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Why I like index funds

This quote from Monica Hesse really says it all:

Whatever the American Dream once was, for whole generations of us, it has been distilled down to a 3 percent match. You get to be in charge of your own destiny, was the enthusiastic promise of the 401(k). You get to decide what investments are right for you. Never mind that I have no business deciding what investments are right for anybody. Sir, I majored in English.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/14/stock-market-crash-retirement-savings-myth/

Don’t try to time the market. Don’t try to pick stocks unless you’re doing it for funsies. Just park your retirement money in a lifecycle fund and wait it out. Don’t buy into the hyper-individualistic idea that you can control everything about your life. (That also leads us down the Just World Fallacy path!)

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Reddit on the markets today

I just wanted to highlight this comment that I saw on Reddit this morning.


https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/s/F8ntmtttGp

There are two things that could ultimately happen with the S&P 500.

1. It could stabilize and continue to increase over time as it’s done for the last 68 years.

2. It could crash, along with the US economy, and never recover.

It’s important to note that if #2 happens, you and I will have far more things to worry about than the value of our retirement as it indicates the total collapse of the US economy (S&P 500 represents 80% of US market cap). In that case, it wouldn’t matter if your money were in the market or in a box in the backyard, it would be similarly worthless.

So, given that there is nothing you can do to protect the value of your money in the event of #2, you might as well continue to invest believing that #1 is much more likely (cause it is).

Don’t panic. Don’t sell your stock. Hunker down and wait it out.

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The menswear guy explains tariffs

This Bluesky thread was really excellent.

Hello! The US housing market has gotten very expensive, but I still dream of one day owning a home in a walkable neighborhood. In that spirit, I'm offering my consulting services. If you support the Trump tariffs, I can help you find US suppliers. Let me show you some examples. 🧵

— derek guy (@dieworkwear.bsky.social) 2025-04-05T02:44:35.545Z

I wear a lot of Actually Rather Expensive clothing, that I bought ten years ago, because I do try to buy and wear American…when I can.

But again: it’s expensive.

We can’t “just” move manufacturing here. There is no “just.”

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Scheduling

This week I saw a good take on scheduling for D&D.

https://www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/543536/dnd-dungeons-dragons-scheduling-handbook-patch

The Scheduling page the author suggests you print out

After I shared it, someone else sent me this Hank Green video about combinatorics, which explains the issue really well.

Ultimately, I think that people have trouble with D&D scheduling in part because of two of the Geek Social Fallacies: #5, “Friends Do Everything Together” and #1,  “Ostracizers Are Evil.”

But you don’t have to do everything together. Like I talk about in Nuclear Event Planning, it is okay to prioritize “I want to host this event” over “I want these specific people there.” (It’s also okay to do the reverse, but then you have to accept the high likelihood that “hosting the event” won’t happen.)

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Board games: vibes vs mechanics

Yesterday, I went to a local board game store’s big yard sale event, and had some random conversations with people. After mistakenly trying to pick up one guy’s Mystic Vale because I thought it was still unclaimed (he was just resting his arms 😂 that box was big!), he pointed me to a game with similar mechanics, but a space theme instead of a fantasy theme.

I said “Thanks, I appreciate it, but I usually go for vibes over mechanics” and he nodded like he understood exactly what I meant.

Because here’s the thing: I do enjoy different types of game mechanics! Some more than others. In my board game group, I’m infamous for disliking trick takers, for example.

But the thing that makes me LOVE a game isn’t the mechanics. I enjoy Arcs, and will willingly play it with my friends, but I actively seek out Root games (when I have a spare full afternoon, which is, granted, not that often).

But sci fi games aren’t what fill my shelves. Cozy fantasy or nature theming is more my jam.

This feels similar to how my friend group somehow settled on only ever playing Century Golem, even though Century Spice Road is an identical game. There’s just something cooler about mining magical gemstones to power ancient guardians than there is about becoming a really good merchant. (Although I’ll always play a game or two of Jaipur!)

So. Vibes vs Mechanics. Which one are you?

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The Just World Fallacy and a sense of control

https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/vitamin-a-and-measles-what-the-data

This post, by Your Local Epidemiologist, makes a good point about people gravitating to nutrition and other solutions to infectious disease, rather than vaccination, because they want to feel a sense of control over their environment. It’s very difficult and scary for humans to accept the randomness inherent in the natural world; we’d rather have a way to say “I am controlling what happens to me,” and controlling what food goes into your body is a natural extension of that.

Vaccines are abstract (and still a numbers game; even 99% efficacy is still not 100% efficacy), and they don’t provide the soothing effect that “actively choosing your food every day” would provide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_fallacy

The Just World Hypothesis is comforting for that same reason of control. We want to feel like good things happen to us because we made good decisions; bad things happen to others because they made bad decisions; and bad things happen to us for reasons we could not control. Nobody wants to confront the harsh reality that sometimes, bad things can happen even to people who made all the right decisions.

Anyway, go read the YLE essay. It’s very good.

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Internal vs External Processing

This Instagram reel highlighted a difference I haven’t been able to put into words before: Internal vs External Processing.

I know I process things by talking them out. I used to joke that I have an “external dialogue” rather than an internal monologue. But not everyone works that way.

Like the commenter said: this is one of those Differences that should be brought up in couples therapy and premarital counseling. Figuring this kind of thing out first can make solving the other problems exponentially easier.

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Geek Social Fallacies Again

I’ve been thinking about the Geek Social Fallacies again, and about Ostracizers Are Evil (fallacy #1).

This Reddit post summarizes it pretty well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AbuseInterrupted/s/syogLYSwkV

It’s not wrong or evil or Just As Bad As The Bullies to ask someone to leave when they are being obnoxious.

People can, and do, learn and change and grow. But they’ve gotta DO those things.

And neurodivergence isn’t really an excuse; sometimes it’s barely even an explanation. Like they say about trauma: trauma isn’t your fault, but healing is your responsibility .

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Word cringe

I’ve had a couple young people side-eye my use of “skeet” for micro blogs posted on BlueSky.

To them I say: this feeling you have right now? I spent decades feeling that about the word “cyber.”

And now I wonder what the next unintentionally horrible word will be?