Listening to the Dem party talking about how to make the rich pay their fair share, they miss the #1 way the rich avoid taxes. Say I start a company, it grows to a multi-billion $ value. I don't sell $500m of my shares, then I would pay taxes. I BORROW $500 with my shares as collateral... paying NO TAXES. Then, I die. Since the law says when you die, your estate doesn't have to pay capital gains taxes on the value of what you own at that time. So, the shares get sold (tax free) to pay off the $500M debt, and the rest gets inherited by my family. I've just avoided paying $200M in taxes!!! What we need to do is change the law so that any assets that need to be sold to satisfy debts have to be taxed the same as if you were alive. Once all debts are settled, the remaining assets can then be inherited without paying capital gains taxes on the accrued value of those assets.

The fact that people actually believe this shows what a sad state our education system is in.

Just 6 months ago the right was bemoaning the left trying to cancel everything they disagreed with. Now they jump on that same cancel culture bandwagon. 🤦

I've been reflecting on the Starship program the last week and one thing has become obvious to me. SpaceX is enjoying the freedom to try and fail in a way they couldn't with Falcon 9. Doing anything "experimental" on the Falcon 9 was risky because it was SpaceX's only source of income, it was their lifeline, their work horse. Making any tweaks to the Falcon 9 to try and land a booster back in the day was a delicate balance. Don't push the envelope too hard because it could lead to a failure of the primary mission (which did happen twice). When SpaceX first landed a booster almost 10 years ago, they were fairly slow to refly and those first non "block 5" boosters were only capable of a couple of re-flights. This gave pause to some in the industry / community fearing all this reusability hype wasn't going to pan out. But SpaceX learned from every landing attempt to develop their Block 5 Falcon 9 which has now gone on to have a single booster fly 30 missions. Absolutely unheard of. Now imagine if SpaceX could've had the freedom to not worry about flying customer payloads to get data during Falcon 9's reusability campaign. Imagine if they could've tested engine out procedures or push booster reentry profiles, or try hot staging, or what have you. This is the phase that SpaceX is in now during the Starship program. I know we hear the talking point of "today's payload is data" and it could seem like a gimmick or excuse even, but that's a freedom almost no rocket program has had before. To know you can just try things out, fly real life hardware, without bankrupting the company, is the ultimate development platform. To be able to push engine out capabilities, remove heat shield tiles on purpose, test reentry profiles, have failures, have set backs, discover flaws, learn operations. When people say things like "Starship hasn't even reached orbit yet" are completely missing the point. They're not just trying to reach orbit, they're trying to do something that's never been done, build a rapidly reusable rocket. A rocket that can land and refly. This has never been done before and honestly it's silly to think you COULD do something like this without trying some extreme things. That's what we're seeing today, and that's extremely exciting to me. I can't wait to see version 3 of Starship fly because they've learned so many lessons already and they have a factory capable of making rockets at scale, and we just get to sit back and watch the cook. It's an exciting time to be alive.

If you had actually bothered to read the study you’d realize that it concluded no such thing. You would actually be more informed had you run the paper through chatGPT and asked it to summarize the findings instead of relying solely on the headline of a popsci article. Ironic!

This post shows $50+ for a 30.8 oz can of Similac ($1.62/oz). Did you know you can get just as good formula from Costco for half? 2x 42oz tubs for $64 ($0.76/oz) Target may be gouging, but you can feed a baby quality formula for much less!

Agree or disagree?

No, we are prosecuting people for vandalism. It doesn’t matter if they spin their tires over an lgbtq flag or a Pepsi advertisement painted in the road, damaging something that doesn’t belong to you is against the law.

Banning the burning of the America flag is more anti-American than burning the American flag.

But we can burn a Bible. Or a Koran. Or draw the Prophet Mohammed on a Koran. Or do all three while burning every flag on earth. It’s America

I don’t hate this country, I love it. Having lived in places where speech is not free I particularly love and admire the First Amendment, which is America’s most unique feature and is in danger from all sides…

Hey @grok, from 1 to 100, what’s @dubya_brian ‘s political lean? 1 is extreme left, 100 is extreme right.

Hey @grok, from 1 to 100, what’s my political lean? 1 is extreme left, 100 is extreme right.

Hey, @grok, who was the most influential person to visit my profile? It doesn't need to be a mutual, don't tag them, just say who it was

I'll never be opening an @Citi @Citibank account ever again. I didn't use my 9 y/o credit card enough so, despite never missing a payment, they closed the account without warning. I called immediately after being notified, they could not reopen without a hard credit check

Performance pay in war. Ukraine introduces gamification in the army [as an economist, I rejoice, any wants to coauthor a paper?] FPV operators earn points for destroying targets Destroyed Russian T-90M tank = 15 points Units can exchange it for new FPV, etc - The Economist 1/

It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!! Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.

14th Amendment, Section 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States. I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and I believe the effort to end birthright citizenship will ultimately fail—as it should.

Imagine that you and around 30 of your best friends go out for dinner to a nice restaurant once a year. Each time, the waiter gives you the check, and you pass it around and ask everyone to kick in what they owe. Maybe four of your 30 friends comply, but the rest come up short. In some cases, VERY short. So, who picks up the tab for what they've failed to pay? That's right -- YOU do. Would you still feel good about going out to dinner with your friends like this every year? This is why Trump has been so adamant about NATO member countries meeting their financial commitments each year. Previous US presidents complained diplomatically, behind closed doors, but nothing ever changed. NATO isn't a soccer team, or some animal rescue organization. NATO is an organization established for the purpose of collective defense against the Russian threat. That's what it was in 1949, and that's what it still is today. Each NATO member state agrees to play a certain part in that collective defense, and to ensure a certain minumum percentage of their GDP goes to defense. If those funds aren't provided, then sufficient weapons aren't available (or maintained), troops aren't available in sufficient numbers, et cetera. You get the idea. Whatever your sentiments may be about President Donald Trump personally, try and understand why he and his senior advisors have been pushing so hard for NATO member states to pay their fair share for defense.