I moved to a bluer state and …

ive been waiting 30 years for them to end the ‘war on drugs’. or enact ‘universal health care’.

We’re we’re one of the first to decriminalize pot, and created sort of universal healthcare that served as a model for aca.

college costs an arm and a leg

Free community college, means tested free public universities

And what was the capital gains tax rate at that time? Why do wealthy people get to call their income something else and get taxed less on it?

You have to go even further back, for a time when both sources of income were taxed the same

• https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/whole-ball-of-tax-historical-capital-gains-rates

Right, that’s the real problem. We’re over hear bickering about income tax rates, while the wealthy are sitting there playing a shell game with : income? Find the income. Which cup is it under? If you tax the right one, you win a prize. Just like any shell game, the only way to win is to not play.

Do you know what else eventually happened with cable? People cutting it by the millions when there was finally another choice.

It’s interesting that my family went from wasting time siting in front of a big screen tv paying massively for cable channels we never used, to cutting the cable and only paying for 2-3 streaming services at a time

But it’s even more interesting we continued down this path so our down time is dominated by small screens and somewhat interactive media instead of passively watching. If I stop paying for streaming media, my teens wouldn’t notice. It would just be the people here who would notice, as I complain more about doom scrolling and reaching the end

As a grandmom, my Mom has decided on boxes for really lame gifts that might make you wonder if she has dementia, for gift cards.

If you don’t give her sufficient ideas for her to buy you something you enjoy, you’re a Scrooge and deserve this box of instant jello …… containing a gift card so you can get it yourself

There’s also the very important concept of a capital gains tax. Why does their income from stock sales get to be taxed at a special low rate, as if it weren’t income? That’s ridiculous

We’d go a long way toward evening it out just by deciding

• income is income. No special categories of income for the wealthy
• when your company or trust spends money on your personal life, that’s also income
• tax brackets keep going. They don’t even have to be specially high, but why does it top out so early? Why is my doctor’s income taxed at the same rate as the richest man in the world’s income?

Too old to understand why you’re asking about American Sign Language

Convenience appliances? You can do a lot with a microwave oven, air fryer and coffee maker, without any flame, or really any exposed hot surfaces

Not at all. Most of those Workstation or Fusion users are likely employed by their enterprise customers, and they need an inexpensive way to try to keep them.

I know it’s anecdotal, but when I worked for an enterprise that used VMWare, most of us also tried to use VMWare in our home labs, even though the company didn’t provide licenses.

Back when VMWare was a desired skill, many of us had VMWare in our home labs even when we didn’t have an employer that used it, to maintain proficiency. This doesn’t seem likely anymore but they probably want it

Cool setup!

What do you have for network equipment? I have 1G symmetrical unlimited, but anything faster seems to require a jump to much more expensive networking. And even then, most user equipment can’t support that

If it’s just not wanting to deal with people, it seems like most restaurants do takeout, since COViD.

Last Spring I went to this Thai restaurant I’ve been eying. The restaurant was pretty much what you’d expect and the food pretty good. Most of that meal we were the only customers, but there was a steady stream of takeout orders. That seems typical now

My remaining fast food vice is Chipotle.

We have a bit of a tradition going. When my teenager drives over from his mom’s house Friday after school, I send out a Chipotle group order so he can pick what he wants, and it’s ready for pickup as he approaches.

So fast, so convenient

Burritos are not food if you get them from taco bell

Do they have options?

I gave up Taco Bell after college as “not actual food”, and for decades only went to McDonald’s in a road trip or Wendy’s for a frosty. There was a cheap local-ish burger joint that sometimes took their place but it was a bit out of the way …… then we got Chipotle and Panera!!! Fast food that’s actual food and not quite as bad for you. And now it’s the same price or cheaper.

My burrito cost less than your Big Mac meal while being more filling. It has less sodium, less saturated fat, actual fiber and vegetables, and tastes so much better.

We do have at least one authentic burrito place that’s even better and cheaper but you can’t order online. Chipotle group orders are the god of food apps

Then go for a burrito

It all depends on whether they’re competent and can act together for their goals. Many of those goals are truly horrible, but

• Trumps first term was incompetent, fractured. Despite all the chaos and destruction, they did nowhere near as much damage to peoples lives and democracy as they wanted to
• My conservative brother is all too typical, dismissing the worst statements as “he’s not serious. He’d never do that”. We have to hope people like my brother are right
• their goal is narcissism and their methods are stoking outrage: is it possible they’re not actually evil, don’t actually pay attention to what comes out of their own mouths? Are they even capable of working together? Making Trump rich and stoking his ego would be a travesty, but far less damaging than what he says he’ll do

They’re convenient scapegoats that can’t defend themselves. “Look, it’s a witch! Burn it”

The problem is the consequences are not immediate. This is like making a child sit in their room because they scribbled on the wall in crayon last week. They don’t have the capacity to make that connection.

If renewed inflation takes another four years to really build up, guess whose fault that becomes? If the climate gets worse over years, decades, generations, no blame here. If Russia invades the Baltic states after consolidating Ukraine, it couldn’t be due to appeasement here. If they succeed in replacing the merit-based civil service with partisan hacks whose only skill is “loyalty”, clearly it’s the swamp that needs to be drained.

Looks a lot like lack of awareness to me. The price of pretty much everything has at least stabilized or is down from the peak. Individuals are better off today than recently.

However prices are shockingly high compared to four years ago. Many are worse off than four years ago. The economy is trending much better at the individual level but people can’t get past the four years of buildup to realize that it has turned around