I mean, the stray cat I hang out with does all these things, too

This would be an extremely time consuming and potentially destructive process.

First, take a grinder and chop off the tips. Then go to the hardware store and get a 1/8, or maybe 3/16, bit that you think is long enough (note- these are expensive). Then go home. Tap a pilot divot in the flattened tip of the lag bolt to get started. Drill your bit all the way through the bolt without snapping it. Take frequent breaks to cool the bit and avoid dulling the edge. Note that bolts tend to be made of quite hard steel to deal with the high forces they are put under, so expect this to take an annoyingly long time. Then do it again with a slightly larger drill bit. Then again. And then again. Etc. Until your bit is just barely smaller than the bolt. Finally, you go in with a drill bit as large as the bolt, and absolutely destroy all your hard work, tearing down the sides of the bolt in a haphazard way. With a large amount of finagling and cursing, you manage to set the bit in thr hole in the top of yhe stripper pole, and finally completely destroy the bolt, so the remains fall on the floor below.

Far more expedient would be using the grinder to grind the tip off, then cut a slot in the flat surface you made. Or maybe a +. Then put either a flat or phillips bit in your impact driver, and reverse the bolt out. How well this works depends on how hard they cranked down the bolts. If this fails, I would get a hole saw, cut around the bolts, and clamp some vice grips to them to turn them out from above.

But really, I would call a real estate lawyer and force my neighbor to pay a contractor to do all the work for me.

Thinner than the lag bolts are long…?

I hear about these things. But I have doubt based on personal experience. When I’ve done long hikes (did both the Appalachian and Pacific Crest Trails), I would nearly universally knock out pretty much as soon as the sun set. This, after a lifetime of being a night owl who very easily would stay up until 2am every night.

And this was true of basically everyone else I met in every age group as well. 17 year olds to 70 year olds all abserved hikers midnight, hitting their sleeping bags hard not long after sunset. Even with a campfire going and socializing to be had, staying up 2 hours past sunset was a hefty proposition.

Also, with the 2 sleeps thing - on the trail, I typically slept straight through the night. I might wake up once or twice to pee, but then I would lay back down and be right back to sleep.

My guess is that

1. All humans naturally sleep around sunset and wake at sunrise, with negotiable dispositions to sleep earlier or later based on age.
2. Variations in sleep schedule in ancestral environments would account for disposition, but would likely be driven by cultural norms, not instinct.
3. Having two sleeps was probably an artifact of having easily available illumination (candles and lamps) which occurred at this time.

I would like to clarify here that “brawl” should be interpreted as a heated discussion, not a physical confrontation.

So all the pizza chains have their conveyor belt ovens so they can churn out pizzas super fast. But what if we just kept feeding one really long pizza through it? An endless pizza!!

Wait no, but get this… OCTUPLE PEPPERONI!!

Basically nothing. If you wanted to show up to a polling station and claim to be your neighbor to steal their vote, there is really nothing stopping you. Except that, yaknow, you would have to get off your ass and go do it. Which is why voter fraud is essentially a non-issue. The number of fraudulent votes any given person could cast would be negligible in terms of the total ballots cast in an election. So the individual has little chance of swaying the election, and knows it. So there is no benefit for them. And in return for no benefit, they would need to leave their house and essentially do paperwork, which is annoying and boring.

Like, if you’re going to go to the trouble of committing a federal crime, you might as well commit a profitable crime.

Relevant

OP is getting a lot of downvotes. I assume, from straight guys who are offended at this notion. As a straight guy myself, I understand their frustration. But straight up (ha!) - if you are a straight guy who is pissed off by this message, you are fucking up.

Why? Because it’s the truth. Go outside, go touch some grass, and observe how women interact with each other (or with obviously gender non-conforming people). They hug as soon as they meet. They give each other compliments. They ask for contact info and proactively make plans to spend time together. In the context of this post, this is what is meant by “treating them like a human”. It isn’t just basic respect. It is giving them a feeling of warmth, support, and acceptance.

So if you’re a guy, and you feel like the world is cold, unsupportive, and unwelcoming - great! Here is some validation of that feeling! You are right! Enjoy the ego boost!

But also - now you know this information. And this is good, because even though it feels bad to know that half the planet doesnt trust you by default while they trust the other half implicitly, it also points you in the right direction for solving your problem.

Here’s the thing. Women do, in fact, like to fuck. Even with men?? Yes! But what they don’t like is dealing with the emotional turmoil of guys who want to fuck them that they don’t want to fuck back. This could come in two forms:

1. The guy who asks them out, clearly a bundle of nerves that could explode into rage or tears at any moment. A lot has been said about how women have legitimate fears about men becoming violent or vindictive when they are turned down, but I don’t think this is worth focusing on, because we’re all very nice people here who wouldn’t do anything to hurt someone else even if we feel bad about getting rejected. However, I think it is also important to keep in mind that most women are nice and they feel bad about making someone feel bad by rejecting them. And so if you ask a woman out and will clearly feel bad if she rejects you, then when she rejects you she will also feel bad, which is an emotional load on her, and she doesn’t like that.

