Most Americans opt to have their employer take the taxes out and send them to the government for them. But its not required, we can choose to receive all of our pay and take responsibility for sending the government their cut ourselves. Its a PITA, but some opt to put their taxes in an account to earn interest for a year before paying the government. They view paying monthly as “giving the government a free loan.”

When you have your employer do it for you, your pay stub breaks down the amount you started with and how much was taken out for each tax. We can see what we are paying in tax on every paycheck which is why so many Americans complain about it.

That’s true. It hasn’t mattered for me, as I have never removed any from the lights I blocked with it. I would assume the purpose made stickers would be better about residue if they need to be removed.

He didn’t want you listening to her music. But I bet he would have appreciated you putting a poster of her over your bed.

Blue tack is very handy stuff. But you know, they make blackout stickers for exactly this application. They look a lot nicer. Though personally, I just cut little pieces of black electrical tape.

Hackers.

The only reason we bought it was because my dad’s cousin was an extra in one of the classroom scenes. As a result I watched more times than I could count, and love cyberpunk stuff.

Great photo. Kinda reminds me of this:

Next bill up for vote: Cutting off hands of shoplifters, and cutting children in half for parents fighting a custody battle.

Yep. Woman I dated in college. After we broke up she found out my class schedule and signed up for the same electives.

The only way I finally got her to leave me alone was to introduce her to the man she’s now been married to for 15 years.

I’m pretty sure I read the other day that it’s the original founders of Digg (Kevin Rose) who bought back the corpse and are leading this with VC funding.

https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/05/kevin-rose-and-alexis-ohanian-acquire-digg/

I just tried it. Seems to be fine for me. Just brought me to a login screen.

Yeah, it feels like its all supposed to be there. But without getting any of my actual friends to make an account, its hard to test any of it out. Though the bigger issue right now is that it seems my instance (friendica.world) is down or dead. The list of other instances is also struggling to load for me.

My complaint about Friendica is that it just doesn’t actually seem to do the part of Facebook that I actually want. At least not very well. I don’t want to see news, current events, memes and crap in that feed. I want to see posts and pictures from IRL friends, life updates, event organization, interest groups, etc. With privacy settings so only actual friends you want see the posts.

In its current state Friendica seems to just be a skin over mastodon, with some alpha stage friend features.

I’m not sure, but probably not “Red Dawn”

The “damn it I forgot, let me google it” option, back then, was looking it up in the set of encyclopedias your family probably had. Or if you didn’t have a set, or needed more elaborate information, you went to the library.

I remember it was a big deal as a kid when we got the encyclopedia Britannica on CD-Rom. So I could just type in what I was looking for instead of having to try to find it manually.

I’ve often thought about the idea that there is really no such thing as true altruisim. Because no matter what, you feel good about doing good. Even if you don’t tell anyone about the good thing you did, you still get a good feeling from it, therefore there is some inherent selfishness involved no matter what.

Of course there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. People should absolutely being doing good things and get to feel good about it.

I feel like a laser cutter would have left discolored edges. Could be a cricut style bladed cutter though.

I often tear up from scenes from movies and tv. Yet basically never do for anything in real life.

I was listening to an NPR story the other day about how a ton of people showed up to donate blood to save an infant, and only one was a match, but it was anonymous, now the kid is a healthy 20yr old and the mom can’t thank the person who saved them. It had my eyes all mushy on my commute home.

Yet, I had a cousin, and an uncle pass within the last few months and while I was sad, and I miss them, not a tear generated.