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Liberty

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Everything posted by Liberty

  1. Storm of Steel is a good one if your a war enthusiast. 'American Caesar' (about Douglas MacArthur) and 'Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War' and by William Manchester are also recommended. 'Strong Men Armed' and 'Helmet for my Pillow' by Robert Leckie, about the U.S. Marines in the Pacific during WWII were also very good, as was 'Ghost Soldiers' by Hampton Sides. I also quite liked the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird ("American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer").
  2. A lot of serial entrepreneurs do this in Silicon Valley too. Build something, get acquired or acqui-hired by Google, stay until you vest fully, then leave and build something else and get acquired by Google or Microsoft or Apple or whoever, rinse and repeat.
  3. Exactly. I guess the lesson is that most "dull" razor blades are actually still pretty structurally sound and just need a little bit of help.
  4. I shave in the shower, regular soap plus hot water is enough for me. It's not even so much to save money (though that's always a good habit to keep for things big and small, and I hate feeling gouged by regular shaving accessory prices), it's to keep things simple and not add steps and products that aren't necessary. There's satisfaction in elegance and minimalism, at least to me.
  5. For those who were wondering if this trick works, I've been on the same blade cartridge since I posted that, and it wasn't a new one at the time. I don't have a Homer Simpson beard, though, some your mileage may vary.
  6. More anecdotes/history than 'how to', but I remember 'More Money Than God' being pretty enjoyable. Same with Michael Lewis 'The Big Short'.
  7. New book by Michael Batnick coming out next week, about "The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments": https://www.amazon.com/Big-Mistakes-Investors-Investments-Bloomberg/dp/1119366550/ I've always liked studying mistakes, hopefully to learn from them and make fewer of my own (I also liked the book 'Billion Dollar Lessons', not to be confused with 'Billion Dollar Mistakes', which I didn't like). Short video of Michael talking about writing his book:
  8. It's as good as the title is cringe-worthy!
  9. Guessing you're asking about the US, since there are no 30y mortgages (with locked rates) in Canada..? I don't know, but it would certainly have helped some people if we could have locked rates for 30y here..
  10. I haven't read it yet, but comments from those that have read it have been pretty unanimously positive, and I expect that with all sagas of this type, there's probably a lot of detail and anecdote that never made it to regular articles (ie. Reading the Big Short is fun even if you lived through 2008-2009 and paid attention at the time). But that's just my guess...
  11. I'd rather pay 15-20% rates for a few years, while wages are also inflating relatively rapidly, and then be left to pay the rest of the principal over a couple decades at much lower rates, than sign up for a gigantic amount of debt at almost zero interest rates, knowing that rates will likely rise over a couple decades and the principal will still have to be paid.
  12. The Russian Mafia state strikes again: Update: He's ok, but it's the sixth interpol warrant against him from Russia...
  13. I just finished watching the last episode of 'Waco', a 6-episode mini-series made by Paramount. I highly recommend it, I think it's pretty much a tour de force. It also makes me want to read the source materials on which the series is based (yeah yeah, it probably made the Branch Davidians look better than they were in reality, whatever, I'm not sure if the people claiming that really know since there was so much disinformation about them too--either way, they didn't deserve this). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6040674/ You can watch it from here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/tv-season/waco/id1318849424
  14. I enjoyed this podcast and thought some here might like it too: https://a16z.com/2018/05/16/network-effects-positive-feedbacks-increasing-returns-complexity-silicon-valley-history-innovation/
  15. This is a book about the whole Theranos sage, form promising startup to all the lies and scandals, written by the journalist who afaik did the most to break this story: https://www.amazon.ca/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X/
  16. The book on this whole saga is out: https://www.amazon.ca/Bad-Blood-Secrets-Silicon-Startup/dp/152473165X/
  17. Well, my reply "I dont think this is the case" because not everybody understands this, and its possible that the writers of these articles misrepresent the word "percentile." That said, my explanation is consistent with the statistical definition of percentiles, and how academics have used the term in context of wealth/income. Well, there's probably other reasons to suspect that the original article is BS, but I didn't really focus on that in my post, so fair's fair.
  18. Thanks for explaining how I was wrong, guys. It's how we learn. I somehow got into my head that they just sliced the pie in 100 slices and then divided the sums in each by the numbers of individuals in each. Cheers!
  19. What I'm saying is that within the first percentile, there's likely a wide distribution, and that since it's probably a power law, that can be skewed quite a bit by a bunch of billionaires. So if you compare that first percentile to the rest and say "to be in the first percentile you need X", you might not actually be accurately representing most of the individuals that compose that first percentile since 0.95 of it might have on average $1m (random number to make a point) and 0.05 of it at the top might have 500m on average. So you're taking the average of the sums in that first percentile rather than look at the median person in that first percentile, and that makes a difference.
  20. You are technically correct about statistical distortion within the group. But stahleyp's reference group is only the top 1%. :) Interesting link about those who feel relatively poor within the 1% (from 2014, so outdated but, if anything, the trend has accentuated): https://www.cnbc.com/2014/03/31/the-other-wealth-gapthe-1-vs-the-001.html I don't see how that's different, no? Take that top 1% of the general population and sub divide it into 100 parts. There's till going to be the 0.01% that might own a billion and skew what that 1% is vs the general pop. Or am I misunderstanding what you mean?
  21. Is this median or average? Because ar billionaires and going to distort things, like if Bill Gates moved to your neighborhood and suddenly the average net worth on the area is $250m or whatever...
  22. I have found "loaning" books is essentially giving them away; they usually don't get returned. So your's is a good policy of accepting that and giving them the book. Someone agrees with you:
  23. Congrats and the successful investment, Dynamic, and thanks for sharing your post-morterm with us.
  24. 10th launch so far this year already:
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