If you haven’t already, check out Upgrade, by Blake Crouch. Good book, similar premise.

When did you exit your positions and when do you plan to reenter?

I never had positions to exit. Was on the struggle bus financially for a long time and even had to declare bankruptcy back in 2013.

I started making more money and finally being able to really save and invest in late 2020/early 2021 but with Covid and everything being all crazy I wasn’t sure of the market as I’ve had no prior investing experience and didn’t even have a 401k. So I started aggressively paying down remaining debts and saving instead.

Currently my only debt is my mortgage, which I should be able to fully pay off (well ahead of amortization) in the next five years or so, and I’m currently living well below my means to save for retirement. Currently I have probably 18 months to two years of expenses in the HYSA.

I was planning to begin investing and putting funds in 401k or a Roth IRA this year, but Trump happened and I’m as lost as ever. I prefer the safe bet of the saving yield right now to potentially losing a ton of money, seeing as the markets are just falling everyday from what I can see.

250k is not a very big nest egg for retirement.

No, but you can have multiple accounts and each is insured up to the FDIC limit.

At this point I think I have more like 18 months to 2 years in my HYSA right now. I aggressively paid down my debts and as of January this year my mortgage is the only one left, but I didn’t start having enough to seriously invest until the last few years (maybe 2020 or 2021) and I’ve been aggressively saving since while I figure out where to put the money longer term.

On the bright side, I’m making so much more than I spend that it’s likely I’ll have my 30 year mortgage (27 years remaining) paid off inside of 5 years while still being able to continue saving, and paying the mortgage off will accelerate my retirement options.

I have to admit, I don’t know that it’s the best option, but all my funds are currently in a HYSA.

Not as high return as the market under normal circumstances, but it’s liquid, and it’s been relatively safe at between 3.5% and 4.25% the last several years, and the times we live in are anything but normal.

That’s great. So… what exactly was accomplished?

Hell if I know. I suppose that’s one of the multitude of possibilities of “what’s coming.”

All I know is I’m fine with getting out of the way while they get it. Preferably far away, where I won’t have to hear the bitching and blaming later when they find out what they asked for, what they voted for, and what they actually wanted don’t align.

Get out of the way and let us get what we have coming

Say no more fam.

Currently alternating between Half-Life 2 (I swear I’m actually gonna finish it this time) (yeah, I can’t bring myself to finish HL2) and Chrono Trigger (I swear I’m actually gonna finish it this time).

I think there’s a difference between people who voted republican (conservatives) who legitimately believed a lie or just saw what they wanted to see(single issue voters) and MAGA who knew it was a lie and deeply corrupt.

I honestly don’t think we should differentiate. Republican leadership in the house and senate have done nothing to stand against Trump and MAGA, and have completely facilitated this mess. Differentiating between “MAGA” and “Republicans” just gives them an out later. MAGA is Republican, and Republicans are MAGA, at least at the policy level.

The Republican party needs a dramatic shift away from utterly insane and corrupt politics and behavior, and that’s only going to happen with a heavy amount of pressure from their base and elsewhere. They don’t deserve leniency in this.

power vacuum

That’s a strange way to spell “block party.”

You’ll have to pry my 70% and 75% keyboards from my cold dead hands. Smaller keyboards are much more ergonomic if you need to also regularly use the mouse.

I’m just glad Veruca Salt made the list.

Also, I dunno if I’d lump Sublime into the “happy/horny” category. They’re more on the “sad/horny” side of the chart.

See my previous comment, I’m 100% on board with Lyrion server and client these days.

I only use Plexamp now for local music when I’m driving.

Disclaimer: Plexamp used to be great, but it’s stagnated badly. It was a good reason to buy plex pass at one point, though I don’t think it’s worth it now.

I’m not familiar with Symfonium, but the major defining thing with plexamp is the DJ features for exploring your local music library.

Unfortunately, some months back Tidal support was removed from Plexamp and that was kind of a deal breaker because now it’s only local library, and its “killer app” feature was using the DJ mixes in conjunction with Tidal to do real time mixes with your local and streaming music together.

I’ve switched to using Lyrion instead, along with the Blissmix and “Don’t Stop the Music” plugins with LastFM support. It integrates with Tidal, Deezer, or Qobuz (and I think Spotify, but not sure, I only use hifi streaming services). They work similarly, and in some ways better because you have full control over Blissmix’s functionality for chroma, timbre, tempo, album and track repeats, and more. Also, Lyrion can stream directly over DLNA to a client, whereas Plexamp was just Airplay/Bluetooth/Google Cast (I have Apple stuff, but Airplay is terrible quality).

It’s sad, but plexamp is just my “local download” player now on my phone for when I’m driving, since it downconverts flac to Opus at higher quality than MP3 and at smaller sizes.

I highly recommend trying out Lyrion. I’ve used nearly everything for music in the past, including even having a year of Roon, but Lyrion has replaced pretty much everything.

I don’t see how it’s not. I have all the desktops and gaming PCs in my house running EndeavorOS and it’s been a flawless experience, much better than Windows. Heck, I’ve been using Linux for my general desktop since 2015. I only kept a Windows install around for gaming, and that’s not even needed anymore.

Even the difference in the installs is utterly absurd. Linux install from USB to full desktop deployment is 15-20 minutes, tops. For Windows, it was more like 2 hours and a bunch of hacks to work around their Microsoft account bullshit.

What exactly “isn’t ready” in your opinion?

They have sales, and it’s not really worth paying the “MSRP” price. My wife got Plex Pass for $80 back in 2023, and I got it late last year for $90.

Plexamp is (or at least was) pretty awesome. It requires plex and plex pass for its full features. Jellyfin doesn’t have anything remotely comparable (though you could always just run Lyrion).

Bear in mind that in the early years of the USA, the vice president was generally the person who was running against the sitting President for the seat. It was another built in check to power, though unfortunately not codified. The idea of just picking a VP candidate came much later.