Old HLSDude Enters his 79th Year - Taking Questions
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Poast new message in this thread
Date: December 31st, 2025 2:02 PM Author: Diverse turdskin
what was your nw and professional status at age 35?
when and how did you make most of ur money?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49552426) |
Date: December 31st, 2025 2:34 PM Author: Olive Dysfunction
I'm thinking of leaving my sinecure with reasonably high pay and absolute job security
I'm mostly in meetings and otherwise I'm reviewing documents
I mostly work 10 hours a week
I'm in my 30s
Should I do it
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49552536) |
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Date: December 31st, 2025 2:50 PM Author: balding supple state
I think there is something there, but I don't know exactly what. My working hypothesis is that we are field creatures of some kind, and the field in which we exist as (nodes?/distributed nodes?/wave functions?) is the mechanism though which these various occult phenomena occur. That's really vague, but I can't do any better. A Jungian shrink I know calls it "The Weather Channel." Sometimes I speculate that there exists a higher dimensional world and these phenomena come and so as that world moves and the projections into our spacetime vary. When I was a little kid I spent a lot of time watching bugs, especially ants. I remain amazed at the complexity of behavior among those little critters with nearly invisible little brains. I speculated then that some of their cognitive bioware was in hyperspace. Of course hive behavior is a much simpler and likely more correct interpretation, but it doesn't explain the occult. The whole field is really messy. It's filled with fraud, hoaxes, misperceptions, gossip, myths, etc. Lots of noise.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49552621) |
Date: December 31st, 2025 3:38 PM Author: Dashing ungodly garrison
I am worried about what society will do when boomers can no longer carry it. Almost all top level component people are boomers. I think we need societal changes to keep them in the work force as long as they want to work. They idea that you can lose social security benefits by working is ridiculous.
At the same time, millennials seem uniquely unambitious, lazy, wasteful, frivolous, and resentful of success. I am worried about our future. What are your thoughts?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49552771) |
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Date: December 31st, 2025 4:44 PM Author: ruby electric ceo
I always enjoyed your posts and did check xoxohth to see if you were doing your NYE special.
Xoxohth is its last gasps. It's hard to have a frank and intelligent conversation on here these days as most people with an ounce of sensibility drifted away a long time ago. The racism and bigotry and antisemitism bothers me. Someone needs to administer death rites.
My father died not long ago from PSP. Poor man, he was only in his late 70s and never had the life expectancy of his parents and all four grandparents and all his aunts and uncles by blood, who lived into their 90s. That's life for you. Now dealing with a widowed mother who wants me to take over all her finances and pay her bills and give her an allowance so she doesn't have to think about it. I'm also in the process of starting up a trust for her assets. And it's making me much more cognizant of what I need to do for my own wife and kids. Definitely feel like I've aged a lot in the last year. And my dad's passing has also made me wonder if I spend too much time working and not enjoying life, money really isn't an issue at this point and I could contemplate an early retirement in 10 years or so, the one thing to keep an eye out for is that youngest would only be 16 at that point (boys are currently 16, 14 and 6). And I also worry about getting the boys properly launched in life, in a good and productive way. Or maybe I worry about it too much as I can't control everything. I've watched some families and it's interesting how disorganized families no matter how loving they are tend to have kids who end up with more disorganized life progressions, while super organized families tend to have kids who follow a pretty predictable route to better outcomes re jobs and relationships. I guess you can say I want to herd my boys away from the dangers of ending up a tattooed pierced metrosexual hipster. If they end up a dull financial analyst or consultant with a pretty girlfriend, job well done. But they do have their own burgeoning personalities and I've learned from it as well.
