Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Gamble to rumble

One of my frequent YouTube channels is Tyrrell's Classic Workshop. The latest video shows the proprietor going over to Paris, France for a car auction. In that very car auction is a Ferrari 250 LM that sold for 28 million euros. An unfathomably large sum - to spend on a single car - for a broke person with meager means like myself.

A tremendous amount of money for a thing that will largely sit in an air-conditioned garage for many years. Until the next supremely rich car guy pays even more for it. Heck, the buyer might not even have to pay taxes if the car is stored in a free port. Vintage Ferrari race cars: the only time a car is an “investment”. Your paint-to-sample Porsche 911, sadly, is not. That money is better thrown into an S&P 500 fund.

The pain from being a broke car guy is that I don’t have the means to sample the variety of cars out there. I can only do so in the virtual world of Gran Turismo (the only way I can “own” and “drive” a Ferrari). A large garage full of automobiles is not in the cards for me, in this life time. I’d have to first afford a garage.

Then there are cars that’s wholly out of my income range. As a former owner of a 2015 Porsche 911 GT3, I currently cannot afford a 2025 Porsche 911 GT3. The starting MSRP has ballooned from $125,000 to $200,000. My incomes has not kept up with that inflation. And that’s before ticking a single option box, and paying extortion money to the selling dealership.

I can see why people gamble their whole money into specific stock options and/or crypto. There are so many nice things out there (it’s not only cars) that if we can just get a huge sum of money very quickly, we’d be able to buy and enjoy them all. They don’t want to wait the many decades in working hard and accumulating wealth slowly. Because a 911 GT3 won’t be brand new on sale for that much longer.

In lieu of getting extremely lucky in a gamble - not that I would in the first place, I hugely temper my expectations.

Strategic egg reserve

In this current battle royale climate for eggs, the trick is to get to Costco (or your grocer of choice) soon as it opens in the morning. You will then be among the lucky few to snag from the limited stock for the day. At least Costco now limits three items of eggs per customer. Hoarders and re-sellers can go die a furiously fiery death.

I honestly don’t think there is a need to hoard an egg supply. I eat two eggs a day for the protein gains (some would say that’s not nearly enough per day), and I’ve yet to run out of my supply. That’s with resupplying only every few weeks (when I go to Costco). These pictures of customers filling up entire carts with eggs: how big of a fridge have they got? Unless there comes an avian flu strain that kills off chickens into extinction, I think we’ll be alright.

It reminds me of the toilet paper panic back at the beginning of the pandemic. Do people expect to wipe their ass more often when they are stuck indoors? The only thing hoarding toilet paper saves you from is having to make a trip when you run out. And even then, there’s always the shower…

What’s hilarious about the egg shortage is that it is coinciding with a new President that ran on a platform of lowering grocery prices (was never going to happen, obviously). January 2025 inflation numbers are unexpectedly high, too. Maybe what America needs is a strategic egg reserve, like the strategic oil reserve. President Trump can increase the egg supply to level out the price shocks.

Forget breakthrough medical research - the Trump administration certainly has by freezing NIH funding; what we need is to research a new method for storing eggs for years on end whilst preserving initial quality. I personally think that’s a great idea.

Don't blame the system

This video popped up on my Youtube feed talking about how credit card companies are criminals for charging such high interest rates. But that’s a bit disingenuous. People aren’t forced to deal with credit card issuers. You absolutely do not need a credit card! Cold hard cash will always be king. There’s also the debit card too, if convenience is what you are after.

I’ve had and still have many credit cards, and never have I paid a penny of interest. (Good move by President Trump in directing the Treasury to stop minting pennies.) Credit cards are a fantastic financial tool, so long as the monthly balance gets paid in full. The issuers can charge the most usurious interest rate, and it wouldn’t affect me one iota. That’s how everyone should be using the cards. Visa and MasterCard more than make enough money on swipe fees.

It’s wrong to call something predatory when both parties came to an agreement. The customer borrows money from the credit card companies, with the promise to pay it back. Interest will be charged if payments are late. It’s not the issuer’s fault if the customer did not read the APR fine print. The issuer is not evil because the customer cannot fully pay the balance in a timely manner. It’s hugely infantilizing to obviate responsibility from fully grown adults.

Again, credit cards are not necessary to living. People did just fine before their invention. Whatever life emergency that people use the cards to cover should instead be covered by an emergency cash fund. Don’t have one? Eat only rice/beans/chicken/lentils (a completely nutritious meal for very cheap) until you’ve saved enough. Sorry, DoorDash is no longer in your vocabulary.

If you’re in credit card debt, it’s time to reevaluate your expectations of what is truly necessary in life. The Amazon habit is too difficult to quit? Better increase your income, then.

I know. Right to privilege jail. Right away.

Can you DOGE this?

I am glad I finally got new tires on the M2, right before another pair of rain storms is due to hit the San Francisco Bay Area. Not that I will be doing any driving during that time. It’s just nice to know that in an emergency, I don’t have to treat the accelerator pedal with the smoothest of care. The original set of rear tires were truly at its end of life.

It’s been interesting to see Elon Musk’s DOGE running through Federal agencies looking for redundancies and waste. Legalities aside (I’m not a Constitutional lawyer so I’ve no idea whatsoever), any fiscal conservative worthy of the claim should welcome a culling of the largesse. (Please don’t forget the Pentagon, Elon!) Indeed, why should billions in taxpayer money still go to other countries, when the referendum for last year’s election is the ill economic feelings of Americans?

