For fucks sake…not again.

Russia may not have

Russia is NOT the only problem, they aren’t even the main problem. There’s quite a number of issues where the mainstream media discourse depends almost entirely on whose in office. As an example take a look at crime statistics since 1991 and then align the media coverage about crime with whose in charge at the time. Immigration is another one. 2,000 people or more crossing the border every day may or may not be a crisis depending on which political party is in charge.

Those and other issues aren’t being manipulated, at least not primarily, by Russia Propaganda. That work is being done by mainstream media sources and the only way to know you’re being manipulated into an opinion is by putting in the work to learn the context and history of an issue.

It’s a massive time suck that can require hours, days, or even weeks to get a deep enough understanding to know you’re being lied to and / or manipulated.

DO most employers want to get this right?

Since MOST companies are small and privately held I’d say yeah, most of them probably do. The issue is mostly with large publicly traded companies and because they have so many employees their cheating is what drives the statistics you quoted.

That doesn’t mean a small company won’t ever try to cheat because they will, I’m just saying that the smaller companies who are closer to their workers and don’t have “shareholders” are far less likely to shiv someone over their OT.

I’m willing to bet that they somehow locked themselves into using 8 inch disks in the early to mid 80s if not earlier, when the 5¼ discs were still new-ish and the 3½ were brand-new or not even available yet.

You nailed it. The contract was awarded in June of 1988 and the ship was being designed in 87/88. That means the targeting system was almost certainly designed in 85/86. A time when 8" floppies were still prevalent in Industrial, Commercial, and Military systems.

There was quite the controversy around the F123 back in the day.

One thing to remember is that “commissioned” means built and on the water. You can see in the Der Spiegel article linked up above that the actual design work on the vessel itself was happening back in 87/88 which means the targeting system was probably designed in 85/86…and now the choice of 8" floppy doesn’t seem nearly so odd.

but 5.25” had been standard for years.

For civilian use but perhaps not in the West German Military. I say West Germany because the ships were ordered in June of 1989 and the Berlin Wall didn’t come down until November.

Europe in general, and Germany in particular, had some very peculiar technology quirks and companies back then.

Edit: It’s worth noting that while the contract was awarded in June of 1988 the ship design was being done in 87/88 which means the targeting system was probably designed in 85/86 when the 8" floppy was still prevalent, especially in Industrial and Commercial applications.

The easy way around the problem is to tax loans that aren’t being used to purchase an asset. This is the “living expenses” loan hack that the ultra-wealthy use and it absolutely needs to be removed.

Your example is a bit different because the wealthy person is selling stock to make the mortgage payment. In this case they should already be paying capital gains taxes on those sales. If they aren’t then figure out why and fix the tax code.

We can tie the two situations together by considering the annual sum of all stock sales and non-asset purchasing loans as regular income and thus subject to income tax, minus any capital gains taxes already paid.

That easily closes both of the common loopholes that the ultra-wealthy use while leaving us normal people untouched. The ultra-wealthy would suddenly be paying income taxes on the money they are spending to maintain their lifestyle, same as the rest of us are.

Walmart sells ammunition in more than half of their stores.

The FTC has already started the process of blocking it.

The issue is this massive monopoly, not really being mitigated by the anti trust regulators

The FTC has already sued to block this, what more is there?

I guess that’s an argument for also having a wealth tax.

I think it would be easier if they rewrote the tax code so that everything (loans, stock sales, etc) counted as regular income and was subject to taxes.

Why would they move? This is an income tax, not a wealth tax and the wealthy typically have relatively little “income”. Sure they may have a net worth of tens, hundreds, or even thousands of millions but their “incomes” (as defined by tax codes) can be surprisingly low.

Look at the CEOs like Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos whose salary was a single US dollar. They were incredibly wealthy but had nearly no normal income.

So unless you jigger the tax code to capture the work arounds the wealthy use this income tax will hardly touch them. It will only catch high wage earners, like a software dev working FAANG or something.

Sounds great, now how are they proposing to tax the wealthy. You know, those people who have a jet set lifestyle but no income to tax?

Most of us dont wanna live in the 1800s though…

Oh I’m not saying we should go back to the 1800s or that the States shouldn’t be held to the 1A. My comment is bemused / sad because you were attempting to make a dramatic argument without releasing that it was unironically correct. People need to be taught a LOT more details about how our Government works and how it came to be what it is today.

…and how can any government be of the people if it disregards what the people want

Overall I don’t think it can, at least not for too long. At some point a Government must either adapt to its Citizens wishes or it becomes illegitimate. There are a couple of “gotchas” though, the first being who is a citizen and the other is which or how many of them the Government should listen too.

The original setup of the United States with it’s Federalist structure was actually quite good, if somewhat inhumane, at answering those two questions. It’s a shame we busted the fuck out of it.

since the Constitution specified “Congress”.

It’s amazing to me how many people don’t realize that’s EXACTLY how it was originally meant. The first 10 Amendment, commonly known as the Bill of Rights, didn’t originally apply to the States and that most definitely included the 1st (and the 2nd for those of you keeping track at home.)

That didn’t happen until SCOTUS created the “Incorporation Doctrine” some years after the passage of the 14th Amendment in 1868, over 100 years after the founding of the United States.

So yeah, before 1930ish it would have been entirely legal for the State of Louisiana to establish a State religion and in fact some of the original States actually levied Religious Taxes and distributed the money to various Christian Denominations.

The United States was built from the ground up to function as a collection of sovereign States moderated by a relatively weak Federal Government, nearly the opposite of how things work today. Its a good chunk of the reason why our Government and Judiciary are such a mess, they weren’t designed for what they’ve become.

I’m glad that Justice, such as it is, is finally coming for WLP and his cronies.

The FTC has statutory authority over the regulation of trade. It doesn’t rely on Chevron except in highly specific edge cases and this likely wouldn’t be one.

Chevron only ever applied in cases where the law was ambiguous or had gaps. The removal of Chevron didn’t suddenly render every Agency under the Executive powerless and if you think it did then you need to go back to wherever Mass Media you got your education from and demand a refund.

This has nothing to do with Chevron. The Federal Trade Commission has had clear authority over issues like this for a very long time.

How am I supposed to back up a 100TB NAS, though?

By spending money. 100T is a quite a lot of data and big data sets cost money to properly maintain.

Based on their 100T of data the .00099 per GB pricing will have them spending $99 a month, or $1200 a year, for backup.