BG2008

I feel like you and I live exactly the same life except I'm at Eastern Market and my park is Kingman Island/Anacostia bike trail/with an occasional Arlington loop sprinkled in. Having visited DC and done lots of tours of multi-family rentals, I have to say that I am incredibly jealous of what a $3,500 budget gets you amenity wise in DC vs NYC. Of course, I live and work from a pre-war apartment for $1,800 in Queens. The value guy in me can't pony up $6,000 for a NYC apartment.

I have been impressed by the flexibility of capitalism allowing certain vendors to sell directly to consumers. We have seen seafood vendors that normally would sell to restaurants pivot to consumers. My wife was able to order some lobsters lately an they are reasonable at under $10 a pound delivered to your door. I have seen Florida stone crab claws as well. Overall, capitalism is still working. Yay!

44% gained weight, 27% lost weight, and 28% voters remain flat. Frankly results are better than I expected. over 60 people voted. Not too shabby.

I second this. Especially for the ultra-competitive jobs with 6 figure salaries, they do extensive background checks on your credit. I have heard horror stories where candidates have to take care of $150 credit card disputes from 5 years ago. If you are offering someone $250k a year, why bother with someone who has a 500 credit score. That there is telling you a whole lot about personal responsibility.

Pure & utterly nonsence to me. something can't be utterly nonsense. utterly is an adverb, utter is an adjective and therefor grammatical. so, utter nonsense, yes, but only if you spell it correctly. LOL. Gotta love it when someone makes spelling mistakes while correcting someone else's spelling. No to meting that sentence structure. Pro tip: If you're gonna pompously correct someone else's spelling be sure to spell check your work. Growing up, I hated grammar *#$%. I outscored most of them on tests and exams and had much more common sense. But If I pronounced the b in debt or said pant instead of pants, I got so much crap for it in that really obnoxious Long Island way. English is a super weird language. Why put the b in debt if it is going to be silent? That's probably why I enjoyed Spanish as you pronounce the words the way that it is spelled. My son is three and every time we go through the ABCs, I'm like Apple, Bottle, Cat kat kat kat. So freaking annoying. My son is picking it up just fine, although he is confused from time to time. But that little boy also says things like architect and engineer and he's barely 3. I started learning English at 10. Man, your brain is all wired up and not as flexible. Plus people don't think you are as cute when you are stumbling for words at the age of 10 versus if you are 2 or 3. Anyway, stop being grammar *#$% to foreigners or foreign born people. I think it's okay to born-in-the-USA people who are too "know it all" and too arrogant. It is one of the most condescending things that I experienced growing up. If you really want to help, just point out little details like the "b" is silent in debt and that the pants are always plurals. Pants, haha, it's one contiguous article of clothing. Yes, it has 2 legs, but it's connected as one. Socks makes sense, pants can eat my shorts.

This was a bit gut wrenching to read. That little part about cleaning out the egg shells, mussels, marrow bones etc hits home quite a bit. When we ran the restaurant, we used to hire people to come clean our exhaust hood (if you don't, the accumulated grease can catch on fire which means your whole restaurant will be on fire). It was an all nighter and cost $200 for the job. The specialist will be 2 guys and my dad used to have to help out. As the business got tougher and us kids started costing more money (teenager kids cost more for meals and clothing), my dad would stay up all night cleaning the hood himself. He would cook the whole day the next day. The restaurant business is a tough one. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/23/magazine/closing-prune-restaurant-covid.html

Not sure if I have mentioned this already, but here it goes 1) Most of the Chinese supermarkets in Flushing has shut down. I don't know if it is due to the smaller independent not being able to get supplies as the suppliers shift to their larger customers or if it is due to lack of employees or a combination of both 2) There is a new cottage industry of independents grocery delivery services started by out-of-work Chinese restaurant operators and others. They primarily use WeChat to offer no-contact delivery to your homes 3) Baldor is becoming the dominant grocery delivery services. Their prices are very reasonable, but you have to buy in bulk. I hope they continue to sell to the public after this. Free delivery on orders above $250. Anyone who wants grocery delivery in the NYC area should consider them.

