figmentPez
Staff member
Every SciFi novel where people don't shake hands in the future because of a pandemic now look kinda foolish.
Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats
- Thread starter GasBandit
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GasBandit
Staff member
I did it the first time my cat got out and I needed help looking for him. Now it e-mails me shit like this:
I came within one keystroke of entering a reply that I eagerly anticipated when the unvaccinated would be turned away from hospitals, because after all, they don't need or trust modern medicine anyway, right?
GasBandit
Staff member
The "attract more advertisers than you repel" rule. It's really the only actual rule.
This is the only true answer, because like I said in the other thread, she's been violating their rules for years
figmentPez
Staff member
Her personal account got banned, but she still has her government account. Any bets on how long she can resist getting the government account banned, too?
Now I am hearing that Republicans were actually mad about the Jan 6th Insurrection only because it fucked up their own insurrection attempt. They supposedly had a plan in place called the Green Bay Sweep, that was to get a bunch of congress on board to overturn the election during the ratification, but because of the riots the whole plan got fucked over and they lost the support they needed from some key senators and legislators.
It also bans teachers from trying to help suicidal kids without parental consent. What the Hell?!
It's part of their general anti-LGBTQ agenda in general, but it's also so they can push said kids towards religion and white supremacy shit.
Yup. They don't want teachers to be able to tell a struggling kid going through identity issues that they can be what makes them happy, because then how will the bigoted parents be able to pray away the gay?
On the surface, this sounds like your usual meme fare, but I legitimately wonder how much of this crap actually does boil down to, "We must perpetuate/indoctrinate our kids into our olde-fashioned, non-woke ways of life because otherwise we'll be forced to admit (to them, and to ourselves) what colossal jerks we were and we don't want to have to deal with that."
--Patrick
You know, in the last two hours I saw both a video making a joke about how sale taxes work and another about how someone voted for a party he hated because "At least I will pay less taxes" and it made me realize, why the fuck do we even show taxes? Can someone explain it to me?
When I go get a burger, I don't go in with the expectation that I need to know the total breakdown cost of the burger patty or the bun so that I understand why I am paying $6 for a combo. If they just put up the price as $10.30 on the board rather then $10 it's not like I am going to look at it and be like "Wow guess I will leave and not get the burger I planned to get, that extra 30 cents that would have been on my bill anyways in taxes isn't fair."
When we get paid, we always go into "Your hourly pay is $10" and then when I actually get paid, of course, it's much less then that because taxes are taken out, so why even tell me I am getting $10 an hour? Why do we make this so fucking complicated. I swear to god but half our fucking problems feel like they would go away if taxes were just a background expense baked into everything. Get a new job? Your pay calculated with all the stuff is "X" an hour. That is what you will get every week / month. At the end of the year you might even get more through a government refund (fucking hell don't even get me started on how we have to file taxes, fucking Intuit.) When I go to McDonalds for a burger they just have it right on the board the combo is $X and that is what I pay, taxes fucking handled in the price like the resource costs to make it.
I know it won't stop corporations and shit from still always complaining about taxes, but it might stop consumers from also screaming about the government robbing them. Oh wait, now I get it. Can we just eat the rich yet?
When I go get a burger, I don't go in with the expectation that I need to know the total breakdown cost of the burger patty or the bun so that I understand why I am paying $6 for a combo. If they just put up the price as $10.30 on the board rather then $10 it's not like I am going to look at it and be like "Wow guess I will leave and not get the burger I planned to get, that extra 30 cents that would have been on my bill anyways in taxes isn't fair."
When we get paid, we always go into "Your hourly pay is $10" and then when I actually get paid, of course, it's much less then that because taxes are taken out, so why even tell me I am getting $10 an hour? Why do we make this so fucking complicated. I swear to god but half our fucking problems feel like they would go away if taxes were just a background expense baked into everything. Get a new job? Your pay calculated with all the stuff is "X" an hour. That is what you will get every week / month. At the end of the year you might even get more through a government refund (fucking hell don't even get me started on how we have to file taxes, fucking Intuit.) When I go to McDonalds for a burger they just have it right on the board the combo is $X and that is what I pay, taxes fucking handled in the price like the resource costs to make it.
I know it won't stop corporations and shit from still always complaining about taxes, but it might stop consumers from also screaming about the government robbing them. Oh wait, now I get it. Can we just eat the rich yet?
The biggest issue is that sales taxes in the US is not just calculated on the state level. Texas has a sales tax rate of 6.25%, but depending on the surtax added by various authorized entities (cities, counties, special-purpose districts and transit authorities) you can end up paying up to 8.25. Or anywhere in between. It's theoretically possible for a McDonalds on one side of the street to have a slightly different tax than an identical McDonalds directly across the street.