Will say, partly because of dealing with reorganizing my mother's finances after dad's death, that the a key observation I have of the changes in society from the past is that organizational structures seem to be significantly less competent in getting things done efficiently. Is it a coincidence that as white men are replaced with DEI people, everything only gets more bureaucratic and less efficient? I don't mean to say that only white men are capable of productive leadership but the culture generated by white male leadership is results oriented whereas DEI leadership is process oriented and cares less about actual outcomes as long the process is followed and the process needs plenty of DEI managers. I like to look at how ruthlessly efficient Amazon is versus government and healthcare. Just a speculation. Any thoughts?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49552947) |
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Date: December 31st, 2025 5:33 PM Author: balding supple state
I dread going into a place with obvious DEI staff. It's not 100% bad, but the probabilities are there. Our area is all white, but things like the DMV can be a problem depending upon which agent you get. Any government office is likely to be a mess. Strangely, Medicare has been great. I expected disastrous bureaucracy, but it has functioned very smoothly. One thing government does well. Ditto with the doctor/clinic side of healthcare. No hiccups so far, at least for us.
PSP is awful. My cousin's husband died of that. Terrible disease. My dad had ALS which was not cool either, but at least it didn't affect his cognition.
Our kids went off the rails at about 19 in both cases. We didn't see it coming, and when it happened it happened very quickly. Before that they had both been good students and athletes with lots of friends.
The worst place I ever worked for DEI crap was the university. They worship process. I spent about 5 years after my first retirement in a senior admin position in large well known school. The president told me one day that "The purpose of the university is diversity." I'm not sure that's even grammatically correct. Later I did a lot of university consulting and saw some really bad DEI things in almost every place. The one exception was Caltech where I taught for 5 years. I used to think MIT was immune, but I fear wokeness that crept in there, too.
A young friend has just taken a teaching position in a prestigious private liberal arts college. She is aghast at the environment. It's all super woke. She's so upset about the lack of rigor (she's in the sciences), entitled students, and As for effort that she's going to leave when her two year contract is up. Her chair made her regrade exams in order to increase grades, specifically noting that one student deserved a higher grade because "she wrote so much." My friend says that she did indeed write a bunch of drivel on a take home open book exam. Moreover, my friend the teacher is black herself, but Nigerian. She was a top sciences undergrad in a small private university and has a Harvard Phd in same. She's conservative and just blown away by the awful academic environment. I guess her hard sciences grad department at H was still back in the dark ages. One funny comment about my Nigerian friend. She does not want to be identified as a black. She has no respect for American black "culture" or uneducated African culture for that matter. Her husband is a white Phd math guy.
I've set up trusts for the wife and kids, but as I handle all the finances I know things will be a little rocky when they have to deal with the bank trust department. For the kids I have younger family members installed as trust advisors and a side letter of instruction to the trustee, but I know they won't do everything I do.
I think you're right about the organized families. I can't claim that we were ever like that. I'm not a super disciplined person myself and often just go with the flow.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553040)
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Date: December 31st, 2025 6:22 PM Author: ruby electric ceo
I think about colleges all the time. I went to Yale in the late 1990s-early 2000s and at the time was effectively a Jewish school, meaning the ethos that dominated Yale was 1990s liberalism with its ideals represented by the Upper West Side and the New Yorker. The faculty were mostly men who'd come of age in the meritocracy of the 50s and heirs to the New Deal progressivism. It was, on the whole, a strongly intellectually honest place. It was not a good time to be a conservative, for conservatism in those days meant the fringes of evangelical wackadoodles who hated gays and trumped creative design over evolution, impeaching a president for a blow job. The Reagan revolution had long been won and coopted by Clinton and the New Democrats. I went to a few campus conservative group events, they were mostly Catholic dorks. The official Republican club did have some of the remnants of Reaganite Republicans, tall blond girls from Texas or Manhattan whose daddies were hardcore Republicans of the old school. But everyone got along, liberals and the conservative minority. Politics wasn't important to most of us.
It's astonishing how much has changed at Yale that would have been unthinkable at the time, although in looking back I could see the emerging warning signs, the younger faculty members, recent hires who were ideologically more rigid and hard, the rise of the safetyism among new female faculty and especially administration, who were averse to challenges to their beliefs and ideas, even in classroom debates. And the creep of unserious academic subjects, leading to courses on decolonizing transbinaryqueers in Latinx! But hindsight is hindsight. And now the college world of the 1990s is as remote and strange as the college world of the early 60s, of single sex and visiting hours in the dorms and dress codes and in loco parentis, was to us by the 1990s.
