Castanza

I'd say if that's the case then that person needs to re-evaluate their expenses. Likely they are living well above their means. Prioritization is a choice imo. I'm 29 took an additional 2 years for college, worked full time during the last two years, paid off my student debt, paid cash for school, built an emergency fund, bought two vehicles and paid them off, purchased a house and recently paid it off. I still invested a good amount of money in that timeframe. Now I have zero debt and can really hammer the investing moving forward. My wife and I have relatively average salaries and come from working class families who couldn't afford to pay for our school. I have colleagues who also have wives as nurses and still don't own homes and say they don't have much invested, yet they seemingly spend hours every day on Robinhood. Frankly I don't understand what they're doing lol.....shockingly this is far more common than one would think. To each their own, but I think we will look back in 30 years and see how bad it was to push everyone in their 20's to jump in the market and make that their priority. Most people don't have the stomach for it, and that leads to poor performance. Sure it's just anecdotes....but they add up when you hear all your friends who don't own homes and still have 70k in student debt talking about swing trading r/wsb stocks.

Best way to overcome this is invest what you don't need for the next few years minimum. A lot of people in my age range seem to have FOMO when it comes to stocks. Many prioritize investing over an emergency fund, house maintenance fund, etc. I was like this my first two years investing as well. It leads to irrational decisions based on the news cycle that day. In fact a friend messaged me yesterday and said he dumped his GOOGL position that he bought like a month ago citing the new Anti-Trust case. A month ago, he thought it was undeniable cheap with a "long-term" perspective.

Added a little PCYO today and yesterday

Lyle McDonald's book The Ultimate Diet 2.0 is a really solid book if you're interested in a really tough but short duration (6 weeks) workout/diet plan for losing weight. I've been using it pre-summer after my typically "bulk" the past three years and it works well. No gimmicky nonsense, just a purely biological scientific approach. Might not be great if you're > 25% body fat. But to get sub 20% down into the low to high teens for those abs I personally haven't found a better program. Also fits pretty well into a typical 9-5 work schedule.

The Taliban was quick to find and execute many individuals who were trained at relatively high levels by US SOF. The ones that remain are likely in hiding or trying to get out of the country to the US. Basic Afghan infantry trained by US forces are very limited in skill and knowledge. Generally this is due to a trust issue. I would not consider them a meaningful force. Most basic infantry will fight for whoever gives them the best paycheck. A friend of mine who is a Green Beret and knows individuals who worked on Operation Pineapple Express said they are still working on getting out counterparts that they worked with. I would not count on many of these individuals fighting for Russia. In fact, from what he told me, many of the highly trained Afghan SOF individuals that evaded Taliban capture have been doing exactly what US SOF units do....train individuals for guerilla warfare. People underestimate the change in the Afghan people. One, many people had a small taste of what freedom can be like. Two, there are millions of individuals that are educated now and no longer living in the dark. Three, people still overestimate how much control the Taliban has. Most people still don't know that the Taliban pre-staged pictures, scenes, etc. in key locations that they knew the press would be to make the world think they completely took over in a matter of days. Worked like a charm and Western Press Outlets ate it up. From what I've been told, there is still a lot of resistance brewing in that country. Also just want to point out how incompetent the US Govt was in all of this. Kamala Harris called leaders from Operation Pineapple Express asking them to get out individuals she deemed important. Operation Pineapple is a self funded organization primarily made up of former SOF members who still have contacts in country. You have the VP of the United States, who has access to Delta Force asking someone else to do her dirty work without providing any funding from the US Government. That is laughably sad. _______________ So in short, I highly doubt that basic infantry with minimal training from US troops and that has an allegiance more determined by their own personal survival will bring any significant capacity to Russian forces. Not meaningless, but turn the tide capable? I doubt it.

I think the closer something like this gets to implementation, the more it will drive up the price of BTC until govt says something directly against it.

How does the IRS view forks? Do they consider it the same class as an equity spin off which is typically tax free?

I like dividends in my non-taxable accounts and buybacks in my standard brokerage.

GOOGL, TSM

Sure, I cant speak to how factual the conversation is. I’m more impressed with the language articulation/conversation give and take etc. I mean if you think about thought process and how humans use logic and we come to conclusions. I don’t think it’s too crazy to expect AI in the future to be able to mimic humans in this regard. Do we truly have original thoughts? Or are they simple the sum of specific decisions and interactions inputs and outputs? No clue and I’m starting to sound like someone who has smoked too much pot. But think how crazy it would be if 100 years from now AI allows us to tap (I say that loosely) into the minds of past brilliant thinkers. Could all be smoke and mirrors too.

Not specific to ChatGPT but this is absolutely mind blowing. Worth a listen even if you only listen for 5 minutes.

+ 19% in the Roth IRAs - 9% in the brokerage Happy with what I own and at what prices through all my accounts so return wise I couldn't really care less this year. When the overall market is down I'm not concerned with measuring returns, I'm concerned with scooping up bargains until they hit rock bottom. Good luck to all! Here's to another year (hopefully) of bargain basement priced equities!

Awesome, thanks for the responses. Most likely going to go with the Aeron since it's readily available for not new prices.

ALCO some tax loss harvesting. Still like the stock and might add back come the new year.

Very nice, looks like a good spread right there

Merry Christmas

Thanks I’ll check out those sites. At my office they had the Steelcase Leap V2 chairs. They were ok. I like the idea of mesh because I usually go running or to the gym at lunch so the cooler “ride” would definitely be a plus

Nice, did you go with the leaf arms?

Haha I like it. Haven’t read over the proxy yet but will probably follow suit with that thought process.

TSN, JOE, TSM, OXY

Finally biting the bullet and upgrading the home office. Been working off the same squeaky terribly uncomfortable cheap IKEA desk and chair for years now. Picked up a Uplift V2 desk frame off marketplace for like half the cost of a new one and working on building a top for it. Been shopping around for chair and looking at the Herman Miller Aeron which can be had for $450 on ebay with a 12 year warranty. Not bad considering most junk chairs are like $250 with no warranty and the HM is what $1100+ new. Anyone have any recommendations?

GOOGL

This highlights the systemic issue with crypto adoption though. People who are fans/hobbyists of specific technology often hold the view of "people just need to do more research and they will see the benefit". The majority of people will never "dig into" BTC and the behind the scenes benefits because they truly don't care. A great place to see examples of this would be on Reddit. There are subs of any topic you can think of that are full of cult followers. Go on r/water and look around. It's full of people obsessed with getting the purest water they can drink. To them it's absurd that everyone doesn't have a Hydroviv water filter in their house. "Why would people not do more research and see the benefits?!" I also think that individuals over emphasize how much average people actually care about a proper "store of value". Prior to BTC and crypto, how many people help gold? It was something like 1-5% of people owned physical gold in the US in 2017. If having a store of value was extremely important to the general populace then why wasn't that number higher? And why would anyone expect it to be higher in any meaningful manner now? There are financial accounts you can get now here you convert all of your cash to Gold held in some vault. You get a debit card and spend "gold". How many people use that? Pretty much nobody. Point being people will switch to Crypto why they are forced to by the powers at be (Central Bank crypto). Beyond that, the average person doesn't have time to think about the benefits of crypto when the reality of every day life sets in. People are too busy, too poor, and simply not interested.

Twitter should just make you verify with a ID or Drivers License to sign up for an account and call it a day.