tacticalturtle

> I think this can make sense theoretically and what about cases where companies just horde wealth like Apple or spend it on stock buybacks (like Apple)?

Eventually that money is going to come back though - no shareholder wants a company to sit on a massive cash pile for decades.

If a company can’t find a use for the money, then investors will want that cash returned so that they can find a use for it elsewhere.

Apple itself set a goal in 2018 to be net cash neutral:

https://www.morningstar.com/markets/what-apples-cash-problem...

And when the money comes back to investors, that’s when taxes can be paid and everyone benefits.

Stock buybacks also result in capital gains taxes eventually - it just takes a long time because investors get to choose when to take the gain. If we wanted to fix that, we could just make stock buybacks illegal again like they were before 1982.

Then investors would get dividends again, which results in immediate revenue for the federal government.

We’re waaay down the list of per capita consumption, especially compared to Europe.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_alcohol...

And anecdotally, any corporate event I’ve attended in the US is dry or 1 drink. Which is a pretty stark difference from when I’ve visited European colleagues.

In Massachusetts it’s the voters themselves to blame.

Massachusetts passed a law mandating upzoning in communities well served by public transit:

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/multi-family-zoning-requir...

And town voters in certain communities have instead consistently voted down plans to move into compliance, and instead choose to endlessly sue the state to delay it:

https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/03/27/timeline-t...

These voters aren’t hypothetical scapegoats - they’re real.

That’s not what happened here though.

In the video I saw, Lander wasn’t asking the agents to prove that they were law enforcement. He was asking if they had a judicial warrant to detain the person he was holding onto. He did seem to believe they were law enforcement.

The problem is, ICE doesn’t need a judicial warrant to detain someone suspected of immigration offenses in a public space. Lander didn’t seem to know this, or at least feigned ignorance.

What do you do with someone who doesn’t know the law, and is actively interfering with a planned arrest? Briefly detaining them seems like a reasonable path to get the job done.

There’s a lot we don’t know about the composition of the group here.

The Trump administration has been routinely embedding other agencies like the FBI in ICE operations:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/ice-oper...

Impeding federal law enforcement officers is a crime - to which other federal officers (not sure about ICE) have the ability to make an arrest.

Yeah you’re right, I was actually trying to delete my comment - this is the internet, of course people don’t read the article.

I was just struck by the crassness and popularity of that comment in an article that points out, among other things, how the suicide rate in men has jumped.

I need to stop doing this, but I always look at the top reader comments at the NYT - this one is third most recommended:

> So because girls/women are finally given the same opportunities as boys/men and are excelling, the boys/men are miffed at this? The boys/men have the same opportunities as the girls/women. The fact they lag behind is their problem not the problem of the girls/women who are willing to work hard to achieve their goals.

There’s always too comments like this - people who clearly didn’t read the article but just have an idea of what the article might be about. I don’t understand why they bother subscribing.

Completely anecdotal - but the guys I know in trades have a larger proportion that smoke/drink heavily compared to the office workers I know.

Would be curious if there’s a study that compares “health nut” physical trade workers with “health nut” office workers.

Still as you said, there’s a lot of risk with relying on physical capabilities for work.

If an office worker gets injured outside of work, you can still do the basic job.

If a physical tradeworker gets injured outside of work, you could be out of a paycheck.

My favorite example is watching the company “C3” evolve over time in it’s NPR ads:

> Originally the "C" in the company's name was a reference to "carbon" and the "3" was a reference to "measure, mitigate and monetize" because the company's original goal was to help manage corporate carbon footprints.[3] For some time in 2016 the company was named C3IoT and before that was briefly named C3 Energy

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/C3.ai

And yes, now they are C3.ai

The AI hype cycle will only be complete when they change their name.

In my state (Massachusetts) community college is in fact free.

In other states, for example Texas, it’s a little over $3000 a year on average for in state:

https://www.communitycollegereview.com/tuition-stats/texas#:...

That’s much cheaper than the tens of thousands for a public 4 year university.

And we should point out that for trades, you are getting paid in an apprenticeship. That’s better than cheap or free.

This has been the plan for months, even during the Biden administration - the plan was to restart in 2025:

> “Involuntary collections will not occur before 2025," a White House spokesperson said in a statement. "Defaulted borrowers won’t see collections until 2025.”

https://subscriber.politicopro.com/article/2024/10/biden-adm...

Are you stating that is true, or that that’s the argument the Trump administration is making right now?

Because the notion that the 14 amendment was supposed to be retroactive only is definitely not captured in some of those quotes here by the senators who debated it:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizenship_Clause

Kind of nuts that there are different rules for out-of-wedlock US citizen father vs out-of-wedlock US citizen mother.

Doesn’t that violate the 14th amendment? Equal protection and all that?

