brin_bellway | Entries tagged with adventures in human capitalism

[arguably cw: poverty, illness, disordered eating]

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[arguably cw: politics, poverty]

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[Substack; Wayback] (by Matt Glassman)

At the heart of the book is a simple proposition. Imagine I offered you a choice. You can have $500 no questions asked, or you can roll a die. If you choose the die and it comes up any number but 6, you get nothing. But if it comes up 6, you get $5000.

This book is not about the people who take the $500. But it’s also not about the people who think for a couple of minute and choose to roll the die.

This is a book about the people who instantly grab the die, can’t imagine not instantly grabbing the die, and think anyone who doesn’t instantly grab the die is somewhere between irrational and insane.

The me of a month ago, when Scott Alexander asked this hypothetical, thought about it for a bit, didn't come to any satisfying conclusions, then took the $500 with a vague sense of this being the Objectively Incorrect Decision and some self-loathing.

The me of today has been through quite a bit more training on this subject! The me of today has practised taking appropriate risks!

The me of today thinks about it for a bit, pulls out an arcane-looking calculator, types some numbers into it, then says--

"That's above the half-Kelly wager for my bankroll."

--and walks away with $500 and a clear conscience.

Hello, folks! I'm going to be teaching a class on advanced grocery-shopping techniques for KW Rationality (currently planned for the evening of Thursday, ~~February 27th~~ March 6th). If you'll be in the Waterloo, Ontario area, I encourage you to come out and join us!

Below is the "textbook" for this class. The further away you are in space and time from late-2024 Kitchener/Waterloo, the less of it will apply to you (in particular, advanced grocery shopping looks very different in the United States), but you may still get useful tips out of it and/or find it anthropologically interesting.

This work distills many years of refinement to my techniques, and to this day I am still learning. If it seems overwhelming trying to take it all in at once, try picking up just some of the new tactics, and expand later. I have tried to put the most important aspects first, where feasible.

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Table of Contents

Where to shop

Before your shop

Rotated stockpiles

Price-matching

Loyalty programs

Coupons

List-making

Payment methods

During your shop

Clearance

Error-catching

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You don't realise how much of your income is denominated in USD until the exchange rate goes up 7%, huh.

~~(I feel like sigmaleph is laughing right now at the idea that 7% constitutes a major fluctuation)~~

I'd...been thinking of that as an annoyance, paying exchange fees when Americans working the same gigs didn't have to, but I guess it's kind of useful as a hedge.

(And Swagbucks lets you *pick* between [CAD-PayPal at a fixed 1.33 exchange rate] and USD-PayPal, so you can check the spot rate and decide for yourself whether you're better off paying PayPal's extortionate 4% exchange fee. I made the switch and am getting around 60 - 70 extra cents per $10, which is a nice boost.)

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(To give a specific figure: during the last full calendar month (November), 14% of my income was USD-denominated. It varies from month to month, though.)

Current Location: doing a Coinbase Learn offer

[Freedom Mobile] also now has a $5/mo plan with 100MB of data, two hours of talk and unlimited text.

holy shit???

I got used to ignoring Freedom back in the day, but they've expanded their network coverage over the past ~few years and aren't effectively city-only anymore

(that's 120 minutes of *outgoing* calls, BTW: incoming is unlimited)

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Oh, that reminds me:

Hey, remember the IRS Free File program?

Yeah, it was *looking* pretty useless at first, but upon careful inspection there turns out to be exactly one Free File participant that accepts self-employed non-residents: OLT (OnLine Taxes). It's a pain in the ass to wrangle into a Canadian shape, but it *can* be so wrangled, and it costs approximately 215 CAD less than doing my dad's taxes through even the relatively cheap expat service.

I suspect that I may need to do one year through ExpatFile after each substantial change in our tax situation, but for years where I can compare OLT's output to the previous year's return to check if I put stuff in the right places, it's a boon.

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I ended up waiting to post this until I actually tried the Freedom Mobile plan.

Signing up was difficult, but if you do it in-person (*not* online) and make sure to specify you want prepaid and *not* postpaid, you should have an easier and cheaper time than I did.

The free roaming in the United States (and also Mexico) seems potentially handy, though I don't have any active plans to go there.

