dh2022's comments

On: Finland announces migration of its rail network to international gauge

[dh2022]

Far easier to re-build a few miles of tracks destroyed at the border then to re-gauge hundreds of miles of tracks....

On: Taiwan to ramp up gas imports after shuttering last nuclear plant

[dh2022]

Well, the same logic about nuclear radioactivity spreading on their own territory did not stop the Russians from shelling the Zaporojnya nuclear plant. Your mileage may vary…

On: Amazon's Vulcan Robots Now Stow Items Faster Than Humans

[dh2022]

That is one of his ways of extracting value from society - by selling his junk.

[mhb → dh2022]

Crazy right? It's almost like the people buying stuff are idiots who don't understand their own needs and values.

[exe34 → mhb]

Given how much time they spend on social media and how much money they spend on keeping up with the Jones..... yes?

On: 'I found your dad': The mystery of a missing climber

[dh2022]

I have been thinking about starting to do air gliding. Is this a dangerous sport? How long does it take to get to glide a few miles? Any pointers pointers (books, videos,etc..) to start up? I live nearby Seattle, WA. Thanks!!!

[mhandley → dh2022]

When I used to do gliding (sailplane, not hang gliding or paragliding) many years ago, it was not classed as a dangerous sport for insurance purposes. Don't know about the other fields of gliding. General aviation was classed as riskier - I guess glider pilots are more used to the fact that they don't have a working engine!

[bratwurst3000 → dh2022]

edit:// i thought wingsuit gliding was meant.

hehe a friend wants to do it. He has a trainer. The condition was at least 5000 jumps from plane with parachute . then 3 years training with at least 1000 or more jumps from plane or so….. it was hard and demanding be asured. he is elite lvl in sport. i wouldn’t do it. not because of the danger but because the training to do it safe is to hard.

On: What happens at the end of 'Trading Places'? (2013)

[dh2022]

(for those who did not make the connection, in the movie Coming to America Eddie Murphy gave some money to two bums - the bums are the Dukes brothers who went bankrupt at the end of the movie Trading Places)

[Braxton1980 → dh2022]

Since toothbrushes wear out why have a gold handle? I get that he's extremely rich but is he just putting gold in the trash?

On: Amazon Doesn't Want You to Know How Much the Trade War Costs

[dh2022]

I do not get how this is a redistribution of wealth away from the rich (rich spend a very small percentage of their income, middle class and poor people spend almost all of their income on necessities and maybe a bit of fun, so at the end of the day rich will come ahead)

On: Amazon to display tariff costs for consumers

[dh2022]

Re: "You can get 2,000 calories for a couple bucks." Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Can you please let us know how can you get 2,000 calories for $2?

[s1artibartfast → dh2022]

In addition to what others said, I buy 2 roast chickens a week for $5 each.

Rice is $20/25 lbs, and 1600 calories/lb for 2000 calories/$

They are 6.5lbs after deboning. Cooked chicken skin on is 950 calories per pound. That is 620 calories/$.

Tortillas themselves are 110 cal, and 4.99 for 100ct, or 2200 cal/$

[hollerith → dh2022]

Rice bought in bulk can certainly be had for that price per calorie with some left over for a little protein. I don't recommend anyone follow such a diet though.

[alright2565 → dh2022]

I lived off $2/day in food for a few years in the US. Oat flour, protein powder, oil, and a multivitamin.

My approach was a little more engineered than most people's would be, but definitely possible if maybe you expanded it to $3/day or $4/day.

[danesparza → alright2565]

I'm a little surprised you didn't get scurvy, or have bone health issues (because of a lack of calcium or vitamin K2), have electrolyte imbalances, or have imbalances in fiber and essential fatty acids. But good for you. Thank goodness we don't base nutritional advice on anecdotal evidence.

[alright2565 → danesparza]

This is the precise recipe I followed: https://web.archive.org/web/20240408162605/https://www.compl...

There was never any risk of any of those things, and if anything the diet proves out the quality of our understanding of nutrition.

[triceratops → dh2022]

Rice, beans, bananas, potatoes. It'll keep you alive but it won't be pretty.

On: The Rise and Fall of Toys 'R' Us (2018)

[dh2022]

In this case the PE firm would have been better off not getting a loan to begin with - it would have kept the interest payments to itself.

This looks a lot like selling some bad assets to some sucker investors. But the question a lot of people seem to ask in this thread is: when will the world run out of suckers? (Maybe this question shows how naive I am? Maybe some people know how to find these suckers one after the other?)

[antasvara → dh2022]

>In this case the PE firm would have been better off not getting a loan to begin with - it would have kept the interest payments to itself.

That assumes the PE company can predict exactly how long the expect the business to survive after takeover. They can't.

Both sides (the lender and the PE firm) are evaluating the company being purchased and the plan set out by the PE firm. The loan terms are set such that both sides feel they can make money on the deal.

The fact that PE doesn't make money on every deal indicates that they can be wrong.

[lazide → dh2022]

There are a lot of suckers, including:

- Folks trying to ‘get a better retirement’ by buying riskier products.

- folks targeted by Wolf of Wallstreet types (or their more ethical brethren)

- folks trying to ‘get rich quick’

- folks trying to ‘double or nothing’ after a bad decision.

Etc, etc.

‘There is a sucker born every minute’ and all.

On: The Rise and Fall of Toys 'R' Us (2018)

[dh2022]

Warren Buffet is interested only in solid businesses, not in buying distressed assets in a fire-sale. One of his maxims: "is better to buy a wonderful business at a fair price, then to buy a fair business at a wonderful price"

[scarface_74 → dh2022]

He bought a bunch of newspapers when he knew they were on the decline and extracted money from them. He sold them all in 2020.

On: America underestimates the difficulty of bringing manufacturing back

[dh2022]

I think the current Russia-Ukraine war is the delayed end of Soviet Union collapse.

Boris Yeltsin in Aug 1991 called for "Russian Federation to reserve the right to review its borders with any adjacent republic" [0]. Yeltsin did that for a couple of weeks - until Leonid Kravchuk (Ukraine's last Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian SSR and Republic of Ukraine's first president) said he will not support Yeltsin in dissolving USSR. By then the Baltics were already independent countries, but Yeltsin still needed Ukraine's Belarus' and Kazakhstan's support to get rid of Gorbachev.

So Yeltsin acquiesced the borders at that time, four months followed up with the Belovezha Accords and USSR dissolved without a fight a couple of weeks later.

I think what we see today is are some repressed conflicts being fought out in the open.

[0] https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/27/world/soviet-turmoil-yelt... - free to read with NYT registration