I’m looking to reenter the dating pool in the near future and this has been on my mind, especially in light of Roe and my location in middle America. Would you be willing to share your personal experience with the procedure? Everyone says it’s very easy, but I gotta be honest, it makes me nervous.
My interpretation, though I do not understand the greater context of this character, is that he is referring to homelessness in general in the first panel, but dealing with a homeless person in the second. Which is to say, that ignoring the systemic problems which result in homelessness does not preclude acts of charity for the rich to make them feel better/tax write offs/a genuine belief in doing good/image rehab. The rich get whatever benefit they sought from the exchange, the specific recipient of their charity gets a hopefully life-changing boost, and down the road a landlord evicts a family after raising their rent 100% over a few years, thus replenishing the pool of the underclass. In fact, by demonstrating these acts of philanthropy, the wealthy provide ammunition for ideologues who want to gut social welfare by pointing to these generous acts of the elite.
So, I don’t see the split or twist that occurs between the two panels that others have commented on. To my mind, both of the panels tell a consistent story. A wealthy man is determined to ignore homelessness when he sees a beggar. He then gives the beggar a pittance and continues along his way, wilfully ignoring the systemic issues that allow homelessness to occur (and which, as a wealthy fat cat type character, perhaps he could do something about if he had the will to do so).
Idk if that was the initial intent, but it’s my headcanon now.
“Billionaires have started ‘quiet killing’, here’s why Forbes says signing up as tribute is a GOOD THING.”
This is a factually accurate statement, but it reads like you’re encouraging someone to get into smoking cigarettes, which is (I thought) a myth invented by DARE types. Hey OP, speaking as someone with a 15 year off and on addiction to nicotine, steady on your course, bud.
I don’t understand diddly about the specifics of this article (I’m a member of the normie minority on this site who is neither working in IT, nor interested in the field), but I gotta say, I loved how it was structured and written. In a sea of AI generated crap, or simply parroting talking heads and calling it news, I found the way they laid out the article in two parts ("this is what happened, followed by “this is our subjective opinion on those events based on the wider context”) to be very refreshing.
You deserve the hose for this, because now I can’t stop thinking about it.
I’m no legal scholar, but my read on Thomas is that he is, at the end of the day, a constitutional originalist. He is also a scumbag, but the opinions of his that I’ve read tend towards similar things: i.e. what does the Constitution/Founding Fathers say about this issue? Of course, most of the time, that ends up generating some wacko opinions because he’s generally unwilling to deviate from at 1700s era mindset. In fact, he seems to immerse himself in that mindset in order to form his opinions.
For example, if you read the majority opinion he wrote, Thomas defines the case very narrowly on Constitutional grounds. Basically, the payday loans companies argue that the consumer protection agency is in violation of the Constitution because, unlike most other federal agencies, its director is imbued (by Congress, mind you) with the power to withdraw up to a stuatory cap of funds from the Federal Reserve every year “as [they] determine fit to meet the agencies operating expenses”. The loan companies say that this is in violation with the Appropriations Clause of the Constitution, which states, " no money shall be drawn from the Treasury except in consequence of Appropriations made by Law".
So, Thomas’s approach to this disagreement is to determine what an “Appropriation” is, as it might have been defined by the people who wrote the clause. To do so, he, I shit you not, consults a dictionary from the period, like the intro to a lazy term paper ("Merriam-Webster defines appropriation as…). He also gets into the historical case law of Britain, rather extensively, as he believes (probably accurately, frankly) that that’s the best way to understand what the authors of the constitutional had conceived as they wrote the document.
After all of this, he winds up with several examples of executive agencies which do/did not fund themselves via the standard appropriations bill process (Customs Offices and Post Offices being the primary examples used). So, he concludes that it’s clear that the Founding Fathers had a broader view of how to find the government than ONLY annual appropriations bills, even if the literal text seems to indicate otherwise.
Also, he points out that the whole thing kinda falls apart in the sense that the creation of this agency was an act of Congress, with stuatory funding regulations drawn up by Congress, which was then signed by Obama into law. So, Congress made a law that said this particular agency is allowed to bypass the appropriations clause in x y z ways. Thomas has a stack of historical records which show that this was something the founders not only were aware of, but actively sanctioned via how the Post Office and Customs offices were set up at their establishment. So, he has no choice but to conclude that this agency is in line with what Jefferson et al had in mind. Thus, tough shit payday loans, bribe a congressman to change the law because ain’t shit can be done from a judicial perspective. Which, I imagine is probably what Thomas told these companies’ bag men when they showed up to secure his opinion.