2. The guy who never asks them out, but who is clearly into them. The guy who always shows up, sticks by her side at every moment, laughs too hard at all of her jokes. This guy is annoying. Maybe if he just asked her out when they first met, she’d be into him, but he just keeps hanging around, making her constantly feel his now-unwanted attraction. But she can’t tell him to go away, or that she isn’t interested in him, because then she would feel like a presumptuous bitch. So she feels stuck, always trying to shake this guy off or avoid him whenever he shows up.

So the solution is simple. Don’t be those guys. Literally all you need to do is not pin your self worth to whether or not any particular girl likes you. If your see a girl you are interested in, then go say hi and have a normal fucking conversation. Then, at a point in time when it wouldn’t be awkward as fuck, just say “hey, btw, I think you’re gorgous/adorable/super interesting/a total baddie/the girl with the best hair here. Wanna go out sometime?” If she says yes, great! Maybe she even wants to make out right now! If she says no, also great, you have a new friend and you can release whatever nerves you had about whether or not an attractive stranger likes you.

Lastly the day you no longer NEED a woman in your life, one will find you. Find a way to be happy alone, and you’ll never want for company again. Works wonders for cats

I don’t disagree with the other things you said, but this analogy is a flop. I wanna pet cats because they are fluffy, not because they arent needy. As evidence, I submit the fact that I also like petting dogs.

I typically run pretty hot, and am typically not mosquitos favorite target. Though if mu oura ring is to be believed, I have a low resting heart rate, which may indicate lower carbon emmissions. So maybe thats it

These calculations are all inflation adjusted. If you are happy on 20k per year, the 4% rule allows you to withdrawl 20k inflation adjusted from your investments per year basically indefinitely.

Its kinda to bad we can’t all be able to take a one semester sebattical every 5 years or so and take like 3 classes and live on a campus and see what things are like. It would kinda be cool.

> Show up on campus 5 years later.
> Excited to learn new things, meet new people.
> Wait, no
> nonono
>
> I"m OOOOOOOOLLLLLDDDDDDD!!!

Problematic

I retired at 32. This is what most people mean when they talk about early retirement. See my much longer comment in this thread.

I mean, I dont think the line of inquiry is bad. But you shouldn’t switch your SSRIs for oranges just yet.

@[email protected] This is the correct answer.

As another commenter said, it depends a lot on your lifestyle goals. Obviously the answer will be different if you want to spend your time sleeping in a hammock on a beach in Nicaragua eating whatever fruit grows on the nearby trees, versus if you want to pop champagne on your yacht every night with IG models. This is the biggest split in the FIRE community - leanFIRE, or fatFIRE. LeanFIRE emphasizes reducing lifestyle cost in order to retire earlier, while fatFIRE emphasizes increasing income in order to enjoy a more luxurious retirement. As a lemming, I think I am safe in assuming you are more interested in the former.

So then, among leanFIRE, you should decide exactly what flavor you want to pursue.

A fairly traditional leanFIRE would be something like working a somewhat lucrative job, like software or accounting, while you live a very modest life. eg, buying a house, renting it out, and then building yourself a tiny house in the back yard to live in, so you can live rent free. Keeping some chickens and a vegetable garden, and riding a bicycle for most of your transportation needs. You then work your job, saving as much money as possible until you have 20x your annual COL in some stable index funds, and then you quit.

An important note here is that for this to be worth it, your leanFIRE must not be a “starvation FIRE”. You can be happy living a modest lifestyle, and you can learn to be happy living an even more modest lifestyle - but if you aren’t happy with the lifestyle you are building for yourself, then what is the point? So probably the biggest asterisk in all of this is that YOU SHOULD NOT BE WAITING FOR RETIREMENT TO MAKE YOU HAPPY. If you are accepting misery during the period in your life when you are working 9-5 and hoping that quitting your job will make you happier, then you are, at best, simply delaying being happy for years. Because while your happiness can be influenced by ourside factors, at the end of the day, happiness is about what is going on in your head, not what is going on in the world. So regardless of your flavor of retirement, retiring should be about going from happy to happier, not about going from misery to happiness - because the latter ends up actually being a transition from misery to misery but with more free time. So if you are eating rice and beans shivering in a cold apartment in order to save a few bucks to retire sooner, and you hate it, then this is counterproductive. If you are miserable in your life right now, I won’t tell you not to work towards FIRE. And I won’t tell you not to tighten your belt and suffer a little. But at the same time, you should recognize that the biggest thing that will impact your happiness is accepting that you have the ability to be happy right now, and working on that at the same time.

