See Also: Apple Vision users after playing Fruit Ninja for the first time.

Not only that, but SP500 pays dividends practically every year, whereas gold costs money to store securely. $15M in SP500 would have netting something around $300k last year in dividends alone.

"imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up"

Like property taxes, then. ;-)

Realistically, I understand the issue. If I had to pay taxes on the increase in price on my house (say from a $300k valuation three years ago to a $500k valuation after the market bubble), I'd be fucked to find 15% of that overnight. Of course, if they allowed that to be offset by the primary residence exemption, it would be a zero cost. Without that, it would still be a non-issue for 95% or more of US taxpayers because most people simply don't own an illiquid asset that increases in capital value (much less an international one), and if you exclude secondary real estate that non-issue number probably increases to more then 99.9%.

The article makes it sound like someone bought the place and jacked up the monthly maintenance fee by $5000 just because “fuck you.”

Well, given that they bought in under the lump-sum + maintenance model and have somehow been "upgraded" to the rental model, that's exactly what happened. It would be like buying a home and then the old owner coming back and saying, "you know what, I could get more money renting this place - you have to pay rent now." These people likely sold their house and used that money to buy into the community - essentially paying for the right to use the building until they die. It's common in CCRC facilities (continuing care retirement community). You essentially pay for the plant and then pay maintenance, and they guarantee that they will have a spot for you in their care facility as you need more assistance (Independent living -> Assisted Living -> Nursing and/or Memory Care - Hospice). It's much like a reverse mortgage in that you "buy" your "home" and get to live in it until you die, at which point the deed is turned over with your heirs getting nothing. Except that in this case you don't get a monthly payment; instead you pay a fee for the facility services which is free of a rent cost. As you move up in care, the fee gets larger to cover the additional services (additional meals, personal assistance, and ultimately nursing care), but it's just for utilities and services - your payment covers the physical buildings. As you move up, people behind you buy in and that money is used for (CEO bonuses) maintenance and updates to the buildings. Many of these are "non-profits" so the extra money technically isn't for profit, but there are lots of corporate mouths to feed in CCRCs and they find ways to distribute the money.

It's self-promotion and is taught at all the top MBA schools.

49.3% say it refers to meeting financial obligations and having some money left over each month. About 54.2% define it as living debt-free, and 46.2% believe it means never having to worry about money.

I'm going to ignore that pesky 100% thing for the moment. Apparently we can't even agree on what "Financial Freedom" means. Defining the metric you're polling seems pretty critical if you want a consistent or useful answer. "Over half" is still burying the lede, though - less than one in ten fall into their personal version of that 150% noted above. Aside from the "American families are financially fucked" though, I'm not sure there's any hard data to extract from this.

--

"Peter don't ya call me cause I just can't go; I owe my soul to the company store."

This is logically efficient from a technical standpoint, but from a practical perspective is a terrible idea. You're only getting 2-2.5x th energy storage out of the process, but in return you're effectively requiring that the entire fluid system be isolated from the environment. Toxicity aside, you can't do anything with the fluid outside of the system. It's probably not something you want local fauna drinking, nor do you want even the slightest chance of this leaking into the local aquifers. I presume that, if it's not fully isolated, the fluid mix balance would have to be adjusted to offset evaporation of the water. And if the plant turns out not to be as great at you hoped hat do you do with the fluid?

Some numbers - a quick google says "According to Ofgem, the typical household in Britain uses approximately 2,900 kWh of electricity annually." I'm going to round that up to 8kWh/day. For a small village of, say, 1250 homes and a three day storage capacity, that's 30MWh. 1MJ (MWs) is 1000kg (one metric ton) stored at 100m - the upper end of this project. Since 3600 seconds per hour x 1MWs = 1 MWh, and we want 30, that's 1MT x 3600 x 30 = 108,000 Metric Tons of this high density liquid needed for a small project to put a 3 power day buffer in place for a town of 1250 houses. WTF are you going to do with 108,000 metric tons of high-density fluid if you decide is isn't working? Your reservoir would only need to be 25% bigger (wider, longer, and deeper/taller) to just do the whole thing with water and you wouldn't need to figure out how to get 3500 full size tanker trucks to transport it all away somewhere for a different project for for de-slurry processing.

First rule of finding yourself in a hole: Stop Digging.

A substantial fraction of their base is his cult now, and the Republicans know that they cannot win without his support. Ultimately they will bow to his will because the parts of the party which have not been utterly brainwashed realize that it is currently their only path to victory, no matter how distasteful that is.

And for that price I'll jump through some minor hoops to get them onto my Steam Deck.

We do need one, but Americans, as well as many other friendly countries, have what is called "Visa on Arrival" which means that you are automatically afforded a Tourist visa just for the asking and you can get it when you arrive at the country. It's easy for Americans, who hold one of the strongest passports in the world, to forget that that visa process for many people can be a long and expensive one, even for something as seemingly mundane as tourism.

This basically adds a "pre-authorization" step once every 3 years to make sure you're not an axe murderer or fall into any other ne'er-do-well category so they don't have to watch you pitch a fit at immigration when you get denied entry.

Edit: I'll add that I pay $100 every five years (Global Entry) so that I can get back into the US on my return flight with as little friction as possible.

The X, in this context, is pronounced like "sh" right?