That must be a restriction imposed on the court by Florida law - I think it’s pretty well established that ICE detainers alone don’t mandate anything of state courts or law enforcement.

Even ICE’s website says this:

> Immigration detainers are only requests. They don’t impose any obligations on law enforcement agencies https://www.ice.gov/immigration-detainers#:~:text=Immigratio...

In Massachusetts where I live, the courts flat out ignore them and release individuals who are not accused of any crime, because:

> Massachusetts law provides no authority for court officers to arrest and hold an individual because of a federal immigration detainer

https://www.mass.gov/decision/lunn-v-commonwealth

Otherwise… I have no idea why the judge would just cave to the prosecutor’s argument like that.

I just want to electronically submit my taxes directly to the federal government without going through an intermediary.

Without this free file service - the only other option offered by the federal government for all income levels is Free Fillable Forms, which is owned and implemented by the Free File Alliance LLC.

If I want to submit directly to the federal government, I have to mail my return in.

How can this be the status quo in 2025?

I posted this deep in another part of this discussion - but the majority of the money being discussed here isn’t really for Harvard or educating its students - the largest portion are for NIH grants funding to Boston area hospitals, most of which have affiliations with Harvard Medical School.

> The Crimson analyzed the proposed Trump administration funding cuts and estimated that the five hospitals’ multi-year commitment from the NIH is over $6.2 billion and the University’s multi-year federal research funding exceeds $2.7 billion.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...

I’m sure that you have legitimate issues with politics at Harvard, but penalizing a number of independent non-profits that serve the community because they associate with a University that the administration disagrees with also seems to be forcing speech.

The 9 billion isn’t specifically just for Harvard “the university”.

The lion’s share of it appears to be NIH programs for area hospitals - all of which are associated with Harvard.

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/4/4/funding-review-h...

We all benefit from that research.

Am I misremembering history?

> Blue checkmarks "used to mean trustworthy sources of information," Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton said

I thought the blue check mark always indicated that account name on Twitter matched the person behind the account. That’s it. They eventually expanded that to include non-famous people.

Kyrie Irving (an NBA player known for conspiracies like flat earthism) had a blue check - no one would ever mistake him for a trustworthy source of information.

And even then, they’d need a 2/3 majority in both chambers to get past a Trump veto right?

There’s no way they’d get that in the house.

That’s using the bizarre trade deficit/total imports formula put forward by the administration.

I’m curious what Pakistan actually imposes on US imports as a policy.

If they’re checking phones, having a burner phone with no or few contacts seems like a great way to arouse suspicion at the border.

I’m still holding out hope that this is satire, and pretty good satire at that.

The level of detail in the paper he’s publishing is making me doubt that - but maybe he used an LLM to make the joke go a little further?

I understand that’s terrifying in the moment to have CPS at your door, but maybe the erroneous CPS visit is a one time cost we have to pay to change the culture, until CPS learns to ignore phone calls with no more details other than “children are outside”. If they don’t learn to ignore them - that sounds like lawsuit territory

Change requires someone that doesn’t accept the status quo

(I don’t have kids, but hope to have some in the future, so this is me talking out of turn)

Lip-Bu Tan would fit that criteria.

Cadence is a successful hardware company - they have an IP catalog available for licensing and sell design services.

That site is mistaken. I live in Massachusetts and can tell you with certainty you are not banned from having a clothesline, notwithstanding an HOA rule in place.

In fact, the states given by that page are all listed as “right to dry” states - meaning associations do not have the right to ban clotheslines:

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/20_right_to_dry_stat...

Although note this information isn’t accurate either - because Massachusetts never passed it’s right to dry law - it got stuck in committee:

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/190/S1117

There seems to be a circle of sites here regurgitating the same incorrect information.

Regardless, I don’t understand how any state or municipality can ban clotheslines.

Which cities made it illegal to hang dry clothes?

I know some HOAs unfortunately do.

In a world without an electoral college, I’m not sure you can say this.

Almost every state is winner take all in electoral votes.

I suspect there are a lot of discouraged voters who don’t vote, because they live in states where their opinion is overrun by the political slant of the state’s majority.

In a direct popular vote, their vote counts a lot more.

It’s not an “approved social media site”:

https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/new...

Presumably there’s some money that needs to change hands between the NFL and a social media site.

The wave of X bans was so frustrating. Particularly for sports subreddits where that’s where all of the breaking news and team announcements happen.

In fact NFL teams are specifically banned from having bluesky accounts as an official media channel, and r/nfl still banned X/Twitter.

sigh

> Spending 60 dollars on a bulb that may or may not last 2 years.

The only way I have ever lost bulbs is when I forget to remove them when changing apartments.

Modern bulbs from reputable manufacturers easily last a decade of normal usage at this point