I’m convinced that Damon Baehrel is a semi-fake restaurant. Like, it’s real, but doesn’t actually take reservations or serve real guests, and the owner/chef lies about everything in order to seem more mysterious.

This article from 2016 lays out the case.

So I don’t think it’s a particularly good example of fine dining, as it’s doing a lot of things different from a normal restaurant that is open to members of the public.

This reminds me of the boy who cried wolf. Eventually the boy cries wolf too many times, townspeople stop listening to the boy, and stop responding to the cries.

The way we tell it, though, is that the boy is falsely crying wolf each time. And the townspeople eventually learn their lesson and stop responding.

One hypothetical that I always think about is what if the boy is correct each time, and there really is a wolf every time? Well, I think the townspeople would eventually grow numb to the cries and stop responding anyway, and kinda leave the boy to fend for himself because they’re sick of helping him. We’d see the same result even if the boy did nothing wrong.

James Cameron has a history of making great things happen with a low budget, and spending millions responsibly to actually make a positive difference in big budget films.

is a “B-movie” now?

Did you not read the article? It was regarded as a B-movie when it came out: a low-budget sci-fi slasher/horror film. Arnold referred to it as a B-movie when asked about it on the set of Conan the Barbarian (which had 3 times the budget as Terminator). The New York Times referred to it as a B-movie in its review, as discussed by this article, which is also why the headline uses quotes around “B-movie.”

I told the magic mirror a thousand times, I never wanted to meet a girl in person! I just wanted a corpse. You can’t disappoint a corpse! I hate you magic mirror!

Yeah, I understand the article to be saying that the Hitachi contract is for the train control system, including the software and equipment necessary for the operation of the train underground. The broader system upgrades include communications systems between trains and stations. At least how I read it.

No, the $212 million includes the entire upgrade (and 20 years of support) of the automatic train control system. The full $700 million plus is for the overall modernization of multiple systems.

pulled right from the fuckin court documents

The “court documents” are filings by the parties. You’re summarizing litigation documents filed by Twitter, in a motion to dismiss, which is a phase of litigation before either side comes forward with any evidence.

The court hasn’t ruled on anything, so you’re just repeating statements that one side has claimed. I’m pointing out that the other side is claiming the opposite.

The suing company isn’t going off anything but fucking assumptions.

They’re not required to come forward with evidence (and litigation procedure doesn’t even give them much of an opportunity to come forward with evidence at this stage). What they have come forward with is literally sealed by the court, so unless you’re leaking confidential court documents you don’t have any idea of what they’re claiming. Take a look at the docket.

If you’re going to be aggressive in this comment section, at least learn the very basics of the thing you’re being aggressive about. It’s clear you don’t know the basics of this type of litigation, so it might help if you show some intellectual humility, take a step back, and let the knowledgeable people actually weigh in, to be able to evaluate the publicly filed documents in an informed way. Whatever it is you’re doing instead, looks pretty bad.

There was no purchasing contract in place when the suing company placed the $20 million dollar order they are claiming is all custom made and cant be recouped, “the social media platform had not made any firm purchase order when the server dealer went ahead with its purchases and deliveries.”

You’re leaving out that the paragraph you’re summarizing starts off with “X claims that.”

One side says there was a contract. The other side says it wasn’t firmed up yet into a binding contract. Neither side has come forward with their evidence.

Also, Wiwynn is also suing for negligent misrepresentation and promissory estoppel, which don’t require a contract.

I wonder about the discrepancy in the line for Met in Bar or Restaurant though, the 2010 upward trend in that is totally absent in the OP image.

The caption for OP’s image says that stat was “cleaned up” to adjust for people meeting online. That could mean that some survey respondents met online and decided to meet in person in a bar or restaurant, and answered yes to both questions, and that those couples should be counted as “online” only.

Or it could mean they were actively swiping while at a bar or restaurant and looked up to see matches they’ve been recommended.

In earlier generations more people didn’t even go to college. If you’re in the 70% of silent generation that never went to college, you’re certainly not going to meet a spouse there. Especially if you attended a university that was only for one gender.

When I was dating in the late 2000’s and early 2010’s, I remember adding dates as friends on Facebook, somewhere around the first date, specifically to be able to get a sense of their personality/background/interests, and to show off mine, even for people I met in person.

It wasn’t online dating through a dating app, but online presence was still a huge part of the actual process.