I'm still going to go to Ruth's Chris, a little graft won't stop me Ruth's Chris is trash, I'll take Sparks, Keen's, and Peter Lugers (I have to deal with the grumpy waiters) any day. :) We don't have that stuff in flyover country. Also Ruth's is sort of indigenous to the region That was me pulling a Marie Antoinette

I'm still going to go to Ruth's Chris, a little graft won't stop me Ruth's Chris is trash, I'll take Sparks, Keen's, and Peter Lugers (I have to deal with the grumpy waiters) any day. :)

Does Shake Shack taking PPP loans go into this category? Or does that go into the Darwin award where it leaves a bad taste in me ever wanting a Shack Stack?

Good one

I'll start with myself I have been working from home for the last decade. It was a very consistent 5-10 pounds a year that I gained since I don't have the same physical activity. The joke is that someone on Keto or Paleo can't stop talking about it. Yeah, that's me. Since reducing carb/sugar intake, I've dropped 50 in the last 14 months or so. Nothing really changed for me with Covid 19 in terms of activities wise. Just sticking to my high fat diet/low carb diet does the job.

One of the things that I have noticed on Social Media is various people mentioning that they have gained a lot of weight due to nonstop snacking and not being used to taking so many steps out of their day. Amateurs! I have been working from home for the last decade. I am trying to gauge this as a I think WW (former Weight Watchers) could be interesting. Any additional insights would be helpful. 1) Lost of physical activity 2) Eating better, eating worse 3) More stressful due to juggling work from home, kids, etc 4) Lack of grocery options forcing you to eat less healthy food Would love some feedback

What would be the most Marie Antoinette thing to do at this moment? (For laughs) 1) Someone wealthy doing a cooking video of making lobster roll (assuming they don't live in Maine or Nova Scotia) and passing it off as a normal Sunday Brunch recipe 2) Complaining about delays in delivery for bubble tea 3) Saying why can't these poor people just take their yacht to... 4) Complain about shortage of various gourmet cheese with veins of truffle 5) Complaining that No 3 Michelin star restaurants are currently open 6) Can't party in NYC, Vegas, London, Tokoyo, and Sydney on your birthday by flying in your private jet 7) The Ferrari factory is shutdown and you can't take delivery 8) That Sotheby's auction is postponed 9) Can't go glamping at your favorite EDM 10) Bonus this year is 7 figures instead of 8

Liberty, thanks for posting this.

Agreed, times have changed, but they have also made a national energy policy more of a necessity than it has ever been. Lack of money, has a wonderful way of concentrating the minds of everyone, Like it or not, there will be climate driven constraints, but it can be done intelligently (ie: orphan well clean-up) The Supreme Court has ruled there is 'duty to consult', not a 'duty to agree'. A sick community cannot veto a pipeline, because it cannot make a decision. The obvious industry 'consultors', are the governments of the day, under a national energy policy. There will be quasi-privatization. Crown corporation in-ground SPR, pipeline company, oil company, rail (oil/grain car) fleet, tanker (nfld) fleet, supply-chain (medical, food) infrastructure, etc. Most likely as oiligarch, crown corp and 1-2 private corps. And perhaps one of the biggest lessons from Covid-19. All of the above are essential services, with immense value-add, and robust . When the sh1te hits the fan, the gig economy, and non-essential services break down. Interesting times. SD What this says to me is that if you have pipe already, it will become increasingly valuable. The repercussions for future supply are interesting to say the least. SA, And to a lessor degree the other large Mideast countries are going to be facing revolution if the oil price stays down for very long. We saw what happened to Libya’s and Venezuela’s supplies when governments become unstable. Simultaneously we have a virtual elimination of long tail projects by every major player in the world. The outcome is likely toppled regimes, and a massive price bounce back, down the road. It may become more like railroads, with very few players making a lot of money. We could speed up the rebalance really quick by turning the gulf fields into glass. China may take exception but I sure Moscow would be on board. Are you saying to Nuke the oil fields in the middle east?

I would have thought that recent events have impaired NYC status as a safe haven. You can pick 1) NYC real estate with rampant zombie virus or 2) Potentially lawless emerging markets where currency may devalue

Fair. Perhaps professionally managed buildings are different. In my experience in lower income housing growing up, the landlord isn't without leverage. That's why I even brought up the point around negotiating a bit. Anyway, we've gotten off track on topic. Apologies for the detour. What kind of leverage are you talking about? Do tell.

