Gas Bandit's Political Thread V: The Vampire Likes Bats

This is... weird? Unsent text on mobile counts as a will, Queensland court finds
A Queensland court has accepted a dead man's unsent, draft text message leaving his possessions to his brother and nephew instead of his wife and son, as an official will.
The Supreme Court in Brisbane heard the 55-year-old took his own life in October 2016, after composing a text addressed to his brother, which indicated his brother and nephew should "keep all that I have", because he was unhappy with this wife.
A friend found the text message in the drafts folder of the man's mobile phone, which was found near his body.
The unsent message detailed how to access the man's bank account details and where he wanted his ashes to be buried.
This seems very odd. I don't know how to express myself on this, but leaving it in a political thread because legal stuff can often get heated. Also, it deals with suicide.
 
This is... weird? Unsent text on mobile counts as a will, Queensland court finds

This seems very odd. I don't know how to express myself on this, but leaving it in a political thread because legal stuff can often get heated. Also, it deals with suicide.
I'd think the only question I'd have if I was judging this was "How sure am I that the will was typed up by the dead man."

But I'm curious also about how much of "all that I have" is actually his to will away.
 
I'd think the only question I'd have if I was judging this was "How sure am I that the will was typed up by the dead man."
I'm hesitant to say something that sounds like "suicidal people are just crazy" but if he was in the process of committing suicide when he typed up the text does that raise the question of if he was of sound mind at the time?
 
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GasBandit

Staff member
I'd think the only question I'd have if I was judging this was "How sure am I that the will was typed up by the dead man."

But I'm curious also about how much of "all that I have" is actually his to will away.
Well, since it had account numbers and stuff, I'd say that's less of an issue than "did he type this up and then change his mind, which is why he didn't send it?"
 
Wouldn't count in Belgium, definitely. You can write a will by yourself of you want to, but then it has to be hand written, signed, dated, and include a statement that it is a will and testimony and all that.
An unsent text message? Really no way to determine who wrote it.
 
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Twitter suspended Rose McGowan over her Wienstien and Affleck tweets. The victim in the Charlottesville beating picture over the weekend has been charged with assault. The NFL in general. Other schools are kicking kids off teams for not standing during the anthem. Congress. Just Congress. And that dipshit in the White House

It seems on an institutional level, evil is winning, and there is little to no hope that it will ever get better.
 
Twitter suspended Rose McGowan over her Wienstien and Affleck tweets. The victim in the Charlottesville beating picture over the weekend has been charged with assault. The NFL in general. Other schools are kicking kids off teams for not standing during the anthem. Congress. Just Congress. And that dipshit in the White House

It seems on an institutional level, evil is winning, and there is little to no hope that it will ever get better.
Angry Old White Guys are trying to take back what they feel they're losing - i.e. control and comfort. They might succeed, with gerrymandering in the USA and just plain power politics in other countries firmly putting power and control "back where it belongs". Or they might lose, and the world will become a more diverse, if more unstable and less predictable, place.

Either way, power is still shifting away from who used to hold it, and this has been the case since the late 19th century (start of socialism, general voting rights, women's rights, etc etc). We've got a long way to go, but whether this is a temporary lull in the curve or a definitive "we're going back to feudalism!" bend, we'll only be able to tell in 20 years.
 
Twitter suspended Rose McGowan over her Wienstien and Affleck tweets. The victim in the Charlottesville beating picture over the weekend has been charged with assault. The NFL in general. Other schools are kicking kids off teams for not standing during the anthem. Congress. Just Congress. And that dipshit in the White House

It seems on an institutional level, evil is winning, and there is little to no hope that it will ever get better.
I'm somewhat disappointed we don't have some new protest songs about all this by now. Looks like I have to rely on the old stuff.



That's eerily fitting.
 
I'm past songs at this point. Individual acts of humanity just can't keep up with the damage the whole is doing to itself. I'm close to thinking we DESERVE to get nuked, the sooner the better. :(
 
I'm past songs at this point. Individual acts of humanity just can't keep up with the damage the whole is doing to itself. I'm close to thinking we DESERVE to get nuked, the sooner the better. :(
DarkAudit will be voting for the Chicxulub party in 2020.

--Patrick
 
DarkAudit will be voting for the Chicxulub party in 2020.

--Patrick
There's also the recent fear-mongering regarding Yellowstone: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/science/yellowstone-volcano-eruption.html

Basically some new research "claims" that signs point to an eruption in a matter of decades. Which would be catastrophic for the world. Oh and most of the USA would be basically completely destroyed via being buried under ash.

I choose not to worry about it because there's quite literally zero I (or anybody else) can do about it anyways. If such were actually to occur, our best chance is probably funding SpaceX (Mars), and anybody else trying to do orbital arcologies or other such "survival of species" work.
 
FWIW, the Yellowstone supervolcano is historically overdue. However, I'm already doing what I can about this by living in MI, which should be far enough away to minimize the impact. I expect someone like @Dave would have a much worse time of it, though.

