arch_8ngel

I really think that you're leaning into a dangerous attitude that is much more likely to blow up in your face than it is to lead to success. EDIT: and in total seriousness -- cross-referencing your posts HERE with your posts in the politics discussion about whether a $50k student loan debt payoff is necessary or a good idea does NOT serve to make your case in the other thread

Arby's pulls off a surprisingly decent gyro and their curly fries are great, but for whatever reason, they are definitely "roadtrip food" and never part of the normal rotation.

Unknown -- there is at least some chatter about this being related to updated short numbers being released and the number of shorts going UP rather than DOWN (granted they would presumably all be at a much more defensible position than the first wave of the squeeze that was attempting to crush shorts that entered below $6/share) And on top of that, the WSB-guys, at least, are pumped about DFV / Roaring Kitty / Keith Gill having doubled his share position following his congressional testimony (bought another 50,000 shares out of his cash hoard) Of course coupled with the CFO departure today.

Good grief... doubled during the day, and doubled after hours. This is wild even by the standards of the "original squeeze". I hopped out of my lingering AMC shares with the added benefit of the after hours bump. Have my one lonely "souvenir" share for GME -- had planned to keep it, but this is getting sillier than I'd expected to see again, and rationally I wouldn't flush a couple of $100 bills down the toilet

I'm sure there are women doing it if there is advertising revenue to earn or OnlyFans subscriptions to be had from it.

Yeah -- Shovel Knight actually captures the play control and feel of how you might have wished a game worked back-in-the-day. Cave Story has a fairly "typical" early-2000's indie aesthetic with modern play control and "feel". It's a fun game, but neither the graphics nor the gameplay have anything "retro" about them, IMO.

Seems a bit illiberal of you to shame soft-core/non-nude sex work just because it targets your hobby

Shoring up individuals is potentially better for the economy/recovery than doing the same for corporations. That isn't my issue with the point you were trying to make. My issue is that you present it almost in a "two wrongs making a right" sort of fashion. So bringing up past less-than-optimal actions as a justification for this action is just not a particularly strong position to take. And helping individuals to boost a recovery does not necessitate a $50,000 handout for a subset of people that chose to take out loans that they promised to repay, when there are considerably less controversial ways to provide them with assistance.

That is nutty of them. I completely agree that it is the Buyer's move to leave feedback first to say that they are satisfied. And it is practically irrelevant whether a seller leaves feedback at all, or not -- but I try to catch up on it every so often. Definitely not a priority for me, at all, as a seller.

If you want to talk about something falling apart pretty quickly, you should draw fewer false equivalencies between life threatening disasters (recent Texas weather), systemic risks of economic collapse (structural unemployment during a pandemic) -- and people choosing to take loans with terms that they agreed to with an agreement to repay. There is a fairly clear limit to how much "personal responsibility" you can bear for needing to use electricity during a life-threatening event, or how much "personal responsibility" you can bear for entire sectors of the economy shutting down overnight (an emergency fund can only be so large, in practical terms). But you can't blame external forces for choosing to pay the price of admission at the school a borrower chose to attend. You CAN very reasonably say that DURING THE PANDEMIC, external forces exist that alleviate PRESENT personal responsibility to repay existing loans -- in the form of eliminated interest and deferred payments. That is a completely reasonable and practical analog to extended unemployment benefits, for instance. It is MUCH LESS REASONABLE to claim that willing borrowers deserve a $50k handout. Even the $10k being discussed is a significant boon to borrowers who should have had no expectation of such a bonus in the first place. There are a lot of ways that existing student loan debts can be significantly restructured to provide relief to borrowers that don't amount to a one-time massive bailout. EDIT: also, citing examples like bank bailouts doesn't really provide a strong case for why student loan debt elimination is prudent or justified. Something that was done to benefit some other group in the past, in a way you disagree with, doesn't justify doing some other bailout that benefits you directly today.

What is your take on the concept of "decay" for leveraged ETFs held over longer periods of time? I'm not as well-read on it as I would like to be. My portfolio portion for "extra" risk in tech is riding with ARK ETFs for the most part.

Any particular reason you're looking at a 3x-leveraged version instead of just QQQ? A 3x-leveraged ETF doesn't really fit the same risk profile as the SPY ticker it was next to in your comment!

A key difference is that the increased unemployment is a clearly temporary measure with mostly collective support from people who don't need it YET, but fear that they MIGHT -- through no direct fault of the individual. A massive student loan payoff wouldn't function similarly and without major structural reforms to college cost incentives, it offers no particular hope of future benefit to those that don't need it today. It is a big payoff that to people who chose not to go to college because they didn't want to take on big loans is going to look like bad decisions being rewarded while they get nothing. There is a clear difference in the level of personal responsibility associated with someone becoming unemployed during a pandemic that completely shut down certain sectors of the economy and someone that took out $50k in student loans with a promise to repay under loan terms that they agreed to at the time they signed the contract. A lot of the practical concerns about the "student loan crisis" could be effectively solved by freezing or eliminating interest, providing better provisions for forbearance without penalties, and providing a better mechanism for phased debt cancellation. But even the $50k payoff is a band-aid without structural reforms, since it just shifts the debt burden to future generations as well as doing nothing to improve cost structure that new and upcoming students will have to navigate. And there is no amount of messaging that is going to make a conservative talk-radio listener with a G.E.D. happy about "liberal college kids" getting a $50k payday.

