I’m not going to pretend I’m an economist, but the idea that the government prints money is not new to me. If the government is “funded” via destroying money (because there is an inflation rate they are attempting to keep constant meaning they can spend X for every Y they destroy) then taking in “funding” via tariffs allows them to either print more money to make up for the additional “income” (aka increased government spending ideally on the public good) or need less money from other sources (lower other taxes - not how it happens but theoretically a possibility), or apply that “excess” to the debt (basically print directly to the debt holders). This does not make taxes or tariffs irrelevant. It is the way the government is “funded” since it needs income to maintain inflation. Is this not a correct reading? I’m legitimately open to learning something right now, but replacing “spend” with “print” and “tax” with burn does not really affect anything considering inflation is a constraint. I understand it’s not 1:1 but that does not mean taxes are “disappeared” in any meaningful sense in this context.

Monetary policy is a complicated subject, but stating that taxes, in this case tariffs, disappear money from the economy is at best misleading if not outright false. They are part of a cycle. Money is printed. Money is destroyed. If money wasn’t being laundered through the government then they wouldn’t just print money. They’d have no money to invest in printing.

If you are suggesting that taxes are disappeared from the economy then how would you explain government services. The government spent over 6 trillion dollars last year. They spent more than they made including taxes, hence a deficit, so not sure what you’re suggesting at this point.

The commenter above said “The money exacted for tariffs leaves circulation is entirely, it’s basically destroyed.” They are talking about money that was spent on the tariff already. What you are talking about is the larger impact tariffs have on the economy.

I am not on the side of tariffs. I’m not against them on principle, but the implementation has never really been stellar. I appreciate your perspective, but in my opinion the OP made a somewhat misleading statement that is not really related to your point. People could walk away thinking that tariff money is basically just put in a big pile and incinerated. The money continues to exist and in fact could be directed toward a specific thing. So if we build luxury yachts here and people start importing them, we can add a tariff to them and allocate those funds to retraining programs for people who used to make yachts. I’m not advocating for that, but in that case the money would reenter in a specific location and affect a specific sector.

I don’t support the tariffs, but that’s not really true. Tariffs are basically taxes. They go to the government. Presumably they would then be redistributed through government programs. You can say what you will about how effective those programs are, but the money does not just disappear and is certainly not destroyed.

That’s why they’re pushing so hard now. They can’t keep it free forever. They need you to become reliant upon it to perform even the simplest of tasks now so when they monetize usage it has already become a must have. That way they can count on your subscription no matter what.

I wonder where that “human accuracy” statistic is coming from. Plenty of people don’t know how to read and interpret data, much less use excel in the first place. There’s a difference between 1/4 of people in the workforce not being able to complete a task, and a specialized AI not being able to complete a task. Additionally, this is how you get into the KPI as a goal rather than a proxy issue. AI will never understand context isn’t directly provided in the workbook. If you introduced a new drink at your restaurant in 2020 AI will tell you that the introduction of the drink caused a 100% decrease in foot traffic since there’s no line item for “global pandemic”. I’m not saying AI will never be there, but people using this version of AI instead of actual analysis don’t care about the facts and just want an answer and for that answer to be cheap.

I’m not a big fan of Gabriel Iglesias or anything, but that was also a surprise to me.

Yea, I didn’t address that directly but what an insane take. That’s like coming to the US and being upset that tax isn’t integrated into the listed price so refusing to pay it and just stealing, but also worse and grosser because now someone has to clean that up or use it after you. Even if it was the norm over there, which to my understanding it is not, that’s then what you should follow as a guest in a foreign country. I can only imagine/hope these people are not Americans with passports. We get a bad enough reputation as is.

I don’t know what all the hate is about. This is not in every restroom there, but even so, we don’t really have a lot of “public” restrooms in the US. All over Europe there are 1 euro turnstiles or other barriers to go to the restroom in the first place. Ideally we live in luxury gay space communism, but in the interim at least having access to a restroom is nice. I’d love it to be free everywhere, but it’s not always free in Europe either and at least in this example you can access it for free if you bring your own or are able to watch an ad, and in the US you may not realistically have access to one at all. This also ensures that the people accessing the service are the ones paying for it, so it’s not like someone in a small town with less access to government subsidized resources are being taxed so that these people can have free TP. I don’t love the idea, but it’s not novel or any more dystopian than what we have everywhere else.

I originally had planned on doing that, but honestly I’ve not plugged my kobo into my computer since I in earnest set it up. Out of the box I jailbroke it, then I realized I liked it a lot and didn’t want to get confused as to what I was recommending to friends/family vs what was actually jailbreak stuff, so I decided I’d reset it and use it the standard way for a bit to get the hang of it. Once I did that I’ve never had a need to plug it into a computer and figured it wasn’t worth the effort.

I hope I’m not considered impolite for using it as intended, though I totally understand people who would want to do as you suggested. Anything to decrease hold times lol. Also not that I would know from experience, but I imagine others greatly respect and appreciate the people who do that, provide the means to do that, or the end results of that.

