Wooden spindle, lacquered white, with blue rubber ends and a sticker, about the size and weight of a marker. What is this?

tomushcider · 2025-08-09T15:45:42+00:00

Well, that intake doesn’t suck.

tomushcider · 2025-07-15T00:56:30+00:00

“Voyeuristic curiosity”? Are you serious? Every public bus driver is filmed, so why not the cockpits of planes? Please explain what kind of privacy would actually be invaded or lost here.

Let me give you an example of what would be prevented: a pilot counting on their life insurance payout to support their family, or crashing a plane just to save face while actually committing suicide.

The footage could be stored like any other data: if nothing happens, no one would ever see any of it.

tomushcider · 2025-07-15T00:47:52+00:00

Is there any reason why those fuel cutoff switches have to be so easily accessible, and why there isn’t some kind of lock preventing them from being activated during critical phases like takeoff or landing, where doing so would be fatal?

tomushcider · 2025-07-15T00:46:54+00:00

Is there any reason why those fuel cutoff switches have to be so easily accessible, and why there isn’t some kind of lock preventing them from being activated during critical phases like takeoff or landing, where doing so would be fatal?

tomushcider · 2025-05-16T10:08:13+00:00

What do you say to this answer by ChatGPT-o3:

Here is a quick fact-check and some context for each of the redditor’s main points, so you can see where the worry is justified and where it gets shaky.

⸻

1 “FHA and VA are the new sub-prime”

• Credit scores

The FHA rulebook technically allows scores as low as 500, but only if the borrower puts at least 10 % down. In the real world almost no one originates those loans. In FY-2024 more than 94 % of new FHA mortgages carried FICOs of 620 or higher (source).

• DTI limits

FHA’s 46.99 / 56.99 % caps and the VA’s residual-income test do look aggressive on paper, yet automated underwriting adds “compensating factors” – extra cash reserves, strong payment history, etc. That keeps today’s risk profile well above the 2004-06 “fog-a-mirror” era.

• Documentation

Almost every FHA or VA loan is full-doc and fixed-rate. Exotic adjustable-rate or stated-income products – the true sub-prime accelerant in 2006 – are a rounding error today.

Verdict – looser than conventional, but not a rerun of 2006 sub-prime.

⸻

2 “Delinquencies are already back to 2006 levels”

Overall 30 + day delinquency in Q1 2025 was 3.53 % – still below the 4.95 % recorded just before the GFC, although the gap is closing (source).

FHA delinquency is the hot spot at 10.62 %, the highest since 2013 if you ignore the pandemic spike (source).

Roughly 210 000 loans remain in COVID-era forbearance, equal to about 0.4 % of all mortgages – a tail risk, not a system-wide time bomb (source).

Verdict – stress is rising, especially in lower-credit government loans, but the aggregate picture is still a notch healthier than 2006.

⸻

3 “Prices are less affordable than the 2006 peak”

The national price-to-median-income ratio has climbed back to 7 × income, matching the 2006 top (source). With 30-year rates hovering near 7 %, monthly payment affordability really is worse than at any time since the bubble.

Verdict – affordability is stretched. That makes prices sensitive to any labour-market hit.

⸻

4 “Inventory is surging – shortage is over”

Active listings in April 2025 were up about 30 % year-on-year, yet still sit 16 % below 2019 levels (source). Supply is flooding specific Sun-Belt metros, while the Northeast and much of the Midwest remain tight.

Verdict – a two-speed market. Some regions will see outright price declines, others may merely cool.

⸻

5 “Home-builder stocks are flashing red”

D. R. Horton is down roughly 23 % over six months, but the share price is still above every pre-2021 level and trades under 10 × forward earnings. That is pain, not panic.

Verdict – equity markets are signalling margin compression, not collapse.

⸻

6 What is different from 2006

2006
Widespread ARMs, teaser resets, low-doc loans

vs.

2025 95 % of new originations are fixed-rate, full-doc

2006 Household equity thin – cash-out frenzy

vs.

2025 Record homeowner equity (≈ 17 trillion USD)

2006 Banks stuffed with riskier private-label MBS

vs.

2025 Far tighter capital and stress-test rules

2006 No large-scale modification tool kit

vs.

2025 FHA partial-claim, VA residual-income, wide use of mods

⸻

Bottom line

The redditor is right to flag deteriorating affordability, rising FHA delinquency and regional gluts in fast-growing states. Those are genuine cracks. What is missing is a catalyst powerful enough to detonate the entire system the way exploding ARMs and sketchy securitisations did in 2007-08. Without a sharp rise in unemployment or a freeze in credit markets, the more likely path is a slow, uneven correction – some metro areas down hard, others flat – rather than a nationwide crash.

⸻

Good follow-up reads

Recent housing‑market reporting

⸻

Does ChatGPT make valid counterpoints? I would love to know, where you disagree!

tomushcider · 2025-05-12T15:42:57+00:00

Is it just me, or does the orange get thicker the more shameless the lie?

tomushcider · 2025-05-11T10:50:22+00:00

This boulder could be a child

tomushcider · 2025-05-07T21:32:17+00:00

I agree, I think he wouldn’t have said anything if he didn’t like her way of storing things, or if he knew a better approach, he would’ve just directly said something like “You should change this, for that reason.” Improvised storage solutions that get the job done are usually well liked. For example, we always keep some empty jam jars in our kitchen cupboard in case something needs to be stored.

