rkbabang

More LAACZ, I've had an order in at $2190 for a long time, today I bought a few at $2275. Itchy trigger finger.

That's totally not something that is happening in this topic. :P Never seen this essay. Its really nice. I have had a few instances which were big oops type ones where I completely changed what I was doing. One question I have though is what you do if: 1) You are sure what you are doing is failing 2) You have no idea of a better alternative. Here I'm not talking about investing because the obvious alternative is to index invest. I more thinking about big problems like a failing career or a lack of passion in life. I am thinking of rut like patterns in life that people don't know how to break. I can think of a few answers: 1) Try anything new and different...experiment with a lot with different things 2) Meet different people 3) Look for the person who is succeeding while you are failing. Especially if that person fall into the psychological category of someone you dismiss because they had some unfair reason for succeeding or because you don't believe in what they are doing. 4) Take LSD or some psychedelic. I don't really think I have a good answer since I am having problems like this and I don't really have a good solution. 1 in combination with 2 is a huge problem. I'm reminded of the saying "When you find yourself in a hole ... stop digging". The first thing to do is stop doing whatever it is that is failing. Even if it means doing nothing at all until you figure out how you want to try to proceed.

Another 2 books I'll mention which are good reads are Kevin Kelly's "What Technology Wants" and his follow-up "The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future". He's got an interesting take on the evolutionary process of technology, both how it evolved in the past and where it is likely going.

You know the photo is staged when she wears high heels on the factory floor. Was there any expectation that it wasn't staged? As in, a photographer sneaked in the high-security ITAR-compliant factory and just happened to catch in a candid moment the COO of SpaceX admiring some hardware on the factory floor? ;) Because I like nit pick: 1) High heels are not allowed on the factory floor typically, because they are considered a safety concern. 2) The fact that the COO wears high heels on the factory floor means that she either doesn’t care about safety violations and/or she is almost never on the factory floor (except for PR). Or perhaps nobody cares about safety violations 3) It’s not a big deal, but sometimes, these little things give you and insight into the company culture. Or maybe she only wears high heels on the factory floor when she knows she is dressing up to be photographed by the press?

In a town in MA that I used to live in, someone discovered that this one guy who was on the town payroll as a full time employee for more than 20 years, had another full time job in the private sector the entire time and had never done anything at all for the town. He had a full time salary, benefits, and pension and had never worked. The funny part is that after it became public and they fired him, they wanted to replace him. There was an uproar in town, because if the job had never been done and no one had ever noticed, then why should he be replaced? In the end the position was eliminated, but only because of the publicity. Had it never been in the newspaper no one would ever have known or cared.

It comes down to incentives. City governments know that they can spend now and tax or issue bonds later to take care of pension liabilities. And anyway the politicians that are in office now can do the spending and let someone else deal with the long run consequences. As long as it isn't going to collapse during your tenure in office, the long run consequences will be someone else's problem. This works year after year, decade after decade, ... until it doesn't.

Technology to the rescue. http://whiskyadvocate.com/rapid-aging-whiskey-feature/ "The Science Behind Alternatively Aged Whisky. The Rosies pump ultrasonic waves through whiskey and other spirits to achieve the smoothed-out flavors and textures that typically come from years of barrel aging."

I use Fidelity as my brokerage and I use their watchlist feature. It lets you add companies to the watchlist and set alerts, it's ok and it works for my purposes. I used to use Yahoo, I'd create a portfolio which mirrored mine and a watchlist portfolio for tracking stocks that I was interested in. But they kept changing their financial section for the worse, and when they got rid of their portfolio feature I stopped using yahoo altogether.

I looked up "The Undoing Project" on Amazon and it said "Read for free" with prime. So I just had that delivered to my Kindle. Thanks. I've also never read Clockwork Orange, I'm going to put that on my list as well.

Yes, but when I say there has got to be a better way of doing things than through coercive government, which has no incentive to make any reasonable real world decisions, I am the crazy one. This is what government does, it steals and it spends until it just can't steal and spend anymore. Government creates no wealth, it can only take it from others. So exactly like any other Ponzi scheme, when it can no longer continue it won't.

Yes, it was me who recommended that to you! Also, I love Haidt. Have you read The Righteous Mind? I have, I didn't list it here because we've talked about it before so I knew for sure you'd read it.

Books I've read recently that I enjoyed. "The Coddling of The American Mind" Jonathan Haidt "The Happiness Hypothesis" Jonathan Haidt "The Myth of the Rational Voter" Bryan Caplan "iWoz" "Christmas Eve, 1914" Charles Olivier "The Everything Store" "Thinking in Bets" (but I'm pretty sure it was you who recommended this, so you read it already, if not, it was good) The 2 "Luna" books by Ian McDonald

Maybe off topic, but my favorite way to use the site is to click the link at the top right under your username that says: "Show unread posts since last visit." Also the one under it ("Show new replies to your posts.") is useful as well to show only topics which you've participated in which have new messages.

