I love everything about this! Such a badass grandma!

Ahhhh, that was a typo. What they meant to say was “the Chinese government has a 95% approval rating among tankies!”

Yeah exactly, but even then there will still be scarcity of land. I’ve been a lifelong Trek fan and I’ve come to see all the holes in that universe. I think even the most diehard post scarcity believers understand that not everyone gets to be Captain Picard. But what about Picard’s family wine estate or even Sisko’s family restaurant? Not everyone gets one of those either.

The best we’ll manage is a tiny living quarters with a replicator and great public transit.

Yes, they’re fueled by resentment and righteous indignation. They see the world as a terrible place and demand that it be fixed for them. They also take for granted all the ways in which the world sucks so much less now than it did for most of history.

It’s easy to see how that falls down though. If everyone’s in it for the love of the game then lots of people are gonna want to be up on stage, like Taylor the superstar, not cleaning the outhouses like Bob the maintenance guy.

And people will say Bob is being exploited, of course, but Bob did choose to take that job. Of course Bob needs to eat and to pay rent and pay for health care and entertainment and to send his kids to university and all that. But let’s assume we take care of all those other things Bob needs the money for, would it still be exploitation if Bob was willing to accept some amount of money (less than what Taylor gets paid for the concert) to clean the outhouses?

I don’t think so, and I doubt Bob would either. I think he would be unhappy if his choice to accept payment for that job were taken away. I think Bob would say the job doesn’t bother him as much as other people and that he benefits from having a stronger stomach (or a weaker sense of smell) from everyone else. Just because we find the job intolerable and disgusting doesn’t mean Bob does. And that’s one of the limitations of empathy (which is so often brought up in these discussions).

But the question is: how? If you look at every other system that has been tried you see the same results or worse. Many systems just end up picking a different set of winners.

I’d like to try LVT because the arguments for it are pretty strong but you never know until you try it and see what happens. I’m far more concerned about mass homelessness and people struggling to afford rent than I am about billionaires. Unless of course those billionaires are corrupting the political system like Musk and Bezos are trying so hard to do.

Unless you’re talking about a 100% tax rate beyond a certain point, then you’re still going to have billionaires (or whatever other arbitrary number you want to choose).

I personally think we should abolish all these complicated taxes and go with land value tax because the increase in the value of land is unearned wealth and the current system leads to gross inefficiency, not to mention tax loopholes.

It’s a system where we’re free to give money to whoever we want in exchange for goods or services. Maybe you’d prefer a system where we all are forced to get the exact same thing!

How does she represent a broken system? People, of their own free will, pay money to go to her concerts. Are you saying they shouldn’t be allowed to do that?

I get the issues around for example Amazon and its algorithmic price fixing and monopolistic behaviours, or with oil companies destroying the environment. But all this woman does is go around playing music that her fans love.

Undecided voters aren’t undecided because they’re oblivious to what’s going on. They’re undecided because they live in a swing state, so they have more power than the average voter, and most importantly they want something. They see the candidates campaigning specifically for them. They’re hoping to be offered a promise they actually care about.

Heir apparent is one way to put it. I would argue that he used the Moscow Apartment Bombings as a false flag to install himself, just as Hitler did with the Reichstag Fire.

Both leaders (Putin and Hitler) already had a lot of power prior to the false flags but those attacks cemented their rule as dictators.

The Moscow apartment bombings were carried out in 1999. Putin used them, along with the invasion of Dagestan, to launch the Second Chechen War.

Alexander Litvinenko blamed Putin and the FSB for the bombings. For that he was infamously assassinated with radioactive polonium.

If Putin were a “good guy” then none of that would’ve happened either, so he might not have won the 2000 election.

How often do you use it, if not every day? Once a week? Once a month?

I use my laptop every day so it makes sense that I don’t use the power button even though it’s right there. I also have a raspberry pi set up to run Retropie that I only turn on once or twice a year when I have an old friend in from out of town. In that case I use the power button every single time but I don’t mind that it’s kind of finicky (I have to turn on several other devices with it as well as a power strip to power them all) because I don’t use it that often.

I could see the new Mac Mini being a bit annoying with its bottom side power button if you’re using it every other day. But honestly I would be more annoyed at the boot time taking 30s than the 2s it takes to reach under the case and power it up. If I had one I would probably just get the keyboard with built in power button and finger print reader though. I use the finger print reader on my laptop all the time because it unlocks my password manager.

How often do you use the power button to turn on your computer? These days I might use it once a year, at most!

Blanka’s feet must be really well insulated from the rest of his body!

People with certain mental illnesses are far more susceptible to conspiracy theories and other such nonsense. It doesn’t excuse what he did but it’s important to recognize this. Our society is a much more dangerous place for these kinds of vulnerable individuals than it was before mass media, simply because of the huge amount of exposure they have to harmful materials.

Especially if you plant open pollinated varieties which are true to seed. So nice being able to save seeds and get more plants next year for free! Doesn’t work with everything but it does work with a lot!

OP’s reply below gave it away.

Absolutely nailed the look. I’ve seen so many PhD students with that exact look!

They’re really in a bind though. Indie games are great because there are thousands of indie developers out there making games and we get to play any ones we want. All the indie games that fail don’t matter because we don’t need to pick the winner ahead of time.

AAA studios can’t operate this way because they can’t predict what will be a great game that everyone wants to play. The only leverage they have is that they can afford to hire a large team of artists to create all the graphics.

It’s really the same situation that Hollywood film studios are stuck in and the result is basically the same. Hollywood makes their MCU graphics extravaganzas and AAA studios makes their Call of Dutys.