Cannot recommend Kobo enough. You can jailbreak it if you like, but I didn’t get much benefit from that personally. I’m partial to the overdrive integration, but if you’re loading epubs you probably aren’t using that. If in the US, I’d recommend at least setting it up, since it’s pretty easy and maybe more immediate for some books, but obviously she won’t get to keep the epub after.

Seconding a Kobo. They have Overdrive (library) integration in the US and their eink and full color options are both great.

Maybe, but you probably don’t know a lot of people in the trades. This article is bad, sure, but I know a lot of college grads in “respected” professions earning way less than people that went into trades. I wouldn’t have met most of these tradespeople had my life not taken me in a circuitous path, and I’d be comparing my college grad friends to my couldn’t get into college/did poorly in college friends. I know people who should have been in a trade and instead went to college and did poorly and now can’t get work. Their family was doing what they thought was right but they were failed by this idea that they needed college. College isn’t for everyone and we should do a better job of making robust education to employment opportunities funnels that don’t just amount to college and networking.

We also need better employment laws so that working as a cashier or stocking shelves can still pay the bills for your family.

All the people I know who would have seen this are boycotting Disney. I don’t think the punisher fans who never read the comics were keeping superhero movies afloat. I think it was people who liked it when “good” won, and Disney is not on that side, not that they were in the past either. My local comics and games store has pride flags up year round and they are doing great. I think the capitulation to Trump is going to hurt a lot of brands more than they thought.

I understand that and that’s probably the best option for a company like Disney where realistically too few people will actually boycott, so making pirating easy is probably best, but for other companies I don’t always agree. It probably differs by size, but if I pirate a game for PC and mention how fun it is online or to my friends, maybe they don’t have PCs so end up buying console versions, or they don’t think to or don’t want to pirate. At the end of the day I’m now doing PR via word of mouth for a company I don’t want supported. I think so long as you’re not part of a culture talking about it and just quietly consume the media while helping people pirate it’s the best of both. Though obviously this is about pirating in theory. In practice I’m sure we would never do that. Pirating is reserved for AI companies only.

I’m not suggesting it’s easy, but if not letting your kids see a movie is enough inconvenience to not boycott then you probably didn’t care that much about the boycott anyways.

I don’t know why the concept of a boycott is hard for some people. Boycotting a product or company does not entitle you to still have access to the product. If you can still get it without supporting them, fine, but the premise of a boycott is generally saying that you would rather go without than support the company. They can just, not watch zootopia. If that is not an option for them then they are not actually interested in boycotting. If anything, it’s more effective if people don’t pirate. That way there’s less people talking about the thing and less general interest. People who still watched it are the outliers and when they ask why no one has seen it you can explain why. I get that they are a huge company, but this is how boycotts actually work.

School shootings are still by far one of the most common forms of this kind of externalized violence, and we need not look farther back then a few months to see dem leaders losing their lives to this too. I think this needs to be addressed regardless of what people think of what happened to Kirk or Thompson. Unfortunately, the world does not actually care about karmic balance and doing evil does not really change the likelihood of being killed, even when limiting the scope to just political violence.

Whataboutism was is a reference to your suggestion that Superman is also a war criminal. In the universe of the first movie we as the audience are essentially told by the text that Superman is good and Lex is bad. In introducing the idea that “Superman is also” as a reason to excuse teaming up with Lex seems to fit the bill for that.

As far as no true Scottsman, there’s potentially a fallacy that fits better, and no true Scotsman may not even really fit the bill at all, but essentially this concept that you cannot portray someone as universally good. I just think that’s not really relevant in this context and I disagree with it. I’m not saying that Superman has to be perfect. I just don’t think it’s good to team up with Lex. The idea that some people might not see it as a negative doesn’t change the fact that some people would. And conceptually I understand that where I’d draw the line might differ from where other people draw the line, but the suggestion that where I draw the line is somehow unreasonable to the point of bringing up the idea that nobody could be perfect seems strange. I’m not suggesting that Superman is held to some high minded unrealistic standard. I think most people would agree that Lex is a bad guy and from a moralistic standpoint would prefer if Superman not have to work with him. I’m not saying it would necessarily make better media, just that we probably don’t need to watch war criminals have a redemption arc at this moment in history.

Additionally, I don’t care very much about what was and was not the case in the comics. My understanding is that in the comics his parents never suggested he form a harem. I think that each reboot should be considered as its own incarnation, and I think Lex in this incarnation is an objectively bad person. I do not think that the movie left any real room for interpretation there. He’s not misguided, or misinformed. He’s a bad guy because fundamentally at the core of his being he has these flaws that affect the way he sees the world and treats others.

Like I said, I will have to reserve ultimate judgment for when we know more about the actual content, but I just don’t think it’s a good premise. You seem to at least understand my subjective opinion on the matter.

I was originally not going to respond because so much of your comment is just not related to my point, but to at least answer your question, a signal to the viewer. To the rest of your comment, I’ll just say that I don’t really care about whataboutism or no true Scotsman or whatever. They could make the movie about anything at all. It doesn’t even have to include lex, but they seem to be choosing to do a team up. I guess I’ll have to see what it’s actually like, but I think there are better options that don’t potentially launder the perception of lex.