I think it's still worth it even after the hassle and extra signup fees, but only if you have housemates on other providers: these days you're allowed to *sign up* if you live outside the city, and they won't charge you *extra* for it, but it turns out you'll still be spending most of your time on their partnered Rogers network and I think we're all very aware by now of how dangerous that is. As long as Dad stays on Bell or Telus networks, I'm willing to take the risk to save ~$125/year, but I'd never want to put *all* our SIM-card eggs in the Freedom basket.

(though if you have non-Rogers-based home Internet, that might be okay)

[cw: poverty, venting]

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[cw: poverty, (arguably) venting]

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Current Mood: mostly numb

Comments on my own posts:

[cw: illness] The one about sore throats and impending doom [two comments]

[cw: government bullshit] ""Fun"" fact of the day (March 1, 2024)

[fairly mild cw: illness] 2020s music, part 3

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: corporate bullshit] [Thoughts of Mine; Wayback] (OP by Mabel Schaefer) Fun with cell-phone-plan loopholes. [two or three comments, depending on how you count]

[cw: what it says on the tin] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

slavicafire) Food-disgust test.

[cw: food (with picture)] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

lnthefade) This is a thing that is now, unfortunately, not being offered at Disney World.

[fairly mild cw: discourse] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

mindstalk) A modest proposal for affordable food/housing.

[cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

siderea) Changing mask tech for a changing world.

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Links:

[cw: death, (arguably) discourse] [New York Times - Wayback] (by Helen Ouyang; h/t swimmer) The race to reinvent CPR.

[Crystalverse; Wayback] (by Chase) How to grow pyramid salt crystals.

[Bloomberg] (main article by Matt Levine; quoted section from Moody's)

Moody’s tool has revealed thousands of directors who are as young as zero or older than the world’s longest-living person on record. One listed director — at 943 years old — would have been born in the 11th century. This director is allegedly a minority shareholder and beneficial owner of a Belgium-based business services firm that incorporated in 2018.

all of the other immortals must be so mad at this guy

you can't just fucking *tell* people you're 943 years old, dude, we've been *over* this

(on the other hand, it doesn't seem like anyone is believing it, so maybe you *can* just tell people you're 943 years old)

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[Bloomberg] (main article by Matt Levine; quoted section by Sridhar Natarajan)

Wall Street firms usually grumble in private after getting punished by regulators. Anthony Melchiorre’s Chatham Asset Management is dragging its advisers into a public legal battle for $100 million.

The $6 billion hedge fund is demanding that Adviser Compliance Associates not only cover Chatham’s costs for settling a US probe last year, but also damage to its business. In an unusual lawsuit, Chatham claims the outside consultant, founded by former regulators, failed to prevent trading practices that ran afoul of authorities. …

“Chatham sought, received and followed advice from ACA that certain trading practices did not run afoul of the SEC’s cross-trading rules,” Melchiorre, 56, said in a statement through a spokesman. “ACA gave it improper advice and failed to flag these trades as problematic.” The hedge fund intends to vigorously pursue the matter, holding ACA accountable, he said.

~~man, imagine having recourse when your financial advisor advises you to break the law~~

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[Bloomberg] (main article by Matt Levine; quoted section by Elizabeth Lopatto)

“Short … [Reddit],” wrote one r/Wall StreetBets user. “They have not proven that this user base or data set can be monetized.”

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[Bloomberg] (by Matt Levine)

By the way, there’s a very funny anecdote in Scott Patterson’s Chaos Kings in which Nassim Nicholas Taleb goes for a walk with some colleagues at Universa, Mark Spitznagel’s black-swan fund. “Taleb, sweating in his professorial jacket in Miami’s eighty-degree heat, spotted a penny on the pavement in front of a parked steamroller — and picked it up, laughing at the inside joke.” The sort of thing that could only happen to Taleb.

oh my god

[fairly strong cw: what it says on the tin, aging]

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[cw: government bullshit]

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Comments on my own posts:

[cw: food, (arguably) illness, (arguably) heights] I have officially survived my twenties

[cw: illness] Variolation, part 4: Secondhand [three comments, one of which is new]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

itsbenedict) A day in the life of a Tumblr user.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

oak23) The importance of ego-syntonic clothing.

