American Redemption

@TheSalonDon This is evil

The Don is having a baby We have 4 beautiful healthy embryos We might end up having all 4 but which one would you choose first?

@KalebTheSocrat You're thinking like the space cameras are iPhone cameras. They're not. It could be a linear array scanner. We've been taking pictures from space for decades.

Now this picture is actually physically impossible to capture at 18,000 mph. This requires an open shutter which with any movement or disturbance will mess up the entire image. No getting past this. This is a test of our intelligence. All the stars should be streaking similar to a normal timelapse taken of Polaris in the opposite direction the “space craft” is moving.

@pepemoonboy This analysis is BS right from the beginning. You can't just take the median rent and compare to the median home. Most renters live in apartments. In my area, 2k rent gets you a 2 bedroom apartment or rowhome. A similar house is around 280k. The buyer wins thanks to leverage.

I ran the numbers on renting and investing the difference vs. buying a home... The results are shocking. The setup: - Median U.S. home sale price: $398,000 (NAR, 2026) - Average U.S. rent: $2,000/mo (Zillow, 2026) - Mortgage rate: 6.51% (30yr fixed, 10% down) All in monthly cost of owning that home: - P&I: $2,266 - Property tax: $332 - Insurance: $215 - Maintenance: $332 - PMI: $149 - Total: $3,294/mo Renting cost: - Rent: $2,000 - Renters insurance: $14 - Total: $2,014/mo The renter saves $1,280/mo. Plus the $51,740 in down payment and closing costs never leaves their pocket. All of it goes into $VOO. Using the long term S&P 500 avg return of 10% and home appreciation of 3.4%/yr (the avg since 1891): After 10 years: - Renter portfolio: $334K - Home equity (net of selling costs): $219K - Renter wins by $115K After 20 years: - Renter portfolio: $927K - Home equity: $531K - Renter wins by $397K After 30 years: - Renter portfolio: $2.41M - Home equity: $1.02M - Renter wins by $1.39M Even if you give the home 5% annual appreciation, the renter still wins at every single checkpoint. At $VOO's actual historical return of 13.99%, the renter's portfolio hits $6.38M after 30 years. The home equity is still $1.02M. The part nobody talks about: after 30 years your rent is $5,614/mo. Sounds scary. But your portfolio is generating $20K+/mo at a 10% return. You could pay that rent 3x over and never touch the principal. A home is a place to live. $VOO and the stock market is a wealth building machine. Not financial advice. There are lots of variables I may be missing. Run your own numbers.

@sweatystartup @shawngorham If it was faked, the Russians would be the first to point that out. This is idiotic

@shawngorham No chance we did it. When I look back at two videos I'm convinced its all a scam. The moon rover ripping along and getting wheels off the ground is laughable. And the takeoff from the moon on the way back is the worst special effects I've ever seen.

Wait... did we really land on the moon? My siblings were going down a conspiracy theory rabbit hole at brunch... must say they were making compelling arguments we never landed on the moon. So... did we really land on the moon?

@WhatNowDoc It's not about the comms or the computing power. You do a test mission first to see how the HARDWARE does. You know nothing about engineering.

I’m sorry, I used to think the “conspiracy theorists” were just nutters. This week I’ve decided we were conned. Hear me out. That 1969 spacecraft I watched on my black and white TV had less computing power than your wristwatch, less than some thermostatic controllers I have on my walls. This week NASA sent a $93billion spacecraft to *orbit* the moon, just orbit, in preparation for an actual moon landing in a few years time. Why on earth would it take us 57 years, and a $93b test flight, with the compute power and comms facilities we have today, if we’d already done it successfully, once before, with so little, 57 years ago. Nah, I’m now with the conspiracy theorists.

@matt_gottshall Ultimately ends up with Fannie Mae aka the government

People don’t tell you when you buy a home that your mortgage is going to be sold 6 times in the first 1.5 years and you have to constantly be creating new accounts, setting up autopay, and have like 6 form 1098s… Why

@VladTheInflator This must not be accounting for leverage. If you put 10% down, you have 10x leverage. That 3% annual appreciation is now a 30% ROI

Buy a house or rent + investing Who wins?

@EricSpracklen House prices may go flat, but they aren't going down. There's still a shortage. As Incomes rise to catch up with the inflation since 2020, homes will become increasingly affordable again (they already are, buyers market right now)

The only way for housing to magically become “affordable” is for home prices to drop 30-40% across the board. Trump cannot avoid this. Everything is so wildly overpriced and I’m tired of people pretending it’s not.

@shagbark_hick Heck why not Northern PA? There are good catholic communities and it's got a better political trajectory than NY by miles

@shagbark_hick Man that's a tough situation. West Virginia looks like the best alternative to me. I'd bet the climate and landscape aren't all that different.

