u/Tatt00ey

I've been looking at Chinese banks lately and specifically China Merchants Bank. It looks cheap on paper. But I don't trust the numbers

I've pulled the standard multiples. Price to book. Price to earnings. Return on equity.

But I'm stuck on one thing, which is basically loan portfolio quality. The issue is that I don't know how to assess it and the bank reports non performing loans. But I don't know how much I trust those numbers. I don't know the real default risk

The market values Chinese banks differently. Some investors look at assets. Others look at earnings growth. Some focus on the state backing. It's not like evaluating a US bank

I need to understand what actually matters. How do you value a bank in a system where the government can step in? Is it even worth looking at loan quality? Or is it all about the macro picture?

I'm trying to be thorough. But I'm hitting a wall. Where do you find reliable data on loan portfolio quality for Chinese banks? And how do you actually interpret it?

As the title says I run an auto repair shop and we're busy and we stay booked.

But no-shows are killing me. People make appointments and don't show up. Indeed, they don't call to cancel. We're left with empty bays and we lose money.

I tried SMS reminders. It didn't help and people still forget. They still don't show up

I found DropCowboy and they have ringless voicemail, SMS, and automation workflows. You can set up a sequence: a voice reminder the day before the visit, then a text the morning of. They claim 5 to 20 times higher response rates

It sounds like it could reduce no shows. But I'm worried it might be too much. People already dislike reminders from service businesses. Would this just annoy them?

I don't want to be that shop that won't leave customers alone. But I also can't keep losing money on empty bays.

Has anyone used automated sequences to reduce no-shows? Does it actually work? Or does it just annoy people?

darwin wet season hits different when you run a small maintenance business. my van is like a sauna inside and no matter what i do everything rusts.

last month my entire socket set grew a layer of orange fuzz. i cleaned it, oiled it, two weeks later its back. my drills are getting that weird white crust on the battery contacts. even my ladder feels damp to touch.

i know its just the climate but im going through tools faster than i can afford to replace them.

had a job at a construction site this week and the site manager pointed out my gear looks a bit rough. i wanted to be like bro have you seen the air here but i just nodded.

any other tradies in darwin dealing with this. what do you do to keep your gear from dissolving.

Two positive reviews, one says my approach is wrong because they'd have done it differently. Editor wants a response to all three.

Don't want to seem defensive, but won't pretend they raised a real flaw. How do people thread this without torching the relationship with a reviewer who'll likely see the revision?

Came in with a specific research interest, advisor's steered me toward something aligned with their grant funding instead. Related, but not what drew me here.

Worried pushing back sours things early, but don't want years on something I'm lukewarm about. How much leverage do incoming grad students actually have?

curious about the stuff that didn't feel good in the moment — where you almost quit, but pushing through actually paid off.

for me it was setting boundaries with people I cared about. Felt awful and selfish at first, and a couple relationships got rocky. A year later, the ones that survived were way healthier, and I stopped resenting people for things I never actually told them bothered me.

what's yours?

i’m trying to figure out an engagement ring without asking my girlfriend 500 questions and ruining the whole surprise. she definitely likes halo engagement rings, that part i know. but the more designs i look at the more i realize there’s a pretty big difference between a halo that just frames the center stone and one where the whole ring becomes a lot. i originally thought bigger center stone + halo = obviously better. now i’m not so sure. some combinations look really balanced and others kind of lose the actual shape of the center diamond because there’s so much going on around it. and then there’s band thickness, how high the setting sits, whether a wedding band will fit next to it etc. stuff i honestly never thought i’d have opinions about lol. for people who designed a halo ring, did you choose the center stone first and build the setting around it? or choose the setting/design first and then find a stone that looked right in it? also curious if anyone went slightly smaller on the center stone specifically because the halo already gave it enough presence. trying to get something that looks intentional, not just “put more diamonds everywhere.”

Something I've been sitting on for a while: does higher ed genuinely value outside marketing backgrounds for research communication roles, or does it just claim to?

