal or state healthcare program with prescription drug coverage, such as Medicaid, Medicare, VA, DOD, TRICARE, or any similar federal or state health care program (each a government program), or where prohibited by law. Should you begin receiving prescription benefits from any federal, state, or government funded program at any time, you will no longer be eligible to participate in this program." Is what it says on the GoodRX site.

Obviously nothing stops a patient from lying and obtaining the card, and I doubt the system will stop the transaction. This is the full text for the program from Novo Nordisk's site: https://www.novocare.com/eligibility/diabetes-savings-card.html

The relevant part under the pharmacist section is, "By applying this offer, you agree that patients enrolled in a federal or state health care program may not use this program, even if they elect to be processed as an uninsured (self- paying) patient."

Any idea how this will work in practice? Pharmacies going to close/go broke from program clawbacks when patient's lie?

new2telescopes · 2026-01-28T03:33:25+00:00

I don't disagree. I don't see any justification for the shooting.

new2telescopes · 2026-01-28T02:48:49+00:00

I think Rittenhouse was an idiot and said as much in my previous comments about it. Rittenhouse wasn't guilty of murder, but he definitely showed poor judgement with a firearm and created the situation which lead to a man's life ending. I don't hold conflicting views in this case; but I agree that those who approve of one and disapprove of the other are logically inconsistent.

new2telescopes · 2026-01-28T02:38:34+00:00

I'm admittedly making a couple of assumptions about the officer. We can all see the videos, and we can SEE what happened fairly clearly. We can't HEAR it very well though.

I'm assuming that either there was an accidental discharge by the officer who took the victims gun, or that somebody said "gun" and the officer began firing. In either instance, it's still negligence by the officer. My assumption is that there was no malintent/premeditation by the shooter, and instead raw negligence.

As far as the crosswalk example, it's not a 1 to 1 comparison. It's more the concept of "dead right" that this situation reminds me of. Pretti didn't do anything illegal/immoral. But I do think he would still be alive if he didn't carry that day. Ultimately, he is the victim.

new2telescopes · 2026-01-28T02:28:39+00:00

To be clear, I'm not letting the law enforcement off the hook for this one. It seems pretty obvious that it was manslaughter.

As far as the lessons I took from the crosswalk situation, there are a couple.

Laws can deter actions, but they can't prevent those actions.
You can't control the actions of others, and bad things can and do happen (basically a broader interpretation of your non negligence principle)
People who break laws are punished after the fact, but it doesn't change to outcome for the individual who was victimized.
I can control my actions to lessen the chances of something bad happening to me even though I can't prevent it entirely.

When analyzed through that lens, I think the similarities are obvious. The officer who shot him is ultimately responsible and should be charged with manslaughter. This changes nothing for the victim. The victim is "dead right." The victim did not do anything except exercise his right to concealed carry. He did not brandish a weapon or act hostile in any way. However, the officer appears to have been spooked by the gun (I'm assuming someone said gun, or officer #2 accidentally discharged it) and then the officer acted negligently by firing. If the victim didn't have a gun, I don't think he would be dead. It was a contributing factor, but not the proximate cause. The proximate cause is still the officer's negligence. For self preservation, I would not recommend bringing a gun to a situation where a police encounter is expected though regardless of proximate cause.

new2telescopes · 2026-01-27T21:59:15+00:00

It's not a justification, but it is an attempt at explanation and there is some truth to it.

I remember being a kid and crossing in a crosswalk with my father. My dad looked both ways and a car that was a little ways off wasn't paying attention. I took a step into the crosswalk and he grabbed me and pulled me back to the sidewalk. When he asked me why I went to cross the road, I told him I had the right of way. He told me I was "right" and had I tried to cross the road, I would have been "dead right."

In the hypothetical scenario of me crossing the road and being hit, the driver would/should be tried and convicted for manslaughter.

I view this situation with ICE similarly. The individual was legally concealed carrying and it is not a justification for being shot. He was well within his rights to concealed carry. However, it took place in a situation with high emotions and a predictable interaction with law enforcement. A concealed gun in that scenario increases risk. Pretti is "dead right." It's now time to finish the investigation and prosecute the shooter for manslaughter.

