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The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

calvin.sh

391–400 of 578 posts

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if they say “Friday week”?

That always means "two Fridays from now" - so if it's Tuesday, then they mean next Friday. I use " week" in conversation, but I'd say it's falling out of favour. I mostly use it with my parents.

What if the person saying that means “Friday this week” sometimes and “Friday next week” other times? How can you know that they don’t from an isolated utterance? Can you know with reasonable certainty that the person saying it knows what you think they mean?

From context you might know if it seems like they know how to use the phrase, but I always struggle to understand these quirks, perhaps because I heard these terms as an adult and haven’t used them much myself, or been exposed to them and the context enough to immerse myself in the colloquial usage by diffusion.

This is close to weird constructions like “x is deceptively y” like “the dog is deceptively large” which, without already knowing the size of the dog, makes me feel like a dunce because I don’t know while not giving me enough specificity to know if the the largeness is what is deceptive or just the perception of the largeness. It’s a syntactical tarpit.

> I use " week" in conversation, but I'd say it's falling out of favour. I mostly use it with my parents.

I am a native English (US) speaker, and I think it’s a British English thing perhaps, as I heard it all the time in Australia, along with other week-related terms like fortnight.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#392

From a 2014 reddit post[0]: > This is actually not a million dollars in singles. It is over $1,000,000. The box was created with the wrong dimensions by the contractor, but they still decided to fill it, display it, and claim it is $1,000,000. > > Source: Tour Guide at the Chicago Fed [0] https://old.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2f9sp7/one_million_do...

It's a baker's million?

a banker's million! new term

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The latest use for AI in 2025: replacing obsolete and non-functional search engines like Google

Can we confidently say that top engineers have lost the battle with SEO spam ? Or they just gave up ? Or something else ?

engineers have nothing to do with it any more, is the entire issue.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#394
post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This thread is very informative on your chances of carrying off a heist stealing this cube. Conclusion: Low, unless you're willing to take only a fraction of the face value. Thinking through it though - you might be able to get away with spending the cash overseas, where it will take some time indeed for the money to be under scrutiny by banks to see if the serial numbers are out of circulation. There's then problem…

I literally just said "Nothing from my end" on a zoom call. Still waiting on my million dollars though so not sure how reliable this method is.

Just add a few more clones running other companies and the spice will flow…

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think those bills didn't go through decommissioning process for used bills. It's much easier to just keep $1M on passive cash balance forever. Yes, they lose about $5k/month on lost interest rate, but a bank can afford it.

These are bank notes so they are a liability of the fed. Them holding them doesn't mean they have more money, they just have less liability.

Yep. Imagine if they put those banknotes through decommissioning, but didn't actually destroy them.

Some day they would put it out (or get it stolen), and now there's unaccounted (counterfeit?) cash in circulation. Better to keep it real.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#396
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have thought a few meant 3 to 5, although I still agree that the number of people who could do it is small.

"couple" and "few" are debatable, but thanks to Survivor we know definitively that "several" means seven.

Couple is not really debatable - it has a definition that includes 2. Not 2 or 3, or any more than 2. Just 2.

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like a handful of bowling balls, please.

I mean, sure. That doesn't necessarily seem like a weird statement to me. It's more than several, but still a manageable number.

Great! In that case I'll take two handfuls of bowling balls and several wheelbarrows. Maybe I should get a couple (4) more wheelbarrows to be safe, bring it down to under 4 balls per barrow

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#399

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitions are surprisingly varied. I see these words as being something to be cautious about. For me: couple(formal) = 2 couple(informal) = 2-3 few = 3-5 half-dozen = 6 [gap] ten-or-so = 9-11 dozen(formal) = 12 dozen-ish(informal) = 11-14 And don't get me started on "this Friday" vs "next Friday"...

My wife and I just discovered that we have different beliefs about "this Friday" vs. "Next Friday". I never even knew there was another possibility, so it's cool to see this mentioned here so soon after.

https://oxtweekend.com/

Re: The Fed says this is a cube of $1M. They're off by half a million

#400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds more like "a couple". Personally I think "a few" would be anywhere from 3-9, which is more reasonable, if still handily above the median national income (like 250k a year if you save and invest well).

Definitions are surprisingly varied. I see these words as being something to be cautious about. For me: couple(formal) = 2 couple(informal) = 2-3 few = 3-5 half-dozen = 6 [gap] ten-or-so = 9-11 dozen(formal) = 12 dozen-ish(informal) = 11-14 And don't get me started on "this Friday" vs "next Friday"...

Where does “several” fall on your spectrum?
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