NY State income tax is about 7%. NYC income tax is about 3%. Taking that 15K figure and working it backwards, he was making 140K +/- 10K. He was doing alright for himself.

Not true. Social Security has an expense ratio of 0.4%. Only low cost index funds beat that, and those organizations don’t have the kind of burdens the SSA does (i.e. keeping track of actual identities and having physical offices across the country).

I’ll let *you* in on a secret: the bigger the organization the worse the oversight over individual programs and people, therefore dollars. Fortune 50's waste billions per year.

Finding meaning in art is like finding Jesus in toast, there’s nothing actually there. Everything is in your head.

Art means whatever your want it to mean, which can be nothing. A lot of it really is just a bunch of well-arranged forms. All of the “meaning” is bullshit, because artists have to brand themselves somehow. Also most people like using things as launching points to talk about themselves and their feelings, hence the…

Nah. An idiot with a ruler would fuck up the proportions and probably the colors. The effort and skill in art like this isn’t really apparent until you try to do something in similar style (not replicate the original exactly). It’s unlike, say, a realist painting where it’s obvious just looking at the thing whether or…

What, in your opinion, *is* art? Obviously, you’re not a fan of modernism. So what is your thing?

I think that the Aliens won’t solve a damn thing. Planet White (pop ~1 billion) will just go back to splitting up its own race and shitting on 1 or 2 token minorities (e.g. Italians, Irish, Eastern Europeans). Meanwhile Planet Non-White (pop 6 billion, so a bit more crowded) will find a way to balkanize their own…

Then you probably can’t plug in any electronics anyway...so problem solved.

Then you probably can’t plug in any electronics anyway...so problem solved.

Umm...no. KS4 is among the reddest districts in the country. The typical democrat is expected to lose by a minimum of 30 points. That the Democrats outperformed that by 20 points, and only lost by single digits, is a VERY good result. If the whole electorate moves 20 points to the left, you’re looking at…

+1 for anything Tripp Lite. These things are buried behind furniture and you’ll never see the LED, so you have no idea if your years old unit still protects against surges. Failing the whole circuit is the only way to truly protect your stuff.

+1 for anything Tripp Lite. These things are buried behind furniture and you’ll never see the LED, so you have no…

You vastly underestimate the incompetence of Congress by itself. The health bill probably would have collapsed a week earlier than it did if Trump hadn’t mounted a last-minute, half-assed attempt to save it.

It’s a big continent. I’m sure we can separate the scientists from the people trying to destroy them.

Yeah, I don’t get this. I want him as far away from DC as often as possible. Is there a trump golf resort in Antarctica? No? Can we fund one? Imagine if the airport gets snowed in. He could be stuck there for months.

True, but those kinds of logs take up mere GBs of storage and include things (like email) that you’re already storing for other reasons. Pretty easy to handle. Video quickly scales into TBs and often requires not only *more* storage, but faster storage. More servers, faster drive arrays, more robust networks. And as…

True. You cannot trademark genres or tropes. Though, you’d have to be careful putting “Cyberpunk” anywhere in the actual title. You might even have trouble calling a main character “Cyberpunk”, if such character featured heavily in marketing.

Pretty much. You can still write cyberpunk novels, even found a company called “Cyberpunk” that makes a product called “Cyberpunk”, so long as your company isn’t in the business of video games or something that would be confused for a video game.

It’s not “jip”. It’s “gyp” as in “gypsy”. Which should tell you everything about the origin and context of that word.

Pro: they get 100% of the take.

Economics is never a zero sum game. Even when it’s growing slowly and ESPECIALLY when it’s shrinking.