Empty places where you can see the horizon but there is no evidence of humanity. It makes me feel the vastness of time, or like I’m outside of time in a way. Its hard to describe but I find it peaceful and it makes me appreciate being alive.

I think it will take longer than that, there’s still a lot of rich people who don’t think Trump will really do the tariffs or the mass deportation. Once it becomes clear that is really happening the economy will likely start getting all kinds of messed up fast.

Also, as others have told you, inflation is actually low again currently and that is why rates are coming down now. This is the “soft landing” that everyone was talking about, just in time for Trump to take the helm.

You dont think Obama in 2008 was a real primary? His campaign fought hard for that nomination, it definitely wasn’t handed to them.

I’m sorry you feel patronized, that wasn’t my intent. It seemed like you were just really ignorant, I didn’t realize you were pretending not to understand. Now I don’t understand how you pretending to be ignorant brings a semblance of reality to anything, that seems very counterintuitive to me.

In a democracy it is possible to democratically elect an anti-democratic leader. It’s one of the ironies and paradoxes of democratic political systems. I think if you study history some more the world should start making more sense for you.

That has not been my experience of France. Maybe its just me but almost everyone I met in Paris was friendly and many spoke English at least a little. I had some wild nights getting trashed and riding the Metro all over, no one gave me any shit for speaking English anywhere I went. I wouldn’t try to live there without at least a basic understanding of the language but as an English speaking visitor it was perfectly fine and I found the random Parisians I met to generally be cool people and not at all like their reputation.

200k per year, maybe. I have a heavy wool sweater like something a North Sea sailor in the 1800s would wear, I can’t handle it without a thick long sleeved shirt underneath because of how rough and itchy it is. It’s also incredibly warm. Sleeping in that thing would be like having a full time job every night.

Intel could have conceivably competed with them there too. If they were still a competent business and not in a crisis of mismanagement. Its amazing how much better AMD is managed compared to Intel.

That is the downside, FZROX is only available to Fidelity customers. There’s also a potential risk it won’t track total market performance as well as predicted because one of the ways they keep the expense ratio at zero is by only purchasing what is supposed to be an equivalent subset of the total market to keep their transaction costs down. I don’t remember the specifics but I think they leave out lots of tiny companies and its not a significant risk because they couldn’t actually move the needle one way or the other.

If you have an account with Fidelity, FZROX should be a better choice than VTI. Unless you enjoy investing or want to really get into it, either do a target date fund for the easiest and lowest risk, or a total market fund like VTI, or an S&P500 fund like VOO. You really don’t need to overcomplicate beyond that, except to potentially start buying bonds when you are nearing retirement if you didn’t choose a target date fund.

What specifically are you invested in? That chart doesn’t look right if you are investing as you describe.

When restaurants have booth seating where you can feel the person in the booth behind you moving around in their seat.

I get cold easier and my clothes keep getting looser but that’s about it. I don’t count calories so I’m not sure when exactly I’m running a deficit or for how long but I have been steadily losing weight. I was a few pounds into the overweight range when I decided to start losing weight, now I’m down at least 14% from my peak and basically right in the middle of the healthy weight range for my height. About a year ago I started eating less, and started only eating until I didn’t feel hungry, and significantly reduced my alcohol intake. Its about the laziest diet possible because I still eat whatever whenever and still drink regularly but the net result is I’m running a calorie deficit often enough to lose a fair amount of weight. It doesn’t really feel like anything, or it feels about the same as running a calorie surplus. I imagine if I was running a larger or more sustained deficit it might be unpleasant and feel like starving but a minor irregular deficit isn’t something I really notice.

That logic doesn’t work because the official duties of the VP are both narrow and distinct from the President. Its not obvious that legal powers confer from the President to the Vice President in any way except under predefined circumstances. The VP would need to wait until those circumstances occurred, for example if the President was sedated for a medical procedure, and then do the official act while they have the actual powers of the Presidency behind them.

Sometimes yes, and I tend to get deja vu very often, occasionally its even recursive where I’m having deja vu of having deja vu.

21,000+ dead and 100,000+ missing sounds like a war is happening in Saudi Arabia. Those are shocking numbers.

In the future when the cops he trained fuck up, they can point to being trained by this idiot as an excuse to get their department more budget for training instead of getting in trouble for the fuck up.

If you are talking about federal income taxes, they are actually progressive. The vast majority of the money collected comes from the top 50%, the 1% pays something like 25% of the total just by themselves. Its why Republicans and billionaires bitch about it so much and want to eliminate the federal income tax. In reality poor people are mostly impacted by sales taxes, and that’s because of the basic economics involved that make sales taxes inherently regressive.

It is pretty ironic the entire time the gun industry was fueling paranoia about the government creating a database of all the gun owners they themselves were secretly creating a database of all the gun owners.

I’m not sure I would. If I could have avoided the bullshit or done the things that would have optimized my income and wealth, I don’t think I would have ended up where I am now. The risk doesn’t seem worth it, I would be a completely different person with a completely different life.