Hank Rearden

Please do a quick read of this. It’s short, well written, and will remove a bit of wool from over your eyes.

@Hanakookie1 @CloisterRes The issue is that they don’t deserve “quotas (that) make amends” at the expense of people’s health and lives Competence and merit should be the determining factors

@CloisterRes Of course they have discourse. When you are Indian in India you do not face discrimination. Everyone is Indian. Yet black ppl were discriminated for over 400 yrs in America. And this quota was to make amends to them. Not asians. Not hispanics. American blacks.

The current discourse on med school admissions is really hard to fully comprehend unless you’ve experienced the severe discrimination first hand. And I suspect (although AMCAS doesn’t publish the data) that the discrepancy is even worse in the context of MD/PhD programs.

@Jacob_Naviaux Did this as a buyer, flipper had a red tagged HVAC unit that they had removed the red tag on prior to sale Once I learned that there’s no way I would do a deal at any price. Too many unethical and incompetent people in residential construction

Nothing more annoying as a flipper than a buyer’s agent sending: “Please find the attached unilateral termination. We had our inspection done and it didn’t go well.” That’s it. That’s the whole email. So many questions: What items were the buyer’s main concerns? Did you ever consider the seller may be willing to repair certain things? Can you at least send the inspection report for tying up the property for a week?

@DallasAptGP You’re talking your book here on south Dallas, particularly southeast. The residents are the problem, no one wants to walk/bike the mugger and assault part of the trail

Trails predict where land will reprice. Years before the cranes show up. New York saw it. Chicago saw it. Atlanta saw it. Dallas is next. And it's running the largest version of this experiment any American city has ever attempted. Here's the pattern: Every major American city is fighting the same battle. The suburbs keep growing. The urban core fights to hold its tax base. People say they want walkability and community. Then they leave for places that feel safer and easier to navigate. Cities have big ambitions. Dallas. Chicago. Atlanta. They want to attract people, businesses, and jobs. That takes money. Aging infrastructure needs replacing. New amenities need building. The tax base isn't shrinking. But it's not growing fast enough to fund those ambitions without raising rates. And raising rates pushes more people out. There's another approach. Build infrastructure that makes land more valuable. Not highways. Not stadiums. Trails. It sounds too simple. When you build a connected trail network, you create the walkability people crave. Neighborhoods that were cut off become accessible. Land values rise. Tax revenue grows without raising anyone's rate. The evidence is hard to argue with. New York built the High Line. Property values jumped 35%. Chicago built The 606. Home prices spiked 48%. Atlanta built the BeltLine. Developers have poured more than $9 billion into land along it. The pattern holds whether the city runs red, blue, or purple. Build the connection. Land reprices. Dallas is now running this experiment at the largest scale any American city has attempted. The Loop Dallas is a 50-mile trail circuit. It connects the Katy Trail, White Rock Lake, the Trinity Forest, Fair Park, the Design District, and Pleasant Grove. Every quadrant of the city. The Design District already proves the thesis. The city built a short connector to plug the area into the Uptown trail network. Before, it was an isolated pocket of warehouses. After, it became part of the Uptown ecosystem. Taxable value climbed 383%. Developers flipped their blueprints. Buildings now face the trail, not the street. South Dallas is next. A 1,200-foot bridge is opening the Trinity Forest Spine Trail. Neighborhoods cut off for decades by the river, the railroad, and the highways are about to become connected. Every city that built a loop trail system saw the same result. Remove the barriers. Capital follows. Trails aren't expenses. They're leading indicators. They tell you where land is about to reprice, years before the cranes arrive. If you want to understand where Dallas is heading, don't watch the skyline. Follow the trail.

I am very concerned about these strikes in Iran. What if the Iranian government retaliates by funding a network of proxy militias across the Middle East, attacking US troops in the region, sponsoring terrorism against Israel and Saudi Arabia, and attacking vessels in the Red Sea?

@scotttmaier Not a single 155mm shell is made via stamping, they would explode in the cannon tube if they were

The coffee maker factory matters. These can be stamped metal parts. 155mm shells are made using stamped metal. Our “surge” capacity is this coffee maker factory switching when demand for 155mm shells increases during times of conflict. No coffee maker factory, no surge capacity

@CynicalPublius Sat next to Jesse Jackson on a flight a few years ago. He could barely move without assistance due to Parkinson’s, however, that didn’t stop him from hitting on the young black female flight attendant the whole flight. She gave him her number so, I guess it worked

Jesse Jackson passed away. I have two Jesse Jackson stories: 1. As a college student with a mushy brain who had not yet reached full adulthood, I worked on his 1984 Presidential campaign. Yes, I know. You don't have to tell me. 2. In my last Pentagon job I used to have to go over to the Capitol periodically to brief staffers on one of the programs I was responsible for. There I am one day, full Class A uniform, going down an escalator inside the Capitol, and two steps in front of me is Jesse Jackson. He turned around and looked at me. I said to him with a smile "Good morning Reverend Jackson!" He looked me up and down with a frown and turned back around without saying anything. That's it. Those are my two Jesse Jackson stories.

