Even nonprofits have a value and can have profit. They just can’t enrich shareholders/owners with that profit. If the guardian invested monies in that division over time and they don’t want it to completely go away, like a normal business they can offload it to someone else for a price and try to recoup some of their losses that way (I.E. replenish their bank accounts or pay off liabilities related to that division).

While sometimes I think…do we really want it to get super popular? But also even if the popularity comes with the assholes…blocking and curating can help and in the end, it IS still decentralized. So let’s say that convinces the average Lemmy user that yes, let’s grow this shit.

How do we get some of the big names here to promote it? I tell anyone who has a complaint with standard social media about the fediverse but I have minimal influence. I HAVE included it on surveys and contact with podcasts I follow, to promote it more, again limited influence.

I feel like we need like…whatever…a Taylor Swift type to take it up as something they push and then other big names will follow.

As you said, I don’t care about that really but many others do. Lemmy and occasional checkins with Reddit are my only social media. But if it gets more people here, it could be worth it. I personally would just love more communities to be more active because I like Lemmy…but right now I only see the biggest “Reddit copycats” getting the major activity.

You asked about taxes in relation to my “ideal government” so I’m going to go ahead and pretend that corruption at a government level doesn’t exist because that’s a big part of ideal for me.

Full disclosure, I am a professional tax preparer and have a lot of bugaboos about the current u.s. system so my thoughts on ideal are basically a full dismantling of what we currently have.

I think most people want to care about other people, but when u get down to survival pretty much everyone is going to choose self (meaning self and family) first (which is not unreasonable). So it’s up to community as a whole (in this case, government) to solve for survival and remove that fear, and use taxes to assist in evening out the rest.

So ideally, no taxes on items essential for living….your home, your food, necessary personal care items, clothing, etc. No taxes on your income set at a reasonable level that would allow every individual to have baseline needs met. Might have to have that baseline be different depending on your living situation tho this baseline also considers that no individual human should be able to live in a 10 bedroom mansion.

Once u are above this baseline (which should be relatively generous) then taxation of income occurs, maybe to the point of 100%, and that is used to maintain municipal/governmental systems. Any excess if it exists is redistributed as a “dividend” to every taxpayer.

Yup I know this sounds kind of authoritarian or communist or both. But I’m going on the unicorn fairy assumption that corruption in govt wouldn’t occur and all taxes would be used appropriately and as promised. Thus, not scary.

I’m not sure how it fits in but I do think there should be incentives for research and development to keep humans innovating. I’m not sure what that looks like exactly without skewing equitable distribution. But also I think a fair amount of people would still want to innovate even without monetary incentives and maybe that’s the people we want doing the innovating anyways. The ones who do it for the sake of curiosity and societal improvement rather than self enrichment. Yes it would probably be slower…but given how dangerous some of our technological advancements have been, I’m also not sure if this is a bad thing.

Nothing. I was a little busy calming my sister down who basically broke down crying in the middle of the store. And even if she was calm, I would have stayed in the store where it was safe. Those men weren’t exactly there to make friends.

What answer were you hoping to hear?

My sister and I are in Columbus for a concert and we were in a store right across the street from this happening. Shook us up pretty good. I have never seen something like that before.

Yeeees…out of the blue. Odd coincidence.

Yeah, like a mime’s opinion. It’s “mute.”

I understand (from my American perspective of course). I live in a swing state in the U.S. that went for Trump. I have the same fears and can only hope if war results from us that it is kept within the borders of this country. Obviously I would prefer violence not be the end result regardless.

Please just know that there are many many people here that are just as concerned and fearful as you are. The people I know that voted for him are either woefully uneducated or are misled by their religion (which in and of itself is a form of ignorance/being uneducated). And while they can still be dangerous, the true fascist zealots are still a minority.

I cannot excuse the people here who voted for this, at this point all I can say is that I am a human, you are a human. I don’t want you to hurt, I’m pretty darn sure you don’t want me to hurt. Let’s do our best to separate this fucking mess from the individual humans who are stuck in it and on the periphery of it, and hope to hell none of us become collateral damage.

Please do not make us a monolith. I am not my country, I was just born here. That kind of thinking leads to radicalism and violence. I can perfectly understand caution with “unknowns” from a group you have reason to be concerned about. Honestly from a personal safety standpoint we do this all the time. But to unilaterally decide we are all one thing and write us off (or worse) is false and dangerous.

I don’t know where you are in Europe but I love the continent and have visited many countries there. I do my best to be respectful when I visit and look up local cultures and norms so I don’t stand out and be “that American.” I’m not ashamed of being an American tourist, but I don’t want to adhere to the worst of our stereotypes. If other countries’ people decide we are inherently dangerous, being annoying may be the least of my worries should I have the fortune of making another trip there.

Those “hands” are nightmare fuel tho!

I can’t decide if like this hodgepodge of tiles or if it’s going to give me a seizure.

I’m not sure why Bernie is the exception for me…I feel like a giant hypocrite being ok with this. But dude does still seem spry AF.

A little too literal, but I like your style, lol

Thank u for replying! You give me hope that it won’t be too hard. :)

A family member recommended target circle as a replacement for Amazon prime and I am researching it. It’s still a big company…but where I live there really isn’t TRULY local options (I.E. small businesses) for household goods and such. I figure target is a pretty good alternative and since we have a store pretty close, I can pickup stuff instead of getting so much extra shipping.

Keeping our Amazon prime until it’s 2025 expiration date. Spent today researching alternatives so I can placate my Amazon loving spouse. Fortunately coming armed with info and the promise that they’ll have a several month “get used to it” cooling down period, they took it pretty well. I also reminded them if they MUST get something from Amazon, they still do the free 2 day shipping if u spend over $35. But it’ll probably be easier than they think with all but the oddest of purchases.

Been wanting to get rid of it anyways and this was the nail in the coffin.

I really love it, been using it for about 2 months, came from YNAB, used that for probably 3-5 years. Although I wish it was a little more mobile friendly, it works on mobile well enuf for me to record my daily transactions and then I just use a desktop once a week when I do all my bill payments and budget catch up.

I really like the reporting options, and also it has some mass note append/prepend/replace functionality which works great for me hashtagging the expenses I have addressed, confirmed and moved around to various accounts.

I do wish it had flagging, I really loved the colored flags, but I’m using the hashtagging as a replacement and it works pretty well.

One of mine does that too. He only likes sparkle balls or rattle mice tho, so no risk of gross items from the garbage fortunately.

We have a wood floor and his favorite thing is to have me throw it in that room so he can slide halfway across it while fetching the toy.

He has definitely slid into the wall a time or two.

My cat is obsessed with grooming beards. As in…will not stop until you force him off. My partner plays a little game where they fight for kisses. The cat will try to get close and groom his beard and my partner will take advantage of the closeness to smother him in kisses. The cat is not a huge fan of the kisses so they do this thing where they both waver in front of each other like cobras, both trying to find an in to kiss/lick. Sometimes when my partner moves in for a kiss, the cat will lean backwards and turn his face to the side, denying the kiss. Then as soon as my partner backs off, the cat quickly moves forward to lick his beard again. It’s hysterical and I never tire of watching the game.

It’s my profession and I’m a little bit of a nut about it (in that I like the job, haha) plus many people do not understand taxes - nor should they because it’s been made SOOO unnecessarily complicated. So I’m always happy to try and explain our ridiculous system, lol. Thanks for reading it!