Focus on the lost revenue for small businesses owners. That’s all these shitfuck Republicans care about.

I’ve never put much stock in the “we are living in a simulation” but stories like this make me wonder if one of the sim developer’s kids is in here doing stuff.

“I want a DQ Blizzard!”

“We have ice cream at home.”

“But home is a bunch of shipping containers welded together.”

“Correct. And it’s wonderful.”

I have so little faith in polls anymore. I know Silver and others try to patch over the shortcomings by analyzing multiple polls and running weighted probability equations on them and so on. But I always think of GIGO: garbage in, garbage out.

And of course, probabilities are just that: probabilities. So if they say candidate X has a 75% chance to beat candidate Y, that means candidate Y still wins 25% of the time. Which is much higher than we intuit when we just look at the 75%. Anybody who’s rolled a 1d4 in D&D knows that 1 will come up more than we’d like.

Allan Lichtman’s analysis is more interesting to me. He’s been right 9 out of 10 times. Which certainly doesn’t mean he’ll be right this time. But I think it’s cool that he ignores polls. I wonder if his methodology, while very clever, may not be up to date for 2024 with all the weird shit going on with judges, electors, etc. The “meta issues”, if you will, around his “Keys to the White House.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Keys_to_the_White_House

I hope you’re right!

I’m not an expert by any means, but my understanding is there is a “tax accounting lobby” that works hard to prevent any measures to simplify it, because they would go out of business. Intuit and others.

Interesting that they are laying off managers while “moving towards more automation”. I’m guessing they mean draconian employee-monitoring hardware and software installed in the vehicles, warehouses, repair facilities, etc.

Love the meme but JFC I wish they would just send us a simple invoice (or refund) every year. You know, the way adult nations do things.

I guess with the constant outrage machine and fear mongering that goes on 24x7 now, some people have just grown numb. It just doesn’t register with them that democracy itself is on the line right now. If Trump wins, people could get put into camps. The very real possibility of that just doesn’t sink in. They have forgotten that our nation has been to these dark places before. Our history is stained with that sort of regressive authoritarian nightmare stuff.

Trump was abysmal… and it frustrates me that it probably didn’t hurt him all that much. Yes, he looked like an angry incoherent buffoon and a spoiled pouting baby. He probably lost a few votes.

But that same performance from anyone else would have tanked their campaign. If Harris had been even slightly “off” or had a cold or made any significant mistakes, that’s all the fucking MSM would be talking about today. Thank the stars she completely kicked his ass and looked good doing it.

But it’s batshit that Trump can be so unhinged and still be in the running. He talks like the idiots who vote for him. His freakshow antics are good for ratings. That’s it. That’s the magic formula. It’s dumb, it’s dangerous, it’s simple, and it works.

It’s almost enough to make me think citizens should have to pass a basic civics exam to vote. I am not really there yet, but I can see some good arguments for it.

I was expecting lots of farting.

Like you, I’m surprised he’s sort-of held it together. They gave him the right drug cocktail I guess.

“The dog ate my homework and then one of THOSE PEOPLE ate the dog.”

Press has a hard time letting go of the Trump outrage money maker.

Other than a bit of a dodge on the tariff question (which she turned into a counter-punch), Harris is nailing this thing with a dakka dakka nail gun.

He looks like he’s going boom boom in his pants.

And he very well could be.

She’s absolutely kicking his ass and the interviewers are, too. The Cult of 45 is unreachable by reality, but it’s a lot more fun watching this than the Biden debate.

“How long do you plan on cheating on your current employer?”

“Wait, is that you in Groucho glasses, boss?”

You make a good point. It does remind me (to some degree) of what happened with ripping music and scanning books.

Dumb question: how do the Europeans get ammo for these 3d-printed guns? Isn’t ammunition also tightly controlled / regulated over there?

Meat consumption is huge, especially red meat. I would be happy to add that to the list of easy things for harm reduction.

I really don’t think all the big dumb pickup trucks are needed, though. I understand some people like contractors and landscapers really do need them. But I also see parking lots for office workers filled with the stupid things.