kpwagner

Something has always bugged me about DoorDash. It just seems so wasteful. What does it take to get a chicken sandwich, fries, and a drink to my door? I've never pinpointed the waste, but intuitively, it just feels like there is waste at every point along the chain. So, I've only used the service once--with a gift card.

I have to admit, as a business, DASH has exceeded my expectations. 50% gross margins, high growth, and they recently posted a net profit--barring accounting fuckery. The ratio of sales & marketing to revenue is almost reasonable; I once grouped DASH with sportsbooks as "detrimental sales spend to keep a narrative going... will not end well." In the long run, if the mission is "get food to you conveniently", technology can do amazing things with time.

All of this is a little off topic. Regarding the Klarna partnership, yeah it's a dangerous service that will get misused while having a few beneficial uses. But that's basically all of consumer finance. All consumer debt is some shade of gray, good to bad.

Cool! I'll play with it more... when I'm not at work.

Suggestion: more keyboard shortcuts: find/replace, delete line to name a few. Eventually you could allow customization and/or selecting different pre-configs (e.g. Vim, VS Code).

Haha! I had a similar reaction when I started reading Taleb. You might checkout Antifragile, which offers a more positive view of randomness. It's easy to get a dire impression from Taleb, but to use his words, "don't read it *too* well." If you really dig into Taleb, specifically Skin in the Game, he is a proponent of risk-taking: his closing statements in Skin in the Game include "Start a business."

I don't even try to summarize Taleb anymore. I used to try, then I kept hearing Taleb's voice in my head calling me an imbecile.

I'm not usually a nut for accessibility, but you make a good point. Using semantic HTML tags and a few other basic best practices (e.g. alt/title attributes, sufficient color contrast) goes a long way.

I get that, but they want to collect your email to improve marketing. If the product is strong enough it may not matter. Practically speaking, I think getting user signup info is pretty important.

I think this really varies from person to person.

I re-read maybe 5% of books, and I tend to get a lot out of re-reading. Nassim Taleb said something like "if it's not worth re-reading, it was not worth reading in the first place".

My re-watch rate on movies and TV series is much higher, probably 85% of movies I will watch more than once. TV series, maybe 50%.

Some people just read or watch and never care to think much about it after. That's cool too; doesn't hurt me any.

In the month it will take me to finish reading Storm of Swords, I will watch ~10 movies. Plus, I'm reading Storm of Swords, which needs no additional support from readers to be discovered or validated--though I still want to read it. Plus, I digitally loaned it from my local library.

I own a number of books (~200) and have probably owned x4 that total in my lifetime. Maybe 1/3 of those I paid full price for new. The rest I sourced either cheap on Ebay or about free from second-hand stores. I've spent probably less than $4,000 total on books, not counting textbooks, while being in the minority of people who buy and read books.

I don't really know where I'm going with this, but the question that comes to mind is something like this: how many people like me does it take to support one professional writer?

Non-fiction writers are way more likely to have other income sources than fiction writers. For example, I'm reading Marketing Made Simple (Donald Miller), which was free with Amazon Prime. I'm quite sure Donald Miller and his company are not sweating how much money they get from a Prime reader: getting anyone to read their book strengthens their overall sales funnel.

The greater the edge, the more you can bet on one occurrence. Easier to understand if you look at binary events: double your bet with a win, lose your bet with a loss.

I agree with previous reply. Don't squander your potential because you think it's too late. I empathize; I had a related experience. After failing at my first career out of school, I was broken an aimless. At 30 I found myself working in construction, which was not a good fit for me in many ways. Also, working 70 hrs/week for $30k/year didn't make me feel highly valued. Now, I'm 36 and a few years into a career as a software engineer. Strangely, I feel I have so much more opportunity ahead of me now than I did 10 years ago. Even more strange, I kind of feel bad for people my age who are professionally and financially successful, but don't have a clue what they want to do next: maybe they have golden handcuffs; maybe they just never really took the time to explore the world or know themselves. They have no businesses they want to start, no books they want to write. I'm sure some people look at me and see a loser, but that's true of everyone, so who gives a fuck?

Should media coverage accurately reflect what we die from? I don't think so. Cause of death is not the only reason to be interested in terrorism, homicide, and suicide. These charts are eye-candy, and while I respect the work that went into producing them, I believe they are simply trying to spin a story instead of addressing the title's topic.

Broadcast radio automation.

The emphasis on the word "narrative" is a little odd to me. In the book "The Everything Store", Brad Stone, the author, describes an awkward encounter with Bezos: one of the first questions Bezos asked Stone was "with this book, how are you going to avoid the narrative fallacy." The narrative fallacy basically means crafting stories where there should be none (e.g. interpreting data with a neat reason that seems plausible, while the reason may be completely wrong and is not proven by the data). See Nassim Taleb for more on the narrative fallacy.

You don't need to be ashamed of your addiction history. Personally, I wouldn't be touting it unnecessarily either though--in most cases it's not their business.