Yeah, it's a bummer.

Neat, thanks for the tip.

Probably I thought my way (the in-line email response way) worked in a pinch

You have a bit of a pile up of points, so I'll try and reply in-line...

On (1), I'd have to see some quotes to refresh my memory, but I thought that from the beginning the discussion was around the "second stimulus payment" being $2k, total. $600 was what we got, and the expectation -- from my understanding - was always around $1400 being a true-up to $2k. On (2) -- the government simply freezing interest accrual and offering forbearance of payments in the SHORT TERM frees up cash flow in the same way as wiping out the debt entirely, for virtually zero "cost" in the budget. In all seriousness, there is going to be a lot of resentment going around on that issue, no matter what direction it goes, and there is real risk of exacerbating the on-going culture war. There are real structural problems in how school costs are incentivized that are not solved by a one time payout, and frankly, tying a clearing out of the existing debts to some longer term reforms, as a discussion separate from pandemic stimulus is a conversation worth having. From the standpoint of pandemic relief -- simply eliminating interest and offering a halt of payments solves the IMMEDIATE concern. On "moderates" -- I think medicare-for-all has better legs to stand on than student debt forgiveness. People make (hopefully informed) choices about the degree they pursue and the school debts they take on -- people have VERY LITTLE choice when it comes to insurance premiums or the cost of medical providers (even for "elective" procedures, which is often just a term for preventative maintenance for a condition that won't kill you yet). There is a level of obfuscation with medical pricing, that even if you tried to "shop around" it is practically impossible. The same thing is not true for the choices people make about college spending. People made choices to take the loans that they took, in the amounts that they took, with some understanding of the interest rates and payment terms. I would be completely on board with cutting the interest rate on the debts to zero, as that already represents a significant reprieve that the borrowers never expected to receive when they took on the debt. I would be completely on board with restructuring income-based repayment, so that servicing the debt isn't crippling to people that didn't go into lucrative fields. I might even be on board with some kind of annual write-down of debt, per borrower. And these are all simply band-aids if future generations aren't helped by some kind of structural reforms that keep government subsidized loans from continuing to allow college costs to skyrocket (where no "asking price" is too high because the money can always be found). But $50k as a one-time payoff seems awfully extreme -- and frankly, in the current climate, I think it stands a really strong chance of further coalescing the uneducated masses that supported Trump and were egged on by Rush Limbaugh for decades about how college was some evil breeding ground for "leftists". There are real risks to a move that big aside from the budgetary imprudence.

On (1) -- from the time the $600 second checks were issued, pretty much the only line of discussion I ever saw about "$2k" was that there was going to be an additional $1.4k to true-up to the originally proposed $2k. On (2) -- I have mixed feelings about it. Even $10k loan elimination is a huge boon to borrowers. On (6) -- while I definitely think minimum wage increases are due, I have fundamental disagreements with shoe-horning them into other high-priority bills rather than debating them on their own merits. EDIT: and in the wake of Trump, I would much rather have moderates in office that can draw down whatever support Trump is trying to muster for 2024 either for himself for a chosen successor. (though I'd much rather have moderates in office, in general :P)

Those are great looking pics -- very promising. I use MakeMKV for the rips, so right now all of my stuff is whatever is natively on the disc containerized in mkv files. I've dabbled in Handbrake (at one point trying to make tablet-suitable files for trips, but never spend much time on it) I'll follow the link and do some more reading on Handbrake settings. But I would definitely be interested in the exact settings you were using to get such a good looking result. Especially interested in the results on the big 4k screen, since once some updated media furniture arrives, I'll be upgrading the old 42" 1080p to something in the 65"-75" range at 4k.

We'll get something maybe once per week. Usually Popeyes, Chik Fil A, or Zaxby's. Weekly "pizza night" is usually take-out, as well, but I don't know if that is categorized as "fast food", and the takeout pizza isn't materially different than me baking it at home.

You're right. Calling him a ball-sack would be much more accurate.

What a cunt.

VR, even more expensive industry/professional VR, still has challenges that aren't really well aligned with playing with a console in the living room. And there are bio-mechanical/ergonomic issues that probably mean it is never safe for children to use, regardless. The muscle strain concerns of long-term headset use are a real issue, aside from how well any particular headset addresses possible impacts on vision.

If you have access to a 401k at work, for the IRA it is ALWAYS better to go with Roth IRA, since you don't get any further deductibility advantage from traditional IRAs (your deduction is excluded by having access to a 401k at work) and "deferred" taxes in an IRA are inferior to taxable capital gains and dividends, other than the paperwork. It sounds like you're doing a backdoor conversion for that, anyway -- in which case, your tax bracket is probably high enough that the traditional 401k at work is likely "better" for tax planning purposes especially if you're in a higher tax state on top of your federal bracket. My personal stance is for "tax diversification", where I'm going to TRY and pay less than my current top tax rate, at some point in the future, when I either gradually convert my 401k to the Roth IRA space, or otherwise eventually take distributions as income. Long term goal, though, is to make sure I don't leave ANY "traditional" 401k/IRA money for heirs, since it is the absolute WORST asset you can inherit now that "stretch IRAs" are gone. (i.e. almost everything else you inherit gets a stepped-up basis and is tax free up to the estate tax exclusion EXCEPT FOR traditional IRA/401k money that still needs taxes paid on it what whatever the heirs top tax bracket is!)