You're not in a movie, racing against the clock to defuse something big and shiny to save the world, it's safe to take it down a notch. I've gained so much piece of mind from letting people get in front of me in traffic, not arguing over a dollar or two difference in price, not rushing or working hastily to meet the arbitrary goal of 'exactly on time' or 'to the penny'. If you aren't a church going person, this is your chance to pay your tithes in a much more constructive and objectively more direct fashion, love your fellow man...they often times need far less than 5 minutes of your time or $5.

People generally stay complacent in their position because it's comfortable, but they may be missing bigger and better opportunities.

When you are jobless and searching, you are often desperate to find anything that could fit your skills. This gives the employer all of the leverage.

If you are searching while you are currently employed, you can ask for so much more because you are "desirable." This gives you all of the leverage.

Instead of trying to similarly match your previous salary, you can make demands for 10-20% more money, more PTO, or other quality of life benefits.

If it all fails, you were in no less of a spot than if you hadn't looked.

So many times I've stayed at houses and it's very awkward to open stuff like sealed TP, milk and juice cartons, tissues in the guest room--even after being told to help myself to anything needed. I buy new or extra stuff just for guests, but open it beforehand. Rip open maxi pad/tampon packages, take toothpaste out of the cardboard, remove the foil tops from lotions, leave at least two opened boxes of tissues around, etc. It takes the weirdness out of a guest waiting until 11 am the next day to meekly ask if they can actually use it, even if they already have been told to have at it. And it makes everything run smoother when we don't have to have conversations about why they needed something.

Edit: Clarification for the people fixating on the TP part of this: Of course I open toilet paper instead of quietly sitting in my own waste for the entire weekend for the sake of politeness, spreading my filth all over the furniture. But the host doesn't have to make it weird. If there's a pallet of TP sitting on top of your dryer, break me off a piece of that, and leave it on the back of the toilet. Be kind to your guests. Leave a couple rolls out.

I once read that on flights, when they serve drinks in cups, you can ask for the whole can. Small thing, but it never occurred to me. I tried it – and it worked!

Another example: I’m currently looking for a new house. The previous owners had some really cool installations, and I was hesitant to ask if we could take them over. I did anyway – and they said yes, leaving them for dirt cheap!

Same goes for a career raise, sending an application or growth opportunities. Just ask!

The lesson? Sometimes just asking opens doors you didn’t even think about. Worst case, you hear “no.” Best case, you get something you didn’t expect!

Some people’s brains tell them that certain activities don’t take any time to complete - the “Zero Time Activity” misconception. For example:

“We need to leave the house at 09:30 to arrive at our appointment for 10:00. Good. It takes 30 minutes to get there. Good. It is now 09:30. Let’s leave the house. All we need to do now is…”

• Nip to the toilet
• Find my coat
• Find my shoes and put them on
• Find my wallet/bag and check I’ve got what I need
• Get the kids in their coats and shoes
• Get in the car, strap the kids in
• Find the address of our destination
• Program the satnav
• Drive to the destination
• Quickly stop for fuel
• Find somewhere to park
• Walk to the destination from the place parked

Everything above - in the late person’s mind - has a duration of zero seconds

It goes without saying, but ever single activity above does actually take a small amount of time which all adds up. Once you internalise the idea that there isn’t such a thing as “Zero Time Activities”, you’ll notice that you start arriving on time.

Ever been in a heated argument or faced someone who was unnecessarily aggressive? Instead of matching their energy, do the opposite & lower your voice.

People expect anger to be met with anger & when you respond calmly, it disrupts their emotional momentum.

It forces them to mirror your calmness, de-escalating the situation naturally.

It signals confidence & the most composed person in a conversation holds the most power.

Real-life example: A guy at the airport was yelling at the gate agent over a delay. Everyone around was tense. I simply said, “Hey, man, I get it, but yelling won’t fix it. What do you actually need right now?” His whole attitude changed. He sighed, nodded, and started talking normally.

My in laws were born in the 30s and the last time we had a gathering, I put on a play list of hits of the 50s. Over the course of the evening, this brought back all kinds of memories and they regaled us with stories of youth we'd never heard before. It was a delightful window into that era of their lives.

This sub has been dominated by doomers lately. It's been so annoying so yeah I'm gonna rub it in.

Yesterday the US economy was poised to go off a cliff due to tariffs. Today the tariffs have been delayed by at least 90 days. The stock market just shot up 8.5% last I checked.

