I recently bought a home that has its original aluminum siding from the 60s.

I’m considering whether or not to have it painted vs having completely new siding installed. It’s probably close to 1000 SF.

Obviously new siding will look better. But how long will nicely painted aluminum siding look good?

Thanks.

Not financial advice but we only get one shot at this.

If all we have to do to change our lives forever is to not sell GME, then we should take that chance.

Lets do a little cost-benefit analysis:

The costs: -potentially losing 100% of your investment (very unlikely given where GameStop currently is and is going as a company) -potentially not making any gains on your investment

The benefit: -own a piece of a fantastic growing company (likely for life) -to stop working the rest of your life -to finally pursue your dreams the way you wanted -to help others -to make a difference

I am taking that chance and there is no amount of FUD that will make me sell!

BUY HOLD DRS See ya on the moon 🚀🚀🚀

Yesterday I asked for alternative hedges for HFEA instead of TMF, one of the mentioned options was TAIL.

The funds underlying investments are:

• 85% intermediate term bonds
• 6% TIPS
• 6% puts
• 3% cash

The fund has limited historical data (2018-2021).

I wanted to get a feel for the cost and benefit of the put option strategy, so I subtracted the bonds, TIPS and CASH return.

Costs complete PV time frame Jan 2018 - Dec 2021

• 100% TAIL: -/- 4.78% CAGR
• 100% CASHX: 1.12% CAGR
• Put portion of TAIL: -/- 6.96% - 0.94 * 1.12% = -/- 8.01% CAGR

(The 0.94 is to remove the return of CASHX. 0.94 because TAIL has a 3% cash position, so instead of +91% it should be -3%)

Over the complete PV time frame the puts had a CAGR of circa -/- 8%.

Note: when I compare 100% UPRO with 94% UPRO + 6% puts then the CAGR is 'only' circa 4.78% lower (see conclusion), instead of 8% lower.

Cost in periods without crashes

The puts benefit from crashes and declining markets. The COVID March 2020 was favorable for the put strategy, but such a crash shouldn't happen too often. From March 2020 to December 2021 it lost 23% (7494 / 9706)[using PV values], which is a CAGR of roughly -/- 14% (7494 / 9706) ** (1/1.75).

Benefits

From January - March 2020 it gained ~14% (9706 / 8479). Extremely unlikely that you get this for a full year but it is a CAGR of 125% (9706 / 8479) ** (1/(2/12)).

Conclusion

• The put strategy is a real hedge; it has a market correlation of -/- 0.90. During

I don't really know to what extent trads are a thing. But if you are one or have had experiences with them, I'd love to hear people map the dating territory a bit.

Do they read classical literature? How many are crypto-sedes? Thoughtful opinions about gender or silly ones? Do they think concerns for racial justice are part of spurious plot by communists to destroy western civilization? Etc

I know economics is the “dismal science”, but I’m curious what are good arguments for a general public audience in favor of benefit-cost analysis and against it being “icky”.

Specifically, many people seem to have an issue with the value of statistical life (VSL). They view it as putting a price on people’s heads or as a way to justify letting people die as being “acceptable”.

What are good ways to combat this thinking?

There are of course ideological and philosophical arguments to be made, but from a purely policy perspective, I don't get the urgency.

From the numbers I have seen, the lower end of the spectrum puts defensive gun uses on average at about 100,000 a year. So that's 100,000 times an American uses a firearm to defend themselves and their family, while there's around 35,000 gun deaths, with 2/3 of those being suicide. I don't get how you look at those numbers and think that the costs of gun ownership outweigh the benefits.

Nor do I get the urgency to ban "assault weapons" which are only responsible for a few hundred deaths a year on average. tie that together with all of the other annoying restrictions like magazine capacity, and "may issue" permitting schemes, none of it seems like it will actually keep people safer, while they impede the ability of law abiding Americans to be armed for their own defense.

Please walk me through the logic, on why you think the cost/benefit supports gun control, and maybe what policies you think would help solve the issues you see around it?

I just tuned into Destiny’s stream for a few minutes to hear a vaccine debate, it was not something I think I’d learn anything by listening to so I shut it off. But I still think there’s merit in having this conversation, it just needs to be done with a clear framework to think about it:

1. At a basic level, you want to to make sure that giving a prophylactic/vaccine/medical treatment to anyone is in their best interest
2. COVID-19’s clinical outcomes are highly stratified by age with the vast majority of morbidity and mortality being in those among 65
3. Long term side effects of both the vaccine and the virus are unknown, so unless we have some strong mechanistic reason to believe one is more likely to be damaging in the long term, we probably shouldn’t factor this into our analysis
4. Both the vaccine and the virus pose known (and some unknown) risks to varying degrees
5. Variants and time reduce the vaccine’s ability to prevent infections and severe disease

I don’t think anyone here can disagree with these points. My question is do we still have good reason to believe vaccination is worth it for all age groups? Or has Omicron, which appears to be inherently less dangerous and more likely to evade vaccine generated immunity, changed the calculus such that vaccination is no longer worth the risk in some age groups?