Even before that, in the early 2000’s, I remember stuff like AIM profiles that could at least link to photo albums that show off things that you’ve done recently. And even then having always-on broadband Internet, to where we’d be logged into AIM or ICQ, was its own flex.

The number of people who are partnered vs single is 70%. If 60% of those met via dating apps, that’s 42% of the total.

You’re still not slicing thin enough.

If 60% of the couples who got together in 2022 met on dating apps, and people who got together in 2022 constitute 5% of all couples, that’s still possible (and probable), then those couples will still only be 3% of the total. Pretty easy to add up to 11% that way when you start including all the 10-year-old relationships, the 20-year-old relationships, etc.

If it were flat at 60% for all years then no, it wouldn’t add up.

But if you look at the area under the curve, it’s still pretty small comparatively speaking because it’s such a recent phenomenon. (And not every year would actually count equally for the whole data set, but it’s displayed in this chart as every year adding up to 100% for its own year.)

About half of those under 30 (53%) report having ever used a dating site or app

Yes, but that’s a bigger denominator, and includes single people, and even those who have never been on a date. The headline question is what percent of couples met through different methods, not what percent of individuals, including those who are not currently in a couple.

So it doesn’t make sense that more people would have met their current partner through a dating app than have ever used one.

It could be that a higher percent of couples met online than the percent of people who have ever used online dating. If you have a data set where online dating is literally the only way to meet people, but only half of the people are trying that method, you’d have the situation where 100% of couples met online but only 50% of people have ever tried online dating (this hypothetical is purely to demonstrate the math, not claiming that this is in any way a reflection or the actual data).

It’s entirely possible (and I’d argue is likely) that the 53% who have used dating services are more likely to be in couples than the 47% who haven’t. And so that larger subset of the 47% would therefore be excluded in the “percent of couples” data.

mostly I’m just bothered by the apparent lack of any way to confirm the authenticity of the graph and its relationship to the source material

The 2019 paper I’ve linked is authored by the maintainers of the linked data set, and contains a very similar graph with an earlier cutoff (2017 data). I’m sure those authors know their data set. It’s just most of their papers using this data is paywalled, and the data is mainly used for other types of analyses.

If I have time I might be able to download the data set from a computer and just map it either naively or by applying the correct weights.

but the study they are citing doesn’t seem to confirm anywhere close to the 60% figure, it seems to be saying 11.5% instead

I think you’ve linked the variable of all couples regardless of when they got together. If 11.5% of all couples met online, whether they met in 2023 or 1975, then that doesn’t actually disprove the line graph (which could be what percentage of couples who met in that particular year met through each method).

The researchers who maintain the data set you’ve linked published an analysis of the 2017 data showing that it was approaching 40% towards the most recent relationships being formed, in 2017. I could believe that post-covid, the trends have approached 60%.

Yeah, one night stands can turn into lasting relationships. I know a decent number of married couples who met in zero-commitment contexts, whether it’s a hookup from a bar or while on vacation in a tourist town or things like that. Or even meeting on a hookup-oriented app that somehow turned into a not-just-for-hookups service after becoming acquired by Match, but during the phase when it was most definitely mainly for no-strings hookups.

Yeah, I’m not going to pretend like I’m good with money. I’m not. I have a decade of experience of being a young adult on a tight budget to know that’s not one of my strengths. I wasn’t great at stretching each dollar to its most efficient use. And I still am not.

I won’t speak on whether student loans are worth it. I think, like everything, it depends. I think a bachelor’s degree is definitely worth the cost (both in tuition and time), but it might still be worth doing it cheaper if there’s a cheaper path available.

Or are you just speaking about cash reserves?

Yes. Cash reserves are like unused RAM to me: I have it, so I might as well put it to work. If it turns out I need it somewhere else, I can always go rearrange things to make that possible.

Realistically, I think I’m rich because my wife and I both have strong ability to command high salaries, switch jobs, etc., even in a pretty severe downturn. The main things that might tank the value of that expected future cash flow are disability or death, and we at least insure against those.

We also only need one of our two incomes to support our lifestyle, so we have a certain resilience that just comes from having that buffer. At our current ages, we also already have substantial retirement savings, so we have some resilience there, too.

What’s your relationship or philosophy with money?

A life-changing shift to my approach has been to worry about absolute amounts rather than percentages. Saving $10 on a $20 item feels great but ultimately is the same thing as saving $10 on a $500 item (which feels like nothing).