The reality is events happen faster than anyone can respond to. You cannot predict the future. I personally have a broadly diversified portfolio, including international exposure. I had that pre-Trump-2.0. I still have it. I'm still buying at the same intervals I was before.

Who knows what's going to happen next. But as always, time in the market beats timing the market.

The markets are overreacting to the DeepSeek news.

Nvidia and big tech stocks losing a trillion dollars in value is not realistic.

I personally am buying more NVDA stock off the dip.

So what is going on?

The reason for the drop: Investors think DeepSeek threatens to disrupt the US big tech dominance by enabling smaller companies and cost-sensitive enterprises with an open source and low cost, high performance model.

Here is why I think fears are overblown.

Companies like Nvidia, Microsoft, and other big tech firms have massive war chests to outspend competitors. Nvidia alone spent nearly $9 billion on R&D in 2024 and can quickly adapt to new threats by enhancing its offerings or lowering costs if necessary.Nvidia’s dominance isn’t just about hardware—it’s deeply tied to its software ecosystem, particularly CUDA, which is the gold standard for AI and machine learning development. This ecosystem is entrenched in research labs, enterprises, and cloud platforms worldwide.People have to understand the risk that comes with DeepSeek coming out of China. There will be major adoption barriers from key markets as folks worry about data security, sanctions, government overreach etc.US just announced $500b to AI infrastructure via Stargate. The government has substantial resourcing to subsidize or lower barriers for brands like Nvidia.Critiques tend to fall into two camps…

Nvidias margins are going to be erodedTo this I think we have to acknowledge that while lower margins and demand would impact the stock both of these are speculative.

Increased efficiency typically increases demand. And Nvidias customers are pretty entrenched, it’s def not certain they will bleed customers.

On top of that Nvidia’s profitability isn’t solely tied to selling GPUs. Its software stack (e.g., CUDA), enterprise services, and licensing deals contribute significantly. These high-margin revenue streams I would guess are going to remain solid even if hardware pricing pressures increase.

2. Open source has a number of relative advantages

I think open source is heavily favorited by startups and indie developers (Open source is strongly favored by Reddit specifically). But the enterprise buyer doesn’t typically lean this way.

Open-source solutions require significant internal expertise for implementation, maintenance, and troubleshooting. Large enterprises often prefer Nvidia’s support and commercial-grade stack because they get a dedicated team for ongoing updates, security patches, and scalability.

This should be a basic no-brainer but everytime you see a stock go down 5% at the current price level. If it increases back by 5% it doesn't go back to its old price.

To illustrate.

10% loss needs 11% gain to return. 20% needs 25%. 30% needs 43%. 40% needs 67%. 50% needs 100%. At 90% drop your stock will need to go up by 900% to return to its old price.

Right now you're seeing NASDAQ dropping double digits and futures are down mid singles almost everyday.

The power of compounding works both ways.

It seems that everyone has become so accustomed to massive yearly gains in the stock market. If you're thinking about selling your investments after a minor drop in the market, then you really need to adjust your strategy. Maybe consider a money market fund or speaking to a financial advisor.

Everyone seems to have forgotten the risk that comes with investing. We have seen gains in the last few years that are unlikely to be repeated in the near future. There have been past periods where the market has been down over a significant number of years.

If you have time on your side and are diversified in index/mutual funds then you need to stay the course. If you have all of your money in a few individual tech stocks then you need to restrategize or stop complaining when you lose a significant amount of money.

If you are a new investor, it can be easy to get discouraged in these type of scenarios but as the market goes down, your future purchases will be at a lower price. Nothing is ever guaranteed and nothing goes up in a straight line.

Genuinely asking, not here to troll. Bitcoin has been popular for 15 years, but it still doesn’t seem to have a mainstream, everyday use. You can’t just walk into most stores and buy groceries or gas with it. Yet, every time it surges, people start calling it "the future of finance," but that future never really happens.

I keep hearing about institutional money coming in, but if it’s mostly hedge funds and whales pushing the price up, how does that make it a real currency? If regular people are just there to provide liquidity for the big dogs, how is this different from a glorified pump-and-dump?

Don't get me wrong I'm a Bitcoin fan and have been buying and selling it for years now. But I cringe everytime I hear “It’s digital gold”.. Gold has a use beyond its speculative value. It can be made into jewelry, art.. People want to have it because its a ‘real’ thing you can hold in your hands! Bitcoin's only real use is making anonymous transactions that regular humans don't usually need to make.

Am I missing something here, or is Bitcoin actually just a bigger fool scheme?

After fumbling around the woods for two years with a bow I finally got my first deer now I’ll always remember her.