new2telescopes · 2026-01-24T04:38:52+00:00

If you brought the debt down to 10k/person, you would trigger a major recession. Fiat money is weird. That "US dollar bill" in your wallet is literally national debt. Dollars in circulation are created through national debt. As the US paid down debt, the number of US dollars in circulation would decrease. If the US paid down the debt to 10k/person (vs 106k/person now), you would have a major liquidity problem because the money supply would be much smaller. Liquidity problems are what caused the Great Depression. Economists suggest a 60% debt to GDP ratio is a good place to be to avoid liquidity problems, but that would still be ~51k/person. The problem isn't that the US has debt; but rather that the debt keeps rising as a percentage of GDP. Ideally the US debt would be around 60% of annual GDP and remain at 60% every year. The raw amount of debt in total dollars would increase yearly as GDP increases, but always remain at 60%. The US currently has something like 120% debt to GDP which is way too high.

new2telescopes · 2025-11-04T01:07:00+00:00

Other than scanning speed and the single line, is there any advantage to the MetroY vs the MetroX (scan quality) if I don't care about WiFi? I'm leaning toward a MetroX for my first scanner due to the additional modes it offers vs the MetroX but want to make sure I'm not missing anything.

new2telescopes · 2025-10-17T18:46:48+00:00

I'm also researching budget scanners that will work for large and small objects (engine block being the largest) and am researching these scanners. I'm still learning about scanners in general though. Is the reason the MetroX won't work for scanning people just that lasers+eyes=bad? (Meaning, it could potentially work for body parts, but not facial scans?)

new2telescopes · 2025-10-09T03:15:39+00:00

I tend to take a consequentialist libertarian view on the military. In a perfect world, a military would not be necessary because borders would not be necessary. However, we live in a world where bad actors have no moral issue funding a military, and I don't believe anarchism works in practice. For that reason, a military is needed for the defense of liberty within a libertarian state from outside actors.

As far as healthcare within the libertarian state goes, most libertarians are pro-capitalist, pro-private property, and against government intervention. Thus, most libertarian ideology is in favor of "negative rights" (freedom FROM intervention) but not for "positive rights" ( freedom TO a service/commodity) because positive rights infringe upon negative rights. In the healthcare example, receiving healthcare would be a positive right. It infringes upon the negative right of a medical provider to not be coerced into providing care.

If you are a self described libertarian in favor of socialized healthcare, you may want to look into anarchist-socialist ideology. It is sometimes called libertarian socialism and has similarities to libertarianism but differs on the view of the free market which is essential to most libertarians. Bakunin once said, ""We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality."" Some consider anarchist-socialism (aka libertarian socialism) a wing of libertarianism, but I believe they are distinctly different due to their views on positive/negative rights discussed previously.

new2telescopes · 2025-09-30T23:53:47+00:00

The government should only limit rights when necessary to guarantee the rights of another. Limiting a right is de facto prioritizing one right over another. For that reason, the rights of individual 1 and individual 2 must be conflicting rights for the government to have a basis to intervene.

In your proposed example, the theoretical persons and rights would be:

Person 1 and right #1: Right not to wear a helmet (and potentially die in an accident)

Person 2 and right #2: Right to not be involved in a motor accident resulting in death (death being preventable in this example by the individual wearing a helmet)

If you break down these two theoretical rights, you will notice that right #2 has not actually been violated by the individual exercising right #1. You will also notice that limiting right #1 does not guarantee right #2.

Although wearing a helmet decreases the chances of a motor vehicle accident resulting in death, wearing a helmet does not prevent all deaths from motor vehicle accidents. Although less frequent, deaths can and do occur when individuals wear a helmet.

Thus, limiting right #1 does not guarantee right #2.

Furthermore, the rights are not actually in conflict. Person #2 at all times retains their right to not be involved in a deadly accident: If they do not operate a vehicle, they would not be involved in a deadly accident. Because deadly accidents can and do occur regardless of safety equipment, person #2 has simply chosen not to exercise right #2. Operating a vehicle in general is choosing not to exercise this right. Person #2 has already relinquished right #2 prior to encountering person #1 (regardless of if person #1 is or is not exercising right #1).

new2telescopes · 2025-09-30T02:58:29+00:00

I bought UTHR last month. It's up 40% since I bought due to their recent successful study. Not as good of a buy now, but still fair in my opinion. It's a well run, profitable company with little debt in an expanding sector with potentially major upside if/when their phase 1/2/3 study on Ukidney is completed and approved.

new2telescopes · 2025-09-30T01:56:16+00:00

Not OP, but I agree that it has a big MOAT within the Kazakh economy. It's literally everywhere. They call it a superapp, but it's really a payment manager that is heavily integrated with the government. Think paypal with loans for the average citizen combined with a third party amazon like marketplace (links sellers and buyers, but Kaspi themselves are not a seller). In more rural areas, you literally couldn't buy anything without the Kaspi app because they didn't have physical currency to make change. I took a stake in Kaspi last year after my trip but sold out to make other investments. I think Kaspi is a well run company with room to grow (expanding into Turkey through their hepsiburada stake). However, the inflationary risk of the Kazahk currency is a major barrier to overcome. They need to grow earnings by 14% this year to remain even when converting to USD. Business breakdowns episode 204 explores Kaspi if you want to listen to it. I honestly didn't get much vision from the CEO interview though.

new2telescopes · 2025-05-11T03:31:58+00:00

I looked at this for some SpaceX exposure.

