Since you asked, the tax write off stuff is basically a myth. If you donate, let’s say $20, then they have to mark down $20 of additional income, raising their tax burden by $20 x 21% (federal, plus whatever state tax there is). Then, when they hand over the money to the charity, they get to take a $20 deduction (not a credit) which means their tax burden is lowered by $20 x 21% (again plus any state tax). So comes out even in the end. The deduction basically says, hey, remember the $20 I put down as income? Don’t tax me on that because I used it for a tax-exempt purpose. They report it as income, then report the donation. Nothing fishy there.

However, depending on how long they hold onto that money, it’s possible to use the money to make other money, like investing it or even just sticking it in a savings account where it would get a little interest. And with enough donations, that might add up.

Well, he did The Nightmare Before Christmas as well as most of Tim Burton’s other films. Along with tons of other things.

They (the investment/owner class) make their money work for them by investing and by playing the banks. Generally, they want to invest the vast majority of their money, and never cash out of their portfolio. When they need “cash” to buy something, they do it with loans and there’s lots of tricks (that I’m not super familiar with) to make loans as cheap as possible, and potentially even profitable if their investments are doing better than the cost of the loan.

Now, why would they spend money pushing propaganda when instead they could be investing that money? Well, when you are that rich, you don’t actually have to spend that much to push propaganda. People are already clamoring for your opinion, because they see you as successful and think, if I copy you then I too can be successful. And when you do need to buy an article, it’s pocket change compared to your vast wealth. And if instead you need to buy a TV news network, a newspaper, or a website, that itself can be an investment. As long as you don’t run it into the ground, it may make you money at the same time as allowing you to push propaganda.

And why do they want to push propaganda in the first place? Because if the working class (those that live off paychecks instead of investments) has the time, energy, and knowledge to do something about wealth inequality, then the investment class will start to have to pay their fair share and lose a bit of their wealth. The investment class doesn’t want that to happen so they need to rob the working class of those 3 things. Manufacturing a culture war is one way to steal time and energy from the working class, because they now have to spend that time and energy on defending personal rights. Busting unions is another way to rob time and energy, as the fewer rights workers have, and the less they are paid, the more time and energy they have to spend to stay out of poverty.

It’s all a ploy to get people to pay less attention to how the investment class gets their money so that they can keep racking up the score without interference.

That said, some of the investment class actually truly holds hateful views, as does some of the working class, but the working class has nothing to gain by acting on that hatred except a sense of personal fulfillment. The investment class benefits financially, so they may act out the hatred even if they don’t feel it.

I’m from the US and “better than a kick in the teeth” and “better than a poke in the eye” are both common around my area. Never heard the tree ones though.

Yeah, that’s fair. I think the main reasoning is that shooting something out of the air can cause it to crash on people or light stuff on fire. I also don’t like the “stand your ground” and “castle doctrine” laws, so I think both shooting people and shooting drones should be illegal.

New drones being sold in the USA are equipped with something called remote ID. In theory, it enables law enforcement to wirelessly identity the drone, who it’s registered with, and where the pilot is standing. This is very new though, and very few, if any, police departments have the tools needed to make use of it. It’s also possible to read remote ID from phones, but without the database, it only gives you so much info. Owners of older drones are supposed to attach a remote ID module to them in order to maintain legal flying, but someone being voyeuristic with their older drone probably isn’t following the rules.

Not in the US. You can report it to the police and the FAA, but it’s a federal felony offense to shoot down any aircraft, regardless of whether it’s a $100 drone or multi-million dollar full on airplane. But like the other poster said, voyeurism and harassment laws still apply. And also, if the pilot is out of sight of the drone, that’s a hefty FAA violation (assuming they don’t have a specific FAA waiver that’s hard to get) and something you can report.

FAA Certified drone pilot in the USA here. That’s wild. In the US it’s illegal to shoot down an aircraft of any sort no matter the type or who is flying it. And also, the Federal Aviation Administration is the only authority in the US when it comes to airspace, and as long as you have authorization from the FAA or are in uncontrolled space, you can fly over anyone’s property. However, that doesn’t give you the right to voyeurism or harassment. If you are intentionally spying on things that are normally considered private (peeking in a window, for instance) or repeatedly or specifically bugging a specific individual or family, then you can still be charged with those crimes. Also, unless you have a specific waiver that’s rather hard to get, you have to be within line of sight of your drone. If the drone pilot is not following the rules, they can be hit with hefty fines. Even though drones can be bought easily, there’s still strict rules that the FAA has for both recreational and professional flying, and anyone operating a drone outside those can and should be reported.

If somebody is thanking you, you likely exerted effort on their behalf. So they say “thank you” for exerting effort, and then you respond with exerting effort was “no problem” you don’t need to thank me. You’re welcome would be a response more along the lines of “you are welcome” to make me exert effort.

They’re both fine, and it’s both a generational and locational thing. I personally prefer “no problem” because honestly I don’t mind helping, but I’m also not giving you permission to use my effort at any time. You can have my efforts when it doesn’t cause a problem.

960mbps up/down for $75usd/m

I loved the Winamp channels. That’s where I learned about the existence of anime. I had no concept that things like Cardcaptors, Dragonball, Pokemon, etc were actually anime because I just saw them in English. But I found dubs through Winamp streaming and it sent me down the rabbit hole to buying DVDs and manga and learning to torrent fansubs. The good old days of my blazing fast 3mbps cable connection. It blew my mind coming from dial up.

SMS doesn’t handle pictures, videos, gifs, reactions, or group conversations. Things I use all the time. MMS handles some of that, but implementation varies greatly by carrier and device. If you want consistency of that functionality, you have to go with an app. Apple and Google have created replacements for SMS and MMS that could be the next version of “texting” but Apple refuses to let anyone else use theirs (iMessage) and Google has only half opened up theirs (RCS), so those don’t really fix much.