Early Retirement Extreme Forums

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 09, 2023 7:56 am

"Well done, Miss Holt. What other talents have you been keeping in hiding?" The Earl's smile was warm, but his eyes remained the hard gray-blue of a gale swept ocean...

I want to read more

I knew of a once immensely wealthy Russian aristocrat who in the 1920s was living in the Waldorf Astoria as a refugee and by the 1990s was living in a council flat in South London, after eeking out a living teaching Russian at night schools. Her neighbours fondly remember her playing the piano and she was by all accounts a nice old lady who kept a certain elegance right to the end.

I agree with a few of the previous statements about how things seem to be incredibly distorted now. Things are just very weird.

Some people are ordering stuff with delivery apps, and are perfectly happy to pay a 50% markup on the menu price, plus a delivery fee, plus a tip.

This week, my partner and I went to a local independent diner, where I had a hamburger, cup of soup, and fries, and my partner had french toast, eggs, bacon, hash browns, and coffee. The service was excellent, and the total bill came to $20 and change. I consider that a bargain for "sit down restaurant service" in the current economic climate. The waitress seemed very happy to receive a $5 tip.

Over the past couple years, we've had higher inflation than I can recall ever in my life. It has had a big impact on my thought processes and behaviors - in unexpected ways. Prior to the pandemic, I was always careful and watchful with prices. I had a brain memory of what normal staple items typically cost, and I would comparison shop and look for bargains. With recent rapidly rising prices, that all went out the window. I was initially frustrated with how fast things rose in price, and the frequency with which the prices changed. Eventually, I began developing an attitude of "F--- It, I'm just buying it anyway because I want/need it, and when it comes down to it, I can afford it." For my own personal situation, that isn't the end of the world, since I have a large pool of savings and investments, and I am still employed earning one of those "large STEM salaries." But it was a big shift in my behavior.

Also in recent years, my income from wage job has increased slightly, but not enough on a percentage basis to keep pace with percentages that my own personal "CPI Basket" has raised in price.

I think we could be near some kind of economic inflection point.

chenda wrote:I want to read more

But how will you know if it was me or chatGPT? It might be fun to see if I could write a polyamorous regency romance in conjunction with chatGPT. You know, just throw the polyamory in like racial equality was thrown into Bridgerton.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 11, 2023 9:39 am

But how will you know if it was me or chatGPT?

Having already clobbered a few robo and robo+human accounts by now, it's rather easy to tell the difference between humans and the rather anodyne generalities spouted by chatGPT, at least as far as v3 goes. I may have to retract my earlier statements about passing the Turing test. Or maybe we need a reverse-Turing test to distinguish between "true" [Scotsman] humans and regular humans who are just repeating the jokes they heard on morning radio or the "research" they did on "the goggle".

ETA: I think chatGPT does a fine job on scripted human behavior. Thus if I find myself convinced in the Turing sense, maybe I should conclude that the conversation is really following a script that I would have previously been unaware of.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 11, 2023 9:39 am

But how will you know if it was me or chatGPT? It might be fun to see if I could write a polyamorous regency romance in conjunction with chatGPT. You know, just throw the polyamory in like racial equality was thrown into Bridgerton.

Haha, I enjoyed the Wideacre trilogy by Patricia Gregory, set it the early 18th century. There's no polyamory as such although the female protagonist enjoys nailing both the gamekeeper and bdsm with own brother, for reasons which are never satisfactorily explained.

7Wannabe5 wrote: ↑

Sun Jun 11, 2023 9:39 am

But how will you know if it was me or chatGPT? It might be fun to see if I could write a polyamorous regency romance in conjunction with chatGPT. You know, just throw the polyamory in like racial equality was thrown into Bridgerton.

Someone’s making a better version for novel writing (I’ve seen it decently reviewed recently but haven’t used myself) called sudowrite.

@chenda: added to my list.
@Slevin:

Interesting. Unfortunately, I have no time for anything fun due to commitment to course on the topic of network engineering, which is,IMO, an intellectual exercise akin to memorizing the repair manual for your refrigerator a month before you are going to trade it in for another.

Man, wouldn't it be cool if someone came up with a personal-scale approach to ruggedizing our lifestyles ahead of the austerities baked into the globalized future that didn't suck and in fact led to better lives? Someone should work on that..

by Axel

Man, this really sucks the fun out of complaining about inflation
But as an aspiring ERE-dude with dependants, this had been worrying me a lot. The basic stuff costs a lot more and I have been losing the game pretty badly. The salaries hare are 1) way lower than in the States and 2) taxes are higher and still 3) prices are almost as bad. Now we lost the zero-interest advantage as well. I got to little less than 30 % SR so I am far from the decent ERE-crowd and closer to average consumer.

Noe the inflaation sucks away that savings rate at alarming speed. The interest hikes alone take more than 10 % of my net savings...

TopHatFox wrote: ↑

Tue May 02, 2023 6:35 pm

@axelheyst - Yes, Aldi or Costco is usually best. But dang, ppl in the 90’s could go get a burger + fries at a middle of the road restaurant and it was $10, a similar price to the Aldi route now. I suppose it’d be different if salaries went up too, but they don’t seem to have. I remember MMM mentioned his first coding job paid 70k 20 yrs ago, and that’s still what most of the entry-level ones pay today (if not 60k). So, yes, developing skills is becoming less and less a cool thing we do, and more of a thing regular ppl will need to adopt

Best place to get value for $ if you don’t feel like cooking seems to be Chinese or Japanese Buffet. $15 for all you can eat, and a lot of it isn’t unhealthy

I do not think most entry level software engineering jobs pay 70k. Most of my 2019 graduating got 104-150k. One friend did not get one and finally got an offer and took a 70k job at the last minute to keep his visa. We felt TERRIBLE for him. California minimum wage for computer professionals is 112k.

https://hnemploymentlaw.com/2022/12/02/ ... ry-1-2023/