@MatthewChang @kaiarhodes You’re an idiot. Lift is what makes airplanes fly. Wheel rpms doesn’t have anything to do with lift.

@kaiarhodes We’re going to make you an honorary engineer.

One of my favorite questions to ask a group at a party when someone says: “oh you’re an engineer? tell me something about engineering” Here goes: An airplane is on a runway sized treadmill. For every 1 MPH the airplane goes forward, the treadmill matches to 1MPH (in the opposite direction). 10MPH = -10MPH, etc. Can the airplane take off? Husbands and wives are usually split about this. Even when I give the answer they argue with me and even change their answer. More than once my wife has pulled me out of the party before I gave the answer, which has probably led to a few couples fights.

@amer_icon @SynchroMaker You can design the die to handle more than one bushing size, they usually do multiple PNs in one batch of something like this

Quantities are low-ish. I haven't looked at sales in a while but I'd say about 1,800 a year for this bushing. Similar quantities in different sizes ranging from 1-2" diameter. Knowing nearly nothing about injection molding myself, am I even in the ballpark of justifying any method other than machining?

PEEK is expensive. The 1.75" rod to make these bushings is over $100/ft, and half the mass ends up in the chip bin. This is one of those areas I think 3D printing could excel but I'm not sure if the mechanical properties would transfer. Any thoughts from the timeline?

@shawngorham Lots of misnomers here…Texas generates far more solar and wind energy than does California, and California still produces the seventh most oil of any state. California isn’t really hell bent on anything, unless you count taxes and regulation

Texans: I have been watching Landman - how real is this sh^%? I feel like this could be real Also, Im from CA, I dont understand oil - we are hell bent on electric here... How does oil work? The lease the land, drill, hopefully hit oil, sell by the barrel, revenue split with the land owner? Give me some math on this stuff Educate me

A generation of white people were openly racially discriminated against in the name of… Diversity.

@jamesbohanpitt @_FlipMan East Dallas is like this too, $1M+ for just the 8-9k sq ft lot

This is not true at all. DFW lots will set you back well over $1m to then have you a $4m at the end. Even in the suburbs, you need generally an acre and that’s at least $1m. Only places you can safely spend $4m knowing it will appreciate and sell after the first buyer is Preston Hollow, Park Cities, Southlake, Colleyville. All will require top end 6 to over 7 figure for the land and will need $250/sf MIN to build ex land.

@PEoperator More to the story which makes the employees look worse, one of the 4 fired was protesting the layoff of her ex dailymail.co.uk/media/article-…

I think this guy handled this to near perfection. He is basically being harassed. These whiny employees need to be creating shareholder value, not complaining about being in the office 4 days a week or asking how the company will respond to the Trump administration. And we wonder why legacy media has deteriorated… x.com/TheWrap/status…

@mwmoedinger 15-25% is absurd unless it’s a highly customized small project, <$1M. Full service architecture in a sun belt city is $10-$20 per conditioned square foot, engineering is $2-4 depending on steel, and MEP $1-10; so max 5-7% at $500 / sq ft which is AD level finish

Depends on the level of service. - Lowest level (aka "drawing up plans) is cheapest. No structural, no finishes, no design, no cabinetry layouts, no support during permitting/zoning/construction. This can be as low as a couple thousand dollars. The catch - you need all the stuff I listed above, so if you're not paying the architect to do it, you gotta pay someone else to 🤷🏼‍♀️ - highest level (full service) is what we provide. All aspects of design, engineering, MEP, interiors, fixtures, finishes, details; full support during pricing, permitting, zoning, and thru construction. The idea is that the GC needs to focus on their job, and to do that, all the other stuff needs to be handled by a pro (or the builder does whatever they want, or you have to do it, or the builder's "designer" does it). This level will cost you 15-25% of the cost of construction, depending what's included, your market, the project, etc. There's no one right way for everyone, but it's important to craft the approach that works for you, the reality of your life, your jurisdiction, etc. Most people *vastly* underestimate how much time and emotional energy it takes to do a home renovation/new build, even with a good team. Your home is your largest asset (for most people) - why muddle thru it and look for shortcuts? To say nothing of the burden on your family/relationship - about 50% of the time I'm playing counselor/confidante/advisor/shoulder to lean on.

