My point is that the US used to have a lot of rail infrastructure, both inside cities and for intercity travel, but scrapped most of it, and neglected what was left, mostly in favor of building freeways for automobiles.
Therefore, as relevant to this subject, we don’t have bullet trains.
This, right here.
US cities used to have terrific streetcar systems. Just look at San Francisco in 1940:
https://ani.social/post/13225809
Los Angeles’ legendary streetcars’ demise was the plot of the movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
In fact, LA’s streetcars were bought by a conglomerate of automobile companies in order to destroy them
A similar story is in the history of US intercity passenger rail, which is in Amtrak’s wiki
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amtrak
Which starts with:
In 1916, 98% of all commercial intercity travelers in the United States moved by rail, and the remaining 2% moved by inland waterways.[9] Nearly 42 million passengers used railways as primary transportation
Treat one of those well, and it will serve for generations in your family!
Aww, you as a couple sound adorable.
Sending vibes that it works out for you both!
Pick fights with your spouse carefully:
With this one, I wouldn’t complain that they never go out to dinner, the movies, or on vacation.
You try making content like that every week, or even more frequently, and see how fast you run out of ideas.
Patreon doesn’t really allow (much) porn.
But yeah, the statement also applies to sex performers and artists on OnlyFans, Fansly, Fanvue, et al.
Straight, white, and male are all optional if you’re corrupt.
You can see patterns in carpet if you stare long enough at it.
Not that they’re real.
Brains are weird in finding patterns that way.
Geocites is no more, but there are multiple archives of those web pages:
I noticed this was on sale at Safeway too, but I’m getting tired of cheap dark roasts, especially preground, and bought some house brand medium roast whole bean instead.
tl;dr
He credits Matteo D’Ottavio with the brewing tips.
Start with cold water.
Leave a good amount of space in the water chamber.
This slows down the water heating process, lengthening the time that the heating expanding air is pushing the water up and through the funnel and grounds, allowing slightly cooler water to push through the grounds, resulting in a better tasting brew.
I also think that less water in the chamber means less of the brew comes from the “sputtering phase” which is supposedly the more bitter tasting. But of course, less water means less volume.
Tried the technique this morning, and it actually worked!
I got a smoother, and sweeter tasting brew.
But at the expense of slightly slower brewing time.
I remember D’Ottavio saying that the first part of the brew is the tastiest and grandmas take that and whip it with sugar to make foam for topping off their cups.
That’s doubleplus goodthink!
The Tick was such good stuff!
Here’s a summary with the good pages from #3: https://cokeandcomics.com/the-tick-3/
From the original paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s44286-026-00406-y
The ground PET bottle was then added to 1.0 M aqueous KOH at a concentration of 50 mg ml−1 and heated to 80 °C for 3 days under stirring to ensure sufficient depolymerization of the PET.
That’s an awful lot of energy and caustic chemicals (KOH is lye) expended for preprocessing.
Way back when I took a short class in investing, and the bottom lines were:
Individual stocks are risky, because you really don’t know what’s going on inside each company. A sure thing today may collapse tomorrow. The more different stocks you invest in, the lesser your risk.
1a) Index funds work according to that principle of lowering risk by investing across hundreds of different stocks.
Choose the ones that have low expense ratios, because they’re automated, and fees will eat into the fund’s earnings.
Vanguard is famous for their index funds, but other brokerages have copied them, but those others still have higher expense ratios somehow.
1b) Also these days, ETFs are similar, but you will be paying stock commission fees to buy and sell them, taking a hit on your initial and parting investment.
Let’s say you have set a target of 70% large cap index, 10% international stock index, 20% bonds, and you balance your portfolio on July 1st every year.
In a fictional example, this year, the large caps did well and now constitute 75% of your total portfolio’s value, internationals did okay and are now at 11%, and bonds relatively speaking didn’t go up as much, and are now 14% of the total value.
That means that bonds are relatively cheap, and a relatively good buy.
So sell the “extra” 5% of your large cap, 1% of your internationals, and put that total 6% of your portfolio into bonds, rebalancing your portfolio back to 70% large cap, 10% internationals, 20% bonds.
Next year on July 1st, the stock market has tanked, and bonds are now 30% of your total portfolio value. That means that you should sell the extra 10% total portfolio value of bonds and re-assign them to your large cap and internationals, however that works out mathematically.
edit: There’s no need to watch your portfolio like a hawk and rebalance every time you glance at it. Just do it once a year, but be consistent.
etc, etc.
As you get older, and closer to retirement, your tolerance for losing value gets lower because you’re approaching the point where you have to start using your accumulated retirement nest egg.
Lower your risk of the stock market, and increase your holdings of fixed income return investments, such as actual bonds (NOT bond mutual funds) that are (practically) guaranteed to pay you X amount of interest.
But holding 0% of stocks still carries risk of inflation wiping out all of the bonds’ earnings.
It was said that holding 10% of your portfolio in stocks is the lowest risk that works.
There are index funds that automate this rebalancing and risk reduction for you: Multiple brokerages have “Target retirement funds” These types of funds have years in their names, stating when these funds will reach a minimal risk portfolio. Once again, shop around and find which ones have low expense ratios.
I got my glass Oggi moka pot on sale at Grocery Outlet, a “last chance leftovers” type retailer, but I have learned to work with it, and can make a decent cuppa when In get things right.
My moka is also only a tiny 3 cup model, and to get a little more volume, I pre-wet my grounds with hot water so that a little less water volume doesn’t get absorbed by them.