every American worker pays into the social security system as a tax on income.

One irritating note on this: there’s a limit to how much social security tax you pay per year. So if you’re making a lot of income, you just stop paying this tax partway through the year.

This is pants on head stupid and regressive. It should be the other way around. Your first, let’s say $10,000 should be exempt from the tax, and it should get steeper as income goes up.

Rich guy absolutely does not need the bump in take home pay from hitting the cap. Poor guy definitely could use the extra income early income not being taxed.

I’m just so mad all the time about people licking the boots of the rich. They don’t need breaks! They’re rich! They’re going to be fine!

That’s really bad. You might get other people sick with what you have, but if they’re immune compromised or otherwise vulnerable they could have a really bad, possibly fatal, time.

There’s a shared theme with like all of humanity’s woes: people don’t care that much.

From pollution to injustice to shitty websites, if people cared just a little more the problem would be dramatically reduced or even eliminated.

But so many people are just apathetic. Overwhelmed and checked out.

No. Your reading of it is unusual, in most contexts. It almost always means “agreement, and I have nothing of substance to add”.

It can be rude if the thing you’ve said should warrant a substantial response. Like if you wrote “my brother just died in a car wreck”, a thumbs up (or probably any emoji) would be an inappropriate response. Heavier stuff warrants whole words.

But if it’s like “Can you get cat food at the store? The kind we always get” then a thumbs up is an acceptable shorthand for "yes, I understand and commit to this request "

Ah, I always liked Three Panel Soul. Shame it doesn’t seem to update anymore.

Maybe was thinking of https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/01/ai-haters-build-tarpits-to-trap-and-trick-ai-scrapers-that-ignore-robots-txt/ ?

Yeah but a lot of those americans who don’t want a simple national ID system are idiots. Some of them are delusional “it’s a sign of the beast!!!” people who should be put in a camp.

:pinches bridge of nose:

I’m reminded of talking with bright eyed product guys at work.

It’s not enough to cover the happy path. You have to consider all the edge and corner cases, too. Sometimes people don’t have all the documents they “need” to get a new card. Every hoop you jump through takes a toll, emotionally and in opportunity costs.

New York State requires you to present the actual card to get a license (at least in some circumstances). It was a whole ordeal for me.

moving mouse targets. Like let’s say you have two pinned items on the start menu, Firefox and steam. You click Firefox and it starts to open. You go to click steam, but Firefox finishes opening and the icon gets bigger. Steam’s icon then moves to the right, so you click where it was but instead just hit Firefox again. It’s stupid.

Note how Firefox has solved this with tabs. Open a bunch of browser tabs. Enough so they shrink a little. Then rapidly close some, starting from the left. Notice how they don’t change size until you’re done closing tabs.

Mouse tunnels. Like you click the “File” menu, and then mouse over “New” and a long sub menu opens. Longer than the original File menu. If you mouse directly from the top of File to the bottom of New, your cursor will briefly be outside either menu. This often will cause the entire menu to close. Mouse tunnel. Have to keep the cursor in the tunnel. Annoying.

Had an old job that insisted this was fine and refused to let me or anyone change the interface to fix it (on a website)

Focus stealing. Like you’re typing, and some other application pops up and takes focus. The absolute worst is when it pops up and puts focus on a dialogue box, and you just happened to hit “enter”. Instead of adding a new line to your document, you just accepted something. Awful.

I think you should be allowed to shoot coal rollers dead. it’s self defense

I find it kind of funny how games are becoming more mainstream, but every once in a while I still meet people that are like “games are a waste of time”. But then again I guess people said that about movies and tv and still do sometimes.

Also I’ve been playing guild wars 2 again. Base game is like 10 years old but it’s still fun

Most people don’t care about things. This is kind of a recurring problem. Imagine if people just cared a little bit more. All sorts of problems, like littering, would just go away.

But people are lazy and don’t care. They don’t care that their behavior today will be a problem for them tomorrow.

The big sites are where the content is, and that’s what they want. Suffering a little bit of hardship (fewer memes) in order to bolster a stronger future? Ridiculous.

my favorite graffiti i’ve seen i think was “the wrong amazon is burning”

Hoping for more visitations from Saint Luigi upon certain people. Shit is bad out here.

Short answer: If they don’t know anything else about you except you’re “Christian”, they don’t know if you’re like a left-wing unitarian or a horrible “conversion therapy, make being trans a felony” evangelical. The former is pretty safe, but if you’re the latter hanging out with you could be dangerous.

Longer thoughts: Many christians are not good about queer topics. This can include “we should torture them” (“conversion therapy”), laws that make life harder for them (eg: banning marriage), and lower grade unpleasantness like “i’ll pray so you don’t go to hell”.

Many christians also don’t really do much to stop their peers. It’s not really your responsibility to fight everyone on every topic, but if you keep going to a church that wants to oppress queer people, you’re supporting something that’s hostile. I don’t care how nice their pastor is or how much fun the choir group is, if the church wants to rip apart my friend’s families and you support that, we can’t be friends. Find another church.

Lastly, and this is more general and less about queer folks, most christians are not very good at it. The bible has lots of stuff about love your neighbor (and your neighbor includes your out-group) and not fixating on material wealth, but I see a lot of so-called christians doing squat for the homeless and vulnerable, voting for cruelty, and sitting around in their nice house with their big screen tv. (All that prosperity gospel, “sin all you want and be forgiven” stuff seems like nonsense.

Violence is not inherently bad. The badness depends on the context. So “doesn’t that make them more-violent??” appeal is technically true, but that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

“Cutting someone open and taking out an organ” is pretty fucked up, unless it’s in a hospital and they’re removing an appendix so the patient doesn’t die.

Punching someone in the face is usually bad, but if that person is planning to go on and do mass murder, it’s still in the black.

How do you tell they’re a nazi? Well, sometimes they tell you. Sometimes they wear a clothes that signal it.

Sometimes people act like “if you can’t write an algorithm to perfectly decide how to behave in all cases you’re wrong” and that’s just not how human behavior and decision making has ever been. People make judgement calls with incomplete information all the time, and that’s okay.

Windows sure is bad, though I haven’t seen an actual blue-screen in years. That’s some foul luck.

Stop going to nazi bars.

I saw “No Men” play a tiny show and it’s still one of my favorites. They put on a great show and also they were super friendly with everyone in the crowd. I saw them another time after at a bigger venue and they even remembered me and my friend.