How many rallies has Putin held?

The interesting thing about this is that people are now stuck with whatever PC they had when the prices suddenly shot up. In the past there was always a hardware adoption curve, where some people had the newest stuff, other people waited for it to get cheaper before they bought it.

In the past, if a game company was developing a game that was scheduled to be released in 2 years, they could look at what hardware people were using now, and estimate what people would be using in 2 years. Graphics and gameplay that was possible on game studio machines running the latest hardware would be too much for home PCs when development at the studio started. But, by the time the game was ready, home machines would have caught up and people could experience these amazing graphics at home. Now, I assume game studios are going to have to re-think things and assume that most people at home will still be playing on the old gaming PC they built before the AI price apocalypse.

Technofeudalism

When those immigrants were coming to the US, they were not considered “white”. Sometimes the discrimination was because of skin colour, sometimes it was religion. But, they weren’t considered to have the morals and work ethic of the English-descended protestants that dominated the USA.

They still have to file income taxes. But, most places have higher taxes than the USA. Most places also have reciprocal tax agreements with the US. There’s also a deduction of something like $100k, so the first $100k (or local equivalent) you earn in another country isn’t taxed. As a result, unless you’re making high six figures, you don’t actually owe any American taxes.

OTOH, just filing US taxes is a real pain in the ass. In the US it’s made very slightly easier by your employer, bank, etc. all supplying you with the tax forms you need. If you’re overseas, you need to figure out the info you’d need to supply on that form yourself.

Exactly, and it’s a cycle. They buy things on credit, carry a balance on their credit cards, owe a lot of money, and the stress gets to them. Eventually they buy things as a way to feel better and relieve the stress.

Trying to “not look poor” or “keep up with the Joneses” can lead to real misery. But, if instead you make a budget and save just a little bit every month it can be liberating.

Fundamentally, the problem is unequal wealth distribution. But, we should also try to help people live within their means while we attempt to fix that societal issue.

You don’t talk about Hitler “more often than not” being popular with Germans. Hitler famously had huge rallies filling stadiums.

The reason they don’t admit that they got a head start is that they actually don’t believe it.

The daughter of a family friend of mine grew up middle class. Her mom was a social worker, her did had an office job. She managed to marry a man who’s the son that’s inheriting his dad’s oil business, worth tens of millions. She is now a housewife / stay at home mom. She now has a city home, a cottage (which is fully a house, just in a more rural location) and a summer home. One of her daughters competes in sailing races (and anybody who knows sailing knows just how expensive that hobby can be), the other is into horse riding.

I’ve asked her what it’s like for her kids to grow up rich, and she doesn’t get it. She doesn’t think she’s rich. She says that there are houses around where she lives that are even bigger than hers, and that her husband works hard. I’m sure that’s true, but she’s still in the top 0.1%. And this is someone who grew up middle class, and should remember what it was like.

I guarantee that most of the kids that come from rich families have no idea what it’s like not to be rich. As a result, they don’t ever consider that it might not be normal to be able to have your dad’s lawyer look over the contracts for your new company free of charge. They never think of how easy they had it to find investors for their company, and how forgiving those investors were. It never occurred to them that during those lean months at the beginning when their company hadn’t yet started generating real revenue, that it was unusual to be able to live in their parents’ spare apartment in the city, and to have dad pay off their credit card.

Putin is hardly a charismatic leader. Might as well throw in Maduro or Noriega, or Saddam Hussein if you’re going to talk about leaders who ruled through fear and force rather than charisma.

But not charismatic enough to challenge him. That’s key.

Vance may be champing at the bit, but he’s also fucking at the couch, and there’s no way that MAGA will fall in line behind him.

The worst is when you can smell people walking past you when you’re outside… before they pass you.

This is why I like taste tests.

They routinely prove that even experts can’t distinguish between $20 wine and $200 wine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias ?

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647303/confidence-institutions-mostly-flat-police.aspx

https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/26474159/cnn-poll-immigration-minneapolis-ice.pdf

Most of them weren’t caught doing anything more than breaking into the capitol building. The ones who actually attacked cops or did something violent got standard prison sentences for those kinds of crimes. Sure, I would have liked longer sentences. But, these were mostly first-time offenders who didn’t do a violent crime, so they got sentences that go with that. The aim of the justice department wasn’t to try to put them in prison for as long as possible, but to treat them the same as any other criminal. Maybe the idea was that that was going to make the cases harder to overturn on appeal because there wasn’t any hint of political bias in the sentencing.

I think it would have had a pretty solid deterrent effect if Trump hadn’t come back and commuted their sentences / pardoned them. But, pardoning them is yet another way he’s completely throwing away the rule book.

Trump is a one in a million manipulator. There’s a reason this hasn’t happened since Hitler and Mussolini. Various others like Marco Rubio, Ron DeSantis, etc. have all tried to use the same playbook and failed completely. If you think MAGA is going to fall in line behind couchfucker JD Vance, you’re deluded. A big reason that Trump picked him as VP is that he knew Vance was no threat to him.

IMO they’re just being lazy. If you just reboot you don’t have to worry about resolving the dependencies for things you upgraded.

And cops are well respected compared to ICE agents, in every way. I’d say about 70% of the US hates ICE agents, whereas about 50% truly like and respect cops. But, even among the die-hard MAGA Republicans who want ICE to snatch people off the street and beat up the non-whites, they still don’t respect them. They’re thugs who are working for their own side.

Fuck that reboot. It’s almost never necessary under Linux. Unnecessary, forced reboots in Windows are one of the last straws that made me fully switch my last remaining Windows system over to Linux.