Property management wont do anything, hope I can talk sense into them before the floorboards rot and cave in.

That seems like a pretty compelling reason to do something. I’m not a lawyer, but maybe keep track of your correspondence with them…and then, when the floorboards cave in, sue the fuck out of 'em for not doing their jobs.

Also, my holidays are fine. It doesn’t feel particularly festive.,.and I’m overwhelmed with the support I’m getting…

#1 Go to the doctor.

#2 Take a walk. Power walk. It’s healthy and fun!

Teacher: …uhhh…

少奇 حكيم : Yep, I’m here.

Teacher: Got you. Where is that from?

少奇 حكيم : …uhhh…

Teacher: Got it. Is Ashley Berkenstein here?

Italian sausage, penne pasta, and marinara. Beyond easy…not particularly healthy.

Government bureaucracy

This is obviously a bad idea. CMV

There will be hysterical articles in NYT about how these poor struggling retailers are losing SO MUCH money (but not really) from theft

Yeah, that’s been retracted.

Now the only reason to park two squad cars outside of every Kroger is to determine minorities into doing what they were already doing, i.e.: going grocery shopping.

The best expression is one quoted by economist Emily Oster: “If you don’t like your beer, stop drinking it.”

But if you’re trying to develop an affinity for IPAs for some stupid reason, then shouldn’t you keep drinking it?

I remember an episode of EconTalk that discussed the sunk cost fallacy. It was Mary Hirschfeld on Economics, Culture, and Aquinas and the Market. I’ll just quote the transcript at length:

Mary Hirschfeld: Okay. But first, I just–I love the observation that in Chapter 1 of an economics textbook, they’ll say, ‘We’re just describing people as they are. People are rational, and this is how it goes.’ And then, in Chapter 2, they’ll say, ‘And most people fail to’–you know, ‘respect the sunk costs.’ And they never even notice that there’s a small tension there.

But, anyway: Now, there’s some places where you actually do want to ignore your sunk costs. If I’m playing you at poker and I spent a lot of money bidding up the pot, and then on the last card it turns out that I really am not going to win, I should not follow up my losses with more betting, if I think I can con you out of it.

But, there’s a good–there’s plenty of places where you really should ignore your sunk costs. But, if you think about it as a practice in general, if I’m always saying to myself, ‘Oh, well, whatever it was that happened yesterday is a sunk cost. I have to decide today,’ that means I’m always going to be emphasizing what are my feelings in the moment. They are just going to have an elevated sense of importance in my decision-making. And, the problem is, my feelings in the moment might often be impulsive or not wise. And, part of self-discipline–part of growing in self-discipline and virtue, is learning that ‘Well, sure, I might like the donut today; but in the long run, I might like to cultivate the habit of not wanting donuts, because it would be better for my health.’

And, so–I mean, there’s classic places where this happens. If I want to start exercising more, I might go down to the gym and pay for a membership fee. And then if I have the idea that I should honor my sunk costs, I’m more likely to act on that higher impulse and get to the gym. But, if I do what the economists says, on the day when I’m thinking I don’t want to go to the gym because I’m tired, and then my little quote-unquote “irrational” voice says ‘You paid that money for the membership; you should go,’ well, the economist would say, ‘No. Ignore that voice. That’s a sunk cost. If you don’t feel like going, don’t go.’ And then I never get this chance to discipline myself.

Now, economists certainly have models that allow you to try to do this self-committing kind of behavior. They have complicated models that try to handle these kinds of situations. I just think it’s a lot more common than they think. And I think the main reason I think that is actually personal. I really was formed as an economist. I started grad school at the age of 20, 21, whatever I was–it was young. And I always found myself thinking on the margin, ignoring my sunk costs, and not developing anything remotely like self-discipline. So, I’m really–and I’m still struggling with this. The legacy of this is still in my being.

tl;dr: According to Hirschfeld, employing the sunk cost fallacy can help us more heavily weigh our past decisions to inform how we should act in the present. We may have made decisions yesterday in accordance with some higher ideal of ourselves, and perhaps we shouldn’t discount those decisions entirely just because they’re in the past.

But they’ll absolutely line up for a guy that did the most to exacerbate the time of great crisis.

Americans…gotta love 'em.

Joe Biden’s failure to do anything material for the public

Yeah…he literally put $1400 in your pocket, assuming you’re American, at the beginning of his administration in response to the covid-19 virus.

American politics is basically one big ol’ recency bias. The most recent events weigh more heavily than a holistic view of the candidate. That’s why George W. Bush can paint fucking puppies and the media that used to disparage him now fawns. It’s also why the 24 hr news cycle is so effective: Americans think being informed means being up-to-date.

When I was poor, $5k would’ve been life changing. I wouldn’t have eaten any better except for a day or two, but I wouldn’t have had debts hanging over my head.

Matter of fact, I had a $4k debt hanging over my head for like 6 years because I dropped out of college. I couldn’t pay it off until I got my dad’s life insurance after he died. I worked the entire time, 6 years straight, but was underpaid and Wells Fargo was doing its illegal overdraft fee thing…I will never work with that bank again. It wasn’t uncommon for me to pay $70 in fees on a paycheck of $400. Idk how the fuck I survived.

Are you perchance a genius?

Honestly, AI has been helping me a lot as a student and someone that just likes to research stuff. It’s development over the last year has been incredible.

Xyplorer. A much better file system

More spending means more demand means more supply, which means production costs go down (due to economies of scale)… so inflation goes down?

Supply may or may not be able to adjust quickly.

A good example is food. There’s only so much that can be grown and distributed. So a high demand for food year after year only pushes up the price. The supply can’t really grow exactly. You can purchase more, import it, but that’s still probably more costly than local production. So importing it may actually make the price higher even while the supply expands.

Also, organizations aren’t required to produce more. In an economic environment where…idk…you once found t-shirts for $5 for three, Hanes can make it $6 for three because what else are you going to do? Buy Fruit of the Loom like a peasant, who is also charging more for their clothes?

So if production can’t or won’t expand and/or supply can’t it won’t expand, you’ll have more and more money chasing the same amount of goods, which leads to inflation.

I am annoyed af. My pc does have TPM but it’s a bitch to set up and I’m not fighting that fight again. And fuck windows 11 on my current computer

So…basically how my brain works? I routinely mishear and misread words. I’m like…80% certain I’m somewhat dyslexic. The repetition of the word would’ve tripped me up, too. The misspellings wouldn’t faze me.

That Have You Ever Had A Dream meme would also trip me up. Written variations would take me a good 10 seconds for me to figure out it’s gibberish. I’m not sure about the plausible deniability bit though…

Just buy Apple and Microsoft. You’ll be fine.

You have to prevent 9/11. Then you can still walk your grandma to the terminal when she flies to the Bahamas.