I work in marketing. Most of my days involve audience segmentation, messaging strategy, and visual storytelling. From the outside, universities seem to struggle getting research in front of broader audiences, and I keep wondering whether departments actually want to hire for that gap or whether they'd rather keep it informal and internal.

The job postings I've seen for science communication or research communications roles almost always ask for journalism degrees or academic backgrounds. Industry marketing experience rarely gets mentioned as an asset. I'm not sure if that reflects a real preference rooted in how academia thinks about credibility, or if it's just the default hiring pipeline repeating itself.

Do your institutions have dedicated roles for translating research for public audiences? If so, where do those people actually come from professionally?

I'm not asking whether academia should operate more like a business. I'm asking whether the skills I use every day would be recognized in a university setting, or whether I'd essentially be starting over. Also curious whether this varies between R1 institutions and smaller schools, or between STEM and humanities departments.

I’ve been job hunting on and off for like 8 months now, mostly tech/ops roles, and last week a recruiter literally told me “you’re too slow applying, the good ones are gone in a day.” That kinda stung and sent me into a late-night googling spiral.

Now I keep seeing these services that auto-apply to jobs for you across a ton of company career pages, scan every few minutes, you set up multiple profiles, then approve apps before they go out, etc. One of them had jobity in the name in a comparison list I found, but there seem to be a few similar tools doing the same idea.

Has anyone here actually used stuff like this as part of your job search “stack”? Did it get you more real interviews or just ghosted faster? How did you stop it from blasting out low-quality or misaligned apps? Also curious if recruiters can tell when people use these and if that’s a red flag.

Maybe I’m overthinking this, but should I just stick to manual, super-targeted apps plus networking, or is automation actually a legit hack now?

So this started because I was hemming some cheap polyester curtains for my sister yesterday, and the offcuts literally felt like plastic confetti. It got me wondering what I should be using for my own place if I care about waste and microplastics a bit more.

I’ve been reading up on fabrics for home decor and got into this article, annieselke talking about hemp, Lyocell, OEKO-TEX, GOTS, etc. Now my head is full of “good” and “bad” fibers, but I still have to pick something I can actually afford and sew without swearing at my machine.

For those of you who sew curtains, pillow covers, table linens, that kind of stuff - what fabrics do you reach for if you’re trying to be more eco-conscious? Do you have favorite fiber types or certifications you actually trust, or is it more about making stuff last longer and mending it?

Also, is polyester really that evil if I’m making something I plan to use for 10+ years, or am I overthinking this?

ok this might be a random question for this sub lol but i have this REALLY good photo of my parents from when they were younger in Miami, probably late 90s, and I've been trying to figure out what to do with it for their anniversary i don't really want to just print it because we already have framed family photos everywhere someone sent me one of those custom diamond art things where they basically take your photo and turn it into a diamond painting kit. never done diamond painting in my life but honestly it looks kinda fun and at least it would be something i actually made for them instead of just ordering another gift. my only concern is faces. there's a lot going on in the background of the photo too (very Miami lol) and i don't want to spend 40 hours on this thing just to have my parents come out looking like two pixelated strangers. has anyone done custom diamond art from an actual photo before? how big do you need to go before faces start looking normal? also open to other ideas for turning an old Miami photo into something cool if anyone has done something similar

I run a tiny performance marketing shop (4 people, fully remote). We mostly do paid ads for local ecom and SaaS. Last week a client casually asked if we could “also handle SEO, analytics setup, and call tracking like those bigger agencies do” while I was on a Zoom in my kitchen making pasta, and it kinda stuck in my head.

Right now we’re duct taping stuff together with freelancers and a bunch of separate tools. It works, but it’s messy and my margins are getting thinner because I spend half my week project-managing instead of selling or improving our core offer. I might be looking at this the wrong way, but I’m debating if it’s smarter to partner with a bigger marketing outfit and white-label, or keep hiring niche freelancers.