President Trump wishes to cull the actual number of Federal workers. He probably saw Elon getting rid of 80 percent of the Twitter workforce, and what is now known as X doesn’t seem to be worse for it. I’ll take some of that! DOGE probably can’t go that far with the Federal workforce, but there’s stuff to be cut for sure. The stereotype of the lazy public worker who does nothing but collect a paycheck (and protected by a union) is based on some reality, no? We all either know a person (raises hand), or know a person who knows a person.

With San Francisco facing a fiscal cliff, the new mayor might need to pull the layoff lever. Some in the San Francisco subreddit hilariously wrote the city can use a DOGE-like makeover. Surely our weathly scion of a mayor can ask some business tycoon friend of his to spearhead such endeavor.

Actually, an entity that we can all agree that needs to be way more efficient: the Department of Motor Vehicles. Elon is more than welcome to get his team of twenty something software engineers to hack into the DMV system.

Ready for some football

It is Super Bowl Sunday. (I think the NFL will send me a bill just for using that term.) An American tradition unlike any other. Except in other countries during their team’s matches in the World Cup. I’m sure the Argentinian television station responsible for broadcasting the World Cup final sold some significant advertisements in Argentina.

One day last week I forgot to bring my own coffee. It’s been awhile since I’ve purchased from Peet’s, and wow has the pricing gone up yet again. This particular franchise seem so embarrassed about the prices it’s charging that they are only displaying the price for medium size. How much for a large cup of vanilla soy latte? Spin the wheel to find out.

There’s been this age old battle between two camps. One side says buying the daily coffee from Starbucks is keeping you poor. The other side says (what was) $3 per day is but a drop in the ocean in the face of immense housing cost. There’s truth to both sides. In areas such as our San Francisco, you definitely cannot save your way towards buying a house by abolishing store-bought coffee.

On the other hand, many little things can indeed compound into significant sums. What makes the high inflation of the past years so pernicious is that it’s kind of death by a thousand cuts. It’s fine if only the grocery haul is (for example) 10% dearer. But when everything else went up also, it’s really easy to look at your monthly statements and wonder where the money’s gone. Five dollars extra here, five dollars extra there, five dollars extra everywhere.

And so it is with the Peet’s medium drip coffee I bought for nearly $4. The Keurig life is for me. I rather have the $1000 ($4 x 21 workdays in a month x 12 months) extra at the end of the year.

Paper or plastic

One month into year 2025 and I hope I’ve gotten all the sickness out of the way. Earlier in January I had a bout with the common cold. Just now I am recovering from a stomach virus. That certainly should be it for this year in terms of illnesses. Please, I cannot handle any more away time from lifting weights. I can imaginarily see the gains melting away in front of my very eyes.

Due to the stomach virus, I was on a semi-liquid diet for about a day. Fruit smoothies to the rescue. The location on campus gave me a paper straw for it (thanks a lot, San Francisco). Predictably, the straw utterly disintegrated before I was even halfway done with the smoothie. Happy to save the environment by not being able to finish my drink! If we are serious about this paper straw business, someone has to invent a stronger solution for thicker dinks. (Shark Tank opportunity, I reckon.)

Coincidently, President Trump plans to sign an executive order overturning President Biden’s pledge to ban plastic straw usage in federal agencies. Those lucky bastards! The masses shouldn’t have to suffer with an inferior product in order to make some virtual-signaling environmentalist happy.

I agree plastic waste is a problem. But how do you propose a fruit smoothie be served without a sturdy straw? Sippy lids works for thin liquids, not milk-shake levels of consistency. Give customers a (compostable) spoon? Who wants to “drink” a smoothie with a spoon? You know what, perfect solution: ban smoothies altogether. No need to solve a problem if the problem doesn’t exist anymore.

Sorry, I’m cranky from being sick. Nothing will make you value health more than suffering through illness.

Dopamine nation

The WiFi has been spotty at work this week, so my iPhone is effectively useless during work hours. (There’s no cellular network in our dungeon of an office.) Be that as it may, I still find myself reaching for it to check stuff, even though there’s nothing that can be checked. It’s like unlocking your phone during a flight: you know there’s nothing new to see, yet reflexes that’s been honed for over a decade is difficult to pause.

I like to think of myself as a mindful person, but I guess I’m not immune to the smartphone dopamine addiction. Every second of downtime must be filled with brand new information. The latest sports news on ESPN, or the latest nihilistic banter on Reddit. Boredom has been extinct since the first iPhone introduction. We did it!

Everybody does it, though. If anything, you look like the weird one if your face isn’t plastered to your phone. Imagine waiting with a crowd for an elevator, and you’re the only one staring into space. The strongly introverted me is not ready to stand out like that.

A coworker’s car failed, so he’s been walking to work. The obvious perplexity is: he doesn’t live anywhere near walking distances from work. (Otherwise the car failing would have zero bearing.) Instead of replacing the broken car, he’s choosing to commute on foot for over an hour. I admire the grit, but I have to wonder at his financial situation if he can’t easily replace the broken twenty year old car. Our State government job doesn’t pay extravagantly, but it’s sufficiently middle-class.

I get it: needing to replace a suddenly out of commission car is a huge blow to the wallet. But that’s why you keep an emergency fund. You know, for emergencies. I can’t fathom the stress living with such thin financial margins. Yes, right to privileged jail, right away.