• 2 Posts
  • 221 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: August 26th, 2023

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  • Some inside perspective:

    You are talking to staff or an intern. You might be the hundredth call for the day. They’ve heard all kinds of shit, from long-winded conspiracy crazies to the most courteous and intelligent calls ever. Yelling at them or being a jerk will get you nowhere. Be prepared to state your case clearly and concisely. Your concern will indeed be noted and logged.

    Do not call a congressperson that isn’t your own. They are not required to listen to you, you are not their constituent. Do not write a congressperson that is not your own. The letter is almost guaranteed to go straight into the trash.

    The best letters go on the intern break room fridge to be enjoyed by all.

    Even so, unfortunately the congressperson may not act in a way consistent with the majority of people’s calls and letters. Thank money and power plays in politics for that.



  • I deleted Threads five days ago.

    It was a cesspool of (Russian? Troll Farm?) propaganda attacking Harris for not having any accomplishments for the last four years, complaining about housing, grocery, egg, and gas prices, “fixing” America, a crapton of pro-jesus stuff, pro-Elon comments and reposts, government money going to “illegals” instead of hurricane victims, and a ton of made up lies. …

    All of which were as transparent as fuck why they were wrong. VP’s don’t make policy, so what accomplishments should she have? Housing has been going up for a decade+, it’s not new, egg prices were normal while the pics were of organic egg prices and expensive grocery carts had hidden high cost items or just straight up lied about the cost, gas prices are the lowest they’ve been for years. Jesus stuff praised trump, America, tons of AI generated “holy” trump pics, bashed atheists, posted Elon’s BS pseudo-wisdom, Ignored the $20Bn spent on hurricane relief in favor of a few hundred million housing the undocumented workers living in the affected area…

    It was infuriating. Because they were so obviously wrong…blatantly, in-your-face, completely fucking wrong. It was a constant flood of lies. Eight out of nine posts were BS.

    But as soon as the election swung in Trump’s favor…poof…it went quiet. Hardly a peep. Gone.

    And I realize that Threads was captured completely by troll farm bots spewing right-wing propaganda. And it was a waste of time. So my account will be deleted.








  • Took my first drive as a passenger in a FSD Tesla the other day. I was rapidly underwhelmed. I mean, yeah…it’s pretty cool the car drives itself, to an extent. But even as a passenger I was struck by the number of times I would have taken the wheel and made the car do what it was supposed to. Hesitant pulling forward to turn, hesitant pulling out into traffic after a turn, wrong speed for the road, abrupt turns… Did it get us there? Sure. Did it do a good job? Mid at best. Probably better as an anti-fatigue measure on highway drives instead of taking you places in town. I would not pay for FSD were I to own a Tesla…at least it seems really inappropriate for the kind of driving I do.


  • Invest in index funds. They are self- cleaning…IOW when a stock stops performing it is removed from the fund and replaced by a better performer.

    Use a brokerage that is low fee. Fees steal your money.

    Do NOT let someone manage your money that moves stocks around for fees.

    Use Dollar cost averaging . Even if the market is down, keep adding regularly. Which is tied to…

    Don’t time the market. You can’t win.

    Don’t touch it. Don’t touch your money. Don’t incur fees and capital gains taxes. You will lose. Leave it alone.

    I am up 8% average yearly over the lifetime of my fund including all the downturns, it has been stellar this year well over 12%. Is this a “get rich quick” way of doing things? Is it exciting? No. Not at all. But it works.

    Investing (NOT TRADING) is EasyHard, because it’s really easy to do, but really hard not to mess with and screw it up.