merc

joined 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 3 points 13 hours ago

I think the best way I've seen to illustrate it is the stories of immortals earning incredible amounts of money every day who still can't reach the wealth of Elon Musk.

Like, you're an immortal born during the ice age 80,000 years ago. You are somehow making $5000 per day (or its equivalent in gold for the 79,700 years before dollars are invented, and you save all of it. You're not as rich as Elon Musk.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

The US has exit taxes, as do many countries. If you try to renounce your US citizenship, you can be taxed based on the value of unsold assets.

I hate that the US is one of the few countries in the world that has citizenship-based taxation. It's awful and stupid. But, in theory, it does mean that an American couldn't just avoid taxes by moving to another country.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 13 hours ago

people often become defensive saying that the government shouldn’t be able to dictate how much wealth one person can accumulate

Of course it should. If we're expecting to live in a democracy, then people need to have equal voices. If you're a billionaire you have a megaphone, as Elon Musk has shown. Democracy can't work if some people have far more power than others.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

That wouldn't catch the people who are the real problem, billionaires, who report something like $1 per year in income.

When you have billions in shares, you can use that as collateral to borrow money from the bank, and then you just spend that money. That's not "income" so it isn't taxed.

What's needed is a 90% tax on people reporting high incomes as a start. But, then you need to close loopholes. The carried interest loophole for a start, which would nail most of the hedge fund crowd. Then, tax unrealized gains when they're in the tens of millions range. Then prevent billionaires from handing billions to their children tax free by preventing the "stepping up" of capital gains for their heirs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

First, I'm writing about a person who's watching and doesn't know if they can trust the system. My point is that there's no alternative to trust in the system, the system is built on trust.

Second, if you're inside the system, if you're an election worker or a government authority, you can tell who voted. But, you can't tell who that voter cast their votes for -- at least in a functional democracy.

The authorities can, and should, have all kinds of checks and balances to make sure that all the votes are being handled safely and counted correctly. But, if the public doesn't trust the authorities, there's nothing that the authorities can realistically do to convince the public that everything is above board. You can't "prove" that the system isn't rigged.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Yes, and again, it's all based on trust.

[–] [email protected] 64 points 1 day ago (17 children)

The scary thing about elections is that, by design, nobody can ever "prove" they won.

Votes are designed to be anonymous. They have to be. If they're not, they're very vulnerable to manipulation. If someone can prove how they voted, then they can either be bribed to vote a certain way, or threatened to vote a certain way. If you can check that your vote was counted successfully for the candidate you chose, then someone else can check that you voted for the candidate they chose.

That means that, by design, the only security that elections can have is in the process. In a small election, like 1000ish votes or fewer, someone could supervise the whole thing. They could cast their vote, then stand there and watch. They could watch as other people voted, making sure that nobody voted twice, or dropped more than one sheet into the box. They could watch as the box was emptied. Then, they could watch as each vote was tallied. Barring some sleight-of-hand, in a small election like that, you could theoretically supervise the entire process, and convince yourself that the vote was fair.

But, that is impossible to scale. Even for 1000 votes, not every voter could supervise the entire process, and for more than 1000 votes, or votes involving more than one voting location, it's just not possible for one person to watch the entire thing. So, at some point you need to trust other people. If you're talking say 10,000 votes, maybe you have 10 people you trust beyond a shadow of a doubt, and each one of you could supervise one process. But, the bigger the election, the more impossible it is to have actual people you know and trust supervising everything.

In a huge country-wide election, there's simply no alternative to trust. You have to trust poll workers you've never met, and/or election monitors you've never met. And, since you're not likely to hear directly from poll workers or election monitors, you have to instead trust the news source you're using that reports on the election. In a big, complex election, a statistician may be able to spot fraud based on all the information available. But, if you're not that statistician, you have to trust them, and even if you are that statistician, you have to trust that your model is correct and that the data you're feeding it is correct.

Society is built on trust, and voting is no different. Unfortunately, in the US, trust is breaking down, and without trust, it's just a matter of which narrative seems the most "truthy" to you.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago

It wouldn't happen, but theoretically if it did it could be hilarious.

The US doesn't look kindly on people who lied on official documents. Mostly this affects people who once came into the country illegally or overstayed their visas. That makes it nearly impossible for them to get citizenship later. So, if Musk had his citizenship stripped, he could be in a position where he could never get it back.