There are several options for consolidating debt, but beware. You don't want to be skipping from one master to another. YouTube some Dave Ramsey videos. It's up to you what kind of financial future you want. I decided I want to have no debt, except maybe a manageable home mortgage at some point. You have to figure out what's right for you and chart the course. That way, the results will be entirely owned by you.

That's true. I misread the chart anyway, so it isn't necessarily saying anything about debt levels.

Yes, I see that now. Not nearly so dire--but still bad.

Federal debt and surface temperature charts are telling because they include 20+ year projections periods--and of course those projections are dire (and bullshit). It's clear the story this "opinion columnist" (bullshit artist) is trying to craft.

To me, net worth by age group is the troubling chart. If I read this correctly, median net worth for all age groups under 44 years old is significantly negative. The scale isn't clear since the chart is indexed. What do you think is the source of so much debt? My guess: student loans and home mortgages.

Fret not. I was a naive emphatic workaholic my first two years out of college--working as an investment banking analyst. It's taken me ten years to figure out that I wasn't honest with myself (or others) about what I wanted, and I've paid a price.

Wow, that comment took a real turn at the mention of heroin--haha. Good for you, no bs. I have no doubt it will be a long-term struggle, but stay on the path. I can only relate with my "addiction" to video games, which has similarities, but I admit is not the same. Don't let that debt get you down. Pay it off and get clear. You have so much time.

If you have a consulting side-hustle, you must have something financially valuable to offer the marketplace--which is more than most 23 year olds can say. If you need support, please seek it out. Our world needs as many people with their act together as we can get. So I'm rooting for you!

Honesty and self-awareness. I'll take those over naive emphatic workaholism.

Yes, and "don't hurt people". Worse, I don't even think those are sufficient as guiding principles. In the real world many ethical situations are not best solved by being nice or refusing to hurt someone.

How about not hurting people unnecessarily? One might say, "well, bots are not necessary, so they shouldn't ever hurt someone." If they aren't necessary, then why make them to begin with? Besides, there is no end to what someone else may determine to be hurtful. I won't play the game of trying to avoid all that is hurtful to everyone else.

The article mentions a bot using racial slurs as something to avoid. Depending on the execution, this could be distasteful at best--assuming the intention of the creator was to have the bot use these slurs. But the use of slurs by bots has largely been unintended by my reckoning. So, you are telling me someone is genuinely hurt by a malfunctioning bot using a racial slur? That says a lot more about the user than it does the creator.

I'm not a subscriber of WSJ, so I can only read the first paragraph. Based on the headline and the first paragraph, I don't see the problem. Wouldn't WeWork have to lease the space from someone? Why is it a problem if that someone is the CEO of WeWork? If WeWork is paying above market rent, then sure, that is corrupt.

A lot of people hop on the band-wagon of bashing "rent-seeking", mostly misusing the term in the process, confusing rent-seeking with leasing/renting land or capital. WeWork's whole business is built on renting as far as I can tell.

I remember hearing one of the founders talking about users trading stocks. He explained their data shows people get better at trading stocks with more experience. I can't remember the source, but I think it was on This Week in Startups podcast. This is really suspect--kind of like a casino telling blackjack players they will get better the more they play.

If Robinhood is incentivizing or encouraging frequent trading by users, that's not really good in my opinion. It doesn't make them worse than other brokerages, but it doesn't make them better either. And with a name like Robinhood, they are positioning themselves as white knights.

For soapmaking the efficiency difference between palm oil and coconut oil is practically the same. If you are talking about oil production efficiency, I don't know.

Not offended. It's true. I don't care enough to make a change. This is partly because I use such a small amount of palm oil--maybe 200lbs annually--so my impact is minimal. Deforestation from palm oil production has been in the back of my mind for years. So far, my customers don't care as far as I can observe. I'm glad to see a big company taking a stand and informing consumers in the process. It's making me think about changing. Removing palm oil is not an option in my mind, but I might pay up for sustainable palm oil.

Yes, exactly. Handmade soaps are rarely made from a single oil. I use a blend of palm, coconut, avocado, and castor. What oils you use and what percentage each oil represents in the composition, determines the base properties of the soap. I experimented with many compositions to get to my current recipe that I really like.

You can get "sustainably produced" palm oil. https://www.soaperschoice.com/palm-oil

The cost is higher. I don't use the sustainably produced oil now. When all is said and done, it might increase my unit cost by ~15%--which is manageable really since unit margins are decent. The reason I don't use it is about 1 part Scrooge McDuck and 3 parts skepticism/cynicism. Without a relationship with the actual producers, I don't know what "sustainably produced" actually means.

They are comparable in my experience. When selecting oils for soap, the type of acid is the major factor. I am only aware of two palmitic acids in oil form: palm and lard.

I make and sell handmade soap with palm oil, among other oils. Unfortunately, palm is a special oil, and palmitic acid is an important part of the oil comp to produce a good bar. The only substitute is lard. While I don't mind using soap made from lard, it has a stigma in the marketplace (i.e. non-vegan, gross).

I wasn't aware of that. Thanks.