The right to not be gaslighted with lies, stupidity, and disinformation.

There’s a little detail in the show that I always liked. They didn’t shove it in your face and I appreciate the subtlety.

The detail is that there were actually very few groceries in the grocery store. If you look closely, the produce is always very low quality, and there just wasn’t that much to choose from. It was a big deal when they got those navel oranges. Not much meats either, and they mostly got canned goods and such. It highlights how shitty their society is without going too overboard. “You might not have noticed, but your brain did.”

Mass deportation of our cheap labor supply will do way more to increase cost of groceries than Chinese tariffs ever will. The cold hard truth of it all is that our entire way of life depends on exploiting cheap migrant labor. Democrats don’t like to admit it because we don’t like that kind of exploitation, and republicans don’t like to admit it because they don’t like immigrants. But we depend on them as much as we do the laborers in chinese factories, the somewhat educated cheap labor in India, the children in sweatshops in Vietnam, and so on. Our entire economy is based on exploiting someone, somewhere, artifically reducing the cost of living for us.

You’re ok with little planes flying through hyperspace but draw the line at space hacking, lol

On the contrary, Luke Skywalker taking a lucky shot

Man that’s like the ONE THING that I totally give star wars a pass for. It wasn’t a lucky shot. The design flaw was there, yes, but the targeting computer was never going to work. Red leader had a lock and it still didn’t work. Wedge Antilles, the best non-Jedi starfighter pilot in the galaxy, expressed strong doubt at least two or three times. Luke had to use the force to destroy it, there was no other way. If you can suspend your disbelief to accept the existence of the force, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story. Fucking masterpiece!

Ever seen Primer? Equal and opposite to that, easily the most confusing movie I’ve ever seen and they don’t spoon feed you anything, lol

Related: outrunning explosions, ugh

That’s why I always have my criminal conspiracy meetings at Starbucks or Wendy’s.

The pseudo-realism in those batman movies and comic book movies in general is a huge part of why I detest them. It’s like an uncanny gap or something. Comic book characters are inherently ridiculous and absurd so I can’t take them seriously. They ask me to suspend too much disbelief.

One specific example from the batman movies is at the end of one of them, I forget which, I think a few hundred cops charge a bunch of guys with machine guns or something? And I remember thinking in the theater they are about to get mowed down World War I style. But somehow they win, they all live, and the streets aren’t flowing with a river of blood. You want me to take them seriously, while having absurd characters and situations, and then you put them in situations where they absolutely should be massacred…I just…I’m out…

You’re a very unpleasant person.

Calm down professor. The US is one of the only countries in the world to tax worldwide income, even if they are a nonresident of the US. That is NOT how it works in every country.

Here’s a pretty good article about it from the WSJ if you want to educate yourself on the subject: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-34630

It’s somewhat accurate to say “every penny they make is taxABLE to Uncle Sam” which is different from saying 100% tax rate. Americans living outside the US still need to file a tax return and report all their income, and pay tax on it to the US, even if it is from a foreign source. That said they could claim the foreign tax credit if they paid tax to a foreign regime on that income already, or the foreign income exclusion under some circumstances which would reduce their taxable income to the US.

Well thank god we don’t have any Death Panels from Obamacare though!

Fuck her, fuck RBG, fuck McConnell, fuck Biden, fuck Trump, fuck every single one of these dinosaurs who will be dead long before they see the result of their actions.

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-announces-sweeping-effort-to-restore-fairness-to-tax-system-with-inflation-reduction-act-funding-new-compliance-efforts

The complex structures and tax issues present in large partnerships require a focused approach to best identify the highest risk issues and apply resources accordingly. In 2021, the IRS launched the first stage of its Large Partnership Compliance (LPC) program with examinations of some of the largest and most complex partnership returns in the filing population. The IRS is now expanding the LPC program to additional large partnerships…By the end of the month, the IRS will open examinations of 75 of the largest partnerships in the U.S. that represent a cross section of industries including hedge funds, real estate investment partnerships, publicly traded partnerships, large law firms and other industries. On average, these partnerships each have more than $10 billion in assets.

Believe me when I tell you a partnership with $10b assets is insane. Auditing that is extremely labor intensive and requires a ton of highly specialized skills and that all requires resources.

There’s really nothing left to argue here so please just take this at face value and move on.

Well the market disagrees with you. And as long as people are forking over $1 million for a starter home and all other equities and commodities are at all time highs, prices won’t budge.

That’s what I was paying in a small college town about twenty years ago. I doubt if we’ll ever see that again. I just checked and that building isn’t even there anymore. Looks like they tore it down and put in some luxury student housing (!) for around $1600/month. Wtf.

Yeah aka market correction to reach equilibrium. Nothing to see here, move along, move along.

Right, well, anyway, the IRS budget just got a huge increase under the Biden administration new budget. They’re finally hiring a ton of new agents and updating their ancient tech etc. The R party fought tooth and nail against this and there’s an active smear campaign to make the average person afraid they’re coming after you. R’s managed to reduce the budget increase which is going to reduce the IRS ability to go after the whales, as you were griping about in your original post.

Yeah this is completely normal and not at all anything to flip out about. Honestly I’m surprised the reporting threshold was ever $20k to begin with. The 1099 reporting threshold for contractors has been $600 for over a decade now so I would’ve assumed the same for scalpers.