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- Back from Eurotrip (Lisbon, Florence, Rome, Munich (Oktoberfest), London – got to see Eric, Richard, Derek (and engagement!)) and unpacked/cleaned/mealprepped/etc.
- Harvested dill, lavender, celery.
- All aquarium life survived!
- Planted next batch of hydroponics: eggplant, sunflower, hot lemon pepper, watercress, lemongrass, marigold, cilantro, bok choi.
- When the dollar is strong, it’s great for retail/vacation/etc. It’s not great for international businesses; their overseas markets reduce revenue.
- Biogen’s experimental drug lecanemab showed promising results last week (slowing decline) after phase 3 trials. Good news after the aducanumab stuff from last year. The assumption/method of both: beta-amyloid deposits in the brain are bad, so find a drug that can reduce them.
- Looked at groundfloor – basically p2p lending for 10% returns, but backed by residential real estate (the second peer is a real estate developer, not another random investor).
- (Seemingly) finalized Schwab fiasco. Cash balance is positive, “Balance Subject to Interest” and “Month to Date Interest Owed” under margin section are both 0.
- RODI overview.
- General.
- Turn your tap to cold, not hot. Hot water has more impurities and can damage the RODI membranes more quickly.
- Frequency of changing filters: totally depends on use case. How much water you push through your rodi system (how often you do water changes), how much impurity is present in your source (how dirty your tap water is), etc.
- For my case (NY, and 15gal/2wk), annually is fine.
- TDS = total dissolved solids.
- TFC = thin film composite.
- GAC = granular activated carbon. Little pieces of carbon (charcoal/coconut usually). Also called UDF, but not sure what that stands for.
- Carbon filters are usually made from wood (charcoal) and coconut. “Activated” means it’s not just wood, using other sources like coconut/peat/nutshells/etc.
- DI cartridges are made of two resins, containing (respectively) negatively and positively charged ions that extract the opposite from the water like a magnet.
- Canisters/stages. In order: (mine is 7 stage)
- Sediment. Usually a polypropylene filter. Basically a mechanical filter. Removes dirt/dust/sand/etc.
- GAC. Removes “tastes” and “odors” – organic contaminants, hydrogen sulfide, chlorine, etc.
- Carbon block. Same as the previous, but uses more coconut and is finer. It’s in a block shape, not granular.
- RO membrane. Does your reverse osmosis. Removes TDS (arsenic, lead, fluoride, more). This is another polypropylene layer, but finer than the first.
- DI cartridges (I have 3). Does your deionization. Removes mineral ions (sodium, calcium, iron, copper, chloride, more).
- Mahlstedt LLC.
- Remember LLCs are only legal entities. They must be classified as one of the other 4 tax entities:
- Sole proprietorship.
- Partnership.
- S Corp.
- C Corp.
- Those generally go in order of size. Sole = 1, Partnership = a few, S = small/medium, C = large.
- The first 3 are passthrough. C corps are not passthrough.
- S corp can have max 100 stockholders.
- If you do not file an ECE (entity classification election, form 8832), you default to a sole proprietorship. You have 75 days after business formation to do this (although can reclassify later).
- FICA = Federal Insurance Contributions Act. Basically a payroll tax, federal income + social security and medical.
- Descriptions.
- Sole. The simplest. You don’t even need to register with the IRS; your SSN is your EIN.
- Partnership is just like the simplicity of a sole proprietorship, but with multiple people. So you usually do the same tasks plus one more: create an operating agreement for the partnership.
- S and C corps are the main ones for businesses of size.
- C is the standard for large. If you’re public (or have >100 shareholders), must be C. It’s what you’re used to: as an employee, you pay tax on your wage. As an owner, you pay tax first on all profits (as the company) and then on your income (as an owner, personal return). This is double taxation.
- S passes through; taxable income for the business passes through to the personal taxes of the owners. You still file a return for the business, but don’t owe tax on it. On your personal return, you pay taxes on the company profits, but then withdraw those profits (tax free) from the company. You get taxed for FICA on your owner salary, but then the other business profits are not subject to FICA. A little more admin for this, have to allocate stock, file for all payroll, etc.
- Overall: since I don’t expect immediate profits from Mahlstedt LLC, I’m leaving it as sole proprietorship. Once I start making profit, switch to S Corp and avoid the 15.3% FICA tax.
- Supercontest.
- Missed the banner/lines/picks weekly update last wednesday because the fetch broke and I was in Europe, unable to fix. Basically wrote a migration to manually commit the lines, and another for the picks that Petty had collected in a gdoc.
- https://gitlab.com/bmahlstedt/supercontest/-/issues/163
- Tried to update the shortcut on my iphone to open the website in brave not chrome, but there’s no brave Action for opening a URL like there is for chrome. Brave only has the “open a new browser tab” action.
