tiredofsametab

You have to file federal taxes. Maybe state taxes. You don’t necessarily have to pay depending upon how much (in USD) you make. Things also depend upon per-country tax treaties. The shitty part, at least for me, is that I can’t use the ISA and similar programs here in Japan for retirement because the US considers them all passive foreign investments (PFICs) which require copious paperwork and punitive taxes wiping out any tax-advantaged retirement savings. Also can’t just invest non-taxed income in many things in the US either.

Voting being at the state level also just fucks all kinds of other things up with taxes and the like.

Humans required tribes and close-knit communities to survive up until extremely recently in our evolutionary history. The last few hundred years massively shifted how where and how we see our identities and tribes, and what information is available. Modern social media and algorithm-based content has taken advantage of this in a huge way. People are not taught proper critical thinking and are not immunized against disinformation. Our ancient brains still think losing our tribe as being sentenced to loneliness, danger, and death. The opinions and actions of many are now more public than ever and there is more pressure there as well.

Octopus lady is great!

In my case, in the sense of “hearing” then yes. I still have thoughts and my mind wanders and whatnot; it just doesn’t need something else overtop of that

… Are you suggesting we are incapable of thought? My mind wanders just like anyone else’s.

We have a lot of non-management whom are all-in and drinking the kool-ade. I’m still highly put off for a number of reasons, but an outlier.

Well, if you have to build all kinds of stuff to win (or even survive) things like environmental regulations go out the window. You can expect factories, many not meant for it, to start running 24/7 and producing all kinds of pollution. People will need to get to those factories and it’s also all using more power. All of those things also need to be shipped around, both to temporary storage and to staging areas for wherever they’re destined.

During WWII in the US, a lot of old mines were also re-opened to get what was left of lead, copper, zinc, etc. and mining can have a huge environmental impact. I suspect we’d see that again along with rare earths mining and refining which is not great for the environment. I suspect we’d see more coal mining, facking, and other things as well to meet energy needs at home and abroad.

There will be tons of fires pumping carbon and I’m sure plenty of nasty materials into the atmosphere as well. Lead is going to end up all over the place in some areas and probably depleted uranium as well (you can see what that’s done over time in various parts of the Middle East).

There are already people who think NewsMax and their ilk are now correct and fox is wrong, so it may just be shifting.

I have at least one family member who definitely believes that there are foreigners coming over, stealing opportunities, and getting free rides. I nope’d out of the conversation before it could go any further but, unless they suddenly changed, they believe whatever newsmax says.

Well, not being a very-much-finished space program would be a good start.

I think the hangup is why is there an “it” that’s doing the raining. My wife had trouble remembering that as well since we would either just say ‘rain’ or ‘rain falls’ in her language

Most languages don’t need a dummy subject to do the raining. Whilst “it’s raining” may seem natural to people who grew up speaking English (or indeed several Germanic or romance la guages) it’s far from universal.

Although insta has been making inroads, it was the default in Japan for a long time for govt info, shop notifications (bars, art galleries, you name it), as well as other customer interaction.

If I kept chickens, I would have a net over (we have hawks and other aerial predators as well) to avoid the situation, but if something somehow snuck in, this would be a good thing in my opinion.

mine is 5m, 1h, 2h, 1d, 4w, custom on gcal on a pixel. It might be based on commonly-chosen ones to some degree, but I rarely, if ever, have selected 5m so I’m not sure.

I don’t know that FF had a specific hero as it were. DQ I suppose did in that they were at least named and had some story. Megaman is a good callout, though. We did have them in the computer gaming world in the more nebulous sense (like how I see FF). I guess I’m also thinking about how hero is used here; is it an existing character with a backstory (more like DQ or even megaman) or some character you create (FF again but also all the old SSI games on PC and many others).

I was thinking of fighting games but OP said nowadays it seems that all games are made for teenagers and adults. and I kinda threw the early SF and MK games into that bucket.

I’d argue that xennials didn’t really either. I certainly didn’t think of Mario, Sonic, Doom Guy, etc. as heroes. The closest that jumps immediately to mind as a named person is the protagonist of Wolf3d whose name I won’t attempt to spell here, but even then I didn’t give a shit about his story which, if memory serves, amounted to a blurb in a manual.

My heroes were in print in books and I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with that.

I wonder what the Japanese source is. I thought we recycled PET and burnt all the rest for power here. I guess not.

No more tax exemption. Even better, ban them.

Seems fine to me. I’d rather someone juggle than loudly play some instrument.