Will say the prestige of elite colleges have taken a huge battering in the last decades. My kids don't view them the same way we did when I was their age, their perception of the Ivies is that it's for Asian grinders and not a place for fun. They are already skeptical of professors and the courses they'll find in college. Because they already know it's indoctrination, not a serious quest for truth. They're bright boys, who at my age would be great contenders for the Penns and Cornells and Northwesterns, or even Amherst, and what now interests them and their friends are the big flagships as they're seen as saner places. Get a business or econ degree, take a handful of interesting classes on the side once you've sniffed out the saner professors. Their maternal grandfather went to Chapel Hill and right now that's my oldest's first choice, despite competitive out of state admissions. So we'll see.
But I'll also say the world of colleges may be changing dramatically as we speak, once again. Past year has seen major shifts in admission stats away from DEI and a much larger intake of Asian students. Which is fair to me. But will the replacement of weaker DEI students with stronger Asian grinders change campus cultures and even the teaching itself? A lot of the mollycoddlying your professor friend mentioned is because of the DEI intake. We'll see!
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553126)
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Date: January 1st, 2026 12:03 AM Author: red appetizing clown
What do you mean by organized/disorganized families? There is something to that, but I don't quite know what it is.
I have 4 young kids. In some ways, my wife and I are doing well with them. They're all at or above grade/age level in those various metrics and do lots of good activities (Sunday school, sports, museums, art class, camping, skiing, travel...). We read to and with them a lot and limit screens.
But, I don't exactly feel "organized." For example, I don't stay on top of the older kids' home work and tests.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553586) |
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Date: January 1st, 2026 8:26 AM Author: ruby electric ceo
Put it this way, notice how Republican country club families don't have trans kids? And the trans kids pop up in certain types of families? People can nitpick and show me the exceptions, but it's a good generalization and speaks to different types of home environments. It's not about providing lots of activities and a rigid schedule but the parents' capacity to build strong foundations in their children's minds of what's real, what's not real, what's right, what's wrong, learning how to be skeptical and when to believe. It takes a lot of organization of a certain type to provide that kind of structure for your kids. The families that are the more "free spirited," to put it politely, are far more likely to have kids going off to weird places. And I've noticed the parents, especially the mothers, seem to like having oddball kids, despite the social costs the kids always pay sooner or later, so they subtly facilitate it happening over time.
Some people want to say how kids turn out is all due to genetics while others say it's the blank slate and culture around them. It's going to be both. Some families definitely have it easier with great genetics but building the right culture for your kids goes a very long way. It is hard in the safetyism that dominates our societies and the indoctrination of school administrators (teachers are a mixed bag) but as I've long observed, there's a great deal of indirect cruelty hidden within the "be kind" mantric prevalent among liberal progressives, which is why so many of them have anxiety and mental health problems.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553776)
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Date: January 1st, 2026 1:30 PM Author: balding supple state
MIT was heavily jewish when I was there, as was HLS. MIT is now nearly half asian and maybe 6% jewish. I don't know about HLS. It seems very non white/asian in pictures.
At my 50th reunion I chatted with the MIT president who said that students arrived there now lacking life experience and coping skills. He said the university has to do a lot more hand holding. In the 60s they basically threw you in to see if you could swim.
I was a member of the young Republicans as an undergrad. It was a Reaganist organization and did not discuss crazed alt right stuff, although the leftists were constantly sniping at us and making silly accusations. The faculty originally seemed apolitical except for Chomsky and his orbit, but as Vietnam rolled on things became more charged politically. Finally the faculty went on strike and there was some confusion and disruption. We had no graduation speaker my year, but instead a "moment of silence."
Things seemed pretty left wing at the 50th several years ago. Mike Bloomberg was the commencement speaker and got an undeserved round of applause for his announcement that he was going to spend half a billion dollars to block new fossil fuel burning facilities. I sat there not applauding wondering now all these smart kids could be so stupid as to think that was a good idea. At dinner that night the only person at the table who agreed with me with was somebody's hot Ukrainian wife.
