I was thinking today about the idea of sticking all of the most important financial advice onto a 3×5 note card. A few ideas came to mind. Pay off high interest debt as soon as possible (high interest > 8%) but not low interest debt if the alternative is investing in higher interest assets Take …
Author Archives: stidmatt
Ukraine in context
The official visuals of Ukrainians blocking Africans from getting on trains. #AfricansinUkraine pic.twitter.com/hJYpM3LY0A — Damilare (Deechi) (@DamilareArah) February 26, 2022 I saw this tweet today and naturally it got me thinking about how racism in our society is constantly perpetuated in all spheres of our modern world. People are very good at othering others. We …
Peace is a policy choice
Today saw the launching of the largest war in Europe since 1945. We must keep track of why there was so much peace in Europe over the last 77 years. It wasn’t because the leaders of Europe were all angels, some of them (particularly Stalin) were truly terrible people. It was because there was a …
Experience is complicated
There is a tendency in technology nowadays to require x years of experience in some technology in order to get a job when you start out. I am fortunately past that stage myself, and have observed why the current conventional wisdom is foolish, and we need to move to a different hiring paradigm. Let’s say …
Common Python pitfalls
Here are mistakes I have observed which lead to broken code. Python is not Java, C, or C++ and needs to be treated as its own language. Treating it with the same syntax is a sure fire way to make broken code. Java and Python are both object-oriented languages. French and Italian are both Romance …
What does International Relations teach us about Ukraine?
The world stands on a precipice right now. The question is whether Democracy will stand or whether it will fall. Russia is massing troops on the border with Ukraine, threatening a war (it’s the only reason a state ever does this military maneuver, let’s be honest) and now its NATO’s turn to act. There are …
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Potential Supreme Court nominees
Biden has announced he will appoint an African American woman to SCOTUS. This will be the first time there are no liberal men on SCOTUS for at least 90 years and the first time there is gender parity among Associate Justices. Here are the nominees. She has to be under 55 to be a serious …
Ukraine Russia game theory
I was watching this video and they showed us this graph from game theory The answer the video said is that the US should do appeasement because of some multiplication, which isn’t how game theory works, so we will ignore that part of the video. You go down the tree. The highest score for the …
Will America defend NATO?
Following the end of the Second World War, relations between Josef Stalin and the rest of the world declined rapidly. Russia is by far the largest country in Europe today, and the Soviet Union was bigger still. Western Europe feared an invasion from Russia, and President Harry Truman understood that if we didn’t defend Western …
Student loans are different
When you go through bankruptcy, most of your loans can be discharged. This comes at a big cost to you of course, in the form of a significantly reduced credit score, making it near impossible to borrow at a reasonable interest rate for the next 7 years, but they can be discharged and give you …