Yessss thank you. I was so pissed when I saw that they aren't getting rid of actively white supremacist subs because "you don't win debates by silencing opposition"... THERE'S NO DEBATE

Well, when I joined hubski I was only going to school half-time with terrible grades, pretty overwhelmingly depressed with all the fun that brings, and I was certain that even if I graduated I'd never get a job that would allow me to live independent from my parents.

Since then I've graduated, found meaningful full time employment that continues to pleasantly surprise me with perks. I got a pretty kick ass new apartment (For the area/my price range) and I'm slowly furnishing it myself. (Still need a dining table and a bed that doesn't need an air pump.) This is all pretty normal stuff, but for somebody who struggled for a long time to find a good argument against suicide, it's a big deal.

If you just post the link it will automagically embed the post!

A few months ago, I was looking forward to August because I was pretty eager to leave my job due to shitty coworkers who created a generally toxic work environment. I loved the work I was doing, but coming into work was a daily struggle because I knew they would say or do some rude shit for no real reason other than they're in their 30s and insecure and I'm in my 20s and an easy target for them. I felt underappreciated, belittled, and just generally out of place. Now that my previous coworkers have moved on and been replaced by people who genuinely appreciate the work I do and have been giving me more and more authority and opportunities. The big boss knows who I am and appreciates my work. It's a good feeling and I'm proud of myself for not succumbing to overwhelming social anxiety and general feelings of inadequacy.

This is pretty interesting. I own a condo, and the pressure I see is the pressure to move around to further my career. Ironically, a lot of that pressure comes from within the company, and a long term outcome is I'll probably leave the company when I succumb to the pressure. But when I look at owning, selling and buying, it's a monumental pain. Renting, though, is so easy. Just don't renew your lease, rent a van and you're off to a new job in a new city.

I like the stability that owning gives me, but that stability comes with a price. My theory is that metaphorical price, in addition to actual price, weighs on young people.

You laugh.

I have a friend who started the process of joining the CIA on September 12, 2001. By March he was the bureau chief of Macedonia.

He's black.

That's absolutely by design. Homeownership is a concept that's been pushed on Americans since WWII... and it makes sense when you consider that housing is the only appreciating asset most people will ever own. However, as the only appreciating asset most people will ever own, there's a lot of pressure from the lampreys to get you into a 2nd mortgage, a HELOC, a payment greater than you can afford, etc.

Combine that with derivatives - whereby investors aren't trading your mortgaged assets, they're trading on your ability to retain your mortgaged assets - and all of a sudden, people with lots of money are getting still more of it by putting your assets in jeopardy.

My wife has owned our house since 2000. We're in a good place. And for the past seven years, we've rented it out. It's been a net win... but that's only because she purchased back when prices were more in line with fundamentals. In other words, we could rent it for right about what the mortgage was. We've been profiting only for the past couple years.

Wanna see a scary graph?

I mean, the San Fran thing is batshit but even the national curve is crazy.

http://wolfstreet.com/2015/06/21/housing-bubble-2-san-francisco-vs-america/

#stlyleski

The question is what the Fed should do about. Part of the problem is that Congress has been so intransigent on doing anything like fixing the unemployment rate, that the Fed has been the only player in trying to right the economy over the last 8 years. And what can they do? Manipulate interest rates and print money. Not much else, and unfortunately, we're finding out what the negatives of long term 0% rates produce.

I wonder what the long term consequences of this trend are going to be. Even though housing isn't a very good way to make money, it is a very good way to store money (as prices more or less track inflation over a decades timescale). $1000 toward rent is 100% expenditure, but $1000 toward a mortgage is at least a little money still in your possession (provided you don't refi all your equity away). And of course the interest to principle ratio drops as the mortgage matures. I fear that a whole generation of lifetime renters are going to be particularly fucked when they reach retirement age, and they have nothing of value to sell.

Hopefully interest rates will begin to rise significantly in the near future, and prices can adjust downward in a moderate way. The underlying causes of bubble 1 and 2 are very different, so hopefully they same catastrophe won't ensue when prices eventually decline.

SF is such a pigfuck, blood orgy of money that I'm not sure it's really even meaningful to compare it to the rest of the country. I wonder what CA looks like when the Bay Area is removed from the data. I'm sure it's still wacky, but not nearly as bad. I also wonder what's going to happen when everyone's boner finally subsides and we all realize that Uber really isn't a $40 billion company, and that FB doesn't really command 20% of all internet users' screen time. SF is a bubble that needs some good old fashion popping.

Mostly I feel bad for the work-a-day types who live there. WTF does a server do when a one bedroom postage stamp puts you back $2500/mo?

It seems the numbers were no larger:

But this might be the bigger issue:

Even more importantly, most oil-price hedges, price swaps/derivatives, also have cross-default provisions. Thus, counterparty credit risk begins to escalate as those parties are forced to disgorge cash payments on those instruments.

CDO's might have assumed a few businesses to have issues making due, but not the whole sector.

Goldfish! All their videos tell a story over about 8 songs, but I am going to link a few of my favorites that I have on rotation.

Instant head-canon.

