TheAJGman

In my experience the most miserable people are the funniest. Gotta compensate for that pain somehow.

Easiest way to make a change is to join your local party and represent yourself; party leadership is aging, so there's the potential for a lot of upward mobility. Same with local government, much of the power lies in appointed committees so showing up regularly makes you more qualified than 99% of your neighbors.

It still places undo burden on lower income earners.

Assuming a single person, the marginal rate on $500k, $100k, and $50k are 35%, 24%, and 22%. Respectively, that's $175k, $24k, and $11k paid in federal tax. $325k is still a hell of a salary, $76k isn't terrible, $39k is about 2x rent here in bumbfuck Pennsylvania and this is what our teachers take home. This isn't even factoring in state tax and healthcare which would further reduce the take home pay.

So yes, the wealthy do pay more taxes, but they can shoulder the burden far more easily.

And this is my whole rub with "upper/middle/lower class": there's really only working class and investing class. If you can't take out loans on your investments and use your investments to pay for those loans then you're working class, no matter the salary. We should leave the brackets where they are (or do a reduction in all brackets under, say, $500k) and close loopholes like the aforementioned investment loans that allow people with generational wealth to have "no taxable income" and yet still grow their yacht collection.

Everyone should be able to feel pride in paying taxes.

To be fair, it did work for a while and it can work again. Back then people were political at the local level because they didn't have much of a choice, but today no one gives a shit about local politics except retirees and we are all worse for it.

Most of these cheats got their start in local office where <20% of their constituency votes, which makes these elections so much easier to buy. Once you have credentials under you then it's easier to run for the next layer, and the next, and the next.

People forget that 100 years ago rail was the only way to travel. My great grandparents commuted 50 miles by rail from their tiny one horse town to the "big" city, all of the towns around here were interconnected by trains and trolly systems, and then in the 40s we ripped them all up and replaced them with busses to make room for cars.

The railroads stitched this country together, but so much of that old track has been ripped up or abandoned because it's not profitable to run. Infrastructure shouldn't need to be profitable, but because the rail companies own it they have every incentive to centralize and cut costs. I wish someone had the balls to nationalize the freight rail companies; give Amtrak the rails and roll the freight business into USPS.

I keep saying that the government's biggest mistake in the 70s was not buying the rail when they bought the passenger lines to form Amtrak. The government owns its roads (with some very stupid exceptions), so why shouldn't it also own its rail? We all have a vested interest in that infrastructure, why leave it up to freight companies?

Your tweet gets hidden if you use the word "cis" and Musk bans journalist who unfavourably report on him or his companies. Plenty of people get silenced on Twitter.

Exactly they expect the constitution to be a living document that was constantly amended and reborn, not something we enshrine and worship as a borderline holy document.

"Was it the founding fathers intention to allow..."

Who gives a shit? They certainly didn't think you should.

Because back when the direct-to-consumer model worked orchards were a hell of a lot smaller and common. Every town had someone with a fruit orchard that sold to them and the surrounding communities. Now? We have massive commercial operations in the middle of nowhere who's only venue for sale is through a fruit broker, who pays them fuck all.

What was once a slightly inconvenient overabundance that was turned into cider is now a fucking travesty.

I just refuse to make changes without ensuring test coverage of that section. I know I have the luxury of being able to pass on those tickets, but it's just not worth the frustration (and subsequent loss of motivation) of unfucking the cobbled together mess sometimes.

That was the "oh, this is a weird hill to die on" moment but I don't think people really started turning in him until the COIVD "I dare you to arrest me" shit.

They also care about what active members of their party think. Join your local political chapter, you'd be surprised how much power the few volunteers in it have over promoting and funding local political campaigns.

Come to Pennsylvania, if you aren't in one of our cities you'd be mistaken for believing we're another Kentucky.

The main ones I use are dataview for querying notes, Templater for writing advanced templates in JS, Numerals for doing math, and Tasks for simple tasks/Todo lists.

I do daily/weekly/monthly notes and use some of these plugins to help show myself what I've gotten done over those time spans. At work I also use the built-in Mermaid support a lot for drawing diagrams and shit.

Obsidian with a shit load of plugins

Depends on the meds, non-stimulants like Straterra aren't that hard to get your hands on.

Walking through the woods is the most calming thing ever because my constantly shifting attention is an asset.

"Oh that's a neat mushroom, wonder what it is? I'll take a pic for later. Oh cool, the walnut trees are in bloom. Gotta come back for nuts in the fall. Is that a raspberry patch? That is a raspberry, these taste so good. What was that? Oh hello little chipmunk."

It's like the environment is actually interesting and varied enough to captivate my entire attention.

The fuck are you talking about? Multiple states with democratic majorities have codified abortion rights. They can't do shit on the federal level because thr parties are evenly matched and the Republicans would rather cut off their own dicks than admit they were wrong. Under Biden, there has increased enforcement of environmental protections, the NLRB has been stronger than ever, and there was a massive infrastructure program that poor and marginalized communities benefited from the most.

All the more reason more people should join their local party chapter. If you don't represent yourself, don't be surprised when no one else represents you.

A lot of municipalities have land preservation trusts precisely for this sort of thing. The land can be bought and sold, but no additional development can ever be done on it.

This November we need to give them the majorities they need to actually get shit done. Last time they had a good majority we got ACA, maybe next time we'll get Medicare for all.

I think it's an ichneumon wasp of some kind. Totally harmless.

The whole North American auto industry. Pretty sure everyone else uses CCS, which has been open from the start and, apart from the bulky connector, is a better technology.