All names are washed away in the grandness of time. The sin is not to burn out but to waste your light in darkness alone. The virtue is in knowing personal cost of the clarity that your light grants to others.

shit, I think I spilled some VtM in my Sponge-bob.

Nah man, This here American just thinks we’re fucked.

I’m constantly thinking about how much we’ve domesticated ourselves over the last few hundred years.

I’m not dying for rich people that got power and decided to break literally every stabilizing thing in geopolitics so that they could make more money and then start a war to cover it up.

I might die because of them, but there’s no way I’m dying for them. If they draft, I’m running. call me whatever you want.

I suppose at 8 years old the difference between the two was lost. I just enjoyed getting to listen to Rob Zombie without my mom knowing.

Kid, I’m old enough to have played Playstation games in my walkman for the music.

cool to know! I think Smart and Final might be a regional thing because I’ve never heard of it. but yeah, one of the draw backs of Aldi is that when they get busy things get messy. In general, I love Aldi. It has it’s issues but overall the shittiness seems muted compared to the other big chain stores. I can at least afford the essentials from there and then, when I get special stuff, buy bulk.

I wish they carried butter beans though.

I’m sorry, but you must be a new Aldi shopper. The quarter thing has been their model for ages. Often, you or someone else will just leave a quarter in their cart when they put it back.

The self-checkout is new, but Aldi is one of those stores that actually does pass the savings on to its customers. It’s always 20–30% cheaper at Aldi than other stores in my area. The exception is big-name brand stuff, but the store brand is definitely cheaper. $4 for a 12-pack of knockoff Coke vs. $13 for the name brand at the other stores? It’s a no-brainer.

Edit: I’m not super current on it, but as I recall, Aldi does actually pay its workers well. It’s one of the places that has a reputation as “the good one.” I’m sure it’s not perfect, since it still operates in the U.S. economy, but Aldi has been up there with Costco for its business practices.

Not entirely a scam in theory. Though we are currently in a period of unprecedented corruption that is so complicated and complete that it might as well be. Even 5 years ago, I would have attributed certain actions to protect the market as an attempt to protect everyone. The systems in place are such that if a stock company fails, it creates far-reaching market upsets across industries worldwide. Essentially, if something fails, it takes everyone down with them.

The fix would be the state taking control of those industries to allow them to stabilize. Unfortunately, most state actors are also tied economically to those systems. That is, they’re corrupt as fuck and don’t care about people, but their own money and status.

So retirement funds and entitlements weren’t entirely a scam, but they are mostly so now. I doubt I will see a dime of mine if I don’t use it soon for school, expating, or buying a house. I certainly won’t see it when I retire.

I have some basic understanding of finance (and I mean basic), so take this as an observation rather than investment advice. If your retirement plan allows you to change your asset allocation, and you have a high-conviction thesis that a significant market event is about to occur, it may be worth temporarily rotating from a growth-oriented allocation into a more conservative allocation to reduce downside exposure.

Under normal circumstances, attempting to time the market is a bad idea, and financial advisors or plan managers will usually push you away from doing so. However, there are rare situations where it’s clear as crystal what’s happening. In those cases, reducing equity exposure and increasing allocations to lower-volatility assets for a short period may be a reasonable risk-management decision.

Using the recent SpaceX-related market activity as an example, I find it difficult to believe that any fund with a genuinely conservative mandate would have maintained meaningful exposure to assets directly affected by that event. A conservative portfolio, by definition, should prioritize capital preservation over aggressive growth and generally avoid concentrated exposure to higher-risk investments.

You generally can’t tell them, “I don’t want this stock,” when dealing with index funds, but you can get yourself out of the fund entirely while it’s poisoned. Unfortunately, my company was changing providers right when the SpaceX shit was happening, and I couldn’t make the change myself.

I haven’t been keeping up with the bond market but last I heard it was it’s own shit show so I’m not really sure anything is ‘safe’ these days.