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Jurgis

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Posts posted by Jurgis

  1. Its funny, I was thinking of all the crazy risky things I have done in my lifetime. Fast cars, fast boats, skydiving, and other dumb stuff I am too embarrassed to admit. Yet the other day I did one of the life threatening things ever.  I went to the supermarket.

     

    You have to admit that going to supermarket is much more fun that the other things you listed.

    I would race a Ferrari through the empty streets of Manhattan with a 25% chance of Corona. Fuck it! That would be a good way to die!

     

    But what would you do for a Klondike bar?

  2. Its funny, I was thinking of all the crazy risky things I have done in my lifetime. Fast cars, fast boats, skydiving, and other dumb stuff I am too embarrassed to admit. Yet the other day I did one of the life threatening things ever.  I went to the supermarket.

     

    You have to admit that going to supermarket is much more fun that the other things you listed.

  3. Jurgis - I was thinking the same. How can I call myself value investor if I do not even pick dollar bills from the street.

     

    I was joking.

     

    Although I would have picked the bills and washed and disinfected hands and bills afterwards.

     

     

     

     

    And then FBI would have arrested me for money laundering.

  4. Practical-side observations/thoughts of masks:

     

    I and my wife wear masks to stores and anywhere we have to interact closely with people. We wear masks at home when someone comes from outside - e.g. we had a chimney sweep come recently.

     

    Since mask wearing sucks (I cannot wear a mask and eyeglasses - they fog over), and IMO the infection risk outdoors is very low, we don't wear masks outdoors when we go for walks. I guess this is being bad role model though. ::)

     

    It would be nice to be able to buy N95 masks for store visits, but AFAIK they are not reliably available. (Feel free to post pointers if you think they are).

     

    I thought about buying face shields for going to stores, but still not sure it's worth it. It's additional hassle, you still have to wear mask underneath and supply is unreliable. (Feel free to post pointers if you have pointers for good supply.)

     

    It sucks when a neighbor comes over without a mask and starts talking to you. First, no mask - bad. Second, talking - also bad (worse than just walking by or standing closely and not talking). I don't have a good way to tell them not to do it without them being offended.  ::)

  5. The open question for me perhaps is how are the food delivery services making the experience better than the status quo? Is calling up my favorite restaurant and going to pick it up that much different than having someone deliver it? I see the two-sided network effects very clearly with something like Uber, but food delivery not so much, especially if restaurants are eating the delivery cost. It is at best another form of advertising for them in that world.

     

    I wrote on this on another thread, so I won't repeat much. But yeah, for me as a consumer Grubhub is making the world a better place . It provides consistent ordering interface, with past order history, easy switch from restaurant to restaurant if restaurant is closed (welcome Covid!). (It could be improved: they should allow me to mark/comment on ordered dishes like "this dish is crap", "this dish is great". I don't want to write reviews, but I want to have notes/flags to remember what I liked where. But then most services don't provide this: I want this on Netflix/Amazon Prime/etc, but can I get it? Noooo. ) And I wrote on another thread if restaurant leaves Grubhub, I'll most likely stay with Grubhub and not with the restaurant.

     

    Grubhub has added a fee for orders, so we'll see how that works out for them and customers. This is something that may make me leave the service if the fee is high enough.

     

    Grubhub is possibly not a benefit for the restaurant, so there's that.

  6. Can't ever admit wrong:

     

    "Trump says he's talking hydroxychloroquine "right now." He says he started "a couple weeks ago." He explains, "Because I think it's good. I've heard a lot of good stories.""

     

    Asked if the WH doctor recommended he take hydroxychloroquine, he said he asked and the doctor said, "Yeah, White House doctor...no, I asked him, 'What do you think?' He said, 'Well if you'd like it.' I said 'Yeah I'd like it. I'd like to take it. A lot of people are taking it.'"

     

    Trump: "So far, I seem to be okay." Asked why he started taking this drug, he said he's gotten "so many letters," "a lot of positive letters," "and it seems to have an impact - maybe it does, maybe it doesn't.

     

    Trump, who just said that his evidence for the preventative value of hydroxychloroquine is that "I get a lot of positive calls," now says the study showing higher death rates for hydroxy patients at the VA is "a very unscientific report."

     

     

    Funny thing is, there's a high chance he's not even taking it, because you can never fully believe what he says.

