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Vegas64

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Everything posted by Vegas64

  1. Demand for mortgages hit the lowest point in 22 years last week. Mortgage applications and refi demand were down 21% and 75% YoY. Wow. Do you think we will see massive layoffs in the sector?
  2. When you say "they can have him" that is also saying they can have his acolytes. Everyone who could be D voters but fall somewhere in the camp of Elon, from "Weird Elon Stan" who jumps in front of Apu in that meme to business-first liberals to technocrats and libertarians to ego-centric and contrarian liberals who want to be smarter than everyone else. I get saying "they can have those guys" but that is giving away votes that should be solid D-voters who care about the environment and technology innovation, as the author stated. We need these people, every vote counts in a voter turnout war after all. Now, if you were to tell me, "Yes, but what about the voters who get turned off and won't be D-voters because Biden is cozying up to a billionaire who acts like a petulant boy emperor? It's actually a net negative to have Musk as a political bedfellow", then I get it. But I don't know if that is the case. Do you?
  3. I was going to post this on the Elon thread in DT but it has political points in that the author, business and sometime political pundit Andrew R Sorkin, talks about Biden and Musk as a lost political opportunity. You can read it for yourself at NYT but here are the blurbs that stuck out to me.
  4. My anxiety is at an 11/10 when I watch these youtube videos. Seriously stresses my body out, I can just feel the injuries I would have by watching.
  5. I need a new fridge-- if I bought one today are there supply chain delays that means I won't get it for months?
  6. It remains the largest amphibious military invasion in history. If you’re ever feeling stressed out, consider the pressure on Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was overseeing the operation: He smoked four packs of Camel cigarettes per day in the lead-up to D-Day. (The future president later quit by filling his pockets with cigarettes and handing them out to other smokers, which gave him a feeling of accomplishment.)
  7. Dude, yes. This has been my secret "dark horse" country for a while now as well. I have a buddy who married a woman originally from Uruguay (they've lived in Houston for 20 years now and have teenagers that look gringo) but he's been going back to Montevideo every other summer during that time and he vouches it's every bit as awesome as the internet would have us believe. ETA: It's only a 5.5 hour car drive to Buenos Aires from Montevideo, so if you wanted to avoid the Argentina government and financial nonsense but still summer or holiday in BA, there you go!
  8. Good stuff and I was actually being sarcastic because Boban is obviously beyond useless in a basketball player capacity, but like you said, need to bring him on staff to keep the good vibes going with Luka and teammates and fanbase since he's a great personality and favorite of many.
  9. To bring it back to the original question and conversation of the cost of UT today versus the 80's being 2x, what I'm hearing you say is that the prestige and perceived value of a UT degree in 2022 is not 2x what it was in the 1980's? I was asking you because you brought it up and matriculated in the 80's so I'll defer to you and others like you. Personally I think UT is 2x the school just based off of stories I hear from peers and network along with admission criteria and difficulty and global and national rankings and UT aspiring to be more than just a solid state school with a perennial top 10 finish in Playboys annual list of best Party School.
  10. I can understand and appreciate the sentiment, but I think ultimately you'll find it's best to just make the drive from LA -> SD straight, unless you consider like Del Mar or La Jolla apart from SD.
  11. Rolling out to the left and hitting A over the LB's and under the Safety for 15+ and killing the clock by taking the momentum out of bounds.
  12. Agree it's more of an opinion which is why I said its perceived value. And that perception, I am assuming, is held by employers. From what I can gather, and I could be wrong and maybe you can tell me as someone who was in school and workplace in the 80's and early 90's, but from what I can tell UT was not a destination school for out of staters and definitely not international brains. Today it's a globally prestigious place for international students to come and get a world class education in specific fields (engineering, physics, computer science, etc.) in a different tier than it was in the 80's when it was just an average to above average state school where you can go party hard and get B's and get a decent job. UT was essentially what Texas State is today in the 80's, it seems, no offense.
  13. UT is probably 2x the prestige and academic value than it was in the 80's. Is your question then, should the perceived value and the cost be tightly coupled? Captainant I think has nailed it, at the end of the day it's all finance tricks.