I have an elderly neighbor who is originally from Taiwan, he's in his 70's but has lived in England, Canada, and the US since college. So he speaks English very well, with only a hint of an accent. But when he jokes around and does an exaggerated Chinese accent it is hilarious. "Fried Rice" comes out "Flied Lice" for instance. He just goes on and on and can keep us laughing for hours.

I was applying for Australian citizenship and the interviewer asked, "Do you have a criminal record?" I said, "No. Is that still required?"

IP addresses are very easy to hide/fake. You can't track people by IP address. EDIT: That is poorly worded as you can track most people by IP address. You can't track someone who doesn't want to be tracked by IP address.

A woman walks into a pharmacy and asks the pharmacist for some arsenic. He asks "What for?" She replies "I want to kill my husband." He says "Sorry, I can't give you that." She then reaches into her handbag and pulls out a photo of her husband in bed with the pharmacist's wife and hands it to him. He looks at it closely and says, "Well, you didn't tell me you had a prescription."

Take 1000 people with $10M in annual income and come back in 30 years and see how many of them are worth over $2B in 2019 dollars that is not due to the growth of their own business. My guess is 0-1 of them. This guy is extraordinary any way you look at it, even if the author of the article isn't. Take a few zero's off, it is like someone who makes $100K/year ending up with over $20M. How often does that happen?

I'm in favor of selling California to Mexico. I'm in favor of spinning off a bunch of states. The US should break into 4. The 2 coasts can each be the liberal leftist socialists paradises that they want to be. The middle can go to the conservatives. And give the libertarians New Hampshire. The notion that 320+ million people spread over most of one of the Earth's continents will all have the same culture and want the same type of government is absurd. It’s Time For The United States To Divorce Before Things Get Dangerous Heyyy, what about Florida? Too hot and humid. Whoever wants it.

Where are all the other self-made multi-billionaires who made most of their money from the stock market rather than their companies or from taking fees on OPM? The base rate says that it's very hard and very rare. It's not like there wasn't a cohort of millionaires in the 70s and 80s who invested in the stock market. Yet it seems very rare to hear about some who became billionaires (not from their companies doing really well or from gathering lots of AUM and taking fees) and held on to multi-hundred-baggers. Not saying there aren't others, but to downplay it as something "not hard" is delusional. The only thing I took issue with it is the click-bate headline. He was a multi-millionaire inventor and successful entrepreneur that became a billionaire through investing. That is admirable and not easy to do (based on the obvious fact that not many multi-millionaires are able to do it). The title makes it sound like a middle class guy became a billionaire through investing the stock market, but that just isn't what happened. It's a good story, it is unfortunate that the author chose to embellish it unnecessarily.

Thanks for the article. I found it interesting that he mentioned "his friend" Daniel Suarez and only mentioned his latest book (which was good, but not about AR), but not his best work "Daemon" published in 2006 which prominently features AR. "Daemon" and its sequel "FreedomTM" were far ahead of their time and really got me excited about the possibilities of this technology back then. Suarez also wrote about killer autonomous drones in "Kill Decision" in 2012, which is also excellent.

I'm in favor of selling California to Mexico. I'm in favor of spinning off a bunch of states. The US should break into 4. The 2 coasts can each be the liberal leftist socialists paradises that they want to be. The middle can go to the conservatives. And give the libertarians New Hampshire. The notion that 320+ million people spread over most of one of the Earth's continents will all have the same culture and want the same type of government is absurd. It’s Time For The United States To Divorce Before Things Get Dangerous

Yes the headline is misleading and clickbatish. Calling him "An optometrist" makes it sound like he makes a few hundred grand per year, not 8 figures. It should be "Successful Inventor Who Beat The Odds To Become A Billionaire" It doesn't sound as amazing, but it is still a good story, because his investing performance is still excellent. And anyone who invested in both the Apple IPO and Microsoft IPO and held until now would have done pretty damn well even with modest amounts.

He's had "steady" $10M per year income for a lot of years. If 30 years then that is "$300 M", let's say he invested $8M/year that is $240 M. The article says that he turned $5M into $800M in Heiko alone, add in that other $235M with no returns at all and he is a Billionaire. And he did get returns on that other money because he owns a lot of Apple and Microsoft, etc. It sounds like he did well even without the Heiko, but that was his big hit.

There can be no serious talk about cutting spending and doing something about the debt unless military spending cuts are #1 on the list. Military spending is out of control and needs to be slashed massively.