I mean if you’re stupid enough you could try to claim a donation to the Taliban as charitable contribution for a deduction. And never underestimate the stupidity of people
I mean if you’re stupid enough you could try to claim a donation to the Taliban as charitable contribution for a deduction. And never underestimate the stupidity of people
American tax forms have an “other income” field. That’s where you can report any money you’ve made not covered by the other fields including any ill gotten gains. That section doesn’t require you to list a source, and even if it did nobody expects you to list “$7,800 - meth sales, $32,200 - crack sales, $50,000 - robberies”. You’d just say “Other income - $90,000”
The logic being that if the government never gives you the opportunity to pay taxes on something, then they can’t charge you with tax evasion. Plus there’s a lot of money in crime! If the US can get a piece of that pie they will!
Finally, the IRS is an already underfunded organization and contrary to the popular narrative, is very easy to work with. If you make a genuine good faith effort to pay your taxes and they find issues, an agent will work with you to resolve it. They’ll set up payment plans, defer payments, and more if you’re cooperative. All this is to say that reporting people for crimes besides tax ones and terrorism (the only one they’re legally required to report to outside agencies) just makes their job harder, so they don’t
A Wells Fargo spokesperson told Bloomberg that the company “holds employees to the highest standards and does not tolerate unethical behavior.”
I mean the jokes write themselves
If speed running counts I was once top 10 in the world for speed running a puzzle game. Since then I’ve dropped into the 20s and the video has been lost
The Doughboys have been joking about this on their podcast recently. One of them remarked that in Tenet you would suck poop back up your butthole. So they joke that shitting is pulling a “reverse Tenet”
The short answer is that we don’t know. It has long been a legal grey area when depicting porn of underage characters that are clearly not real. There’s the classic “she’s actually 1000 she just looks 6 years old” and “all characters depicted are at least 18 [despite all of them being in various stages of high school]”. American politicans are by and large way out of date with modern technology and cannot be expected to rule competently on the subject. Is the AI nude of a real person “revenge porn” or constitutionally protected free speech? People have been drawing fan art of underage celebs having sex with high detail for a long time (see Harry Potter/Twilight rule 34). Ultimately congress will need to make laws about this or courts will have to interpret a previous ruling as applying to these images. Unfortunately due to the Streisand Effect whomever is at the unfortunate center of this shitstorm will be forever made into pornographic material so we understand the general hesitation to get involved
I kinda agree. Sure there’s observable/measurable phenomena out there, but past a certain point it’s like a toddler asking why? You just have to say "because that’s the way it is:
Why did that apple hit me in the head? Because of gravity
Why does gravity make things fall? Objects of larger mass attract objects of smaller mass
Why do they do that? Well the more massive something is the more it warps space around it
Why do massive objects warp space around them? Well there’s some theories that certain sub-atomic particles interact in a way that causes these forces
Why do those particles do that? Well that’s just what they do
(yes, I know these are overly simplified)
Eventually you reach our furthest level of understanding and we just have to say “that’s just what we have observed happening, we don’t have a root cause or explanation yet.” That bottom level is basically magic in our universe until we learn more about it
Yes. They spent years fighting Roe V. Wade with inane bullshit until one stuck. They fought student loan relief, immigration changes, and healthcare reform. Republicans in America have clearly demonstrated that they are dogs chasing after cars, and when they catch them they don’t care or realize what the consequences are. We need to stop excusing their behavior as if they’re “making a statement” or “posturing”. They tell us what they want to do, we say “nah, they don’t mean it”, and then it happens
The only reason I listen to Film Reroll is because it’s about movies. I don’t even listen to all of them, just movies I know will be fun/I’ve seen. Fifth Element, Mighty Ducks, Aliens, Last Action Hero, and Memento (which was incredibly cool how they did it) are the ones I’ve listened to since 2020.
Something about actual play just irritates me, especially for D&D. I’d just rather play myself
I’m fully in the Nick Weiger podcast universe so I listen to:
Which are all comedy podcasts with similar people appearing. They’re about chain restaurants, random side bullshit, Video Games, and Anime respectively. Then I also listen to:
Which is a podcast by 2 former cracked writers which is the only reason people listen to them and a podcast about playing through movies as role playing games
No actually, in America we don’t actually have all that many rights. I was specifically asking him what right we have as citizens that he feels we are being denied by this decision. Because I would be hard pressed to identify a right we have that is harmed by this decision
It appears this person signs off all of their comments with a creative commons license for fair use, presumably saying how you’re allowed to use their comment. Which I’m relatively sure has exactly the same legal power as a boomer posting a Facebook picture saying that they don’t consent to having their data collected
Every single time we infringe on personal freedoms, we need to do this calculation.
What freedom do you have that you think this is infringing on?
Stop Chinese data collection. I think this is just misdirection. You say it’s conspiracy, but just like the PATRIOT Act had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children and the Iraqi war had nothing to do with WMD… the government often misleads or outright lies.