--Patrick
 
FWIW, the Yellowstone supervolcano is historically overdue. However, I'm already doing what I can about this by living in MI, which should be far enough away to minimize the impact.
Depends on which figure here is more accurate: https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/yellowstone/yellowstone_sub_page_91.html

I tend to believe the 2nd for at least a BIT (even if only a dusting) of coverage, since very thin would wash away quickly, and as they say in the article, would not be in the geologic record.
 
FWIW, the Yellowstone supervolcano is historically overdue. However, I'm already doing what I can about this by living in MI, which should be far enough away to minimize the impact. I expect someone like @Dave would have a much worse time of it, though.

--Patrick
The impression I got was that if you live in North America, your choices are die fast or die slow.
 
Putting this here because I doubt the laws are very different in the USA, and thus not Canada-specific: She spent $124K to get her home back: Legislation leaves Alberta common-law couples without recourse
Common-law relationships are on the rise, but what some partners might not realize is they aren't afforded the same legal protections as married couples when it comes to breaking up.
...
"I left and there were two houses in this relationship but neither of them were in my name," she said.
I may be in the minority here, but if you're dumb enough to not get your name on any of the property, wtf is wrong with you? @Dirona and I ARE married, and we STILL made double-sure that BOTH of our names have been on any property (even rentals) that we've had together. Not because of this, but because it makes WAY more sense for any number of other reasons relating to anything done to property. If one of you technically isn't the property owner, that could get "interesting" really fast.

Now I'm not saying that the woman's mistake in this article should be punished by her getting ZERO, but she's still stupid.
 
In the US, the only way to officially* change the people listed on a property is to remortgage that property from scratch (unless it is not currently under mortgage). This can be difficult for tax reasons, getting the new person qualified for the loan, etc.

--Patrick
*that is, to where people take it seriously.
 
In the US, the only way to officially* change the people listed on a property is to remortgage that property from scratch (unless it is not currently under mortgage). This can be difficult for tax reasons, getting the new person qualified for the loan, etc.

--Patrick
*that is, to where people take it seriously.
It depends on what you're doing. Right now I need to change the ownership listing. In the county records, I'm the sole owner. My mortgage is joint, since we did a remortgage after we married. Since the property was in my name, we didn't have to change the record for ownership. It's a good reminder for me to do it though. Since if I die or become incapacitated, my wife has no rights to the property. Even though she is on the mortgage.
 
In the US, the only way to officially* change the people listed on a property is to remortgage that property from scratch (unless it is not currently under mortgage). This can be difficult for tax reasons, getting the new person qualified for the loan, etc.

--Patrick
*that is, to where people take it seriously.
My name is on our house, but not on the mortgage, so I don't know if that's entirely accurate.
 
Canadian Newspaper, but obviously picked up from some american source, as it's all with USA numbers: Who pays what in taxes?
According to the latest IRS data, the payment of U.S. income taxes is as follows. The top 1% of income earners, those having an adjusted annual gross income of US$480,930 or higher, pay about 39% of U.S. federal income taxes. That means about 892,000 Americans are stuck with paying 39% of all federal taxes.

The top 10% of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income over $138,031, pay about 70.6% of federal income taxes. About 1.7 million Americans, less than 1% of our population, pay 70.6% of federal income taxes. Is that fair, or do you think they should pay more? By the way, earning $500,000 a year doesn't make one rich. It's not even yacht money.

But the fairness question goes further. The bottom 50% of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income of $39,275 or less, pay 2.83% of federal income taxes. Thirty-seven million tax filers have no tax obligation at all. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 45.5% of households will not pay federal income tax this year.
Good article about taxation. Not great, not perfect, but good. In particular I'd like to see what the breakdown of taxes that are not income taxes, and how those come into the revenue streams. I'm sure that data is online, but I don't think it's fair either to only make an article only about income taxes, rather than all taxes.
 
Canadian Newspaper, but obviously picked up from some american source, as it's all with USA numbers: Who pays what in taxes?

Good article about taxation. Not great, not perfect, but good. In particular I'd like to see what the breakdown of taxes that are not income taxes, and how those come into the revenue streams. I'm sure that data is online, but I don't think it's fair either to only make an article only about income taxes, rather than all taxes.
If the bottom 50% paid their entire income in taxes, what percentage would they contribute in taxes paid?
 
Ah, that's been Warren Buffett's argument for years.
Last year my federal tax bill — the income tax I paid, as well as payroll taxes paid by me and on my behalf — was $6,938,744. That sounds like a lot of money. But what I paid was only 17.4 percent of my taxable income — and that’s actually a lower percentage than was paid by any of the other 20 people in our office. Their tax burdens ranged from 33 percent to 41 percent and averaged 36 percent.

If you make money with money, as some of my super-rich friends do, your percentage may be a bit lower than mine. But if you earn money from a job, your percentage will surely exceed mine — most likely by a lot.
--Patrick
 
If the bottom 50% paid their entire income in taxes, what percentage would they contribute in taxes paid?
In addition, what other taxes (sales taxes, etc) are you paying? And that's only personal, so as I asked above what other tax sources (import/export taxes, etc) does the government have, and what percentage of the pie are those?
 
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