@rohindhar RoE dumbass, most people don’t buy houses with 100% cash, but do with stocks

If you bought a $1MM dollar home in San Francisco in 2010 It’s worth around $2MM today If you had put the money in the S&P 500 instead It’s worth about $7MM Most arguments that homes are good investments are more related to the judicious use of leverage than the underlying performance of home prices The decision to buy a home should be a hard one because the opportunity cost of your capital is so high A home has to bring you immense joy compared to $7MM 😅

@PEoperator If you start from the position that PE guys are generally idiots about everything except finance, your life becomes easier. VC is even worse, they know nothing and are defiant on that point

Hokey, but required reading, especially for those in manufacturing. In my opinion, Theory of Constraints is an underutilized methodology (largely because finance guys don’t love it). It is a simpler approach to manufacturing for the non-financial. The two concepts that stuck with me the most were: 1) identify and chase the bottleneck 2) maximize throughput On the former, pretty straightforward- there is one true constraint in a manufacturing setting. Find that one, remedy, and then find the next one. Repeat. Throughput has broader implications on customers and pricing. The idea is more about maximizing sales, given your capacity (which is impacted by your bottleneck). These are obviously intertwined and there is a whole TOC framework but just nailing these two concepts is worth reading the book.

@Yellow_Dog1959 @mattyglesias Well we can see that you can’t read very well as your question is addressed and the premise denied in the original article.

How much is due to holding kids back? Why have math scores improved a ton too since they started holding kids back? Is reading that critical that a bunch of kids became proficient in 4th grade math because they could read a little better? When we will see data comparing MS 4th graders to MS kids who are 9 years old? That limited data hasn't changed much.

@JustinWolfers Being compared to Bill Nye and Neil de-Grasse Tyson isn’t a compliment…

Carve it on my headstone.

I'm seeing quite a bit of comment about this, so I want to make a couple of points. I'm not owed eternal agreement from any actor who once played a character I created. The idea is as ludicrous as me checking with the boss I had when I was twenty-one for what opinions I should hold these days. Emma Watson and her co-stars have every right to embrace gender identity ideology. Such beliefs are legally protected, and I wouldn't want to see any of them threatened with loss of work, or violence, or death, because of them. However, Emma and Dan in particular have both made it clear over the last few years that they think our former professional association gives them a particular right - nay, obligation - to critique me and my views in public. Years after they finished acting in Potter, they continue to assume the role of de facto spokespeople for the world I created. When you've known people since they were ten years old it's hard to shake a certain protectiveness. Until quite recently, I hadn't managed to throw off the memory of children who needed to be gently coaxed through their dialogue in a big scary film studio. For the past few years, I've repeatedly declined invitations from journalists to comment on Emma specifically, most notably on the Witch Trials of JK Rowling. Ironically, I told the producers that I didn't want her to be hounded as the result of anything I said. The television presenter in the attached clip highlights Emma's 'all witches' speech, and in truth, that was a turning point for me, but it had a postscript that hurt far more than the speech itself. Emma asked someone to pass on a handwritten note from her to me, which contained the single sentence 'I'm so sorry for what you're going through' (she has my phone number). This was back when the death, rape and torture threats against me were at their peak, at a time when my personal security measures had had to be tightened considerably and I was constantly worried for my family's safety. Emma had just publicly poured more petrol on the flames, yet thought a one line expression of concern from her would reassure me of her fundamental sympathy and kindness. Like other people who've never experienced adult life uncushioned by wealth and fame, Emma has so little experience of real life she's ignorant of how ignorant she is. She'll never need a homeless shelter. She's never going to be placed on a mixed sex public hospital ward. I'd be astounded if she's been in a high street changing room since childhood. Her 'public bathroom' is single occupancy and comes with a security man standing guard outside the door. Has she had to strip off in a newly mixed-sex changing room at a council-run swimming pool? Is she ever likely to need a state-run rape crisis centre that refuses to guarantee an all-female service? To find herself sharing a prison cell with a male rapist who's identified into the women's prison? I wasn't a multimillionaire at fourteen. I lived in poverty while writing the book that made Emma famous. I therefore understand from my own life experience what the trashing of women's rights in which Emma has so enthusiastically participated means to women and girls without her privileges. The greatest irony here is that, had Emma not decided in her most recent interview to declare that she loves and treasures me - a change of tack I suspect she's adopted because she's noticed full-throated condemnation of me is no longer quite as fashionable as it was - I might never have been this honest. Adults can't expect to cosy up to an activist movement that regularly calls for a friend's assassination, then assert their right to the former friend's love, as though the friend was in fact their mother. Emma is rightly free to disagree with me and indeed to discuss her feelings about me in public - but I have the same right, and I've finally decided to exercise it.