Well, that's a disaster. Am I to carry a bunch of different Visa cards, hoping that one of them will be accepted at whatever merchant I am at?

Suppose I am at a restaurant, and there is no prior discussion about WHICH Visa cards they accept, I eat my meal, and then they tell me they don't take the Visa card I have.

Carry cash.

When eating at a restaurant the diner receives goods and services before the bill is presented. In this case it is within their rights to insist on paying with cash. In fact, this is legally protected.

But, accepting cash is not required if the customer pays first, or if there is contract for specific forms of payment, or if the payment would be a burden (e.g., pennies).

If possible one should (1) carry enough cash to cover common daily expenses, and (2) pay careful attention to accepted forms of payment before taking on a contractual debt. If this is done then there is no need to worry much about whether or not a credit card is accepted.

Yes. But the cool thing about this study is that we can quantify this.

If we model your setup in their calculator (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/rainbow/projects/display_calc/) as a 55" display, 6' viewing distance and 4K resolution it predicts that 30% of people can tell a difference between that setting and an ideal display device. This justifies a claim that 8K, in this setting, is unnecessary for most.

However, in your story there is no difference between a 4K display and a 1080p display and that contradicts the study.

Why is there a contradiction? One possible explanation is that 1080p is enough resolution to represent the source material. What I mean is that a 1080p source material can be encoded at 4K and labeled 4K but there is nothing gained by this.

A job applicant who holds a degree from a high-quality university has more leverage to negotiate a higher compensation.

An employee who holds a degree from a high-quality university has more leverage to refuse when they are demanded to overwork or act outside their the bounds of their role.

An employee who has received a classical education is more likely to recognize acts which harm others. This last point seems relevant to Palantir.

It would be fairly easy for Google to make an interface of YouTube which excludes likes, comments, recommendations, subscriber-only videos, and streaming chats. This would help Google establish their claim that YouTube is a video sharing platform. OTOH, refusing to do this weakens their own argument.

This guy reminds me of me. When I was a kid I thought I was a great programmer. Then one day I looked at the code for the C Standard Library and realized that 99% of every program I had ever created was not written by me.

Although, prior to this revelation, I never publicly bragged about being the best. So I guess he and I are different in some ways.

Your questions are already answered. The procedure is very clear and there is no ambiguity regarding these issues.

And when the market value goes down ? What then?

Nothing. Changes in market value have no impact on the calculation.

And when I sell things, to pay these taxes, it will cause the market value to drop, very potentially below the threshold that I supposedly met to pay said taxes. So then do I still pay the taxes? If not, then who is compensating me for the loss in value? Can I write that loss off?

None of these things have any effect on the calculations. Re-read the procedure. It is very clear. If it would be helpful to sell assets first in order to reduce the tax burden then that can be done. Don't worry---billionaires know how to handle situations like this.

You seem to have no clue how capital markets actually function, and believe this myth that someone has whatever net worth Forbes magazine decides they do.

Don't make up stuff. Forbes plays no role in the procedure.

As per usual, it is a lot easier to talk about wealth taxes than implement them. The idea of taxing unrealized capital gains is frought with major, major issues - both logisical as well as philosophical - because you're literally talking about taxing something someone does not have yet. Its akin to a tax time machine. Imagine when you are born, someone came up to you and said "based on our analysis, you are likely to earn $50M during your lifetime - so we will assess you with that tax bill, and you need to start paying it now" - that is not very far off from what happens when you try to tax an unrealized capital gain.

Evaluation based on what? Something is not actually worth anything until it is sold. Before then, it is all hypothetical. Also what happens when the evaluation decreases? Do they get a gigantic refund? Also if you start doing this then people will just move their wealth to a different vehicle. What about art? What about commodities? You are vastly over simplifying the problem area here, just as the politicians do.

Here is one way to do it.

Step 1. On December 31, you estimate the market value of all your assets.
Step 2. Subtract $1 billion from that.
Step 3. Multiply the remainder by 0.02.
Step 4. This is what you owe in taxes. If you don't have enough cash on hand then you will have to sell something.

Each tax year is independent of all other tax years. There is no carry-forward. Just repeat the same procedure each year.

This answers all your questions.

Don't like the Supreme Court ruling? Pressure Congress to do their jobs well and not write ambiguous laws. Problem solved.

Sure, but the details are important. Let's look at a hypothetical case. Suppose we need a law to protect watersheds from a certain chemical pollutant, let's call it X-123. In order to write this law we will need to elect an expert on watersheds and X-123 to Congress so that they can write the law in a way that is unambiguous and addresses the issues.