Thank you for your service
As a small, optimistic caveat to the above, Biden’s pardon does work for anyone who was charged in Washington DC since they don’t have a state body representing them. So, yes, typically anyone with a federal marijuana charge is also likely the subject of many more serious charges, there is a population of people that may have received immediate relief at the time, which is good.
Biden has done what he is able to do. He proclaimed presidential pardon for federal marijuana charges in late 2022. However, the executive branch has no authority to impact state level charges, which would likely be the vast majority of people affected by marijuana policing over time. In a world where government works as intended, state level organizations should take their cues from what the federal government is doing, but, as I understand it, they are not necessarily beholden to slavishly adopt the federal posture. Perhaps someone with a deeper understanding might illuminate us further.
Man I hope the Red Letter Media boys put together a retrospective in his honor
Keep up the good work!
I overheard a conversation between two old guys at the Omaha VA discussing one of their relatives coming out as nonbinary. The sentiment was, in essence, “well, are they gay or what? Idk what these damn kids are doing anymore…” After some internal debate, I piped up and explained the sexuality and gender are two separate topics. To these guys’ credit, they seemed to take it in stride, if a little befuddled by it all. Considering the other options and prevailing opinions of many of the patients around here, I’ll take a couple of Vietnam vets’ bewildered acceptance of non-cisgendered people over ignorant hate seven days a week, and twice on Sunday.
You’re correct, HR is there to benefit the company. However, in this case, the goals align. OP wants to stop being sent objectionable material while at work. HR wants employees’ actions to not open the company up for litigation. Being able to prove that dickhead is engaging textbook harassment while on the clock should be an open and shut case.
All of this is to be taken with a heaping handful of salt, since regulations differ wildly by jurisdiction, but this seems pretty clear cut to me.
Adding on to this, TECHNICALLY speaking the freshest butter bar (lowest ranking commissioned) outranks the highest warrant. However, just as it would be foolish for a lieutenant to try and pull rank on their grizzled platoon sergeant, it would be foolish for an officer to dismiss the advice of a warrant for all of the reasons stated above.
Also, I find the biggest distinction between warrants and other officers is their attitude on command, which I think fits very well with discussing Ripley’s role on the ship. The warrants I have worked with typically have little to no interest in being in charge of other people, outside of a small team of folks dedicated to a common mission (e.g. a vehicle maintenance shop, supply warehouse crew, etc). If they wanted to be supervisors, they either would have remained NCOs or commissioned as lieutenants rather than warrants. So, Ripley being put in a position where she is responsible for others is probably both not in her wheelhouse, and actually antithetical to her desires. That’s always gone a long way for me as for as explaining her prickliness early on (especially relating to Yafet Kotto and Harry Dean Stanton’s blue collar “enlisted man” characters).
Yes, for tax purposes, which then implies such a metric can be used for income reporting, as is this case with this chart. After all, if you and a platonic roommate were sharing an apartment, you probably wouldn’t want to include their income on your filings to the IRS. For one, the illegality of falsely claiming a dependent, but also simply because the last thing you want the government thinking is that you made more money than you actually did.
I think you’re being glib, but my assumption is they are using household in the IRS sense, I e. A household consists of any one taxpayer and whoever they can claim as dependents.
For sure. My impression is that to focus on character work in the same way as BG3 (i.e. voice acting, mocap, cinematics, etc) would have been an impossibility for the studio that made Solasta. I would guess they did not have the financial support to make that happen.
Personally, I think of it as being of a piece with the old Infinity Engine games. There was the Baldurs Gate series, which, in classic CRPG fashion, was all about player choice and character. But, side by side with those games, you had the Icewind Dale series, which was almost completely devoid of the story focus of the BG games and entirely focused on dungeon crawling and seeing how far the ruleset can be pushed.
Fair. I felt I should jump in and provide some more context than the other poster for exactly that reason. The worst thing a movie can be to me is dull, and those sequels qualify, in my opinion.
Only do so if you have high tolerance for bad filmmaking. I’ve seen the live action sequels, and they are BAD. The second film feels like an unrelated script that got attached to the IP for name recognition. As I recall, it’s dull, poorly acted, ugly, and cheap. The third film does lean into the IP, complete with satirical propaganda gags and, yes, mech suits make an appearance. However, my recollection of the rest of the movie is that it is dull, poorly acted, ugly, and cheap, but less so than the second.
If you enjoy Sci Fi Channel original movies from the early 00s, these movies are birds of a feather with those.
Wouldn’t the establishment of a new precedent require the Supreme Court to overturn their previous ruling though? I’m not super familiar with the judicial system, so perhaps someone could tell me if I’m on the right track here with this hypothetical series of events
Is that a probably series of events? Obviously the suit being allowed to continue and the defendents being found guilty are huge assumptions, but, assuming they come to pass, am I on the right track here?