Additionally, the US has an exit tax for citizens who want to renounce their citizenship. That includes taxes on "Assets that haven’t been taxed yet but would be in the future, such as capital gains on stocks or funds in retirement accounts". So, if they hit him with that after stripping him of his citizenship, they could tax the hundreds of billions of unrealized gains in his various companies.

I agree that it's not going to happen unless something dramatically changes, but if it did it would be epic.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Give them a break, it's really erarly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Almost everything in any religion is a "telephone game" retelling of things. These days they're the same to most people which is what really matters.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

George Bush Jr. took the DOJ's win in that case and basically let Microsoft off the hook.

Having said that, the fact that they were being prosecuted did limit their behaviour, and it's why the FAANG companies were so successful. Now, we need a new round of antitrust to defang the FAANGs.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Kiwior I’m not sure if I can defend anymore, he’s made several extremely costly mistakes in three appearances so far

You almost summoned up another one.

 

This sounds like a disaster.

For those who don't know, Football Manager has a yearly release schedule, and the highlight of the release is that it has a database of nearly every professional player in the world, the club they play for, and an attempt to "scout" them, giving all their various attributes from passing ability, to height and weight, to their determination.

By releasing in March 2025, they're going to release the game essentially at the end of the 2024/2025 season right before players start moving to new clubs and the database becomes obsolete. Typically, around March is when they're giving deep discounts on the yearly release because they know there won't be much remaining interest in playing a game that's almost out of date.

They really shot themselves in the foot. They could have released a Football Manager 25 that was 100% FM 24 but with an updated database, they've done it before. They could have called "Football Manager 25" something like "Football Manager Next Gen" and not tied themselves to a certain season. And, if they do manage to get Football Manager 25 out in March, are they really going to be able to do FM 26 half a year later? Will anybody buy FM 25 if they know there's a FM 26 coming out so soon?

 

It's amazing to me that they can even measure a 0.01 XG shot. This comes from James Benge's twitter account.

The XG graph is also interesting. Tottenham has a continuous stream of very low quality shots, resulting in the graph going up in tiny increments. Arsenal has a series of decent chances near minute 17, and then the one high-quality shot resulting in Gabriel's goal.

Arsenal vs. Tottenham XG graph

https://understat.com/match/26640

I'm sure part of it is Arsenal defending in a low block after scoring. But, it also smacks of desperation on Tottenham's part. If you're taking a shot that has a 1% chance of going in, rather than passing and waiting for a better opportunity, you don't believe that you're going to get a better opportunity.

 

Maybe the "great" America that Donald wants to take us back to is the 1860s?

 

Note: National Bank of Canada is a commercial bank, not the Bank of Canada which is Canada's national bank. Um. Which is Canada's central bank.

The graphs in the presentation are the key takeaway for me. But, some key words:

"Canada is caught in a population trap that has historically been the preserve of emerging economies. We currently lack the infrastructure and capital stock in this country to adequately absorb current population growth and improve our standard of living."

...

"To put things in perspective, Canada's population growth in 2023 was 3.2%, five times higher than the OECD average."

...

"But to meet current demand and reduce shelter cost inflation, Canada would need to double its housing construction capacity to approximately 700,000 starts per year, an unattainable goal."

 

Earlier today, Scottish adventurers Chris and Julie Ramsey were finally able to announce their completion of the nine-month, 17,000-mile "Pole To Pole EV" expedition, the world's first drive from the 1823 Magnetic North Pole to South Pole.

Other links:

https://expeditionportal.com/what-the-pole-to-pole-expedition-wants-you-to-know-about-long-term-ev-travel/

https://poletopoleev.com/

https://global.nissannews.com/en/releases/north-pole-to-south-pole-with-nissan-ariya

 

The article was clearly AI generated. Microsoft has killed the original article, giving a 404, pretending it never existed. But, you can see an archived image of it on Imgur.

Even ignoring the ridiculousness of including the Ottawa Food Bank as a destination. Even ignoring the callousness of the line "Consider going into it on an empty stomach", the article is just full of spicy autocomplete nonsense.

  • "Participate in the Winterlude, the Capital's winter festival, skate on the world's largest skating rink, or play on North America's largest snow."
  • "Go to an Ottawa Senators Game: Ottawa, as Canada's capital draws visitors from around the world who come to see its historic buildings and landmarks, experience its arts and culture and take in the sights and sounds. Denis Potvin are two NHL heroes from Ottawa..."
  • "The World's Largest Naturallyfrozen Ice Rink"
  • "Discover a Winter Wonderland at Omega Park" (along with a picture of the Canal)
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