     

     

    I said so... but those liberals tried to stop me from making the Presidente great again.

  7. Now Trump is the democrats' fault!!

     

    Hold on, so that means Trumpers should thank Democrats for their great achievement of electing Trump.

     

    And if Trumpers are unhappy about Trump being elected and blame it on Democrats, hey, there's two great ways to fix it: Trumpers have the Senate. They also have an election in November.

     

    But hey just vote Trump! Give idiocracy a second chance! Electrolytes against Covid!

     

    Take the argument to its logical conclusion, and German jews are to blame for Hitler's rise to power, because they weren't able to stop him. Trumper logic, QED.

     

    You are not wrong: German jews were actually blamed for Hitler's rise to power.

  8. Now Trump is the democrats' fault!!

     

    Hold on, so that means Trumpers should thank Democrats for their great achievement of electing Trump.

     

    And if Trumpers are unhappy about Trump being elected and blame it on Democrats, hey, there's two great ways to fix it: Trumpers have the Senate. They also have an election in November.

     

    But hey just vote Trump! Give idiocracy a second chance! Electrolytes against Covid!

  9. I know of software tech company that has been working hybrid distributed WFH for 5+ years now. And when I say "hybrid" it's fully that. Some teams are mostly located in single office. Some teams distributed across US, some distributed across US, Europe, Asia. Some people work in office, some people work part time from office part time from home, some people work from home all the time. Some managers work from office, some managers work from remote office, some managers work from home. People who work from home (and from remote locations) get promoted pretty high in organization - let's say one level below CTO. Yeah, I also thought that working from home is career suicide for management track - not there though. Are there issues? Yes, there are. Though the issues are mostly because of distributed teams, not because of someone working from home. Would the company do better if everyone was in one location? Sure. Would they be able to hire the same quality people in single location? Very unlikely.

     

    Covid lockdown has very limited impact: just a bit more of distribution and WFH. How will things go after covid? Likely similar as they were before covid. If I had to guess, things won't change since some amount of physical co-location is beneficial. But likely people who were remote and worked from home will still do it. And people who came to the offices, will likely do that too. Maybe some will shift to work more from home. Probably not significant percentage.

  10. “Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it”

     

    ???

     

    So far the "we just shouldn’t do it” has been resounding success in the markets.  ::)

     

    Kushner isn’t even at first level thinking yet. He’s at 0.5-level thinking.

     

    It's not the level of thinking, it's who your father(-in-law) is.*

     

     

    * First axiom of any banana republic

  11. “Jared [Kushner] had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it”

     

    ???

     

    So far the "we just shouldn’t do it” has been resounding success in the markets.  ::)

     

  12. BRK is basically this city on top of a hill with huge walls, surrounded by rows of moats filled with crocodiles and sharks and with dragons flying around. The S&P is the slum down below. If the economic performance is the same you should pick the castle. Sure the slum can be more fun than the stodgy castle. But when the Mongol hoards come around being in the castle is pretty sweet. And those damn Mongols have a tendency to come with some regularity to ruin the party.

     

    BRK is this city on a top of a crumbling hill with dilapidated walls, surrounded by half empty moats with couple of zebra fish floating in them.

     

    FAAMG are shining metropolis in the cloud(s) with glass and steel skyscrapers, flying cars zooming around, protected by laser beams, firewalls, and army of Agent Smiths.

     

    SP500 actually includes the metropolis. Includes some slums too.

     

    Your pick.

  13. I would say that politicians are the only true leeches I can think of.

     

    I know the question involves businesses, but government is a sort of non-profit business, taking in revenues and bearing costs.  the whole process of capitalism to my mind culls out leeches...which is why politicians survive.  Politicians are not subject to any culling mechanism other than the voting process, which is why politicians pander to voters, which actually increases their leeching behavior.

     

    Government and organized crime.  They both leach off of the productive and provide "protection" (mostly from what they will do to you if you don't pay and obey).  Just parasites like viruses are to biological systems or different kinds of viruses are to computer networks.

     

    "All Complex Ecosystems Have Parasites" --Cory Doctorow

     

    YES! People should just govern themselves! We should all just do whatever we want to do! Don't ever trust professionals! Power to the common people!

     

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

     

     

    (This message is approved by Communist Party of Soviet Union)

     

     

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