This is also a proposed wealth tax not just an income tax, the US would probably do something like tax US citizen ultimate beneficial ownership of assets held which can be traded on US exchanges, so unless someone entirely divests there isn’t a legal tax avoidance strategy apart from the exit tax.

Honestly 2% on billionaires is too low imo. I’m in favor of starting lower and having a progressively increasing marginal wealth tax, like 1% on all assets over $10M, additional 1% on all assets over $100M, etc.

It’s there to get it away from the other categories. Every category isn’t just a game, there’s other stuff like events, just chatting etc to cover any content that isn’t specific to a single game (like a gaming related podcast for example), so playing a game isn’t required you can just talk at the audience. People who make the sexual content were using those more generic non-gaming categories (as well as popular gaming categories but having the game running in a tiny box in the corner) but advertisers took issue with advertising on the sexual streams, so Twitch made ways to segregate them from the content advertisers wanted to pay for.

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Each part of Prime just keeps getting shittier and shittier, this could definitely be a straw that broke the camel’s back situation. Shipping stopped being 2-days every time during the pandemic, returns used to allow for pick up at your house are now drop off at a store. Music catalog is being slowly locked behind Unlimited, and now it’s all station-ified so you can’t even listen to what you want.

They said if you’re buying solely based bubble color then it’s based on peer pressure, there of course are other valid reasons for someone to choose one and there are also other bad reasons.

Dvorak?

Have you considered switching to pickup when you can? pick what you want from the comfort of your home, drive to the store at the designated time, an employee has picked all your goods and it is brought out to you. Same price for you, more labor for the company to pay for.

You’re headed towards the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon”. I’d also note, that people losing a war without suffering recognizable losses are less likely to surrender to the victor.

I feel like it’s ok to skip to optimizing the autonomous drone-killing drone.

You’ll want those either way.

I just checked an Amazon purchase that had the option for a payment plan, my options were to use my Chase card affiliated with Amazon or Affirm which is a 3rd party that is offering the structured payment. Not sure what it looks like for others, but if it’s similar, then Amazon wouldn’t be doing anything bank-like with those payments.

You could do banner ads, shrink the video, randomly add a banner to top/bottom and a 2nd left/right. If you skip the ads, you skip the content too.

I’m expecting someone smart at Google to figure out how to encode ads as part of the video file as it is delivered, making it literally undifferentiatable in the data we receive, and then there’s no way around it. They’ll make millions in ads and billions licensing it out.

Your talk of providing estimates just reminds me of this scene from Star Trek TNG.

Geordi La Forge: I told the Captain I’d have this analysis done in an hour.

Scotty: How long will it really take?

Geordi La Forge: An hour!

Scotty: Oh, you didn’t tell him how long it would ‘really’ take, did ya?

Geordi La Forge: Well, of course I did.

Scotty: Oh, laddie. You’ve got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.

I’m a fan of Bucklin voting in particular, allowing equal and skipped rankings along a bounded range of 0 to twice the number of candidates, every candidate default of 0. Give people an offline digital interface to do the work, they confirm it, print it, check it and it gets scanned to be counted. Undecided if I think votes should be weighted by rank or not, maybe just for tiebreaker.

“Earn my vote” is the bullshit mentality that led to Trump being president. Fuck all of that. R’s are batshit, and if someone doesn’t commit a vote that can matter against them, that person’s part of the problem when R’s win.

There is literally NO issue where someone who would normally vote for Biden has a better option under any realistic R candidate.

In the 2024 presidential race, if anyone who would otherwise vote for Biden, from any state that is not 100% safe, chooses not to over basically any issue(s), they improve the odds of an R, with a worse stance on that issue, winning the election. Ideology can take a long walk off a short pier when sobering reality comes knocking.

Abstention and 3rd party choices are indirect support for the candidate you’d least prefer.

Both choices might be a shit sandwich, but the US system just doesn’t support not eating one, so it might as well be the one you’d rather than the alternative.

You just can’t draw the article’s statements as even a reasonable conclusions without ignoring a whole host of things. They’re largely comparing a general election to a midterm election, Rs show up for midterms more reliably than Ds, a drop is basically expected. Even compared to the previous midterm, that was with a very polarizing R in office, so we’d also expect a higher D turnout than one with a D in office. Plus add in consideration for the effects of voter suppression that’s been building basically specifically targeted at the group in question.

This article is just bait created by someone who is either ignorantly or purposely misrepresenting the actual study’s implications.

The point the other person is trying to make is that if a person wants to watch something, but the price is higher than they value or can afford for the experience they will not pay the price, so the company will not profit. If the person then pirates the content to view it, the company has lost nothing additional.

However, one could also make the argument that the viewer having the ability to pirate lowers what they are willing to pay, thus the company does lose some amount of profit in aggregate over time. This though is not necessarily true for those who lack the means to pay, rather than just the willingness.

Ultimately for people who do have the means, piracy is a symptom more of a service issue rather than a price issue. People generally will follow the path of least resistance to acquire what they desire. For most people a small payment and easy access will lead them not to pirate, but as prices rise, content fractures and UIs enshitify, the aggregate effort crosses the line and they start to withdraw and turn to other methods.

Everyone has their own willingness to pay for things on the demand curve, if companies pick an optimal price, they maximize profits, and aren’t harmed by people who cannot or will not pay that price utilizing a non-consumable resource without payment.

Honest criticisms: It’s a bit of a brick for sure. I turned the RGB ring off. The multi-function button isn’t as usable as I’d hoped, mostly just a flashlight/screenshot button. The headphone jack and USB port are behind a protected rubber flap, so I keep opening/closing it frequently, but that’s to help with being waterproof. While the optional case functions as a good stand for horizontal viewing and for holding, it is inadequate for vertical, and it just would’ve needed a small internal brace to fix that. The case also blocks their wireless charging connectors, if you were planning to use a dock for that. Attaching the endoscope requires removing a tiny screw. The lack of a bottom button bar has taken some getting used to but I’m fine with it now, the side fingerprint scanner is similar.

Overall I am happy with it. The battery lasts a whole day with high use, it has decent internals for games, the screen and included protector are appropriately unobtrusive, it isn’t running a very outdated version of Android. Perhaps most importantly, it should survive my child who likes to throw my phone and my dumbass who left it in my pocket getting in a pool.