Vegas64

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.

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.

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.

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.

Excellent start! Let's go!

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.

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.

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.

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.

Was wondering if anyone watched this game tonight.

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.

I remember watching Frasier a lot on syndication on network TV as a teenager and think it was good but not really understanding why.

I can't handle those pictures. Heartbreaking.

Turns out we knew what was going to happen and why almost a year ago.

Did Justin Weiss just hold a conversation with himself, like 12 replies to himself, or were just his replies highlighted and shared?

Sure thing; I generally read blurbs and summaries through news aggregator or substack/newsletters, is why. But to the OP on the student loan break down, it was from WP from 2 days ago: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/22/student-loan-borrowers/

I said Gentleman's sweep was a possibility as well. But yea, I hope I'm wrong and Dallas can rattle off 4 straight wins. But come on, Steph isn't a douche. Geez.

Wouldn't have mattered. Too much demand, not enough supply.

Don’t be a hater. I’m as disappointed as the next guy and gonna hate being swept or gentleman swept, but Steph is an all-time player. Would be cool to say you saw him in the WCF.

U-freaking-valde of all places, geez louise. It can happen anywhere. So sad.

7 children across a variety of women. I guess explains why he pushed back on nuclear family and being a present father. He probably justifies the Xmillion dollar trust fund as "mission accomplished" when it comes to being a father. Which, to be fair, ain't nothing.

You can pick up Lexus level tickets for like $250 today. Had friends that bought them after PHX Game 7 closer to $850. Oof. Might be worth it to pick up some "cheap" tickets just to see this core GSW team that, no matter your opinion on personalities, will be historically remembered as dynastic and Steph will go down as the greatest shooter ever.

At this point I'm not actually sure what is stopping Biden from doing $10k loan forgiveness at the executive level with a flick-a-da-wrist of his pen. It's not the left and I don't think it's the crazies and it sure ain't the moderates and left of center/right of centers. Do we have a credible read on why we haven't seen any loan forgiveness? And don't give me inflation crap-- we know for a 99% fact that the money that would have been going to loans has not been saved in a rainy day fund called "future loan payments" so there isn't a flood of new money with $10k forgiveness.

True. It just confounds why it won't get done, even at the executive override level, since it's $10k, it's a low lift, and it's got broad bipartisan approval.

I think the takeaway is more that just getting a quick legislative win at $10k forgiveness is actually very impactful, by the numbers. You are erasing 1/3 of the student loan populations debt and meaningfully impacting 53% of the population. And this is as a first step plus it executes on a campaign promise and shows some rigor and integrity to doing what you say you are going to do. Also, it sounds like the 7% with the 100k+ debt, whatever their major may be, are the vocal minority who are letting great be the enemy of good here.