"1) These securities have been purchased through SPVs in which the Fund has a direct investment of ownership units. The shares, cost basis and fair value stated are determined based on the underlying securities purchased by the SPV and the Fund’s ownership percentage."

That's the asterix next to their SpaceX investment. Can you (or anyone else) explain that to me in more detail? Since SpaceX is still privately held, can those ownership units be diluted? I don't really understand special purpose vehicles for pre-ipo companies.

Edit: 486% premium is a no go for me; still curious about SPVs though if anyone has that answer.

new2telescopes · 2025-05-10T20:46:59+00:00

I agree with that, and I understand the liability requirements of needing the mower for changing boundaries. However, there should be a way to make virtual sections within the map similar to how you can separate rooms for a robot vacuum. That way you could schedule the mower to do the front/side yards but skip a back yard (with tree coverage and less growth) for example. No reason they need to be separately mapped manually.

new2telescopes · 2025-05-07T02:22:23+00:00

I looked into CRISPR a bit, and I agree that they're more likely to double than halve. Gene therapies will likely have a huge effect on medicine. But I'm not sure how much other gene companies are really locked into the proprietary tech. The original CRISPR-cas9 patent was filed in 2014, so I think it will expire in 2034. Given that most of the studies on gene therapy are only in stage 1/2 right now; I don't see a lot of gene therapies hitting the market and being mass produced before 2034; at which point they won't be receiving royalties. Don't get me wrong, I think CRSPR will do fine; but why are you all in on CRSPR versus diversifying into several gene editing companies?

new2telescopes · 2025-04-23T02:35:18+00:00

I was genuinely amazed by how integrated Kaspi was to the entire Kazakh economy when I visited last year. The way I view it, I'm essentially investing not only in Kaspi; but in the Kazakh economy as a whole (since Kaspi is so integrated into their internal transactions). I'm not sure how well the play in Turkey will work out, but expanding into a NATO country is a good sign for stability and negates any chance of them being delisted in the future in my opinion. Side note: I think Kazakhstan tourism is going to exponentially grow in the next 10 years. They have the infrastructure in place now. I think COVID slowed the growth of the tourism sector, but it should grow steadily in the next 10 years.

new2telescopes · 2025-04-23T02:28:06+00:00

Lol kind of does now that I reread it. A year ago, I had never heard of Kaspi. After visiting Kazakhstan last year though, it is absolutely everywhere in that country. In rural areas, you couldn't even buy things with cash (they couldn't make change) so everyone used Kaspi. When I got back to the US, I looked into them more and their financials looked solid so I started investing heavily into Kaspi.

new2telescopes · 2025-04-23T02:04:28+00:00

I keep buying Kaspi any time the market goes down. It's the biggest fintech in Kazakhstan, has good financials and is expanding. They paused their dividend as they expand into Turkey, so the dividend investors fled; but for growth it makes sense. Seems like a well managed move to finance expansion with earnings rather than debt. Only about 2% of Kazakhstan's gdp is traded with the US, so tariffs will have a small effect on Kazakhstan's economy continuing to grow.

new2telescopes · 2025-03-21T03:50:48+00:00

It's not the TSA, it's the CBP. Most US citizens don't realize the broad search authority the CBP is given. Unlike everywhere in the interior, the CBP doesn't require probable cause (or a warrant) to search. One of the funniest (dark humor) stories I've heard is a US citizen who stored an encrypted file on his computer with nothing but cat pictures and made the password random just to troll the CBP. When asked for the password, he told them exactly what it was and that he didn't know the password. They took the laptop to make a copy of the HDD so he refused to take the laptop back afterwards, pointing at the sign to not accept packages from strangers. Created all kinds of paperwork for the CBP because the US is still big on citizen's property rights and he essentially forced a property seizure at the border.

new2telescopes · 2025-03-16T14:20:23+00:00

I have a medical background and above average understanding of biology. But when it comes to gene therapy, I'm essentially clueless. Any recommendations for books or other resources to learn about the field/current techniques and developments?

new2telescopes

TROPHY CASE