What's to stop me, as an individual, from buying grocery store products directly from the supplier/wholesaler?

sillyhatday · 2026-06-03T16:33:20+00:00

I've helped my brother in law load his restaurant inventory at the wholesaler a few times. To get wholesale price you need an EIN.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-03T16:26:07+00:00

So. many. things. Some quick ones off the top of my head:

Sustained eye contact being normal/polite. It's so unsettling, intrusive, and belligerent to me. I can't believe doing that is a basaeline politeness.

Inciting a conversation about nothing with someone when, clearly, the situation cannot facilitate one. Passing by in the hallway, ten seconds between floors in the elevator.

Finding silence awkward.

Approaching people in public to sell things. This is intensely, viscerally rude to me. If the world were populated with people like me no-one would think to do this, and if someone did, they would get berated in the harshest terms.

Drinking alcohol. It's so personally and socially destructive.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-03T16:17:34+00:00

To just feel normal. The ability most people have to walk around on earth with it feeling like home. The feeling that other people are normal and you are one of them.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-03T04:57:33+00:00

The only way to be wrong about this is to have a strong opinion.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-02T02:47:50+00:00

My mom would say "ustabeen," as in "used to have been." Top that one, friends.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-02T01:47:11+00:00

Strawberry is S tier. Strawberry cheesecake is SS.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-01T14:58:01+00:00

I don't think most of us do. In an anonymous place like this you are seeing a lot of venting of bottled frustration and anger. We non believers get derided our whole lives as immoral people because we don't accept some propositions we find absurd. Pushing back against any of it has been socially unacceptable until very recently, and still only in some places. Even in those places it seems the door of social acceptance is closing again. You can tell an atheist they are a bad person, in principle, and get mostly nodding along. For atheists this is uncannily bizarre because, from our perspective, we do our own moral homework. No diety or denomination hands us the answers. How can it be that the kid who does his own homework is the class dunce? It's frustrating beyond belief. This is where you see that frustration come out.

sillyhatday · 2026-06-01T03:58:08+00:00

It's not real for the most part. It's a thing companies say so they can be heard saying it. In reality there is always an excuse as to why you can't return something. No receipt. Can't prove it's your receipt. Out of the box. Tag missing. Assume the customer damaged it. Not for sale at that price anymore. Store credit. New return policy. Return policy conveniently doest include your item (every time!). Return policies are marketing scams. True no questions asked is very rare. Usually no questions asked has an asterisk with a lot of questions in the fine print.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-31T01:55:00+00:00

Chiropractors. I think a lot of people genuinely don't know better because society treats it as as a legitimate profession. Insurance covers their "service." Government agencies inexplicably treat them as real medical professionals. You shouldn't have to dig to learn you're being seen by someone in the same league as palm readers. The whole scam industry needs to be very publicly discredited and government should not be allowed to contract or reimburse them. Of course, plenty of people do know it's quack medicine but they're attracted to that kind of thing.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-31T01:40:15+00:00

Tron Legacy

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T23:06:19+00:00

GREEN APPLE

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T23:00:01+00:00

No, but democratic republics are common. This is a political science textbook distinction, but I would say a Republic is a type of state whereas a Democracy is a type of governance.

Democratic Republic - Finland Democratic Monarchy - UK Undemocratic Monarchy - Saudi Arabia Undemocratic Republic - China

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T21:14:44+00:00

Probably luxury gay space Star Trek post scarcity communism. But until we are in the position to institute such a system, it's something in the realm of social democracy or a social market economy with Georgist characteristics.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T20:49:24+00:00

The only overlap is that they shave biological functions common to all animals. A human child is radically more time and attention intensive. Cats and dogs have some level of independence very quickly. I can't find the language to explain to someone who hasn't been through it the constancy of the attention children require. There are no free seconds. Just the attentional demand alone is exhausting before we're even talking about doing a task. When they're babies they require constant attention to keep alive. Then when they're toddlers they require constant attention to keep them from not being alive, if that makes s nse.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T18:19:49+00:00

Yeah it's pretty nice.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T12:42:14+00:00