Not shhughes1116, but hey here's my 0.02. Personally, I separate good managers and good leaders. Good managers are the ones who take care of the team. It's all cliche, but they are the ones who care that team members get responsibilities according to their strengths and weaknesses. And at the same time encourage team members to improve their weak sides. And care about team member personal and professional growth. Interface the team with higher management and other teams. Deal with politics. Build team spirit and camaraderie. Make sure the team is valued. Makes sure the team gets adequate support and renumeration. Good leaders are much less common. For me a good leader is someone who directs the team into new high value and/or high growth directions as they appear or even before they appear. It is someone who notices trends before others and gets the team positioned accordingly. Ideally it's Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, but it doesn't have to be someone who produces iPhone. The leadership could be something less groundbreaking. It could be someone who first notices move to cloud computing and pushes company's product to be rewritten as SaaS on AWS. It could be someone like Munger who pushes Buffett to switch to moaty businesses. (Buffett himself is a leader in certain aspects too). It could be someone who noticed that ETFs are coming and converted mutual fund shop to ETF shop. Or just positioned the team inside the organization accordingly. Some people would call a person a leader even when that person focuses on existing strengths or focus areas and never changes direction. E.g. someone who gets a management role in a company known for frugality and keeps the team focused on saving every cent in product costs. Or someone who leads a team that produces a great software package and keeps that project steady on track. I personally don't consider such people leaders. IMO they are managers - without any negative connotation attached to that term. Of course, in the real world there are shades of grey . Most great managers have to show some leadership if they stay managers for a long time. They cannot stay at the same place or their team would become irrelevant. Converse is true less often: leaders can be lousy managers or not managers at all. I mostly agree with shhughes1116 that good manager can deal with distributed team. IMO it's not as easy as dealing with co-located team though. Personal interaction matters, shared activities in office matter. Remote manager loses a number of tools that help and faces higher hurdles to do best for the team. Jurgis, Thank you for such a great feedback.

shhughes1116 - Can you expand on this topic "I will share one interesting observation, at least in my opinion. Good leaders can lead, whether their staff is remote or in the office. Shitty managers are shitty managers, regardless of where their staff are located. I think remote work really highlights those that are good at leading and connecting with people, and those who believe leadership is randomly showing up at your office door to "make sure you are working". " As a way of background, I played a lot of sports in HS and my best friends and I are both captains of 2 teams. I have noticed the 2-3 classes above us had a lot more ego and a-holes. There were way more drama and infighting. As I have grown my business a bit, I have had to develop a rag tag of interns and analyst spread over the places. I really relish my junior year and particularly my senior year when everyone was on the same page. While a lot of my HS and college friends have faded away over the years, the guys that I played sports with can still pick up and grab a beer when we see each other. Any tips? Comments? Observations? Is it being thoughtful? Is it putting yourself in your employees' shoes? Is it articulating the responsibilities well? What do you deem to be most important?

Can you share specific names and subscriptions? I am wondering if this breaks the Saas model assumptions. They tend to be priced on a P/Rev model and it has worked wonders for shareholders. Gavin's take is that software and cloud is now 50% of IT spend vs 10% in 08/09. So, it is subject to price cut. I am waiting for FB and Goog to report their earnings and see how the ad spends. On the software that you subscribe to? Are there a competing product? How expensive are they? I really would love to get more participation on this topic as I find some Saas models attractively price at the moment. But if we have across the board 30% price cuts, it can really upset the apple cart.

Thank you to anyone who participated in this survey. Seems like the key response is that work from home will be heavily dependent on your job functions.

This is a great interview of Gavin Baker by Patrick O Shag on his podcast Invest Like The Best https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/gavin-baker-investing-through-bear-market-invest-like/id1154105909?i=1000470286606 There is an anecdote where Gavin talks about how the sister of a friend who called their software subscription providers and got 50% price concessions within 1 hour. Gavin talked about how subscription and cloud spend is now 50% of the IT budget versus 10% during 2008/2009. Logically, CIO who are looking to cut IT expenses will try to negotiate lower software and cloud cost and it appears that the providers are conceding. Is anyone here experiencing that? Is anyone calling their software/cloud providers and successfully getting price cuts? Thanks in advance.

Apparently NYC condos are better than cash if you are a South America family. Part of the reason why NYC RE prices continues to be high. Probably a hedge against political instability. https://www.wsj.com/articles/south-american-family-buys-eight-new-york-apartments-to-stash-cash-amid-coronavirus-11586952028?mod=trending_now_4

Grocery delivery has emerged to become a cottage industry of its own. Here in NYC, people who got laid off are offering grocery delivery for families who do not want to risk becoming infected. Getting a spot through Costco, Wholefoods, Chef's warehouse, or Baldor has been difficult.