Anyway, suppose you want to get to a semi-retirement even sooner. One strategy here is coastFIRE. This is where you plow money into your investments as quickly as possible so that they will then eventually reach maturity at a traditional retirement age as long as you don’t touch them ahead of time. So suppose you are happy living on 20k/yr. The 4% rule says you need $400k in the market as principle. So then your goal is to put enough money in the market so that you will have $400k when you are at traditional retirement age - which depending on how old you are right now, is significantly less because of the power of compound interest. Lets do some math.

PV (present value) = how much you need invested when you hit coastFIRE such that you will have 400k in the bank at retirement age.

FV (future value) = 400k. The amount you want invested when you start withdrawling cash to live on.

r = anticipated real annual return (all these numbers are inflation-adjusted. That’s the “real” part)

n = number of years in the market. The difference between your official retirement date and your coastFIRE date.

The formula is PV = FV/(1+r)^n

So suppose you want to hit coastFIRE at 30, and retire at 60. So n is 30. And lets assume a conservative 7% real return in the market. Then

PV = FV/(1+r)^n = 400000/(1.07)^30 = $52,200

So plunk $52,000 in your 401k, and now you only need to work to cover your living expenses. Which you can do as an accountant by, say, just working during tax season. Or as a software developer by just picking up occasional contract gigs.

Another option here is what is called baristaFIRE. This is coastFIRE, but rather than continue working your lucritive (but often unenjoyable and stressful) job, you switch to working a job you enjoy. For many people, that might be being a barista. Or it could be any number of similar enjoyable but low paying jobs, like raft guiding or teaching martial arts or making art. This is currently my strategy, where I work as a rigger for concerts for part of the year, then bounce and do whatever for most of the rest.

And another option to consider is what is called geoarbitrage. This is essentially just moving somewhere with a lower cost of living before or after retirement. For example, if you get a software job in SF, then get a remote work option and move to Thailand and decide you want to live the rest of your life there, you can retire very quickly.

So if you want to retire early, your main priority is creating a lifestyle you are happy with which has as low of annual expenses as possible.

Then, don’t neglect working to increase your income via chasing raises and promotions and switching companies.

Then, invest the difference in index funds (most traditional), real estate (a factor in most FIRE peoples portfolio, at least for their own residence), and/or a personal/local business (highest yield, but the most work and biggest risk).

Finally, do note that by pursuing early retirement, you are officially a capitalist. You are using the money you earned as the investment capital of some sort of business enterprise, and are then getting paid by the enterprise for the privilege of using your money. So everyone here hates you. Sorry.

I would really not recommend talking to a financial advisor about this without really knowing what you want. They are, by their nature, quite financially conservative, and their main clientele are people who are in their 50s or older. “Retiring early” to them, means retiring at 58.

I would love to see a clinical trial done to definitively show that eating citrus can lower the risk of depression,

Ie, there are no clinical trials, this is just the result of running statistical analysis on large datasets that rely on self-reported data, along with a proposed causitive mechanism.

My guess at an alternative explaination: people who eat healthy diets and generally take care of themselves have a lower risk of depression. One significant factor in this is eating fruit. People on answering questions on a survey, even an anonymous survey, are embarassed to admit that they’ve only eaten McDonalds this week, and so imagine/justify eating some fruit, and the imaginary fruit that they are eating is apples and bananas, since that is the most stereotypical fruit to think of. People who actually live a healthy lifestyle are thinking of actual instances where they ate specific fruits, and are thus far more likely to report eating oranges. Oranges are a very common fruit to eat, since they are generally palatable, convenient, and cheap. Compare to mangos (messy, inconvenient) or blackberries (expensive), oranges are common enough that they can actually produce some sort of signal in the data. Then tack on maybe some accidental p-hacking (some fruit somewhere in the data was bound to indicate that eating fruit is good for your health), and you get this result.

Watch out for your 50 year old Aunt to tell you that drinking margaritas cures depression after she sees it on The View a month from now.

Subtract effort involved from expected emotional benefit.

To actually make your neighbors hedge bigger, you would need to plant new plants next to the additional plants, and tend to them to ensure they don’t die after being transplanted. Which is basically landscaping. Which us a job that pays decently primarily because it is a lot of effortful and unpleasant work. And to make your prank work, you will be doing additional labor to hide the fact that you are landscaping your neighbor’s yard, and will also be working at odd hours - either the middle of the day when they are at work, or more likely (assuming you have a job) late at night. So you are basically taking on a part time job for several months to do this right.

Then, the payoff. Most likely, this person doesnt notice at all for quite a while. When they do notice, the maximum possible payoff you will get is that you run into them in their yard, and they make some offhand small talk comment about “my hedges sure are growing a lot this year”, just before they take a hedge trimmer to them, destroying months of your labor in a few minutes.

A good prank is higher in payoff than it is in effort. Like handing someone a gross prank-flavored jellybean. Or (if you want revenge on someone for some reason) hiding raw fish in their car.

Your idea doesn’t meet this critia. It seems like a lot of work for something the person being pranked wont even notice