Overzeetop

Russia is one of the largest exporter of gasoline.

At the risk of linking an un-cited web page, they look to be a distant 12th in gasoline.
https://www.indexmundi.com/energy/?product=gasoline&graph=exports&display=rank
The source is supposedly https://www.eia.gov/ but I can’t find the original data there in any usable format.

Russia comes in a distant second for general refined petroleum (not just gasoline) according to https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/field/refined-petroleum-products-exports/country-comparison/

Sounds pretty presidential to me.

Don’t even need that. Meta crosses multiple platforms now - Instagram, FB, WhatsApp, etc. All you need is for someone you know to have you in their contacts list, and the hit the “allow access” a single time. All of that data is then scraped, cataloged, and cross referenced with everyone else. Name, address, phone numbers, birthday, work address - anything your contact felt it convenient to add about you in their phone. From there it’s just a matter of time until data mining of second and third level contact - or outright data leaks - fill in the rest of your profile and demographic information.

Oh yeah, my state has one boob on the flag and one in the Governor’s mansion. Livin’ the dream.

More of a boil situation. Nothing’s getting golden brown and delicious in this scenario.

It’s magic and we don’t know how it works*.

* as of my latest coursework in Biology; IDK if anything has been discovered since the 80s.

I think it doesn’t go far enough. Straight up, no one should be permitted to create or transmit the likeness of anyone [prior to, say, 20 years following their death] without their explicit, written permission. Make the fine $1,000,000 or 10% of the offender’s net worth, whichever is greater; same penalty and corporate revocation for any corporation involved. Everyone involved from the prompt writer to the work-for-hire people should be liable for the full penalty. I can’t think of a valid, non-entertainment (parody/humor), reason for non-consensual impersonation - and using it for humor or parody is a slippery slope to propaganda weaponization. There is no baby in this tub of bathwater.

Depends on your definition. I’m white collar, 40 hours a week, bottom 90% income.

Based on videos from one of the major lava-themed entertainment venues who has been posting updates for two months, the “barriers” for Grindavik were barely started, with work only beginning some time after January 4th or 5th. The primary focus of the public work was in building the barriers to protect the regional power plant to the east of the fissures (and hot springs resort area just east and north the power plant). IIRC, those barriers took a month to construct.

The subsurface dam/inclusion runs pretty much directly under Grindavik, so if an active eruption opens along the southern edge of the magma inclusion there will be no way to prevent damage to those houses adjacent.

Disc: I’m neither a seismologist nor a volcanologist, but I’ve seen Journey to the Center of the Earth. Oh, and I was in Grindavik in October.

Because, despite 5 decades of progress in information availability and democratization of knowledge, working class people still have to be spoon fed every bit of news as they are emotionally incapable of learning anything other than what gets fed to them on the TV.

Having lived through it, it really does feel weird though. I (mostly) missed the gasoline crisis (I was a child). It’s hard to imagine gas pumps all over the US being out of gasoline, and mile long lines waiting for a tanker to show up so you could get gas. It’s pretty much impossible to imagine staple rationing (butter, sugar) during wartime in modern US. I certainly didn’t live through it - having the TP aisle empty during covid doesn’t quite match that. And the actual (1930s) depression. I suspect those folks would consider the crashes of 87 99 01 08 and 20 minor annoyances - a bad Tuesday - compared to what they lived through.

Think of this, though - you have Covid. Okay we have Covid. That’s a world-wide event with life-changing implications for so many. And, we can hope, we don’t get another pandemic event of that magnitude in our lifetimes. And a decade or two from now you can lord it over some kid who was born in the last 3 years and just “doesn’t understand” that “closing school for three days because the flu is so bad” is not a pandemic, and that they just don’t understand what a game changer Covid was. ;-)

protect the interests of American drug companies abroad

That’s a nice sentiment, but the drug companies are voluntarily selling internationally at lower prices. There’s no “protecting the interests” drone strike we can make when the big pharma is doing the rate setting itself (negotiating, true, but still a voluntary choice). The proper fix would be to mandate that any drug that had any Federal research may not be sold in the US for more than in any other part of the world and that fee may not exceed (make up a number) 10x the production cost, with distribution not allowed to exceed 50% of the cost of the retail price of the medication and delivery not to exceed 125% of commercial shipping rates.

You mean the Royale with Cheese, right?

Well, since the original patties have always been 0.1lb precooked weight and the quarter pounder has always been (checks notes) 0.25lb precooked weight, I’d say shrinkflation is one thing that hasn’t come to McDs. Actual inflation? Oh, yes - $4 for a double cheese burger (with 0.2lb of beef) is straight up insane. That’s $10 for a half pound burger - nearly the same cost per ounce of burger as a Five Guys standard burger, which isn’t even in the same league.

The property tax was separate, and it happens regardless. The 15% is the long term capital gain rate - if the value of an asset increases (say 300k->500k) I have a 200k gain. I don’t pay tax on that 200k until I sell, but if there were an in-process gain tax, I would. So instead of owing taxes on my profit/gain when I sell, I would pay the gain each year (and carry over a loss if the value of the house decreased). Coming up with 30k (200kx15%) would be a tough think to do simply because my neighborhood got popular in the Real Estate market.

YES! And this is the problem with profit based taxes. You should be taxes on what you have (property taxes) and what you receive (gross receipt taxes). The ebb and flow of commerce does vary, but the overall work and wealth is more stable. It also makes taxes harder to dodge as there are no deductions for expenses or other items. My local business tax is this way - I pay a couple percent in fixed assets tax, plus a (I think it’s less than a) percent on my gross receipts - take what your paid, multiply it by 0.012, send that amount in. Simple, effective, and relatively consistent. It also, in a very simple way, reflects that government services are not a bonus the town gets when you make a profit but a cost of doing business. My power company charges me whether I make a profit or not, as does my web service, my copier maintenance plan, etc.

“imagine the shitshow if you had to pay extra every year if you owned a house outright but the property values kept going up”

Like property taxes, then. ;-)

Realistically, I understand the issue. If I had to pay taxes on the increase in price on my house (say from a $300k valuation three years ago to a $500k valuation after the market bubble), I’d be fucked to find 15% of that overnight. Of course, if they allowed that to be offset by the primary residence exemption, it would be a zero cost. Without that, it would still be a non-issue for 95% or more of US taxpayers because most people simply don’t own an illiquid asset that increases in capital value (much less an international one), and if you exclude secondary real estate that non-issue number probably increases to more then 99.9%.

Republicans really hate democracy…

Even in States where they get ballot initiatives, the Republicans are always wanting to change the shit voters initiate and approve

maybe get a few of those potatoes up front

It’s good to see such unbridled optimism in these dark times.

Shut up and take my money!