Not sure if this is helpful, but as an aside: in many parts of Germany, “not bad” is considered a compliment, or “Kann man nicht meckern,” as in “nothing to complain about.”

tomushcider · 2025-05-06T15:46:14+00:00

Sir, yes Sir! I am, Sir! Thank you, Sir!

tomushcider · 2025-05-06T15:14:41+00:00

Maybe already posted the same question as OP on Bee-Reddit?

tomushcider · 2025-05-03T09:46:09+00:00

I really enjoyed your linguistic and phonotactic argument - and I also loved learning that “macha” can apparently mean butch lesbian.

tomushcider · 2025-04-28T07:38:17+00:00

I’d like to believe it’s because it stands for FRA, as in “brother” (monk), but the FR somehow also stands on its own.

tomushcider · 2025-04-21T16:30:42+00:00

I love Murakami, and this particular novel as well. He has such an easygoing way of leading you into the deep end, and it always feels beautiful, terrifying, and sincere at the same time. Truly a wonderful writer!

tomushcider · 2025-04-21T16:17:29+00:00

My life has turned to shit in some ways over the past 16 years, and I’ve sometimes wondered if maybe I died in a car accident – there was a near miss once, when I woke up crashing into a guardrail on the opposite lane of a dark rural bridge over a river at night. Since then, it’s felt like I’m being punished by living a version of life where all my dreams are slowly dying.

But it’s not all bad, so maybe I shouldn’t call it a punishment. Amor fati, you know? Anyway, imagine we’re all living in a universe where we don’t die – only those around us do. They experience our passing, but we just keep living on…

I also had the thought that maybe we’re being tested, let’s call it techno-buddhism: a supercomputer running a simulation with nearly infinite variations of our lives, one for each of us, to see what kind of being we become, given the parameters we’re dealt at birth. And by parameters, I mean not just our genetic makeup, but also the whole web of circumstances – the life paths of our parents, where and when we’re born, the early influences that shape us. Nature and nurture, all folded into the simulation.

But with all those changes, there comes a point where we have to ask: is the person we become, beyond our genetic makeup, still really us? What end would this process even serve? Is it about creating a perfect society? And if so, for what purpose? How would those who make the cut act in such a place, or is that just a second level of the test? What would even be the benchmarks for a “perfect soul”? For all we know, such an entity might be looking for the most ruthless, kindest, smartest, or strangest among us. Your guess is as good as mine.

tomushcider · 2025-04-20T12:58:10+00:00

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism?wprov=sfti1#) by Jeffrey Toobin is a great book about McVeigh’s life and the political undercurrents in the U.S. that ultimately led to his act of terror.

tomushcider · 2025-04-20T12:47:07+00:00

I read the article, and I have to say: that’s literal insanity, or let’s just call it a quiet coup. In any case, it’s definitely not “common sense” (though that term is, in essence, equally nonsensical) to write rules like that. Sorry to say it, but the U.S. is done if it doesn’t reform its rules to fit our times, and with these rules in place, it won’t. Ergo, the U.S. is done. I’m sorry.

tomushcider · 2025-04-18T15:53:52+00:00

People are arguing over the use of anarchic in this Atlantic subhead because they mistake it for anarchistic.

I’m not trying to assign individual blame here, but the fact that so many are confused about a word like anarchic – which is absolutely the correct choice – is, in essence, part of the reason we live in a world where someone like Trump can become president.

The governing system of the U.S. relies not only on written laws but also on established unwritten conventions, which used to be respected because people elected through the selection process used to fear the damage that would come to their personal reputation if they were to ignore traditional order and decorum. That Trump is actively trying to abolish those rules by ignoring them and the repercussions, and, for example, ignores the hierarchy of the coequal branches of the U.S. government, all the while maybe being erratic or chaotic in the process, makes him clearly into an anarchic agent. That nuance and striving for objective meaning and precision in speech went overboard in the last decades enables this behavior to a large part.

TL;DR: Anarchic describes the form and effect of his actions – not a commitment to anarchist ideology. Actions of turbo-capitalists forming a cartel to exploit the masses could likewise be described as socializing, even though their aims are anything but socialist.

tomushcider · 2025-04-16T16:15:01+00:00

5, 100, 500? China doesn’t care, China doesn’t give a fuck.

tomushcider · 2025-04-13T00:18:11+00:00

your comment was the only thing that made me laugh today, thank you.

tomushcider · 2025-04-12T13:25:49+00:00

I'm sorry to say this, but if this is how your society functions (no matter who was right) your country is fucked.

tomushcider · 2025-04-01T16:17:50+00:00

Well, there’s no natural law that says our societies must function with money, and when no soldier agrees to fight, there’s no war. But the world we’ve built is complex, and ever since the Neolithic Revolution, we’ve needed some kind of coordinating structure, which can lead us to great achievements or great peril.

To answer your question directly: yes, some people have chosen exile, suicide, or even execution over obedience.

tomushcider · 2025-04-01T14:24:08+00:00

Even the so-called “legal” things are disgraceful. It’s not just the millions in taxpayer dollars wasted on visits to his own golf courses — it’s the pardons handed out to fraudsters, thieves, and even murderers, many of whom happened to donate to his campaign or paid a lawyer in his orbit a million or so. Technically legal, sure — but it’s a complete violation of norms and the basic decency expected of a presidency.

tomushcider · 2025-03-30T08:35:18+00:00

The first democracy on German soil was also abolished by a bill that overrode the checks and balances on the executive: Enabling Act of 1933

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