While researching I saw stuff like Netpeak US and similar “full stack” agencies that claim they plug into smaller teams. Has anyone here actually partnered with a bigger agency like that instead of building in-house?

How did you structure pricing, who owned the client relationship, and did it hurt your branding long term or actually help you grow?

i keep going back and forth between a really simple engagement ring and a halo because i LOVE how halos look from the top but then i start thinking about actually wearing it every day here. like beach, sunscreen constantly, pool, sweating basically the second you walk outside lol. i already know i’m not going to be the person who remembers to take my ring off every single time. does all the little detail around a halo get gross/dirty really fast? and is cleaning it constantly actually a thing or not that serious? also if you live near the beach do you even wear your engagement ring there?? because losing a ring in sand sounds like the kind of nightmare i would absolutely create for myself basically i want the pretty ring but i also know myself 😂

discovered a decent Broward house that needed renovation, but the numbers were favorable provided we could close quickly. The normal bank continued to extend the deadline and add limitations. Rather than using a checklist, they examined it like investors. Terms were returned in a timely manner, allowing us to close the sale on time. It still seems like the difference between acquiring the property and seeing it go to someone else.

not the generic "just start small" advice — the specific thing that broke through when you were genuinely stuck, past the point where willpower alone was cutting it.

for me it was telling one friend a specific date I'd show them progress. Something about a real person expecting it snapped me out of a weeks-long stall in a way self-imposed deadlines never did.

what was it for you, and what were you stuck on at the time?

I’ve got medium-length dark brown hair that’s pretty straight and currently just a basic cut that’s grown out a bit. Face is more oval-shaped and I usually keep things simple.

Thinking of going a bit shorter with some layers and maybe soft curtain bangs to frame my face better. Nothing too drastic but enough of a change that it feels fresh.

I have an appointment at David Ryan Salon next week so I’m trying to go in with a clear idea. Anyone with a similar face shape and hair type tried something like this before? How did it turn out?

Went to an open home in centenary heights on saturday. Basic 3 bedder, original 70s kitchen, absolutely freezing cold inside. There were literally three different selling agents walking around with ipads doing facetime tours for buyers down south. They didn't even acknowledge the locals who actually bothered to show up physically

Was reading some regional market trends from property buyers later that night while sulking, and it just confirmed what everyone is feeling. So much of the decent toowoomba stock is getting snapped up off-market or sight-unseen by interstate equity before a normal local family can even get their finance approved.

its just wild how fast we've been priced out of our own backyard tbh. Genuinely wondering if I'll end up having to move all the way out past oakey just to afford a patch of grass at this rate. Just so exhausted by the whole process.

I had this cap and it was pretty old and maybe worn in a bit but perfectly broken in. I'd worn it for years and it went everywhere with me.

Then I spilled hair dye on it and I tried to scrub it out and made it even worse. The cap is ruined

I've been looking for a replacement. Nothing fits.

Every new cap I try on either sits on my head like a garbage can lid. Too big. Too stiff. Or it's got that flat brim. I hate flat brims…

This cap had a curved brim and not too curved. Just right... Comfortable... It took years to get it that way…

I found Conner hats that seems to have the same style. Curved brim. Proper fit. I'm tempted to order one

But I've wasted money on caps before. They look good in photos and feel wrong on my head.

Has anyone tried them? Do they fit like an old worn-in cap? Or are they like all the others?

Been noticing how some artists let personal stuff bleed into the actual music more than others. Not just in lyrics either, but the way albums get recorded or how they approach touring after big life shifts. Radiohead's Kid A era comes to mind but that's been talked about plenty. More curious about smaller scale examples where you can actually hear the change in approach. An artist whose recordings sound noticeably different once they hit a certain point in their life. Not asking for sob stories, just the musical result.

Sometimes the production choices or even the way they structure songs shifts after whatever happened. Fleetwood Mac's Rumours gets mentioned a lot but that was more of a band dynamic thing. Curious if there are other cases where the timeline of someone's personal life lines up with a clear shift in how the music actually sounds.