They get permission to hate the people they want to hate. See? They think it is a fair deal.

There’s another aspect to this, that eventually the loans have to be repaid. That may involve selling assets, which would expose the seller to capital gains.

However, if the loan is held until the owner of the loan dies, then the estate gets stuck with that bill. But the estate inherits all the assets at a stepped-up cost basis. The assets are still sold to pay off the loan, but very little will be owed in capital gains taxes.

It’s so common that it’s referred to as the Buy, Borrow, Die strategy that the wealthy use to avoid taxes.

Also, the lottery is a tax on those who don’t understand (or are willing to learn) about statistics. Never play.

I bought a ticket this time around, and I understand statistics. I understand that my odds of winning are infinitely better with one ticket than no tickets. But the difference between one ticket and more than one ticket is inconsequential. So one ticket it is.

I also understand the odds of winning Powerball are about 1 in 300 million. So once the jackpot gets over 600m or so, the expected value is high enough to justify buying that one ticket.

So, when I see the jackpot get big, I buy a ticket, and dont get my hopes up.

The process to get your first passport is quite a chore, because you need your original citizenship documents, like that birth certificate with the raised seal, or your original naturalization papers. If you don’t have that you need to go to whatever authority made out your documentation first and request it, which might take a while (and more ID).

But once you have that, renewing it is much easier, because that expired passport can be still be accepted as proof of citizenship, even for some time after expiration. I’ve been able to renew mine online. I just have to fill out the form, send them a fresh picture, and pay the fee.

Pro Tip: for an extra $30, you can get a Passport Card in addition to your passport. It is only valid as a travel document for land and sea travel within North America, but has the same proof of citizenship as a passport book. Everyone who is in the wrong half of the “Peter Griffin in a Fez” scale should carry it on their person at all times.

Yes, the ICE agent will say it’s fake, and confiscate it, but at least you can keep your passport book in a safe place for your family to bring to the detention center to try and get you out.

There’s an app for that!

“An ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien,” said the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Wait, you mean the guy who owned a beauty pageant was part of the sex trafficking operation? Who would have guessed that?

Sounds like an “international distributor” aired the episode, so it was already public, at least in whatever country it aired in. The only risk they took is perhaps getting their “international distribution” contract cancelled.

If it aired publicly, and nobody involved in the distribution is involved in the “archiving”, there may be very little that can be done about it, short of sending the USS Trump to carpetbomb their country.

Maybe this movie will end like Raiders of the Lost Ark

This article doesn’t repeat the claim, but the NYT article reported that not only did Weiss “suggest” that they talk to Stephen Miller, she gave them his contact information. As if they hadn’t bothered to try and get in touch with him, at all, this whole time. That article correctly noted that if they had to wait for an official Administration response on every story, it gives the Administration a de-facto veto by simply being too busy to reply.

I hope they did text that number, though, just to say “hi”. Who knows what kind of shit he will text back by mistake.

He’s not being self aware at all, he’s just whining. It’s a justification for a decision he’s already made.

“We have to do it because nobody else will”. That’s probably the same logic he used to put his name on the Kennedy Center, or his picture on all of his buildings. Doesn’t he want to put his face on a quarter? And Mt Rushmore? Seems to me we’re being forced to memorialize him everywhere.

No, that’s not quite how it works.

Calling the newly minted coins a transaction fee “paid from the pool of unmined coins” isn’t really accurate, as those coins didn’t exist until they were mined. The algorithm carefully controls how many new coins are made.

But miners do not set fees at all. Users set their fee when they make their transactions, and miners pick which transactions they want to attempt to validate. We expect miners will pick the transactions with the highest fee per byte, because they want to increase their reward if they manage to find a block. But they don’t have to, and they may have reasons to pick other transactions.

The whole point of it being trustless is that no party needs to coordinate. Users create transactions, miners validate them.

Bitcoin was extremely successful at making what it set out to do in the first place: make a fully distributed, peer-to-peer, trustless currency. Anyone who has ever been forced to pay bogus transaction fees ought to be able to appreciate paying for things without needing a bank, or any intermediary at all. It’s like cash you can e-mail.

But, most people into crypto now don’t care about this utility, they just want Number Go Up. So they don’t transact with it anymore, they just hold it (or actively trade with it). Which makes the whole ecosystem not useful for anything except feeding itself.

I still think that, in theory, there are areas where cryptocutrency can be used for real innovative purposes. But these will never actually be done, because the people in a position to do those things would rather make quick money selling shit tokens to unsuspecting people.

Do you want to learn how it all works? Feel free to do so, it’s all Open Source. But if your goal is to invest… Well… You still need to learn about and understand it first. This will help you differentiate the good ideas from the scams. (And there are a lot of scams!)

They are clearly having sectional relations

Nethack

RGB should have stepped down early in Obama’s second term, when Democrats still held a majority in the Senate…

Congress? That body currently run by Mike Johnson and John Thune?

We’ll get a special prosecutor, all right, and it will be Matt Gaetz.

I look forward to the “Donald J. Trump Memorial” anything.

Not just any Republican, she was Trump’s nominee for UN Ambassador, until that got withdrawn because the Republicans were losing too many House seats to Presidential appointments.

So, she decided to run for Governor, until a better connected male candidate decided to run instead, so she backed out of that.

It seems like her entire year can be summed up by getting screwed over by other Republicans. No wonder she wants out.