Let's examine why this is not feasible. Firstly, a single expert on watersheds and X-123 may not exist. These are complex topics which may require multiple experts to fully understand the issues. Secondly, after this law is written the experts are no longer needed. Congress would need very short turnover times otherwise it will take forever get laws written. Thirdly, our knowledge of watersheds and X-123 is expanding so the laws would need to be re-written every time there was a scientific publication on these topics. Finally, although this is not a problem per se, it defies common sense for Congress to vote on a law that is so complex that only experts can understand it. What would even be the point of having a vote?

Considering the above it is clear that we need experts to craft the regulations, which are not subject to a vote, and the experts need to work together so they can pool their knowledge, and this is an ongoing effort, and they need to be answerable to voters. In short, we need regulatory agencies staffed by experts who are appointed by voters. And, the regulations they create need to be enforced with the same level of attention applied to laws.

This Supreme Court ruling dismantles a key part of legislature without offering an alternative. It is a bad ruling.

The population of 15-64 year-olds is about half what it was in 1985, they're back at the levels of 1920.

This graph has a problem. But first, realize that the last data point seems to be 2010 with a population equivalent to the level of 1970, not 1920. The rest of the graph is a prediction that the population in 2060 will be at the level of 1920. We'll see.

The problem with this graph is that the data is shaded up to 2015, implying the real data extends to 2015 despite the data source being a 2012 study on Japan's population from 1920 to 2010. It seems like the person who prepared this graph didn't check it for correctness. As such, I would look at the original data rather than trust this graph.

The ideology of the Three Percenters is anti-goverment and pro-violence. The movement attracts members which are neo-Nazi, neo-Confederates, and pro-white supremacy. On January 6, 2021, members of the group turned their ideology into action. They led an organized attack on the U.S. Capitol building with the goal of halting a democratic election. This was a violent, anti-government, anti-democracy act.

The parent essay by MacMann ignores these facts. It draws a false equivalence between a group actively recruiting members to continue its attacks upon government and democracy, to ordinary people posting flyers. This false equivalence supports the goals of the Three Percenters because it proposes that their extraordinary acts are ordinary. This is untrue. The Three Percenters are an extraordinary danger to society. They have proven this with their actions. That the essay ignores this is inexplicable considering the obvious hints in the summary.

Ultimately MacMann's essay is trying to change people's minds into accepting something that is unacceptable: allowing organizations in America to openly recruit an army for the purpose of overthrowing democracy and the American government. We should not accept this.

I'm not seeing how banning interior security cameras is going to prevent people from trying to hide cameras inside the house that were already breaking the existing rule.

Correct. But, let's look at it from the perspective of a guest. The old policy requires a two-step process to claim there is a violation: (1) the guest(s) must judge whether or not a camera is a violation; and (2) the guest(s) must write up the claim in sufficient detail so that Airbnb can understand the situation well enough to act upon it.

Step 1 requires judgement, and step 2 requires evidence collection and writing effort. If there are multiple guests then there is an increased burden since a consensus must be reached.

The new policy reduces the effort needed to lodge a complaint and reduces the effort to review complaints. While there may be little impact on compliance initially, there is good reason to believe that compliance will increase over time if Airbnb receives and acts on relatively more complaints.

According to https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... US capacity was 1,200 million kilowatts in 2022. That is 1200e9 / 1e6 = 1200000 megawatts. Thus 11,236 megawatts represents a proportional increase of 11236 / 1200000 = 0.00936 (i.e., a 0.9% increase).

There are no numbers, no study, no measurements in the article to support the headline's claim that the Internet is "flooded" with racist images. Anectdotally, the article says images were posted to a TikTok account, which was removed. A better summary would say racist images are being removed from the Internet. Which is not news because that is the status quo.

It is not acceptable to attack an electrical substation to stop a social event from occurring.

I feel it is necessary to say this after reading the parent comment by phlinn since this is a discussion about an attack on an electrical substation and not a discussion about the merits of a drag queen show. phlinn's off-topic comment correlates disapproval of drag queen shows (phlinn's comment) with an attack on a substation (the topic of discussion). This correlation would not exist without phlinn's comment because no reasonable person would imagine any connection between a drag queen show and an electrical powerstation. phlinn's comment is a form of stochastic terrorism, which creates a non-explicit connection between two unrelated events with the intent of using fear of one event to stop the other event. phlinn's message is a call to violence and should not be modded up.

Fiat currency works, has strong ties to real value (in fact basically all of the world economy), can be transferred nearly instantaneously and nearly for free, is accepted basically everywhere and typically also has a quasi-anonymous form known as "cash". Next dumb question?

For a private citizen the only practical way to move large amounts of money internationally is by an international wire transfer, which costs $40 USD and can take up to 5 days to complete.

A Bitcoin transaction (in 2021) can take up to 20 minutes to complete and costs $3.4 USD.

Bitcoin is 12x cheaper and 360x faster than an international wire transfer.