**COST & BENEFIT ANALYSIS**

Creating a cost & benefit analysis can help decrease the desire for porn and increase the desire for a pornfree life. Here is how you make a cost benefit analysis.

*Step 1:* Think about your reasons for watching porn. What are you getting out of it?

**Step 2:** Think about the costs of watching porn. How has porn negatively impacted your life?

**Step 3:** Take the opposite of the costs, these will be the benefits of being pornfree.

**Step 4: **Think about the costs of no longer watching porn. See if you can find a substitute for the benefit it gives you. This will give you even less reason to go back to porn.

For reference see the example below:

**Cost Benefit Analysis.**

S - Short term

L - Long term

**Benefits of porn**

sexual pleasure S

escaping from reality S

**Benefits of staying clean**

More self-respect S

regaining my desire to do things L

less depression L

more energy L

seeing women as real people instead of sex objects L

increased desire to socialize L

freedom from cravings L

a lot more free time S

no more shame S

able to feel more emotions L

mental clarity L

less stressed L

calm and confident in social situations L

**Costs of porn**

Porn induced erectile dysfunction

feeling ashamed and pathetic

being tired all the time

feeling dead inside

constant cravings

social anxiety

wanting to isolate

wasting hours of time

seeing women as sex objects

no desire to do anything, no lust for life.

brainfog

anxiety / stress

**Costs of staying clean**

No more instant sexual pleasure

No more running from reality

*you can masturbate without porn, or even better, get yourself a girlfriend and have sex.

*Running from reality only makes reality worse. Instead of making it worse you can make it so fulfilling that you have no desire to run.

I'm not sure if Sam has ever done an episode on cost-benefit analysis but I'd love to hear his thoughts on this. Recently, Andrew Sullivan did an interview noting that children are eighteen times more likely to die in a drowning accident than they are from catching Covid. He argued that given how uncomfortable wearing a mask is for a prolonged period of time (6 hours a day, five days a week in school) the case for mandates was very weak on cost-benefit grounds. My girlfriend's sister who is a hardcore liberal was at our house and hate watching this and she was all 'So he knows people will die and he's okay with it.'

I am under strict instructions not to get into it with her (despite voting for Biden she thinks of me as a hardcore right-winger lol) but I know her view is very common among people on the Left. It's not merely an aversion to those who oppose mask mandates but, seemingly, an aversion to the very concept of cost-benefit analysis. What I want to say to these people is 'We know for a fact lowering the speed limit ten ticks would say lives but we don't do it because efficiency is fucking valuable.'

It seems like the Left has decided to combat the Right's Covid denialism and anti-vaxlunacy with a religious embrace of maximum safety without regard for the costs of living in a maximally safe world. Here in Montreal where I currently live for my job (and in any other big liberal city) you see people fully vaxxed people wearing masks outside when they go for a run! Virtue signaling married to a poor ability to estimate risk is a pretty bad thing in my view.

I'm a beginner and just bought an rc30 because i like to jam with myself haha. Got curious with other pedals also (oh it seems like one of the best rabbit holes of life haha).

I'm thinking of buying "cheap" pedals for the sake of learning and exploring my taste in guitar playing. Not into one multi-effect pedal because i think i like the idea of having quick and easy access to the knobs and foot switches.

It's difficult to define what cheap is haha. Please share your thoughts anyway.

Thank you in advance for your wisdom!

As a fulltime courier, how do I do a cost-benefit analysis of renting a car when my car is unexpectedly out of service? I know the expected rental cost, and my past weekly revenue and income. I can hypothesize two days vs two weeks. My only car went out of service on a Friday evening. I might theoretically have it repaired and returned by Tuesday. I won't drive one of those days.

I am new to the system of acquiring cards to get the most “juice from the squeeze.” I can see how it can easily become challenging/confusing to analyze which cards owned are best for certain spend on them due to benefits. Keeping track of cash/points back is easy as I see what which one is highest for how I value the return on spend. But for example many cards have streaming credits, hotel credits, airline credits. Some cards get more in-depth than that. So keeping track of what cards do what, which card I’m using x,y,z benefit with which streaming service/hotel etc.

