shhehebehdh

Terminological issues aside, tax is not about fairness. At least not for any one person’s particular definition of fairness, and certainly not mine. Tax, in this case, is about a behavior we want changed, and a means readily to hand by which to change it. Doesn’t really matter if it’s fair.

Are there industries or regions where the style of labor depicted in stardew valley is rewarded? Have there ever been?

I don’t mean that people are literally collecting magical fruit. But I mean a place where a small farm can yield a good life for the typical small farmer, and where such labor is respected? I spoke recently with a cousin about his travels around the world. I asked him what country was his favorite, and he told me that rural Uruguay was, because people live a modest but healthy and happy lifestyle off the land. I thought that was a really interesting observation, since I suspect that type of lifestyle is quite rare in the first world.

This implies that all insurers pay the same rates, which I think is not true.

There’s also a question of how thick the material, and how motivated the rat. Can rats make a dent in bricks? Yes. Is a single rat going to chew a hole all the way through a brick wall just to see that’s on the other side? I’m no rodent behavior expert, but I doubt it.

More to the point (at least according to YouTube exterminators) rats will only chew through things if they have a reason to. That is why you seal holes with silicone caulk after the copper wool: to prevent the smell of food from drawing rats in.

In any case, I can only tell you what treatment we applied and what the results were. There is a lot of information on the internet about how to prevent rat ingress in apartments and buildings. Based on my experience, that information seems accurate. But another approach is to assume nothing can be done and live with periodic rat infestations.

Rats can definitely squeeze into very small spaces. However, they cannot squeeze through packed copper wool impregnated with silicone caulk.

Even then, they don’t necessarily do any harm. As long as the interior of the home is sealed, they can’t get in. Our building definitely has rats, and we saw one in our home shortly after we rented it. The previous tenants had just trapped rats they saw, but we insisted that the landlord send someone to seal every ingress point (with copper wool and silicone gel). Since then we haven’t had an issue, even though our little visitor would come daily before.

As a bonus, the same way rats get in, so do cockroaches. In NYC, older buildings, especially near the ground floor, are notorious for cockroach infestations. But we don’t have any of those in our unit either, despite the building being a century old. Turns out cockroaches and rats aren’t made of magic. They can’t teleport through solid material. If the interior of your home is sealed, they cannot get in.

Maybe Samsung has learned from Apple: the profits won’t be found down-market.

Not saying that we should therefore allow paydays. Just curious about what the situation is.

But, it is the law of the land, and unlikely to change in the near future. Lots of things are suboptimal and I’m not sure GDPR is very close to the top of my list. So you get over it and move on.

I wouldn’t even look at it from an anticompetitive angle or anything like that. This is a matter of what’s best for apple and its users. They should absolutely do what’s needed to ensure that their terms are obeyed. But permanently banning google is not “what’s needed.” What’s needed is merely to demonstrate that the behavior will not be tolerated going forward. I imagine discussions between corporate lawyers and perhaps a reasonably sized bond would be sufficient to demonstrate google’s sincerity in not repeating the error.

I would also loooove to know how this clusterfuck came about. But I guess we will never know that. I doubt this crosses Sundar’s desk, but I would be curious to know where the buck did stop. Was counsel involved or did a couple of teams just adopt a better to seek forgiveness stance?