Before you get into those, it’s worth writing down your investment goals. What generally are you trying to accomplish? When you start reading more about investment, some people are going to try to push you into day trading. Obviously investing itself is not guaranteed, it’s a kind of gambling, but all of the short-term stuff is particularly close to casino gambling. Be careful of that.

Except the numbers that you’re talking about are radically different from the numbers they are talking about. What you’re talking about is something that was probably 10 times or 20 times the average consumption, not 3 times. You’re also talking about something where they’re actually was a clear physical danger and crimes obviously being committed.

I don’t think many people would be particularly surprised if the power company were finding people stealing power and calling the cops on them.

"Hold hands and say it like me

The most shady, Frankie baby, fantastic

Graphic, tryin to make dough, like Jurassic

Park did quick to spark kids who start shit"

-Biggie

And since a grad school thesis isn’t published, there’s definitely no restrictions on the author sharing it. Maybe it’ll get a few citations in the future. Not many, of course, but anything more than zero is nice.

qpdf is handy for merging PDFs. Command line but quick to learn for most usage.

You can buy loyalty. Give someone a high paying 3-year contract and they’ll probably work to the end of it. But of course HR doesn’t want to hear that.