another sad case of a good kid gone bad
Just a guy, getting by.
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another sad case of a good kid gone bad
Surprise her! A single rose, a loving text message, a picnic at the beach, hiding a dead body together, it doesn't have to cost money, it just needs to catch her off guard.
Oh, Andy Borowitz. What a gem you are.
Ireland: chat through the list of suspects over pint. (Also applies to Inspector Morse).
I was wondering what was happening this morning in the White House and for some reason this scene came to mind... www.youtube.com/watch?v=bP89...
Not for the first time I am begging angry people to put the phone down, walk through actual streets, go to actual pubs, stand on the touch line at local sports clubs, browse Saturday markets, chat with ramblers on footpaths and rediscover beauty & contentedness.
Like this for all sorts of reasons. I’m pretty sure this is what China is already doing.
The whole production is amazing, and very, very funny. You can find it here: it's worth the money. player.shakespearesglobe.com/productions/...
I think he is having a procedure: something like a conscience transplant or a prejudicectomy, which is why they don't want to talk about it.
Indeed. Some real dance discipline and skill here: these are properly trained dancers: given Russia's deep ballet tradition, I suspect many of them may be ballerinas working off-piste.
Amazing. I'd only seen this kind of movement one other time, but not by so many or so brilliantly choreographed. In fact, it was a completely different context: Mark Rylance in his wondrous performance as Olivia in the 2012 Globe production of Twelfth Night. youtu.be/HVubWP3p62s?...
This is on the WhiteHouse website, and I was seriously impressed. I didn't know that he was so keen to celebrate America's animal doctors. Given what he's said and done previously, it can't be be anything else, can it?
I suspect he's having a procedure done... Conscience transplant or prejudice removal, something like that.
I'm not saying they're connected, and I know this your nom-de-plume, but given the rumours circulating, someone might think you've used your particular set of skills in a particular way...
I'm sure it's saying, "Ahab? Last I looked, he was sleeping with the fishes..."
Fan service!
Summer in Alaska...
Old World Language Families. I had an excellent professor with this on her wall ages ago
'Peaceful Dawn' Glastonbury Tor this morning before sunrise.
Please watch
or a book.
Outstanding.
Monorail? Chimpanzee? I'm afraid you've made me think of the Simpsons... www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy6C...
Dog tired while bike too fast.
American legislators do much, much more to 'protect' kids from books than from guns. Yet in America, guns kill kids more than anything else. Why? Legislators believe that a nutjob's freedom to have a gun matters more than the right of kids to stay alive. publichealth.jhu.edu/2024/guns-re...
I think I've found the house where Bond villains live when they want some downtime away from their volcano...
Intriguing promotional strategy. The #Anthropic team announce the initial user pilot of their AI, #Claude, for Chrome by explaining in some detail quite how vulnerable it will make users to malicious attacks. Their logic seems sound, but as a tool to encourage adoption, it is...interesting.
Nice bespoke gag there. Just goes to show what a craftsman can do with good material, carefully cut to the right length.
Absolutely true. People are entirely rational, in that they always have reasons for what they do. Oftentimes, however, these reasons are unconscious.
Indeed. And at some point, you turn that asset growth into cash. And pay only 24% on it.
Hmm... As I understand things, as you get richer, more of your wealth and income comes from investments and capital gains. 24% CGT is less than 45% top rate or the tax on a salary above £50k. You end up paying less tax than on comparable salaried income. Not a tax expert, so happy to be corrected.
Indeed. Rich people may pay more income tax on salaries, but as you say their tax picture is complicated. As it is for poor people. This is why I think it is hard to justify saying that inequality is a 'brainworm' without considering the tax burden as a proportion of (all) income, not just salary.
His gross tax bill might well be very big. But the tax on the proportion of money he takes home might well be lower. That said, I appreciate that the narrative here is less clear than in the US, where billionaires routinely pay less tax - Trump paid $750 total income tax in 2016.
Including income from non-salaried sources?
Yes, but rich people seem to be able to keep more of the money they take home than poor, even if they pay a higher salary tax. If we're talking other taxes, we can look at total effective tax rates. The poorest 10% pay an effective 48% tax rate; the richest? 39%. equalitytrust.org.uk/news/press-r...
No argument from me there. If we are talking about salaried income.
This gross income. Do you mean gross salaried income? Or all monies flowing into a rich person's bank account?
Those big gross numbers are impressive. But again, what percentage do they pay as a proportion of the money they take home each year? (again, not just salaried income).
I'm sure they do pay a lot. But do they pay a lot in proportion to their income? And you can argue assets vs income: it is about the amount of money people take home to spend at the end of the month / year. If I take home more, I should pay (at least) the same proportion of tax as others.
...And if I may: I'm not against people being rich. I don't like rich people not paying their proportionate share on the money people earn that is available personally for them to spend, regardless of source. And overall, the rich need to demonstrate that they pay their proportionate share.
A little more than just vibes, I think. There is plentiful evidence that the true marginal tax rates on incomes for the very rich are low, and lower than for salaried income. My point, I think, still stands: your 'brainworm' contention needs to be justified against total income, not just salaries.
That may be true. I'm not proposing a fix. I made my original comment because I felt that suggesting that 'rising inequality is simply a brainworm' may not stand up when considered in the context of the tax burden on rich person's total income, rather than just the salaried component.
3/3 I also suspect (but stand to be corrected) that many rely on additional sources of income, and that they pay proportionately less tax on these other sources than salaried taxpayers do. Hence the perception that the total burden on middle income taxpayers is disproportionately high in comparison.
