I feel there’s a potential suicide joke here, but it would probably end up in bad taste.

I have a question for you that needs answering first. Offensive to whom?

I think you answered your own question. If taking drugs actually makes you a better person, of course it’s OK. That’s true for both physical and mental considerations.

But look, you put everything into one definition. What is “better”, who decides, and how do they decide? If you don’t have anywhere to go, you probably won’t get there. Or maybe you will get there but you won’t realize it.

There is much debate on all kinds of drugs, but I can tell you that some of my friends have had various experiences that are relevant. For several friends, acid or shrooms helped them deal with some harsh trauma. For several other friends, various uppers helped them handle ADHD relatively effectively. But of course we all have different problems and goals, so the burden is right back on you to figure out what you want to do. There’s no way around this basic fact of life.

I think you need to take a step back and stop talking about income tax. Instead, talk about wealth distribution overall. What about businesses? What about corporations? What about passive income? What about savings that’s passed to children? What about inheritance tax? What about tax fraud and tax evasion? And I meant to separate those explicitly, because there are many weak points in the tax code that allow for companies to take advantage of the ability to send money overseas, for example.

If all you’re doing is adjusting the standard deduction or the base exemption or the top threshold for social security payments, you’re ignoring the gigantic high-dollar figures that are happening with the billionaires and the largest corporations in the world. And if you ignore them, then there’s no way you can fix the corruption that’s plaguing modern society.

Of course I think you were trying to keep your focus narrow, which is a reasonable thing to do, but it’s also worth noting in at least one comment that the big picture involves much more important questions about how we should allow wealth to be redistributed.

You didn’t tell us when he asks if everything is OK. That is a large omission, and I hope you can update the original post with examples of what led up to the question being asked. Also, what is the setup there? Are you working at Subway making sandwiches? Do you have adjacent desks? Do you show up to work with black eyes? We are left wondering what’s up.

Certainly anyone who repeatedly asks “Are you OK?” is exacerbating some issue, but I would be hesitant to offer any advice about what you ought to do without reading more details.

(In other words, the missing missing reasons applies here just as it did in the original scenario, for those who remember it.)

But that’s not what happened. If the lawyers are saying that some open source groups can’t work with open source groups in Russia, as Linus indicated, that doesn’t mean either group dislikes the other group. I don’t think this is a question of animosity.

You didn’t tell us what you meant by “shoulder the burden”. Maybe you should have, or at least if you did it would allow more focused answers.

Some people that I have spoken with are fans of a flat tax. They think that income tax should be 10% on everyone, no matter what. They think that is fair.

In order to maintain that belief in fairness, they also need to magically forget about: the ultra rich, passive income, capital gains, the existence of businesses that have a different tax code, and the fact that they probably actually endorse various tax breaks.

On a side note, I think one of the underlying causes of people being willing to try to forget all of these obvious facts of life is the gut assumption that big banks and ultra rich people who are running scams or finding loopholes are doing so in a very complicated way, so there’s no chance we could figure out what’s happening and stop it. But what forensic accountants point out from time to time is that many of the scams and loopholes are new variations on old tricks. We can understand how they work, but it takes effort, because the names change and the money moves in slightly different ways.

It’s banning contributors but not contributions themselves. So there must be inconvenience but somewhat effective workarounds. That could be fun to see unfold.

The specific rules vary by state. Where do you live, what are you going to do, and can you stream it for us?

Everyone else is wrong but you’re right? … It’s a cute idea.

Exactly. People do learn. That’s who we’re trying to reach.

What, so waiting until December would create more pressure? I can’t see how.

Sure sure, and the amount matters, right?

I generally agree, and I also think that the spy agencies would assassinate him within a couple of days. There’s a bunch of men who have been running those groups for decades, and they don’t want to give up their power because some lunatic is making a power grab on the White House.

It’s interesting that you think the national guard would support him. I don’t think it’s as simple as that. We can be sure that most lifers in the military have considered what they would do if the unelected commander-in-chief gave an obviously unconstitutional order. It’s not just a hypothetical to them.

Your feelings are of course valid, that’s how you feel, and it’s a perfectly normal thing. On the one hand technology keeps changing, but on the other hand people are trying to drum up money by selling promises of new technology as if it were snake oil.

All of the talk you hear about AI, it’s 95% nonsense. Of course we can see some new cool toys, and we should be happy that we have new cool toys, but it’s not like something totally magical has happened in the last 2 years, and it’s not like something totally magical is going to happen in the next two years.

With all that in mind, you just got to take a break from the news, whenever you feel like it, and try to be open-minded about what the future will bring. A couple of decades from now is certainly going to be different from a couple of decades ago, and although that can be scary at times, remember that the same thing was true for our parents and their parents and their parents.

That’s generally false. But even if it’s true, all the boss has to do is argue that medium-term profits will be generated by whatever policy they want to adopt. Since nobody knows the future, they might be right, and they’re legally rock solid.

In other words, the duty to increase value produces unfalsifiable policy claims. So it is meaningless.

The Pirate Bay will always be with us.

I think you’re just framing issues to match the claim you’re making. For example, an anti-bad-cop protest could be “protesting against cops violating civil rights” or just as well “protesting to bring justice to the victim’s family”. The former is a negative, the latter is a positive.

Japan has a lot of drink vending machines, but relatively few food or candy vending machines. This is actually an area where the United States performs strongly. That being said, Japan has a real number of strange vending machines.