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

nenya_kanadka) How to make Wikia actually usable (and Dreamwidth even more usable).

[cw: illness, medical, (fairly mild) venting] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

cordeliaflyte) Fantasies about easy solutions to medical problems: not always pleasant.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

eightyonekilograms, though also kind of

jv) Tumblr Backup Awareness Week, and a modernised version of tumblr-utils. (Though I ran into enough problems getting the python3 version of tumblr-utils working that I eventually gave up and went back to python2.)

[Dreamwidth; Wayback] (OP by

thedarlingone) More on the mobile-accessibility updates to Dreamwidth.

[cw: nsfw text] [Dreamwidth; Wayback crawling forbidden] (OP by

porthole) The distinction between fetishes that can be done in real life and those that cannot (and the grey areas between).

[arguably cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

ladiesloveduranduran) Which of these U.S. cities would you be most willing to live in?

[cw: illness, (arguably) poison] [Updated part of WordPress thread (Tumblr)] (OP by

rustingbridges; partly in respose to

keynes-fetlife-mutual) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. [three comments, two of which are new]

[cw: illness, vomit, unsanitary] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

toasthaste; in response to

robustcornhusk) Norovirus prevention tips.

[cw: sexism, embarrassment squick] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

RaxKingIsDead) Accidental street harassment.

[cw: corporate bullshit, (arguably) government bullshit] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

JoshGreenberg27) How to get government-funded U.S. tax preparation. (It's still not 100% clear, but it looks like probably *not* for non-residents. On the ""bright"" side, I'm below the income threshold to have to file at all for 2023, and there's no further stimulus checks to claim by doing it anyway.)

[Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by

gummybugg; mostly in response to

sacrificedtoatree) I have unlocked a fiction-writing skill tree! [two comments]

[arguably cw: guns] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

trailertrashin) "The Glass Eye - Adult Greeting Cards": a real store that really exists, somehow.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

whatcha-thinkin) Assuming you had access to perfect medical care at no additional cost, which of these fixes would you want most?

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Links:

[strong cw: illness] [Patreon; Wayback] (by Violet Blue; h/t

siderea) A list of COVID-19 resources, consisting largely of people doing their best to navigate things on their own because God knows there are no trustworthy authorities left on this. I bought a $4 bottle of store-brand mouthwash (contains cetylpyridinium chloride) because of this post: I figure it's an extremely low-risk bet.

On a similar though shorter/narrower note, https://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/805203.html

(Update from January: ...if someone who *doesn't* now have a history of COVID infection (or who can otherwise psychologically handle it) can pick through all the stuff in Violet's news roundups about Post-Acute Sequelae Even Worse Than Previously Believed to get at the actionable advice, I would appreciate it)

[cw: illness] [Absolutely Maybe; Wayback] (by Hilda Bastian) Researchers have not given up on creating a COVID vaccine with sterilising and/or durable immunity! Things may still improve.

[cw: corporate bullshit] [PCMag; Wayback] (by Chloe Albanesius; h/t Violet Blue) Obituaries for tech products and services that were shut down in 2023.

[Youtube; Invidious] (by Pope Kallisti; h/t

blazingdarkness) A MIDI conversion of "Bring Me to Life".

[Live Science; Wayback] (by Victoria Atkinson) I told somebody in a nuclear-vs-solar argument a while back that I'd care less about solar if ordinary citizens could get household-scale nuclear batteries. There has been non-zero progress towards this.

Two laugh-rule entries:
[Beware The Shadows; Wayback] (by Brett J. Talley) The 56 best/worst analogies written by high school students (or, fairly likely, ""high school students""). (I've seen a lot of these before, but not all of them.)

My favourite is "Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph."

[brr; Wayback] (by Anonymous; h/t Jenn) Showering at the South Pole. (This whole blog is amazing, though usually more in a "wow, Antarctica is such a place" way than a "funny" way.)

Current Music: "Bring Me to Life" - Evanescence

[cw: poverty]

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Current Mood: accomplished

[cw: government bullshit, (fairly mild) venting]

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Current Mood: aaaargh

[cw: food, (fairly mild) poverty, (arguably) illness]

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All my love for the devs out there in the trenches this week trying to keep the Internet we know and love afloat, and USD$17.50 for them too.