HLS was pretty much careerist. I didn't notice politics at all. I was married and lived a normal life off campus, so maybe I missed it. Also, I didn't take a lot of policy courses. I was under the delusion I was going to practice law so I mostly stuck to stuff I thought would help me do that.
MIT had some bad experiences along the way with affirmative action. They started AA near the end of my time there. The AA admits had a lot trouble academically, so they started enrichment programs before freshman year that seemed to help. In the 90s they decided to double down on it, and the faculty got up in arms about too many admits who couldn't handle the work, so they retreated some. The no SAT Covid era was also a disaster. It's not really possible to BS your way through math intensive courses, which most of them are outside of humanities and maybe some business courses. Rumor is that the influx of grinders, asian and otherwise, has diminished the hacking culture.
I don't know that I would go to MIT now, or any other elite school. I couldn't stand a leftist environment or a grinder environment either. I'm thinking that as your kids think that a big state honors college would be my best fit. Fortunately, I don't have to do it.
I'm on a foundation board here in Republican country. One of the things we do is award scholarships. Most kids in this area are choosing a strongly vocational track. We've also set up a program that guarantees free tuition at our local community college to any student whose family makes under $65K. The story of how we created the endowment to do that would make an entertaining business school case.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49554188) |
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Date: January 1st, 2026 6:14 PM Author: black casino travel guidebook
enjoyed this and agreed.
also
At dinner that night the only person at the table who agreed with me with was somebody's hot Ukrainian wife.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49554914) |
Date: December 31st, 2025 4:37 PM Author: Boyish idiotic degenerate parlor
My M1 16” MacBook Pro won’t boot. Won’t charge, either — MagSafe LED does not turn on when plugged in. Typical keyboard resets for M1s have not done anything. Why did this have to happen as I start a four-day weekend? Most likely need a new logic board from Apple. Can you buy me a new MacBook Pro?
Your son,
Stalin tp
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49552926) |
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Date: December 31st, 2025 5:52 PM Author: Boyish idiotic degenerate parlor
Thanks,
Thanks
Sent from my iPhone
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553084) |
Date: December 31st, 2025 5:01 PM Author: Brilliant swashbuckling milk
Happy Birthday, fren.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553003)
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Date: December 31st, 2025 5:45 PM Author: balding supple state
I've invested mostly in stocks. I have mix of index funds and quality stocks, more of the latter. The stocks are pretty diverse, but I have some concentrations I have been trying to thin down. From a diversification standpoint the trouble is that the strong performers just keep performing, albeit with some volatility.
On the ETF side I like QQQ and MDY especially. My portfolio allocation is probably a little bit aggressive as it's very tilted toward equities. My experience with bonds sucks, except for the cash I keep in short term bond funds. I do keep quite a bit of cash in those. It's under performing but allows me to avoid worrying about market volatility. I like to keep about 5 years' expenses in cash. I have used the 4% rule, and have never pulled that much out until lately, partly because I'm being forced to by IRA MRDs. I think it's far better to retire early than not unless you really love your work. I actually retired twice. The first time I was 51, but went to a university, then retired again at 56. After that I did gig work which I pretty much enjoyed. I got to do a lot of interesting things that I could not have afforded to do otherwise. That includes my 5 years in university/wonderland and my additional 5 years teaching part time. I think I would have died if I had tried to keep up my working pace into old age. It was a terrible grind and there is no part throttle setting possible.
