In an order issued by a Texas federal court last week

Ah, say no more.

Back when I worked in an office I would put up badass president pics Fourth of July. Too lazy to find them, but stuff like Kennedy riding a robot unicorn on the moon, FDR in wheelchair themed power armor, Roosevelt gunning down big foot in a forest fire, etc.

At home, the only significant decorating I do is for Christmas. There’s enough misery out there, and I choose to embrace the joy and the appeal to the better side of our nature. So we have lights, fake candles, and so on, and we put up a tree that gets a new ornament or two every year which fills it with memories. And as a finishing touch we hang a banner declaring “All creatures will make merry under pain of death”

Rockets are literally on fire.

Hawaii

And for something similar in its insanity, there’s also Santa Claus, a product of Mexico that I can only assume was fueled by product from Columbia.

“I wonder if there’s beer on the sun”

The Canada Song lives rent free in my head.

“We put our faith in BLAST HARDCHEESE.”

Final Sacrifice.

It will block youtube ads if the video is embedded in another website. When I want to find a youtube video on my tv I just search it on DuckDucGo, since watching it there blocks ads and seems to bypass any restrictions they’ve placed on watching videos outside of youtube.

I need to set up a cheap computer and just run the TV as a monitor so I can have all the features I want, including a real browser with ublock. But in the meantime, this fixes the one issue I have with DNS level blocking.

I wanna say they specifically called out property destruction as being against the rules. And overpaying as well iirc, so you can’t offer someone millions for a sandwich that you then eat.

Plus, if we’re being pedantic, burning the money isn’t spending it, which is what he is supposed to do.

The movie also has the advantage of having a contract that presumably covers any other loopholes the audience thinks of, but which they don’t explicitly address in the script. Once you take it out of a movie and start treating it like a challenge to be solved, you can no longer hide behind some unseen fine print.

It’s taking the premise of Brewster’s Millions, which required that he not only spend the money, but that he has to have nothing left at the end, including assets. So, buying a house doesn’t work because you still own the house.

Obviously there are still plenty of ways to drop millions on stuff without having anything to show for it. Hell, it’s probably easier now than ever before. Just become a whale for a mobile game and you’re there.

4x games tend to be functionally infinitely repayable, since a single game often takes an eternity and there are usually many factions to play.

I particularly like sword of the stars 1 & 2. Honestly don’t remember which I preferred but I know I got an insane amount of time sunk into both of them.

Steam isn’t a monopoly, I can get my games elsewhere (epic, gog, humble store, origin etc). But Steam is dominating the market because it does it better. It offers value and features that others don’t, and it generally hasn’t abused its dominant market position to squeeze the consumer or crush their competitors. The closest thing to enshittification we’ve seen from Steam was them allowing third party DRM and launchers, which isn’t something they wanted, it’s them backing down from a stand-off.

I want competition, but there’s good competition and bad competition. Good competition is what we see from Steam and gog, where they stand out by being good at what they do and giving customers what they want.

For an example of bad competition, just look at streaming sites. We went from everything being on Netflix to everything being divided among dozens of shitty platforms, each of which costs more, and the prices keep going up, especially if you don’t want ads. Nothing was improved for the consumer when Netflix lost its defacto monopoly. Which isn’t to say that Netflix is great, only that the competition for marketshare has only made things worse for the consumer.

I think it’s easy to look at all the bullshit EA and Ubisoft and the like pull now, and imagine that same pattern from streaming playing out in gaming.

I Always thought Perkins was Jerkins

Creating massive penalties equal to the whole cost of a house for anyone that sells after less than 6-8 years would have devastating unintended consequences. It might make flipping impractical, but it would also hurt a lot of people who find themselves in a position where they need to sell, and would increase the risks associated with buying a house for lower income buyers.

It would help if you targeted the profit from the sale instead of the whole price. Flipping is about buying low, minimizing the cost of improvements, and then selling for a massively inflated amount. Without that profit it’s not worth it. For a normal person, being able to make money on the deal is nice, but at least recouping your costs can keep you economically stable and allow you to move on with your life.

I also think that you would want to combine this with some plan for helping low income buyers with the restoration of neglected properties that would normally be snatched up by flippers.

I also think the arbitrary age restriction on owning a rental property needs an exemption for inherited properties if nothing else. A 20ish year old who inherits a home or rental property when their parent(s) die is not abusing a loophole, and immediately hitting them with additional legal problems and forcing them to sell a house that has a tenant already in there is just unnecessary chaos for everyone involved.

I’m also curious how large apartment complexes fit into this plan. Are they also banned? Do you just need an owner to occupy a (potentially much nicer) apartment in the building? If you can still operate a huge apartment complex, I would expect the market to shift heavily towards those. If you can’t well, that raises it’s own issues around urban housing and population density.

Well, since you say Christmas or not, my favorite show any time is Babylon 5.

But for Christmas stuff, Hogfather is my favorite tradition. Also Die Hard, and the Christmas episode of Justice League.

It’s like using literally to add emphasis to something that you are saying figuratively. It’s not objectively “wrong” to do it, but the practice is adding uncertainty where there didn’t need to be any, and thus slightly diminishes our ability to communicate clearly.

Taking preorders today. First unmanned set up mission to be launched in 18 months. First manned colony ship full of technicians to launch in 24 months. First luxury Starship™ to launch in 36 months.

12 years later

The first ship full of semi-functional robots and temporary shelters (engineered to nanometer level tolerances) blows up on launch pad.

Musk announces that it was a very successful test. During the next investor call, Musk explains that they are on track for the manned mission sometime next year. He says that preorders have slowed but not stopped, that the premium nonrefundable Space Marine™ and Starfighter™ packages have continued to increase revenues, and that they are in negotiations with Disney to offer Jedi™ packages that come in Padawan™, Knight™, and Master™ levels (the knight package will include simulated telekinesis on day one, while the master packages should be able to deliver ESP sometime after wave 1 of colonists reach X city on Planet X, formerly known as Mars).

Musk goes on to explain that the switch to only taking payment through the X app is actually saving them money. Musk’s line is “accidentally” muted while he is responding to a follow up question about X refusing to comply with investigations related to banking regulations that he claims it is exempt from.

Tesla stock plummets the next day, and yet, somehow, is still overvalued.

Arctic creature here. I wear a kilt and t-shirt all year round. Sandals too, unless snow is recent enough that it won’t have been cleared from wherever I’ll be walking.