  14. I should have seen that you said Gone Girl was an excellent movie and you’ve seen it many, many times and think it’s a great rewatch before taking your reply serious enough to respond to. This is on me, my fault, I’ll take ownership of this mistake.
  15. I thought it was good. It wasn’t excellent. The dialogue and some of the writing was very amateur at times. I will say it was an excellent directorial debut, though, for a first crack at writing and directing something. Kevin Spacey was excellent. Not sure that Bradley Cooper would have added anything to the movie though given it’s structural limitations, so I disagree with your raccoon comment.
  16. Just saw this on Netflix for first time. I thought it was good but agree it felt a bit underwhelming based on the cast. Mainly Paul Bettany seemed cheesy. I think it was the writing and dialogue. Jerrmy Irons and Tucci were good but Kevin Spacey killed it. He’s such a good actor, it really is a shame he’s just a horrible person and abuser in real life. Also seemed like a topical movie with us heading into a recession soon. Have to get reacquainted with that mindset.
  17. Excellent start! Let's go!
  18. You aren’t wrong. You also aren’t understanding the complexity and impossibility of abolishing police and replacing the institution of criminal law enforcement with something else better suited and led to enforce laws. A good analogy would be, you wouldn’t just say let’s abolish I-35 in Austin and all the highways because they suck and we will have a new better system. It’s a 25 year project and takes 5 years of planning and then 5 years of support afterwards and costs billions of dollars and the projects of demolishing the status quo and creating something new have to co-exist somehow, and be managed. “Abolish the police” no matter how emotionally or morally justified is political rhetoric no different than saying Police Reform is impossible and can never happen.
  19. I think the phrase "Abolish the Police" is jarring because it brings to mind anarchy and crime explosion, etc. Really what you are advocating for is the abolishing everything we know about the institution of police and instead standing up some other institution which would ACTUALLY serve the same vision statements and mission statements and practical purposes which you could call Xolice. I'm with you in spirit, but the glaring issues I see are in practicality. You are going to have to hire McKinsey or someone like that to come in and the organizational change management is going to be a nightmare. Imagine the optics of paying McK $1bn to stand up a nice police institution. Also you will have to manage a transition, probably a tiered and over time, so you have the old police institution rolling off while the new one onboards. You can't just flip a switch on something like this and have any gaps or downtimes or literally (lots) of people will die. Not just criminals who are going to criminal no matter what, but especially if opportunistic criminals can exploit gaps and holes. So this whole venture is going to cost billions if not trillions and take decades. In order to justify the lift there will absolutely have to be quantifiable ROI and improved metric forecasting. That's a $100mm and 5 year engagement in professional services just itself. This is the tip of the iceberg on why I think "Abolish the Police" is a fun internet battle cry but realistically a 0% option. "Reform the Police" is the only practical option at our size and scale.
  20. Maybe good timing if you are looking at now as the strong dollar and weak euro has them almost at parity 1:1 for first time in ever? So your dollar will go a lot further, instead of it being $1.5mm USD.
  21. I think climate is much more of a concern but if you are concerned with both political failure and climate, Canada is probably a good idea. I think a midwest hamlet or enclave which was previously "too cold" for us Texans would be a good investment as the weather will be trending to mild and nice in the next 20-100 years and the weather will get worse in the South and North and East and West (as well as the coastlines). A present day mid-sized midwest city that could be the next big or cool city could be a great investment to get in cheap before the climate change. I feel like we've gone through periods of unrest and extreme divisiveness in the past and it never seems to be existential (famous last words), so I don't put much stock in the doom spiral or domestic sky is falling. I think back to eras of like McCarthyism and the 50's with Jim Crow and segregation and even the Vietnam war era and draw hope and encouragement that this too shall pass. The worm will turn and then another cycle of unknown and unforeseeable depravity will have us circling the drain in 25 years during the next death spiral cycle, and turtles all the way down.
  22. Was wondering if anyone watched this game tonight.
  23. Had a buddy contract for his pool during the heart of COVID-19 for like $50k. Talked to my next door neighbor today as the guys were digging his 16x32 and 7x7 spa and he said he paid north of $110k today. Oof. I told him thanks for building OUR pool, though, just hurry and be finished by Labor Day.
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