We got an insane amount of rain towards the end of last year and the beginning of this year (compared to our normal), so there was an unusual amount of growth on the hills. On the other hand, this one is in (a small part of) the 2018 Woolsey Canyon fire burn scar, so it’s grass and new growth, not decades of built up fuel.

Ah, makes sense.

Okay, gotcha. I mean, I got the overall point, I guess I just missed the extension of the theme.

I must have lost the thread; why are we doing 2% of what a billion dollars’ earnings earn?

Your sheets feel grimy after a week or so? Do you have a very physical job?

I’m pretty sedentary, and I’m not even sure I could tell when my sheets need cleaning by feel. I wash them ever couple of weeks or so because I’m guessing they’ve absorbed some body oils by then, but not such that I can see or feel it.

If the billionaire wants to continue growing with inflation it reduces to them getting 20 million a year which translates to 400 thousand a year both matching 3% inflation.

I didn’t follow this part

Now do $1B

Yeah, I was being sarcastic

What if you wanted to buy yourself something pretty, like Microsoft?

Also a good one

Yeah, that’s a good one.

People have a hard time conceptualizing really big numbers, and a billion is a really big number. If you put $1B into a fixed rate investment earning 5% annually, you’d be getting $50M a year just from that. Most investments in the market do much better than that. So if she kept just (just!) $10B of what she got, she could easily be getting back well over $500M without doing anything at all. Every year, forever. If she doesn’t spend or give away that much, then what she gets back grows.

I don’t believe that’s true - handedness is a real thing. You might be able to learn to perform well enough with the other at something with practice, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a naturally dominant hand for most people.

For sure, and much more doable, though still relies on being able to make a metal vessel that can hold pressure.

Okay, but you still need to get electricity to the electric motor. How would you so that?

So then you have copper cables covered in something to insulate them that are long enough to cover a whole field, which by itself would likely be problematic at the time.

For most applications, I’m guessing the windmill directly to the machine is going to make more sense, though of course that has to be a stationary machine.

I understand that but it’s not useful in this context, is it? You make an electric motor to power something, and then you have to use a mechanical generator to power the motor. How is that helpful? Unless you also know how to make batteries.

Don’t you need to vacuum the air out of that glass so the wire doesn’t just burn up?

Where do you get the electricity for your motors?

I love that show - it and The Twilight Zone are probably my all time favorites. The production is amazing and it’s just so fun and interesting.