animaltobacco11

Just caught up on this episode and same thoughts. How is that stuff even possible? Mind-blowing, really.

YOU DON'T KNOW ME BRO! You aren't on my level! There's levels to this! GET ON MY LEVEL!

I think the problem is this, service workers and restaurants bellyache about living off tips, but the reality is (whether they know it or not) if they went to a minimum wage (or heck, even double the the minimum wage) system sans tips, they'd make far, far less money. There wouldn't be career service workers except in high end dining. The ability to walk out of work with a wad of cash and the way the pay is structured so you can be "tax clever", means that good service workers make a lot more money than you and I probably think. I was reading an interesting article about minimum wage and does it even matter anymore? Many places struggle to find people above minimum wage. You pay someone $15 an hour and do away with the tipping dynamic, you will get bad service, the lowest of grunt employees, high turnover. The system we have now works for fine dining, but for the 85% of other times you eat out from fast casual to casual dining, the tipping system is complete grift when you are like me and feel compelled and obligated to tip minimum 20% no matter the service or experience. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/23/business/economy/minimum-wage.html

Budnik.

What's seemingly insane to me is that we still have a 1 game lead despite a 7 game losing streak. I guess all the "heart of a champion" talk out of Houston is just talk, because any team with that fight and that dog in them would have seized the opportunity and bit our jugular from our throats and wouldn't look back. At this point I'm more worried about the M's than the Astros.

I'm with you on the first paragraph. I have plenty of money and ability to do it, but I just feel like it's wrong to finance and have a $1200 car note or spend $80k on a car. I have luxury vehicles and have a nice car that you reference, but purchased right before Covid, so maybe I'm just being old and obstinate and don't understand the new normal, but I'm going to wait this thing out and see if there isn't a bubble popping before buying a new vehicle (I really, really like the new Lincoln Navigators).

Not difficult to comprehend, just difficult to imagine the common rube, as you put it, doing it. At least I don't see it anecdotely. The common rube I see seems instead to be getting ripped off by paying $550/month for a high mileage, 10 year old vehicle.

The real answer is that Old Austin died when a man couldn't get a double or triple whiskey coke for .75 cents at Treasure Island on Dirty 6th, which was around the same time that Oriental Cowboy parlour was busted. We went from a wilder west, frontier libertarian city for cosmic cowboys, rakes and industry leaders in training, to a city catering to the needs and wants of the mediocre and trendy.

People who ask for a meeting for whatever reason, but then put the burden of calendar'ing it on you. If you need the meeting or are asking, you do the administrative work of getting people's availability and setting it up. I'm not your EA.

I don't know anyone else paying $100k+ for a vehicle and my personal network/peers consists almost entirely of very high income people with decent net worth (not like multimillionaires or anything), just upper middle class professionals. Well except one guy who bought an Aston Martin who is also a mid 40 year old DINK who had back to back 7 figure w2 years. I think the whole "wow the average American has an $1100 car note and are buying crazy expensive vehicles" isn't true. Maybe they have two car notes that combine to $1000+, sure.

Let's go WeWork (WE), to the moon!

It's because he's almost 50, inherited a huge house from his parents when he was in his 30's, been a high earner (300-500k) for 15 years+, and has zero kids (DINK). His toys are enviable.

Nice.

It's nice to get a game back in the lead and not even have to play yet (the last 2 Astros games).

I just watched the Netflix documentary again, The Greatest Party that Never Happened. Just crazy stuff and he's back at it.

Geez, even being out on bail he couldn't stop defrauding. From Wikipedia:

And in a moment that made me feel old and wonder where has the time flown, the original Fyre fraud was in 2016-- 7 almost 8 years ago. It feels like just like two years ago. Covid really threw my idea of time away.

America loves a comeback story.

https://autos.yahoo.com/fords-ceo-had-charging-reality-165440187.html

Maybe this is a way to have his death faked (be put on the souls manifest of the plane) and go live out his days in Siberia or Uruguay or something?

Heck yea! I've gone from being ambivalent to rooting for y'all because of your posts.

How is the energy and the morale on the front lines? I assume Tropical Storm Hilary has paused any physical strike activities, but the fight goes on!

Mac-- take heart. I've been reading there is something called the September Surge, which is essentially a great time to be looking for a job as employers do a huge amount of hiring in September: https://www.careerchange.com/the-september-surge-is-starting/

Priced out a 2023 Escalade ESV with premium features-- definitely can see how monthly payments are $1250+ I posted this on the truck thread, but my buddy got a brand new F250 premium two months ago and paid $109k (w TT&L). My hypothesis is that, if you are smart and patient and have the privilege to wait it out, you will be able to get some great deals in the next 2-5 years once the credit card and car defaults start happening. Lagging indicators and what not.

Derka rules