2/3 Back to my original point: I am sure that your analysis of the relative proportionate tax burden borne by the rich on their salaries is correct.
1/3 Maybe not. But i'm pretty sure that in many cases, it does. I'm sure rich people employ very expensive tax advisors to help them navigate the administrative burden of sorting out their tax affairs. I'm sure also that many of them are employed to find ways to minimise the tax burden.
Ok. So if rich people aren't defraying tax exposure through loans, and they are paying taxes proportionate to the income they make from capital gains, what do the thousands of people employed by the rich to minimise their tax exposure do all day to justify their existence?
I am astonished and bemused equally. Using the spin of electrons to power data capture? They might as well say they are using the "Archmage's crystal torus to scry the astral plane..." Clarke's dictum - advanced tech is indistinguishable from magic - stays true, even when you know it's science.
Indeed. But are there not a plethora of other vehicles to shield income from the taxman? 'Loans' secured against assets, for example?
Great analysis. But I fear there is a significant omission. For most of the top end, only a relatively small proportion of their actual income is taxed. Tax avoidance through schemes, trusts, loans, putative investment loss and offshore monies mean that their true marginal tax rates are very low.
6/6 Health. Housing. Food bills. Transport. Water. Labour needs to tell its own stories about fundamentals, and stop making it easy for Reform to link such failures to immigration. But Labour, like the Dems, don't know the story they want to tell. So they let Trump and Farage tell the story instead.
5/6 It is also why Reform is gaining. Because its story speaks to these things, and uses them to make its anti-immigration case. Such things used to be Labour's story - told for the purpose of helping people aspire to better lives, rather than to blame others. But it has forgotten these stories.
4/6 Dems need to speak to how they will put more food on the table. How they will secure jobs. How they will make people feel safer. How they will actually make them safer. Trump has stories for all of these. That's why he continues to win.
3/6 So he reflects (and magnifies) their needs into fears and inverts the story: he is the good guy against the leftists who don't care. Dems can't counter this by saying Trump is the bad guy. But they do need to show that they are the good guys. And that means speaking to the fundamentals of life.
2/6 Dems (and Labour over here) think that their stories are about the fight of (their) good over Trump's evil. But to his people, Trump is the good guy - because his stories speak to the fundamentals of their lives. He's telling their stories. That he takes and distorts them doesn't matter.
1/6 Absolutely spot on. Trump's stories connect with his people because they are always, at their heart, about Maslow's basic needs: food, safety, family, money. The stories may not be true, but for people looking to explain and get control over their lives, they resonate. Same deal with Reform.
We need more people willing to fight for moderation.
Whoops. Hadn't twigged it was AI. Hmm...
Wonderful. Now all we need is 'Play that Funky Music' by AC/DC...
Important information if you don't want to get caught on the hop...
There are book reviews, and there are book reviews...
True... 👀😅🤣 #cat #catday #bluesky
I think he may have misunderstood what they meant by 'Club World'
www.worldofmoose.com/products/min...
Currently stuck in telephone service hell trying to speak to #VirginMedia. The IVR does not recognise the password it has asked me to speak, and has asked me 11 times for my password. This the seventh time I have tried to speak to someone today and it is an egregiously awful customer experience.
i had the immense privilege to attend, in the front row, Peter O’Toole’s final stage performance. It was in the glorious, if inconsequential, ‘Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell’ at (I think) The Old Vic.
They think it’s all over, it is now.
This is brilliant - as is pretty much everything they post. Enjoy, and follow: you won't regret it.
The Thai cover band you didn't know you needed in your life. Crank it! 😀 🎸
isn't there an amendment about this? Something about free speech?
I bet she's fuming...
I bet it's waiting until it's time to go back to Madame Rose...
An excellent philosophy.
Not wrong.
'Rollback,' of course, is a holy word for the Asda Stonefolk. It's origins are lost in the mists of time. While some claim it invokes a mythical age of prosperity, many scholars say that the clue is in the name, reminding us how the Stonehenge stones were transported to Wiltshire...
computers were better when they were transluscent machines feared us more when we could see their insides
Stocking fillers for grownups.
Unusual choice of outfit, but I guess he knows what he’s doing
this is so wonderfully weird, give her all the golds 🥇
Some people think that the overarching purpose of a degree is to get a better job. It's not. The purpose of a degree is to become a better person: to be able think for yourself, trust your own arguments and to learn from, and challenge others. Better jobs are side effect.
Enjoy your mimsy borogroves...
Witchita Lineman is simply a perfect song.
This is amazing. Wondrous language. Perfect.
Wow.
Naught but a leap to the left And thanne a clockwyse tread; Put thyne handes on thyne hippes, And be thy knees yn-gatheréd: Lo, it ys the pelvique thruste That maketh mirthe down to rayne - Let us do the Tyme Warpe agayne!
I do NOT recommend this new capri sun.
Words To Live By Number 241
I assume that when you speak of walkable neighborhoods, you didn't have in mind neighborhoods where those walking are dressed in body armor representing the Federal government...?
Pleas Sir, can I be excused? My brain is full.
Have you ever noticed that people dressed better in the past? Even in the summer, when it was scorching hot? Why is this? 🧵
This is the greatest news article ever written.
The Beagles. Electric Light Quartet. The Blue Brother. The White Strips Manfred Mann's Soil Band.
I think you mean www.paragraphplanet.com?
Reminds me of a joke, the punchline of which goes: "That's no 'Nile terrier.' That's a f***ing crocodile!"
Those are good contenders. Some others: "Aha, the old...X... ploy." - universally applicable for any given X. "No matter where you go, there you are." Also universally relevant.