Was wondering if anyone has organized an excel (or similar software) template they would be willing to share that would help with making one for myself?

I have seen asksebby show some that are card specific, or aimed at the topic of the video and would think he has some “master sheet”

let's say that, hypothetically, you friend had an assignment that was worth 10% of their grade in that class. the assignment is a 500 word essay based on a 180 page reading that was meant to have been completed well before the essay due date. your friend has not started the essay because they have not yet done the reading. your friend loses 5% per day. it has been 9 days, thus a 45% deduction (though your friend was sick for three days, and could possible get just a 30% deduction). Your friend has other pressing assignments in other classes worth more, at this time.

should your friend even bother with this 500 word essay? (asking for a friend)

I have a 2015 Thinkpad T450s with i5@ 2.3GHz, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD (but I have an external 1tb SSD where I store my libraries, and I keep my internal drive about half empty) and I use a Focusrite 2i2 audio interface. I use this computer for music production on Reaper - I record guitar and vocals but everything else is MIDI - regular internet use and MS Office stuff; that's it, no games, no fancy video editing, just music software and bare bones, and that's all I want/need. For a lot of software I'm right inside the bottom limit of the recommended specs, so Kontakt/Komplete, Halion, etc., I can technically use, but I want to be able to get Omnisphere, and have songs with ~20 tracks and at least a few instances of Omnisphere without worrying about crashes/freezes. So far, I have infrequent crashes, but I do get speed/buffering/clipping issues when I get to even the low end of the "1-song-worth-of-plugins" spectrum.

So what I want is a computer with a better CPU that's strong enough for modern music plugins at least at the amateur level, with at least 16GB of RAM, and a SSD, but I don't care if its relatively small because I'm fine with external storage. And bonus points if I can upgrade the RAM at some point. I put $1k as the budget, but I'm broke and I'm also cheap, so if there's anything that meets these criteria for $500, that's even better.

I don't care about the screen size or quality. I don't care if its new or used. I don't care about gaming. I don't care if its a laptop or desktop. I don't care if it weighs 40 pounds. I just want the best CPU and RAM I can get, with reasonable storage, maybe ~250-500gb or so, at the lowest possible price point. I was on the verge of buying a hard-to-source RAM stick for $120 to increase my RAM to 20gb, when I realized that the RAM stick would be worth about as much if not more than the computer, and I'm at a point where I really need to figure out what kind of quality I can get at my budget, because if I can't get a significant improvement for that money, I might end up actually getting that RAM stick instead and just finding workarounds.

Anyone who takes the time to read this, thank you... and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Eg. 5%. I have been googling but can't seem to wrap my head around it. Thanks in advance

Premise: The first essential requirement of lockdowns is that they save many more lives than they take. Absolutely nobody should be in disagreement that if they caused a greater loss of life than they prevented, they could not be justified under any conceivable scenario.

The following figures are for the UK, but similar analyses can be done for any country. To try and answer this question, we need to look at QALYs (Quality-Adjusted Life Years). Essentially, a year of life gained/lost, adjusted for the quality of life experienced during it.

1) What is the maximum number of QALYs lockdowns could have saved? We will use the famous Imperial College modelling for this question (for the sake of argument, assume the model is accurate). The projected deaths in an unmitigated pandemic was 500,000. The UK has, with lockdowns, experienced around 140,000.

Thus we can say that the maximum number of lives saved here is around 360,000, and if we generously assume that each life had 10 years left to live, then we are looking at around 3.6 million QALYs saved due to lockdowns. Of course, no pandemic would be unmitigated, and the 500,000 number is a purely academic thought experiment - but we will run with it here.

2) How many QALYs have been lost due to lockdowns? This is not easy to answer, but first we will look at the year+ spent in lockdown itself. The entire UK population (66 million people) was subjected to entirely unprecedented restrictions on basic everyday life and human contact. Almost everyone experienced a loss in quality of life due to these restrictions. How much exactly will vary massively between people, but let us conservatively assume on average Brits lost 10% in quality of life specifically due to lockdowns and associated restrictions.

Across the whole population, that is a loss of 6.6 million QALYs, just during the lockdown period itself.

As well as this, we need to look at long term loss of QALYs, after the lockdowns ended and far into the future. This is also difficult to estimate - but the effects of unemployment, poverty, homelessness, mental illness, increased drug/smoking/alcohol usage, increase in obesity, missed diagnoses, impaired childhood development, impaired education, divorces, domestic/child abuse, etc would all need to be taken into account.

This paper from the US projected around 800k excess deaths due to unemployment alone - adjusted for UK population,