I, too, find the schadenfreude delicious

'* * cough * * WaitButWhy * * cough * *

Because of its blatant ties to fascist ideals or because its price to earnings ratio is more than 100 when it should be (and I’m being really generous and saccharinely optimistic here) more like 20?

Or, realistically, 8ish.

True. The common theme between those two is they both have way more charisma than musk ever has or will.

Puts are another way to bet against the stock without the risk of your bet ballooning beyond a 100% loss. Lots of Puts and pessimism

Where are all the 17 year old Kenosha kids chomping at the bit to grab an AR15 and stand a protective vigil in front of judges’ houses to protect them from violence and property damage?

Well… my bad-hearted woman loved a smooth-talking gambler, so I… ran him over with my train. Lord! Lord! Yes I… ran him over with my train.

By Bender

Check out The Distracted Mind by Gazzaley and Rosen. As part of their research, they wrote a video game to specifically improve cognitive functions.

I think we’re calling them Holy Republican Edicts now.

deleted by creator

I knew he was just a huge shill for the reptile egg shadow industry. Before you know it, all US omelets will be made from factory-farmed sea turtle eggs.

It’s a catchy phrase for his legion of ignorant sycophants to chant while it taps out their final remaining lead-damaged brain cell.

I like this idea. What does it look like?

One or two skilled people identify a venue (public high school gym? Public park? Local, non-corporate movie theater? A stadium?) and schedule a date and time?

Come up with a draft agenda to discuss at the meeting, publish it somewhere accessible online, and request comments to consider additions/revisions?

Do the same thing for a meeting ruleset to ensure it remains productive and not just an excuse to suck up oxygen by venting/ranting? Use something like a ‘talking stick’?

Have petitions ready for signature so attendees can formally record their views and desires upon conclusion of the meeting?

Identify 3 or so topics to rally behind and ask for volunteers to lead or serve on committees to act on them?

I want this stuff to be actionable, not just a “someone should do this!” complaint.

I’m not an organizer… I’m naive on how this kind of thing works…but I’d like to be part of an organized movement to make things trend toward better before it gets worse.

It doesn’t help they seem to have a few Vichy-type collaborators on the “opposing” team.

Sometimes when you’re having a tough time with other people, it might not be them that’s causing the difficulty…

If it were somehow revealed he was assassinated by the CIA or secret service or some other government agency, what exactly would that do at this point? Give Trump an excuse to dismantle it and authorize the creation of a new intelligence/enforcement agency with deeper and more covert and loyal power tendrils, like a new SS?

Degree of democracy has more to do with the size of the ruling coalition relative to the size of the pool of the interchangeables. When power is shared within a large ruling coalition, there tends to be a louder and more influential voice by the interchangeables, leading to more democracy and better living conditions for everyone, including those in the losing coalition. Autocracies on the ruling spectrum tend to have tiny ruling coalitions.

Source: my memory of reading The Dictator’s Handbook by Bueno de Mesquita and Smith. Highly recommended reading.

If the ruling coalition of the US is much smaller than it appears to be, then yeah, it’s at risk of losing its foothold as a democracy.

I personally will never short anything. I’m not smart enough to do it right, I proved that to myself when I tried to actively invest. Were I to play the market again, if I were pessimistic about a stock, I would opt to buy Put Options to bet against it. Those come with their own risks, including being able to time the market in addition to its direction. I’ve seen others say you can buy positions in a ticker that tracks the inverse of Tesla, but it insulates you from the worst case of selling short (i.e. theoretical infinite loss, or at least way more loss than you could afford); it can only drop to zero for a 100% loss, but not more. At least, that’s my understanding, but I could be wrong. The advice I give myself is to just not play, except in the most boring way.

That’s a fun question to ponder. I don’t have a good answer for you. I think it might boil down to the mast cells and whether or not measles kills them in addition to the B and T memory cells. Have you read Immune by Philipp Dettmer yet? If not, you absolutely should check it out. There’s an excellent chapter about allergies, as well as a subchapter about measles.

Edit: trying to harness this measles’ indiscriminate appetite for long-lived plasma and Memory B and T cells to only those that may be sensitive to allergens seems like a tall order, but it’s amazing what immunologists have been able to achieve.

Maybe figure out how to make a measles virus with an antigen that’s only similar to the allergen’s so it selectively attacks those problematic immune cells. That’d be neat. Sounds REALLY complex in practice.

I am mostly a disciple of Boglehead investing philosophy.

A seminal resource early in my adult life was The Wealthy Barber, which I think still stands up well as a sensible guide to low-stress, long-term investing.

An ETF is basically a thing you buy, like shares of stock, but each share of an ETF is made of a blend of a bunch of stocks. VTI is an ETF run by the brokerage Vanguard that tries to track the entire US stock market, weighted against how large a company is. You should try to find ETFs with a low “expense ratio”, which is basically the management fee for a blended fund. VTI is really low, something like 0.03%. So you pay vanguard $3 for every $10,000 gained (I think it works like that, anyway. All I know is it’s low and that’s good).

I don’t endorse playing with Options Contracts unless you have an iron stomach and incredible self discipline. It’s legalized gambling in my view (although it has other valid uses, like hedging against losses…but it’s an advanced tool and can wreak havoc on savings when used poorly).