Jack Smith just did the best thing he could do by dropping the charges now.

In January they'd be dismissed with prejudice. By dropping them now, they can be re-filed when Trump leaves office.

A few years back, a really nice graphics card was like $650, so $3,000 got you a lot of performance.

A lot of tipped workers defend it because waiters can make good money for their qualifications, but what they don't understand is that they should be making that amount of money without requiring tips.

The problem is that when a restaurant increases prices, they don't share the extra income with the staff.

Hell, Subway has doubled the prices in like 3 years AND started asking for tips for the staff.

I used to be a gun salesman and have put more rounds downrange than 99% of gun owners.

Training is absolutely essential, and very, very expensive. Not the classes themselves - you can do just a few classes and learn what you need to get by.

It's the ammo. One of the reasons I hate cheapo $100-$200 guns is because they encourage people to buy guns who can't afford to train with them. Buying cheap, bulk training 9mm ammo you're looking at about $200/case, or 20 cents a round. While 1,000 bulle5s sounds like a lot, it goes way faster than you think.

My Canik has 20 round mags, so that's $4 every time I reload the gun.

And you really should train with defensive rounds as well to make sure they cycle and that you can handle the different recoil.

The difference with defensive ammo (usually hollow-points) is that it expands upon impact and dumps its energy into the target, which makes it way, way more effective. But more importantly, it's less likely to kill the neighbor because it doesn't penetrate the target and 4 walls.

The thing is, defensive ammo costs more than a dollar every time you pull the trigger.

Between a gun, holster (essential piece of safety gear that should be mandatory), range membership, safe storage, lessons, ammunition, maintenance supplies, etc, a new shooter shouldn't be thinking about the cost of the $500 handguns, but the $5,000 cost of responsible ownership and training that comes with it.

And then there's the rest of it.

Are you in a good head space to be a gun owner? Buying one because you're stressed and afraid isn't a great sign.

Are there children in the house or do they visit regularly? I grew up with guns in the house, but since a gun in the house is more dangerous for children than a potential burglar, my Dad didn't keep ammunition in the house. If I have children visiting, all my guns are in the safe (most are usually, but my carry gun usually isn't unless I leave it at the house) and I move all the ammo to my van.

Do you have the right disposition to own a gun for self-defense? If you're too willing to use a gun that's a bad sign, but at the same time if you're too reluctant to use one it's more likely to be used against you.

For most people, I don't think a defensive firearm makes sense - especially handguns. Rifles are easier to learn, but they're unweildy indoors. Unless you're hunting, target shooting, or going into combat they don't make much sense. An AR for home defense is just a silly idea. They're big, loud, hard to deploy in tight quarters, and have way too much penetration. I love mine, but they're for shooting at the range and for shooting wild hogs.

More and more.companies are dropping arbitration agreements these days because more consumers are realizing the consideration in the contract that allows them.to have mandatory arbitration requires the company to pay for the arbiter win or lose.

I had an issue with a vehicle that the dealership was refusing to repair. I looked up their arbitration process l and then looked up the arbitration firm.

When I pointed out to the manager of the dealership that the arbitration would cost them 5 grand even if they won, they fixed the car.

For anyone here who doesn't understand why this is bad advice, it's because income tax increases only apply to income made above that threshold.

Let's do a simple example and pretend there's only 2 tax brackets. From 0-50k tax is 10% and over 50k it's 20%.

If you make exactly 50k your tax burden will be 5k and you'll take home 45k a year.

If you get a 1k raise, only the final thousand is taxed at the higher rate, so your tax burden will be 5200 (10% of the first 50k and 20% of the remainder), and you'll take home 45,800 a year.

So even though you change tax brackets, you still make more money.

"Where's Pademe?"

"Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

H5N1 is way, way more lethal than Covid19.

If it were to mutate to spread between humans without decreasing in lethality it would probably be the deadliest event in human history by a significant margin.

That's a different thing entirely.

"Right to Work" is about the relationship between workers and unions. Specifically, it bans mandatory membership in unions and union-member-exclusive benefits. The most important part of that is it keeps unions from being able to collect union dues.

"At-will employment" is about the relationship between employer and employee, and is what allows someone to be fired for any non-protected reason or no reason at all. It's also the standard almost everywhere and has little impact most places because firing someone without cause still incurs payment for unemployment benefits.

Trust me, as a former manager, it's still very hard to get corporate permission to fire someone who shows up on time, sober, in dress code no matter how toxic or lazy they are.

I've lived in my current place for over 10 years, and so don't actually know if the heater works.

Then again, I live in Texas (and was away from home for the big freezes we had in 2021 and 2023), so it's rarely an issue.

But air conditioning is a different story. I can only trove so much clothing, and without air conditioning my little trailer home gets to like 120 degrees in the summer.

Doesn't the PSVR2 have eye-tracking? That's a pretty great feature for games that use it for stuff like foveated rendering and even better depth simulation.

Harbor Freight is your friend. Their cheap tools can suck and may break with repeated use, but that's almost a feature.

If you use a tool often enough that you break it, then it's worth investing in a quality version of that tool. If you don't use it often enough to break it, you can get by with the lower quality.

Most businesses lock the dumpsters because trash service is expensive, and if you don't lock them people will pull up with a pickup bed full of trash and fill them up.

I built a $3,000 performance desktop a few years back, and the main games games I ended up playing on it were things like FTL, Shovel Knight, SNES emulators, and other games that could be run on an overclock ham sandwich.

They're threaded all the way to the top, so they're mediocre.

Awesome screws don't have threads in the first piece of wood. That way, they'll pull the boards together as it free-spins in the outer board and tightens the second board.

Threads all the way through can leave a gap in your joint.

Jack Smith dropped the charges without prejudice so they can be re-filed the second he leaves office.

I don't think anyone has ever been so kind to Mississippi.

I'm pretty sure his foundations and the Gates stuff both are specifically designed to be left with zero money at the end.

I think that Borderlands still had the best gameplay loop because of its more random loot system.

You didn't have the legendary items dropping from specific enemies, so instead of farming bosses for a specific item, you just run around playing the game. Every time you opened a chest it was exciting because there might be something good inside.

Oh, and the legendary guns could be stupid powerful. I got a Hellfire with my Lilith at level 25 or something, and it still melted enemies at level 70 because of the elemental effects.

If I could get that loot system with BL2's story and level design and the Pre-sequel's OZ kits I think it'd be perfect.

My super-conservative parents also pulled me from DARE. As punishment, the school made me do an in-depth semester report that required me to spend an hour a week in the library reading about great scientists.

It was awesome!