You’re ok with little planes flying through hyperspace but draw the line at space hacking, lol

On the contrary, Luke Skywalker taking a lucky shot

Man that’s like the ONE THING that I totally give star wars a pass for. It wasn’t a lucky shot. The design flaw was there, yes, but the targeting computer was never going to work. Red leader had a lock and it still didn’t work. Wedge Antilles, the best non-Jedi starfighter pilot in the galaxy, expressed strong doubt at least two or three times. Luke had to use the force to destroy it, there was no other way. If you can suspend your disbelief to accept the existence of the force, it makes perfect sense in the context of the story. Fucking masterpiece!

Ever seen Primer? Equal and opposite to that, easily the most confusing movie I’ve ever seen and they don’t spoon feed you anything, lol

Related: outrunning explosions, ugh

That’s why I always have my criminal conspiracy meetings at Starbucks or Wendy’s.

The pseudo-realism in those batman movies and comic book movies in general is a huge part of why I detest them. It’s like an uncanny gap or something. Comic book characters are inherently ridiculous and absurd so I can’t take them seriously. They ask me to suspend too much disbelief.

One specific example from the batman movies is at the end of one of them, I forget which, I think a few hundred cops charge a bunch of guys with machine guns or something? And I remember thinking in the theater they are about to get mowed down World War I style. But somehow they win, they all live, and the streets aren’t flowing with a river of blood. You want me to take them seriously, while having absurd characters and situations, and then you put them in situations where they absolutely should be massacred…I just…I’m out…

Ctrl+F Hitler, ah, there it is. I feel like the xkcd comic missed an opportunity to have a 1932-1945 segment in there about the biggest cause of death for time travelers being OTHER time travelers killing them before they can successfully go back in time and kill Hitler, lol.

Re: conservation of reality, I feel like if I went back and shot Hitler, I would miss, or be stopped by security, or bad weather, or my gun would misfire, or even if I managed to actually do it, he’d be replaced by a look alike, and then it would turn out the guy we always thought was Hitler was actually just an actor, or something. Like if someone went back and killed baby Adolph when he was six months old, the parents would adopt another kid and name IT adolph, and there you go. Whatever happened happened and can’t be undone, not through magic resuscitation of a corpse, but through smooth and natural intervention of reality itself, if that makes sense…

I hear the universe is infinite, and no matter how far away from earth you go, there’s just infinitely more universe. So like if you are standing on earth looking twelve billion light years that way and then twelve billion light years the other way you are in a sphere of unimaginable size right? But if you actually went twelve billion light years that way once you get there you can still look this way or that way and see twelve billion more light years every which way. So from that perspective, pretty much anywhere in the universe is the center of the universe…from a certain point of view…

That’s such a great angle, calling all republican presidents DEI hires from the electoral college lol

You’re a very unpleasant person.

Calm down professor. The US is one of the only countries in the world to tax worldwide income, even if they are a nonresident of the US. That is NOT how it works in every country.

Here’s a pretty good article about it from the WSJ if you want to educate yourself on the subject: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WB-34630

It’s somewhat accurate to say “every penny they make is taxABLE to Uncle Sam” which is different from saying 100% tax rate. Americans living outside the US still need to file a tax return and report all their income, and pay tax on it to the US, even if it is from a foreign source. That said they could claim the foreign tax credit if they paid tax to a foreign regime on that income already, or the foreign income exclusion under some circumstances which would reduce their taxable income to the US.

Well thank god we don’t have any Death Panels from Obamacare though!

No, all you’re doing is shifting power from the big bad mean rich landlord into the hands of the government agency or agent in charge. How do you not understand that? No matter what there’s going to be an asshole with too much power/wealth.

This is extremely dangerous to our democracy.

Are you a bot? Wealth tax is not the same as income tax. You can’t compare 24% to 4%. It just doesn’t work that way. I don’t know how to be more clear.

Suppose you take one of your remaining dollars after paying 24% tax on your gross income. You buy a penny stock and it skyrockets to the moon and you are now worth 100 billion on paper, and you stay at your 100k/yr white collar desk job. Your only income is your 100k salary. You haven’t actually earned any income yet or triggered any taxable events. Income happens when you sell, not when values fluctuate. Your fair share is 24,000 now and then capital gains tax whenever you sell your share of that stock. This wealth tax is absurd because it’s literally just a timing difference between now and whenever you sell, or whenever you die, whichever happens first. That tax is going to get paid one way or another.

You guys are getting your panties all twisted up over a temporary timing difference. And the worst part is you just don’t even know what you’re talking about, or how chaotic it would be implementing such a thing, which would never work in practice, or even the fact that it’s unconstitutional and would require an amendment to be legal. This whole thing is just idiotic.

That’s actually a really good point I hadn’t even thought of. Is there even enough actual currency in circulation to pay the tax people are talking about, or is it all locked up in hypothetical future income priced in to the current FMV? Great post.

People will always act in their own rational self interest. Idk where people get this idea from that you can legislate market forces. It’s like legislating the tides or the seasons. The commies around here walking around bitching about all these mean rich people are so naive it’s really incredible.

This is a super basic apples and oranges concept, please try and keep up.

Your original comment was bitching about 4% not being a fair share when you are paying 24%. Wealth tax is not the same as income tax.

I think everyone is subject to income tax in the US when the income is taxable to them, yes. Eventually all of these big bad mean rich people will pay tax on their unrealized gains one way or another. No need to create a wealth tax because eventually the income tax will kick in, I promise you. There’s no need to fuck with the tax code even more, and by doing so totally breaking accounting and tax concepts in a way that only government can, just out of this populist notion that they aren’t paying their fair share, whatever that means.

If you’re talking about eminent domain, the gov has to pay fair market value for the assets it takes, at least in the USA. So you’re just flat out wrong using that as an example because in this context you guys are talking about the government forcing someone to provide something to somebody else for free, or just seizing their property (!) to do it themselves.

I’m looking for you to be able to articulate a specific rule or set of rules with hard numbers and thresholds that applies to literally everyone. You can walk around all you want saying rich people are big bad meanies and should give this poor woman free housing. But it turns out people will always act in their own rational self interest, and until you can figure out a way to codify your values into law, you might as well be writing letters to santa. I wish everything were perfect and nobody wants for anything, but the universe just doesn’t work that way. It’s hard to believe there are so many people naive enough to not know this by now.

I’m definitely in the wrong place because all I’m hearing is a bunch of morons.