(I hope that in May I will be in a better financial position and can be more comfortable with buying a full year. It could very plausibly happen.)

Current Location: updating my archives

*flump*

[muffled by lying facedown] hello and welcome to the Q4 edition of this fortnightly roundup

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Comments on my own posts:

[cw: illness, medical, food] Status update, morning of 2023-08-01 [four comments]

[arguably cw: apocalypse] Friday Five: August 25, 2023

[cw: food, poverty] Extreme couponing [two comments on Tumblr]

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Comments on other people's posts:

[cw: apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

c-rowlesdraws) The fictional ~~for now~~ cultural symbolism of auroras.

[cw: illness, apocalypse] [WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

stumpyjoepete; partly in response to

nuclearspaceheater) Air-purifier recs.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

lonelyroommp3) The psychological importance of tidy surfaces.

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

sigmaleph) What does "soul" even mean, anyway?

[WordPress (Tumblr)] (OP by

moonlit-tulip) VPNs and Tumblr shadowbanning. (Update: they *eventually* un-shadowbanned me, several weeks after I contacted them.) [two comments]

[arguably cw: amnesia] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2; Tumblr part 3; Tumblr part 4)] (OP by

calware; also in response to

lizardywizard) Pi and the overestimation of common knowledge; speaking of senseless, fortunately-lifted Tumblr bans... [two comments, sort of]

[cw: illness] [Start of WordPress thread (Tumblr part 1; Tumblr part 2)] (OP by

rustingbridges) Nipping colds in the bud (maybe) with zinc lozenges. (They *do* sell Life Extension in Canada, it turns out.)

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Links:

[Tumblr; Wayback] (OP by

sun-dari, but read the whole thread) Pun translations in Good Omens.

[Substack; Wayback] (by Adrian Hon; h/t wolffyluna) Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser: a LARP event from a post-scarcity (or at least much richer) society that tried to manifest on a world not prosperous enough to support it. (Or at least, that was *my* takeaway from the article.)

[Taiwan Quest; Wayback] (by Zhen-Kang) Discouraging under-the-table transactions via a government receipt lottery.

[strong cw: illness] [Dreamwidth; Wayback] (by

synecdochic) Modern COVID-testing technique. (Well, the post is mostly about other COVID-related things, but anyway.)

[cw: medical, (arguably) illness] [Ontario; America; Wayback 1; Wayback 2] (h/t

cobaltdrgn) Did you know that fat people need a different size of vaccine needle?

[NASA; Wayback] We, the people of Earth, have obtained actual rocks from an actual asteroid!

[Dynomight; Wayback] (by Dynomight) The midwit home: smart enough to be helpful, not smart enough to betray you to the corporate overlords (or just be an overcomplicated pain in the ass).

[strong cw: poison, death] [Los Angeles Times; Wayback] (by Emily Alpert Reyes and Cindy Carcamo; h/t nuclearspaceheater) The terrible hidden cost of engineered-stone countertops.

Laugh rule:
[cw: (fairly strong) illness, (fairly strong) apocalypse, war] [Mastodon; Wayback] (by plaguepoems@mastodon.social)

Darker days ahead
she tells me
for all of us there are
darker days ahead
and as she delivers
this ominous declaration
I’m not really sure
if she means the plague
or the catastrophe
some other calamity
or daylight savings
but regardless of the specifics
I fear she is right.

[cw: poverty, corporate bullshit, (fairly mild) food, (arguably) discourse, (arguably) venting]

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[arguably cw: food]

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Current Mood: proud
Current Location: eating Cheez-Its

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Brin

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Brinens and Things

now with 50% more Internet Archive

Entries tagged with adventures in human capitalism

Liveblog(-ish): Early Retirement Extreme, by Jacob Lund Fisker

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Guide to Advanced Grocery Shopping, 2024-2025 Edition

1.44

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Like a mirror, you see yourself

Today in penny farming

Comment and Link Roundup: June 14, 2024

Miscellaneous Money Stuff

thinking about brain-damage insurance lately

""Fun"" fact of the day (March 1, 2024)

Comment and Link Roundup: February 23, 2024

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Friday Five: November 24, 2023

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Comment and Link Roundup: October 30, 2023

The paradox of thrift

Extreme couponing

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May 2025

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