Early Retirement Extreme Forums

I'm wondering whether a 1-dimensional table is the best format here. Beyond stage 3, it involves two people each at their own stage. Later stages potentially even more :-P . Getting into the nitty-gritty of matrices and tensors would void the useful parsimony of a table, but how you explain stage N ...

It could be one of those strange opportunities that would have never appeared had we not pressed reset. Brilliant! I think it's also a connection that wouldn't have happened if Mrs Ego hadn't (spontaneously?) mentioned the possibility. Ultimately, it's about control, access, and optionality. Lunch ...

I somehow suspect that this song is a about me ... One of the (lifetime) challenges handed to [gifted] INTJs is to learn how to suffer fools gladly. Of all the temperaments, INTJs will have the hardest time with that, because Fe is so deeply burried in the stack (7th) that it's hard to appreciate ot...

I do hope that someone would edit the wikipedia article, since wikipedia-rules bars people from self-editing. However, I told the fact-checker that the whole "father"-reference thing is pretty rare and that it kinda diminishes the generations that came before. They ignored it and wrote it ...

I used to say that I was a writer, but since I don't publish much at all anymore---even if I type a lot of words---calling myself a writer sounds a bit pretentious. I tried the "I collect interest and dividends" a few times, but some people just thought I was "in between jobs". T...

Is it possible for you to share those 5500 words? I would like to know more! The author/editor were already set on the fatFIRE angle, so it was mostly me pushing back on the idea that fatFIRE is not taking over the world, and there's more to FIRE than a bunch of tech-bros pretending to be frugal an...

ETA2: I guess I don’t really know the difference between wanting to get a black belt because black belt and wanting to get better, improve, grow, become more authentically the best version of myself etc. Internally it feels like I pursue the latter, but I am always suspicious that I’m fooling mysel...

Speedrunning is more of an overall strategy/approach of attempting to progress through the WLs as rapidly as possible. Not necessarily bad, but frought with risk (skipping steps and tripping). The danger of trying to go fast is in not actually achieving unconscious competence at certain skills and ...

Fun tangent: I once visited a Little Free Library in NY which aside from the usual free books also had a box with various school-level math puzzles and science experiments. Kinda like how other LFLs sometimes offer small bags of seeds, postcards, bookmarks, ... except this was small bags of STEM ori...

That sounds amazing - basically an UBI scheme for old people. I'm guessing most countries aren't as generous as Denmark though. It depends #TANSTAAFL If you're single w/o any savings, you should be able to haul in $2000/month AFTER tax. Average cost of living in Denmark is roughly the same as the a...

I have fond memories of my science teacher cutting up lumps of potassium and throwing them in water. But I fear the health and safety people will have a lot to say about that and it won't be favourable. Me too. I bet that the legal profession has had some boring impact on school science experiments...

Weird. That link worked for me. Perhaps it was only free for the first few hours.

@7wb5 - I may be using academic metaphors---because I have an academic background, although in this case I was using a cooking metaphor. What I'm pushing is essentially https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model_of_hierarchical_complexity ... WL5 - MHC 11 (optimization is the peak of analytical thought) WL...

A Van de Graaff generator combined with someone's long hair was always a hit.

Also potato batteries. You can have them try with different fruits and vegetables. See who can make the light shine the brightest.

I've previously thought that what you are describing in WL9 here actually took place in the transition from WL6 to WL7. Possibly earlier at WL 3-5. @theanimal, @ego, and @C40 talk about this in the thread linked above, noting that some members have naturally focused on developing an integrated syst...

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/07/magazine/retire-early-saving.html I wrote 5500 words in response to the interview question, which boiled down to about 50 words in the article. I never learn :-P Hopefully, though, it did help to steer the tone somewhat away from the "rich tech-bro" examp...

Ah, if you can't tell the difference between the programming and yourself then you're going to have trouble finding purpose. Other way around. Once you can tell the difference, you may want to program your own purpose and that programming is much harder. But perhaps I'm just presuming that anyone w...

Hypothesis:
WL8 - Changing the system from within.
WL9 - Changing the system from without by connecting with other systems.

https://www.amazon.com/Boyd-Fighter-Pil ... 0316796883

An @AH favorite. I think he qualifies.

What are you learning to deal with ill health in older age? I'm still just middle-aged. However, when I was younger, I had the benefit of having regular long conversations with a middle-aged athlete while commuting to weekend warrior activities. I'm only going to be repeating what you already see i...