I grew up lower middle class: never had to worry about not having a roof over my head, but there were times we were somewhat food insecure, and spending money on leisure/entertainment or anything unnecessary for survival was a foreign concept until I got to high school and some my parents’ career moves paid off and put us in upper middle class. It took them a good 10+ years before they could relax a little bit and feel secure with their money, though, and that was as much driven by the fact that their kids were adults who had moved out.

So life has been about deciding which of my parents’ frugal attitudes and approaches to money to keep and which to discard.

Things I decided not to adopt:

• I slowly learned to stop caring as much about wasted food. Food is just cheaper now compared to when I was growing up (even if the last 5 years has shown an uptick), and as a society we have more issues with obesity than hunger, so cleaning off a plate seems like it doesn’t actually do that much good.
• My time is worth something to me. I will gladly pay the few dollars here and there for convenience.
• I’m glad I ignored my parents advice to buy a home as soon as I could and build equity or whatever. I rented and it worked out great for me, giving me the flexibility to make changes at different stages of my life.

Things I kept:

• Life is uncertain. Always be prepared with whatever you can accumulate for financial resilience: cash, other property, lines of credit, marketable job skills, literal insurance policies, etc. Don’t underestimate the importance of personal relationships, whether it’s “credit” from friends and family who can help you out of a bind, colleagues who can refer work to you, bosses who will fight for your career, etc.
• Develop your career. Education and credentials are important early on, and up-to-date skills and a good understanding of the landscape in your field (both in the type of job and the type of industry you work in), plus solid relationships with people, can help you know when switching jobs is right for you.

Things I had to learn on my own:

• Life is unfair. Many types of unfairness are systematic. So why not position yourself to where the unfairness works in your favor, if available?
• Higher income makes it easier to survive mistakes on the spending side. To flip around Ben Franklin’s quote, a penny earned is a penny saved.
• Know yourself and your own laziness. Set up automatic functions wherever possible: automatic bill pay, automatic savings, automatic investments, etc. Steer away from any strategy that requires active management, and towards strategies that tend towards a set it and forget it philosophy.

I’ve also made a shitload of mistakes, some of them pretty costly, especially back in my 20’s:

• Paid probably thousands in credit card interest in my early 20’s chasing lifestyle bullshit.
• Paid thousands in unnecessary car loan interest in my mid 20’s by getting suckered by a dealer.
• Paid hundreds, maybe thousands, in late fees and interest from forgetting deadlines to pay shit I actually already had the money on hand for.

I’m rich now, most of it from luck (especially timing), much of it from personal relationships (good family, good marriage, good friends), some of it from actual effort (good grades from a good law school), and some of it from conscious decisions to steer towards my strengths and away from my weaknesses (lazy but smart, prototypical “gifted” slacker with undiagnosed ADHD).

It took a while to get here, though, and I was financially insecure well into my 30’s. Sorta figured shit out then, and then married someone who complements me pretty well on these things, and covers my blind spots.

For the extra brave ones: how much savings do you have, and what are you planning to do with them?

I have some savings, and it’s an emergency fund. It’s representing 1-2 months of typical spending, that could be stretched to 3-4 months if I needed to stop the frivolous spending. But I have credit beyond that, and less liquid assets I’d be able to tap into if I were facing a longer term issue.

But I’m not saving for any particular thing other than retirement. If things accumulate and grow, great. I’ll make a judgment call on when to retire based on how I feel and how much I have and what I want to do. I anticipate my wife and I will probably want to retire in our early 60’s, based on our anticipated career trajectories and the ages of our children.

I read that half of Americans couldn’t cover an unexpected $1,000 expense.

Without borrowing or selling property, yeah. Not a lot of people have that much liquid cash laying around.

But I wouldn’t assume that this would be some kind of economic devastation. Our whole system revolves around easy credit.

If the unexpected expense is something that can be paid for on a credit card, that 20% interest isn’t exactly ideal but for many people it can be a simple task of buying now and paying it off over 2 or 3 months. For them, $1000 isn’t a lifestyle changing expense.

For others, $1000 might be devastating. It might be the difference between making rent or not, and ultimately lead to eviction and maybe even homelessness.

So liquidity is a different question from financial health or resilience, even if they’re somewhat correlated. There are other metrics out there more directly measuring financial stability or vulnerability.