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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • The major reason given is that taxes vary so much in the US by location that it would be onerous for businesses with locations in different areas to print different price tags and advertise prices broadly.

    It’s even an issue online because, until you enter your address, the online retailer has no clue what your tax rate will be, and they have to assess tax based on the purchaser’s location. Postal code isn’t always enough, as they can be shared by different cities with different tax rates.

    Some areas also vary tax by date (tax free holidays), though I don’t think consumers would care if their total ended up being cheaper than they thought.

    A national standard VAT would be the only way businesses might start including tax in price, but there’s no way to do that without a constitutional amendment. States have the power to tax, and they’re not going to stop now even if they receive VAT revenues.


  • I got very randomly bumped up to first class on a transatlantic flight for business. I do not travel much for business, especially internationally. So, I definitely should not have had priority over more regular accounts. I have to assume I just got lucky, and that flight happened to have no frequent flyers.

    It was an eye opening experience. I got to hang out in a secret lounge. When my flight was ready to board, multiple staff escorted us to the gate. When we landed, we took a private van to a secret side entrance, which had its own first class only passport check. We were brought to another secret first class lounge through hidden back hallways to wait for our connections. The lounge looked down over the terminal, and the exit was a nondescript door you’d assume was a maintenance entrance.

    Being around that level of service and the other people in first class, it’s clear the wealthy live in another world. I looked up how much that ticket normally goes for after, and full price is for many people a yearly salary. It was nice, but it seems like a crazy way to divide resources.





  • Then it’s not a binary system. It’s a system with two extremely dominant members. Those are different things. You can be more binary in specific contexts e.g., gametes and egg vs sperm.

    I’d be very cautious about the healthy description in reference to intersex people. I don’t believe you are trying to say anything nefarious, but there’s a reason it shows up in eugenics arguments.

    I didn’t say sex was a spectrum, though perhaps someone else you were speaking with did. I wouldn’t use spectrum for sex, since there are multiple differentiating factors with differing measures.


  • I’m not quite certain the point you are making here. Is the implication that because humans typically have two hands, those that do not are not a group that can be described? Or that they can be, but only should be as the product of developmental errors?

    We don’t generally, where we know exceptions exist, refuse to acknowledge their existence. Saying sex is a binary is saying there are only males and only females. That’s literally what binary means. Like binary notation either uses 0 or 1. If it was possible for sometimes to have a 2, it wouldn’t be binary anymore. That’s a different thing.

    This is especially true for something like sex that is based on a grouping of traits, genes, expressions, etc. which are not universally 0 or 1. Sure, we generally agree on a category when some are different, but there’s some points where it’s not so stark. Hence, the binary fails because there can be overlap and grey.

    Nobody is saying we have to stop using male and female to describe sex in most cases, especially in a medical setting. But if you had a child born intersex, and the doctor turned to you and said, “Nah, my gut says male. Nothing will be different,” you’d probably ask for a second opinion.








  • It would probably seem less daunting if we knew that these great technological innovations couldn’t be controlled and hoarded by a small group, but were instead widely available for the public to use on equal ground. And further, if we would all equally share in the efficiency benefits, rather than just a small group.

    Like, if my boss told me half my job was being automated by ai, but I’d still get the same salary and only have to work 2.5 days per week, I certainly wouldn’t complain.





  • It absolutely happens before the conviction. Arrest records and mugshots are generally public information, and the press will publish them immediately in many cases.

    There is also no obligation to retract/amend if the person is found innocent, and there is nothing the person can do if they use careful language (arrested for, accused of, allegedly). Most publications will refuse to take the article down later if the innocent person requests it, too, meaning that follows them forever. There are companies that make money offering the service to bury such articles to make it easier to get a job.

    The US routinely demonstrates why most its peers do not do it this way.