Being from NY is torturous because I'm constantly torn between my heart and my mind. My heart says: it's awesome here. I should stay forever. Though the government sucks, it's still America, it's still cheap, it's still mine. My mind says: RUN! Between the gun laws, taxes, terrible homeschooling laws, depopulation + rising median age, legal abortion + euthanasia, Priest shortages, and NY's anti-homebirthing stance, I'd be stupid to stay here. Especially because owing to family turmoil, I have no real family-related reasons to be here anymore. I can afford to go almost anywhere I'd care to go, and the question of "should I stay or should I go" has frankly been agonizing to me. I can't get over it, especially lately. Good Lord would it be nice to ride around in my uninspected truck, with the kids in the bed and a gun in my jacket... a property tax bill in the low hundreds, next-to-no building codes, flourishing Parishes, lots of babies and young people, etc etc. A general feeling of optimism in the air -- to live somewhere where to be a real American you don't have to live like a fugitive... I could do it. West Texas, New Mexico, West Virginia, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Kansas, Arizona, Nevada... hell I could probably even try Alaska. But I'd miss the land here. I'd pay more for property. I wouldn't know anyone out there. I'd miss the climate, the overcast, the snow, the trees. But I can't help but be nagged by the feeling that if we stay, I'm making a bad decision for my family. After a few run-ins with the school superintendent, perhaps a doubling property tax bill, a CPS intervention after a doctor's visit, or God forbid I ever have to discharge a weapon to defend my family and a liberal DA throws me in jail on a manslaughter charge... there's just a damned lot that could go very, very wrong here, and it's lonesome besides... I remember two years ago in Alpine TX, at a bar called Railroad Blues, I drank with a 24-year-old Texan kid all night and told him all about this stuff. He was flabbergasted. Said: "I feel sorry for you, man. And I feel especially good about how I grew up here in West Texas. I don't have to think about ANY of that stuff." That'd be a helluva gift to give our kids. I dunno.

My mother is one of 9. From those 9, there are 14 of us in the next generation. 18 would have been replacement. My generation needs to have at least 28 kids or our family shrinks again. We need to bring back big families or our lineage dissapears.

@rainstormblue 2 equations, 2 unknowns. Classic

i have a PhD in maths from the university of cambridge and i can’t solve this

@darrelltalksfi What 30 year old doc has a 500k networth? More like -500k

Who’s winning? The 30-year-old doctor making $300k with a –$500k net worth Or the 30-year-old earning $150k who’s already built a $1 million net worth

This person is not a Catholic. Disregard his opinions

@realJennaEllis Honestly, I just can't support Trump any more because of stuff like this

Thomas Massie’s beloved wife Rhonda passed away unexpectedly in June 2024. They were married 31 years. I know personally from my friendship of more a decade with Massie how incredibly difficult it was to find himself suddenly a widower and losing his best friend. I have prayed for him every day. I was absolutely delighted he married a year and a half later and wish only the best for him and his beautiful bride Carolyn. To have the kind of deep faith in the Lord, resilience, and courage to find love and joy again in a new season of his life should be met only with deep admiration and encouragement. The Lord brought him out of his suffering and into a new day. Some things are still sacred and should still be beyond this kind of political mud-slinging.

@EndWokeness You'd have to be mental eat a burrito on the NYC subway

Fork & knife for a burrito. Hand for rice.

@PeterSweden7 Unfortunately, it won't do anything. Well meaning but it doesn't work. The only way to increase the birth rate is to increase the marriage rate

MASSIVE Poland has signed a new law meaning that parents who have two or more children will be exempt from paying income tax on salary up to around €33.000 This is a good way to increase the birthrates.

@TRobinsonNewEra 2 kids doesn't move the needle. Should have required 4

This is how you solve a declining birth rate , not importing millions of Muslims

@Pat_Stedman I'm an Aerospace engineer from a big 10 school. It was well understood that all the international students were part of a network of cheating. Database with previous years tests, hw, and projects. Often the same from year to year.

One of my (white) childhood friends got into University of Michigan Aerospace Engineering for his masters Except he actually didn't. A few months later they said his GPA - from an elite American college that unusually didn't inflate grades - was too low, that they made a mistake accepting him, and tried to withdraw his acceptance Moral hazard though was such that they had to honor it, since by then he had rejected other colleges Anyway 80% of his graduate classmates were international, mostly Indian, Pakistani, and Chinese. They all cheated. He understood the material better but his grades were worse because he refused on principle not to cheat He did fine but not enough compared to his classmates. This cost him a PhD in the field and he switched to medical sciences after graduation A lot of stories I heard like this when I was younger I never processed. They only take on greater significance as I get older.

@redeemed_zoomer False. There is hope for those who, through no fault of their own, have never heard of Christ