Fixing this would require a fairly large overhaul on the whole tax system for local taxes. In countries that have simpler tax schemes, often the final price is shown on the label, and not the pre-tax price. In many states you can just include the sales tax in the final price (for example, Texas allows this as long as you have a big sign and also put on the receipt: "Texas state and local sales and use tax is included in the sales price." I'm sure a lot of businesses that have presence in multiple locations would find it cumbersome to follow each state's rules, and then calculate tax for each location come tax-payment time. They can just enter a base price in their POS systems, and then upload a database of tax codes, and let the register figure it out and get a report of taxes collected on demand. And, tax-included pricing isn't allowed in every state.
https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sales-tax-in-the-price has a pretty good explanation of the pros and cons.
Fixing this would require a fairly large overhaul on the whole tax system for local taxes. In countries that have simpler tax schemes, often the final price is shown on the label, and not the pre-tax price. In many states you can just include the sales tax in the final price (for example, Texas allows this as long as you have a big sign and also put on the receipt: "Texas state and local sales and use tax is included in the sales price." I'm sure a lot of businesses that have presence in multiple locations would find it cumbersome to follow each state's rules, and then calculate tax for each location come tax-payment time. They can just enter a base price in their POS systems, and then upload a database of tax codes, and let the register figure it out and get a report of taxes collected on demand. And, tax-included pricing isn't allowed in every state.
https://www.taxjar.com/blog/retail/can-retailer-include-sales-tax-in-the-price has a pretty good explanation of the pros and cons.
They fucking signed me up automatically and I have had to unsubscribe from like 23 different Nextdoor notification systems. Fuck that company so hard. I don't care what kind of massive racist my neighbor is or how much they hate some other neighbor's cats.
I...kinda like Nextdoor.
I immediately block the assholes, of course, but I've made like 5 or 6 friends so far by sharing my photos of food, crochet, and irish music there.
And, before I block the assholes, I report all the Covidiots I can so that they get banned from the platform. Here in small-town Texas--there's a lot of them. Heh. I thought I was going to have to drop a guy yesterday morning because he was in the CVS pitching a fit because the pharmacists wouldn't give him ivermectin. I was giving him the hairy eyeball, and prepping myself for if he decided to get physical when he noticed my scrutiny. Usually in cases like that they either do the ol 'What are you looking at?' or slink away. He slunk away.
Years ago, when Nextdoor first sent out it's mailings for our area, my first instinct was, "Oh, hell no!". Most of our neighbors are white and elderly, and the ones that aren't we're already friends with, and we hang out or text each other. I can't remember if Trump was president yet, but this area still tends to skew Republican, and even though it keeps getting more purple, I knew I wouldn't hear anything I ever wanted to know about. Every few months we get sent a "request" to join (which is usually worded more like a threat?) and it goes straight into the trash where it belongs.
...well, recycling bin. Probably better than it deserves.
...well, recycling bin. Probably better than it deserves.
GasBandit
Staff member
In a development that kinda surprises me, it turns out the gunman who took a synagogue hostage in Texas this week was a British national.
He did not survive, everyone else lived.
apnews.com
He did not survive, everyone else lived.
Texas rabbi: Captor grew "belligerent" late in standoff
Police in England say they have arrested two teenagers in their investigation into an armed British national holding four people hostage during a 10-hour standoff at a Texas synagogue.
apnews.com
Painfully accurate.
Sinema and Manchin would be the poster boys (f/m/x) for "all that is needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing", if I believed either of them to really be "good".
I would argue it's been longer than a year. Trump's ascension didn't come out of the ether. This has been building up for years, if not decades. I would argue it started to trend uglier with GamerGate and everything that came of that. It's the systemic racism, rampant sexism, toxic masculinity, etc. All of it has been getting worse within Republican circles, with a lot of toxic radicalization happening on the edges. Like GamerGate, like ComicsGate, and other places. Steve Bannon was at the forefront of GamerGate and they used a lot of its playbook during Trumps ascension and regime.
I would say this, but also a lot of the groundwork was laid during the Reagan Years. It's when Fox News started as well, and that isn't a coincidence. It just became painfully, horribly obvious when the lunatic fringe, the Tea Partiers, the conspiracy nuts, etc. became embraced rather than dismissed.
Yep. The Reagan era empowered corporations like never before, through incentives and deregulation. And criminalizing or demonizing minorities. Which ties in with how Republican parties in power further that. Reagan's regime demonized the LGBTQ community in response to the AIDS pandemic. Reagan and the Bushes empowered white voters and suppressed minority voters (though much more subtly and coded than how it's handled today).
I've read a number of non-fiction books on things like, say, the fast food industry or the environment. And more often than not, anything wrong with the US or the world today goes back to whatever policies Reagan enacted. It's...honestly amazing just how much he fucked over anyone who wasn't upper class.