I was browsing old prompts one day and I really liked this one, but it was already a month or so old. I submitted it anyway, but I doubt anyone actually saw it, heh. Well, luckily today I learned that there are [PI] posts here! Hope you guys like it!
The Doctor
>"Bruce? Dr. Kuhr will see you now. Bruce?"
>"Hm? Oh, I’m sorry, I must have drifted off. Thank you."
Absentmindedly, Bruce walked into the office. When he looked up, he was perplexed. Rather than the stereotypical psychologist’s office- bookcases lining the walls, old-fashioned mahogany furniture scattered throughout the room, a couch for patients to lie down on, instead Bruce walked into an unsettling space.
The smell was the first thing that hit him. A faint herbal scent, not particularly pleasant nor displeasing, but it invited you into the room to see more. However, there wasn’t much more to see. The walls were bare, void of any color, just an unnervingly pure white. There was no furniture, except for two curved white chairs facing each other in the center of the room. No lights, save for one dimly lit fluorescent bulb hanging in between the two chairs. The rest of the room was covered in darkness. And there, on the other side of the room, was but one window, where the doctor stood, looking out as the rain poured down on the city.
>"I’m sorry, is.. is this the right room?"
Back turned to the door and arms folded across his chest, the doctor didn’t move. As Bruce turned to go back, he had already begun to regret this visit.
>"I must have wandered into the wrong room, I’m looking for Dr. Kuhr’s office. I’ll just go back.. I’m sorry for disturbing y-"
>"Oh no, don’t you worry Bruce. As a matter of fact, you’re right where you belong."
Confused, Bruce turned back around only to find that instead of standing by the window, he found the doctor sitting in one of the seats, just outside the light.
>"You don’t mind if I call you Bruce, do you? Somehow I just have this feeling, as if we’ve met before."
>"No, I suppose not.. But I don’t believe we have, doctor."
>"Oh, well that’s quite alright. I believe we’ll get to know each other quite well today. Now why don’t you have a seat?"
The doctor gestured to the seat in front of him, and despite the growing uneasiness, Bruce felt compelled to oblige.
The chair was considerably more comfortable than Bruce had expected
... keep reading on reddit ➡
Just like when you are held liable for some traffic violations made by another person with your car?
April Fools I can now operate a metal box less than 26,000 pounds that has 4 rubber balls attached Whoopee
Yes, the individual was possessing the firearm illegally, but they used it for a noble cause, to protect themselves or others. The person illegally possessing the firearm didn't use it with the intent to commit a criminal act. And as a side question, would a person possessing a firearm illegally face charges if they used it to stop a home invader who has broken into their own residence? I'm sure there are many variables such as what state/local firearm laws are, who the county prosecutor is, what local law enforcement is like, etc.
http://twitter.com/BBCBreaking/status/1238465196315889665
The below is the text from my latest blog post about bonds, if you want to see the original with pretty pictures, charts, graphs etc then click on this link.
Ok, the title is an obvious dad joke, but as it happens it still fits in with my naming convention for posts so happy days! On to more serious stuff.
The most common proposed asset allocation for people pursuing FIRE seems to involve having absolutely as much invested in equities (or to a lesser extent property) as possible, and reducing every other asset class to as little as possible. Which is certainly one way of doing things, and given the great performance of shares and property over the last 20 years or more there is an argument to be made for doing things this way.
It’s certainly not the only way of doing things though, and I will be trying to show why there is a case to be made for investing some money in other asset classes, in particular Fixed Income aka Bonds.
So what are bonds?
Bonds are a type of debt that is issued by governments, semi-government organisations, and corporations, so basically you’re lending them money. In Australia we also have what are called hybrid securities, but they’ve got some big enough differences that I’ll talk about them in a future post (probably).
Bonds are also one of those fun areas where there is an exception to every rule, so although what I’ve written below is broadly accurate there is always going to be some type of bond or a specific issue that breaks one of the rules.
So please don’t be an internet hero and “well ackshually” me about premium redemption/issue bonds, soft calls, hard calls, investor puts, floaters, PIK notes and all the rest of it because broadly speaking it isn’t going to make much difference for the purposes of explaining bonds. Basically play nice readers!
Talk numbers to me…
Bonds are all about math. As I’m sure regular readers of this blog can imagine this makes me very happy, and probably explains in part why I spent a large part of my career working in an area where understanding bonds was crucial, although to make things more interesting we added on a bunch of other stuff like equity options, credit derivatives, FX etc.
The main numbers to think about are the price you paid for the bond, the coupon on the bond, the yield on the bond, the time to maturity, and the maturity value of the bond. From those main numbers we also der
... keep reading on reddit ➡I was just thinking about the Bond movie License To Kill lately--for those of you not into the series, it's the one where Bond, instead of getting an assignment from M as usual, goes rogue from MI-6 to get revenge on the leader of a South American drug cartel for maiming his friend. There's little in the way of exotic locales, beautiful women being seduced, or colorful henchman, he's just taking out a glorified drug dealer. It's basically a Lethal Weapon movie. Fun, but not very Bondian.
I think there's a similar mistake in the ST. They tried to do something new and different with the series, without realizing they were taking away from the uniqueness of their own story and making it like every other work in the genre.
I'm referring here to Kylo Ren. It makes some sense to have another Darth Vader with the explicit possibility of being redeemed, but then to have him be irredeemable--subverted expectations!--but that just makes him like your average Marvel movie villain, all of whom get blowed up real good. Add to that--
-It's depressing as hell for the Solo/Skywalker story and lineage to end with an irredeemable mass murderer. I mean, that's even worse than Han and Leia's kid just dying or never having been born. I thought this was a children's movie about space wizards. What Pixar movie has the hero get murdered in cold blood by his own son?
-It's boring. And so is Kylo Ren reenacting Darth Vader's arc and sacrificing himself to be redeemed. Maybe if the second movie had redeemed him and the story had become about former enemies working together, that would've broke new ground, but by having him redeemed at the climax of the third movie, they just did Vader's arc in a more convoluted way.
-It makes no sense. If your villain is going to be even worse than Vader, it seems like you should have some explanation for that. Vader grew up a slave and ended up blaming himself for the death of the woman he loved. That would fuck anyone up. Kylo Ren... grew up in the lap of luxury with two loving parents and the coolest uncle in the galaxy to mentor him as a Jedi superhero? At most, I could see a guy like that becoming arrogant or a brat. Instead, he's a serial killer. Were Han and Leia just unlucky enough to have a child born a sociopath?