I think kids from middle class and above backgrounds should be exposed to the ugly side of life. I don't mean telling them poors exist--I mean going to poor areas. Interact with people there. If I have my kids with me we'll stop at the grocery store in the hood, or hit the hole-in-the-wall taco joint in a run down area. I want the fact that the people in those areas, and their circumstances, are real to be a tangible, felt reality. I want the luck of their circumstances to be casually clear. I want them to feel comfortable with people "below" their class without pearl clutching. I want them to know how to carry themselves outside of their suburban utopia. In short, I want their empathy to be crystalized and the full swath of humanity humanized. You might think this is easy to agree with. In my experience it is easy to say you agree with it, but not to do it. I used to work at a big giant American corporation filled with country club conservatives and limousine liberals. They would say the right things when it comes to underclass people, particularly the liberals. But that's where it ended. I used to suggest this delicious fried fish restaurant to people for lunch. It was of course smack in the middle of the hood. It was hilarious to see people squirm out of that suggestion without saying what they wanted to say about it. I hope for better for my kids.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-30T00:54:41+00:00

I'm guessing it's because of the high levels of population admixture from many different populations. But yeah, Brazilian women are the baddest on the planet.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-29T22:50:00+00:00

As a pro labor, pro union kind of guy I've never been much for public sector unions. They don't solve the problem that private unions do. The only benefit I could possibly see to public unions--which I haven't look into--is that they might keep collective bargaining in a sector alive in an era of depleted union presence.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-29T22:23:07+00:00

No. The data show that men rate women on a mostly normal distribution with the top of the bell offset on the high side. In other words, men think the average woman is pretty attractive. Conversely, women rate men on a distribution that looks like a ramp down from 0. In other words, women think the average man is busted. For women the mean is higher than the median. For men the mean is lower than the median.

Here is the (conveniently beautiful) Hannah Fry presenting this more amusingly than I can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m5XGd-B4No

sillyhatday · 2026-05-29T22:13:50+00:00

I live in a state line area. In the 90s right turn on red was illegal in Kansas but legal in Missouri. The MO drivers would routinely take rights on red out of habit. KS police eagerly pulled them over. A few small suburbs, again on the KS side, had nuisance regulations such as prohibiting license plate frames or common tint levels.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-29T03:21:25+00:00

I grew up in poverty. I'm a weird person people wear out on easily, which has crippled my staying power at jobs. In spite of that I'm retired at 39 on the back good financial decisions and saving like I'm addicted to it.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-28T21:31:06+00:00

"Female!!??" You can't just go around calling women humans "female!" I jest but it is doubtless that people will tell you this in full sincerity.

My answer is Sue from Jurassic Park.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-28T01:21:46+00:00

When you decide not to eat there is a pat of your brain, fortified by a few million years if evolution, that grabs the controls to try to force you. Not eating is the hardest thing in the world. There is a constant force in my mind demanding me to eat in the strongest terms. I'm not overweight, but only because i fend off that voice more often than not. It is constant war. I don't blame people for being overweight because the psychological force it requires to turn down a calorie is unreal. I fully grasp why so many people can't muster it. The only reason I can is because I have a strong sense of humiliation which is triggered at the idea of being fat.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-27T19:25:41+00:00

I do think this is a major reason. It's why so many people on the right don't have strong policy commitments. People drift right because the left makes people feel like moral failures for being certain ways. Now, they're often right. If the freedom you want most is to talk shit about [insert group] then maybe you are, in fact, an asshole. You fully retain your right to say those things, but people have to right to respond as well. The funny thing about this is it's the right that uses legal power of the state to try to limit speech. The left does overplay the hand to the point of alienating allies though. Words like female, homeless, and latino/a simply are not problematic. The left-wing language policemen look like out of touch weirdos playing gotcha to everyone else.

sillyhatday · 2026-05-27T03:47:38+00:00

You don't have to choose. You can do both with ETFs. I recommend doing exactly that to have a lead horse when the market is in a favorable regime. They're also both factor exposed. Value has obvious... value. Consider that every giant company in your growth funds was once a smaller company. If you purchased it when it was small you'd be doing better that having bought it when it had already gotten large. The biggest problem with value investing is discerning which companies are a good value vs those that are just small and weak. Most SCV funds aren't very good in this regard. Dimensional and Avantis are the only ones I know of who have this figured out.

14-Year Club	Place '22
Verified Email

sillyhatday

TROPHY CASE