I’ve been reflecting on what I’ve accomplished this past year, and while I read several books that were great, I also feel that I didn’t focus enough on the books I had, as several remain unfinished. Most interesting of these books were a few I had on the Tibetan language. After my first trip to […]
Category: Economics
Escape Velocity: Getting Your Savings to Actually Work for You
When I was in high school and college, I was “good” with money. I spent very little on myself, never bought things like DVDs or other entertainment media, and rarely bought expensive things. But strangely, this was never enough. Despite saving most of my birthday and Christmas money, my first semester of college wiped out […]
Brief Thoughts on Engine Rebuilds
I would love to learn how to rebuild an engine. I think it would be an excellent educational experience. But it’s also not to be taken lightly, as it requires space and several very specialized tools, such as an engine stand and a valve spring compressor, to name just a few. It has occurred to […]
Downsizing the Lego Collection
I think this is a good case study in downsizing. I told myself this past year that I’d like to do one or two Lego projects, somewhere along the lines of finishing a mech I started building years ago and maybe building a house or two based on designs from the 1920s. Neither has happened. […]
Food Part 1: The Economics of Emergency Food
Many years ago, my dad bought me a box of freeze-dried emergency meals. This box expired in 2019, and while I had planned to get rid of it in 2020, the pandemic convinced me to hold onto it a little longer. But it’s been several years now, and it got me researching emergency food. First […]
The Myth of the Eternal Beater Car
There is a general category of urban legend that features beater cars that simply never die. Many of these urban legends revolve around Hondas and Toyotas from the 1990s, even spawning the great “1999 Toyota Corolla – Fine AF” post on Craigslist. Many people have anecdotes of older cars seeming to last forever, or stories […]
The Importance of Owning Less
My parents moved out of state this past week. I wrote up a rather large rant on the subject, but after taking a few days to clear my thoughts, I decided to rewrite it into something maybe a little more useful. Nobody ever moves and thinks, “Wow, I’m glad I have all this stuff!” And […]
The Protestant Stupid Ethic Part 2: The World is Complicated
Years ago I ranted about how the so-called “protestant work ethic” is largely bullshit in this post. But now, I’d like to revisit a few key ideas. First, let me talk about getting hassled in Thamel. It was my last day in Nepal, but most shops in Pokhara had been closed, and now, back in […]
Life Lessons from a Failed Museum
I can’t remember the train of thought that led me to this, but just recently I wondered what happened to the Wildlife Experience, a museum that used to be in Parker, Colorado. Despite living not far from there for a time, I never actually went. I knew they had opened the building up for college […]
Buy and Hold: Various Thoughts on Investments
Economic predictions of doom have flooded every news site, it seems. I’m not too worried about the conditions in the US, but I think China might be going through its own version of our 2008 soon, as their housing market collapsed and they’re now seeing several bank runs. Sounds familiar. But all of the crypto […]