Nearly Reddit-free. It's been relaxing. Especially in light of the last couple months.

Look - stop it! OK? You too steveo

But thanks.

We need to have another three-way one of these days.

I mean Google hangouts. (ha ha)

I read this article, I tried to understand it. Honest I did. I ended up buying a cane and shaking it at the clouds and "Harrumphing" angrily. Articles like this make me so happy that I don't date. You kids are all bonkers.

The problem, I believe, is that this is a children's book that presents the true complexity of a historical situation to parents that have no basis in that complexity nor the preparedness to explain it adequately to their children. Slavery = bad is about the nuance you usually get from children's books (if you're lucky - lookin' at you, Berenstein Bears) and if there's complexity, that complexity pretty much has to be the payload of the story... not the background against which the story is set. It's a shame, but an unsurprising one.

You sure are good at finding articles that make you think the sky is falling, aren't you?

So I've never used Tinder. Probably never will. I sunset on the dating scene back when Match.com on dialup was state-of-the-art. But I've spent a lot of time counseling people, hanging out with friends, and observing this brave new world of dating. I've said it before and I'll say it again: all these apps and trends and fads and what-have-yous are about meeting, not dating. The analogy is not apt; Tinder is hot-or-not.com is, as 'Ben summarizes, bone or don't. The oppression of choice is all about the ability to compare fifteen different models across 27 metrics on seven websites, four of which offer free shipping but three of which take Paypal when the fact of the matter is, if you schlepped your ass down to Best Buy and laid hands on it, you'd discover that the remote feels like it was assembled out of returned hair dryer parts by the mentally handicapped in Bangalore.

What's happening is we're surrounding ourselves by a million different mediated experiences instead of actually experiencing choice. Who the fuck says Tinder knows what you should look for in a girl? Tinder and only Tinder. Who the fuck says Amazon knows what you should look for in a toaster? Amazon and only Amazon. But since there's no way to appify the way a pair of headphones fits on your skull, you'll spend 45 minutes cross-referencing head-fi.org with Amazon with Crutchfield with Consumer Reports with Reddit in order to buy a brand you've never heard of before (and then another 30 researching whether burn-in is real) when prior to the Internet you would have gone to Fry's and paid for the ones from a brand you trust in a color you like.

Dating is no different. There is no secret sauce. No metrics to be found that will measure whether or not you'll click with someone. It's entirely about how you collaborate and to do that, you'd best start interacting in a non-mediated environment. What the Internet has brought to the table - when it comes to human experience, or things that face the human experience - is a dizzying array of mediated pseudoenvironments to postpone the interaction you actually want.

No wonder that the people trapped in those pseudoenvironments bemoan the lack of interaction... and hearken back to the glory days when they didn't "have" to use Tinder and the like. So much easier to blame the interface than recognize that it only ever gets you to the first date anyway, try not to take it so seriously.

I got you.

So you've got these kids and they don't make nearly what their parents made when they were kids. They've got roommates, or they live at home, and they don't drive because they can Uber everywhere and their music is on Spotify on their phone and really - they don't have much in the way of possessions and their job is shit and unfulfilling and has no security and you know what? A lot of the time they're bored. They're bored, they're insecure and they aren't getting what they were promised... just like every generation of young adult males before them.

But they've got Facebook, they've got Instagram, they've got Tinder, they've got Vine, they've got Youtube. They've got a million opportunities to tell them that there is no self without self-promotion. And the people they see are not shaped like their parents, the people they see are shaped like triathletes.

But only shaped. They never compete. They never play sports. They never get together and do any of the competitive stuff that you can actually be judged on. That requires training, which requires coaching, which requires a time commitment, whereas once you've got a gym membership they charge you the same no matter when and how often you're there. Frankly, their shower is nicer than the one at home anyway and probably there's a hot tub. And chicks in yoga pants.

And you can't really afford to eat anyway and for fuck's sake you aren't going to eat like your parents because my god who can handle the carbs? Especially when a fuckin' gin and tonic is 400 calories. So what do you do?

You lift.

You train.

You work out. You certainly don't "pump iron" - only cro magnons do that shit, guys whose tendons are so shortened they can't wipe their own asses. Not you. You're just here to "stay in shape" like every other dude in your Facebook feed. Besides, you've got that Tough Mudder coming up in a month and a half and there's nothing quite so Instagramariffic as abs covered in strategically-wiped mud. Maybe Bethany will even comment on the photo.

_____________________________________________

Really, it's harmless. Probably great, actually. Kids with no money are turning inward, same as convicts do in prison. Take away their disposable income, their status signals and their materialistic possessions and all they got is them so that's what they're buffing and polishing and detailing and cruising up and down the boulevard in. When you've got the time, lookin' ripped simply demonstrates that you have the discipline.

Good on 'em. Me? I like bread and cheese too much but fuck you I'm still runnin' 9 minute miles.

Also, good job on the running! I've been taking the boys out for walks to meet my goal, it's getting me fit, it's getting them fit and gives mummy a break, so everybody wins!

We walked >4 miles, twice last week. This week I'm hoping to double that record, weather permitting!