Correct, it had nothing to do with patriotism or protecting children. It had to do with war profiteering. That’s the simple answer to basically every question that starts with “why did the American government do…” It made wealthy Americans richer. That’s the default US policy
Much of our data is for sale to anyone who wants to buy it. In fact, our law enforcement loves buying data instead of going through the process for a warrant.
There are so many apps out there with less than scrupulous devs who are more than willing to scrape for as much data as possible and sell that off. China can easily acquire massive amounts of data regardless.
Yup, and that’s fine in the way that it’s fine for us to ship oil, soybeans, and semiconductors to China. As long as America gets the first bite of the pie, what happens after that is mostly fine
Chinese influence on Americans. I think this one makes more sense than the first one. China is able to quietly suppress or encourage certain points of views - subtly pushing the 170 million Americans into directions that are beneficial for China’s interests. For example, perhaps media discouraging support for Taiwan.
I think this is ancillary benefit that is mostly being pushed by our military. I know it’s the “reason” they’re giving but I agree this is not the primary purpose
I believe this because we are a free society.
We are not. By basically every measurable metric of “freedom” the US doesn’t even crack the top 10 in the world and on a lot of lists we don’t make the top 20. I don’t know what Americans think “freedom” means but whenever I hear people talk about it I often wonder if we live in the same country
You are right that we don’t always live up to that term, and never really have. But we get a hell of a lot closer than China or Russia. We shouldn’t be moving towards them in ideological terms, but away from them.
It’s pretty hyperbolic to say that banning the Chinese pipeline of disinformation and spyware makes America ideologically similar to Russia
As for the young people, there are 170 million people on the app and it skews younger. A large portion of these people use Tiktok as their primary social media. A lot of these will be pushed towards anti-establishment and radical ideologies. Tiktok already leans leftist (and not neoliberal left).
That’s just conjecture. Do you know how many social media sites we’ve seen come and go? You assert people will become anti-establishment, I assert they’ll just move on to other social media. Both of our assertions are equally valid without evidence
What happened to freedom of speech? Freedom of association? Free market capitalism?
America has none of those things. We have clear limits on what is and isn’t acceptable speech. We routinely see protest groups beaten, jailed, and killed for protesting things the police like. Finally, you have to live in a bunker if you think we have a free market
If an American citizen wants to use a Chinese platform, why don’t they have the right to?
Because part of the government’s job is protecting its people. If China gave away a blowjob and cocaine robot and all you had to do was walk it around and give it detailed tours of civilian infrastructure that’d be banned too despite being hugely popular. If the government desides it’s in the best interest of the people to not do something then they have the authority to prevent people to doing it
I think the data collection stuff is a red herring. Real reason is that war is coming and they’re preparing the online information space so they can more easily manipulate it. Sort of how they did a test run with covid. Banning misinformation and such.
This is just pure conspiracy talk. Occam’s razor says the simplest solution is usually correct. What’s the simple answer here? Data is becoming one of the most valuable “natural” resources. You don’t hand valuable resources for free to rival governments. You charge them, or you prevent them from taking it. It’s all about money
If the sale doesn’t go through, I don’t see how this will eliminate whatever little bit of credibility the federal government has among the younger generations. 18~25 or so
Call me naive but I like to think young people care about more than just the apps on their phone and are capable of holding a more nuanced view of our government than you clearly are
Yeah, the mods are pc only. Multiverse feels like it quadruples the size of the game. Not every single element of it is fully fleshed out but there’s some really cool and unique stuff. They add new ships, crew, quests, sectors, weapons, and secrets
Oh man, that answers some questions I’ve had for a while. Some of the podcasts I listened to have custom ad reads and then some will just blast the same ad as another unrelated one. Especially considering I get republican ads on podcasts with very liberal hosts. Plus gambling ads fucking everywhere
At one point when Republicans did their latest shitty thing to trans people the Wachowskis decided to auction off a bunch of props/awards/memorabilia to fundraise for a charity and I won one of the lots with this in it. Amongst other awards
I’d probably bring this. It’s the actual award that the Movie V for Vendetta won for being certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes
I understand and obviously agree or else I wouldn’t be vaguely gestures to everyone around him
But let’s not live in fantasy land. Capitalism rules the internet and like it’s old predecessor Feudalism there’s one rule. Bigger Army (bank account) diplomacy. None of the other rules matter if you’re big enough to write them. Nobody will willingly give up their level of control of the internet and everyone who takes it will do so with the objective of replacing them not dethroning
Despite never owning one (we were a Nintendo house) I’d argue it’s the PS2. An easy thing to forget is that the PS2 was one of the cheapest DVD players for a very long time and that got video games into a lot of houses that wouldn’t have had them. Add to that some of the best games of tent pole franchises GTA3, FFX and FFXII, Kingdom Hearts, God of War, MGS3, Guitar Hero, and Tony Hawk. That generation also cemented the twin stick controller design as the standard. I really think the PS2 defined the rubric for consoles to come
JK, it’s the Wii. I helped install one in a nursing home when it came out, what other video game console had that kind of appeal? /s (but only kinda)