I have experimented with letting a "professional" manage a small part of my portfolio. His performance has not been terribly impressive.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553070) |
Date: December 31st, 2025 7:11 PM Author: maize stimulating lodge blood rage
now that we're a few years removed from it, what is your assessment of the pandemic and its significance for our society?
as a millennial i feel like my young adulthood was bookended by 9/11 and the pandemic, and the experience of those two events couldn't have been more different. both were seen as crises but there was a real sense of solidarity and groundswell of energy after 9/11, whereas with the pandemic there was only deranged division and a near-total collapse in institutional faith.
going through the pandemic was extremely disillusioning in many ways. we all affect cynicism here, but i was not aware of just how much implicit trust i'd been putting into the system simply out of convenience, just so i don't have to think about it. but something like covid was a real emperor has no clothes moment.
did you feel similarly, or have you been around for so long that it doesn't even register?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553234) |
Date: December 31st, 2025 8:02 PM Author: Jet flickering legend
two ways to ask the same question
1. how do people from your generation support biden/kamala in 2024
2. why did so many people from your generation support biden/kamala in 2024
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553324) |
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Date: January 1st, 2026 12:38 PM Author: balding supple state
1. no idea
2. no idea
I suppose for the same reason people from your generation did. What they have told me is that "I hate Trump." and "I hate Trump." They also said, "I hate Bush" and "I hate Bush." Maybe EPAH can shed some light on it.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49554076) |
Date: January 1st, 2026 2:00 AM Author: thirsty geriatric lettuce preventive strike
Do you notice people aging out here? I had an interesting observation...my grandfather that passed at 73 had a packed funeral. My grandfather that passed at 93 had nobody there, just family. I think most of his friends were dead.
My father will pass soon. I'm here with him now but I know he wants to die. He's in an amazing amount of pain with a cancer bodysuit. You don't have answers for me but you've probably had more deaths than most here. My dad wants to be cremated ans his ashes dropped off the canby ferry. I will do that but it's not a formal service. I want people to come share their feelings, he was a popular fella. Where does that leave me?
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553670) |
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Date: January 1st, 2026 12:59 PM Author: balding supple state
We're all aging. With no new blood on the bort we will suffer the fate of the Shakers.
Most of my family and many close friends have already died. If you want to do have a formal service, do so. When my good friend died without family, we had him cremated and interred his ashes in our family plot. When the stone I ordered for him arrived, I invited some of his other friends who came from all over the country. Most of them stayed with us and we had a nice memorial dinner with an empty seat and plate for him, then had a memorial gathering at the cemetery. My wife arranged for a Catholic Mass to be said in his name. We all attended that in lieu of a formal funeral service. I had an Apple photo book made up using pictures of his life and distributed it as souvenirs to all who came.
I think it's important to mark death with a ceremony of some kind. The dead don't care, but it's really helpful to the living. Humans have been doing this our entire history. No reason to skip it, IMO.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49554119) |
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Date: January 1st, 2026 11:29 AM Author: Costumed cerebral genital piercing ape
I have done some of this work. How bad is it? Is he mobile? A physical danger to himself or others? Actively being scammed or giving away his estate? Does he know/admit he has a problem?
General advice: try everything else first. Do you have a POA? Health care POA? Forge them if you have to (not legal advice). Ideally he has a trust, or you settle one for him, move his assets into the trust, then remove him as trustee. Physicallytake his checkbook and credit cards if necessary. Driving is a big one, you may have to take his keys and/or sell the car.
Will he accept help in the house?
The conservator process is terrible and dehumanizing. You'll have to get up in front of a judge with your dad there and describe all the demented shit he does. This is a very ugly process, avoid except as a last result.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49553946) |
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Date: January 3rd, 2026 8:49 AM Author: avocado contagious public bath hominid
Really appreciate it. Any chance we can set time to briefly discuss? Being referred to a lawyer soon but would like to chat it through a bit.
It's pretty bad tbh - he refuses to admit he has a problem. Have been dealing with this for a while so me and my aunt have some safeguards in place (nurse 2 x a week, aunt has visibility over his bank accounts and has been helping coordinate his medical care for years)...but at a point where that's not enough. Unfortunately (and I love him dearly), my demented dad loves his psychotic scamming gf. So I'm going to have to extract him from her, and ideally get her arrested.
Anyway, appreciate the note.
And thanks to OldHLSDude for being OldHLSDude.
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5815827&forum_id=2#49558271) |
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