croon

Sure, but I don't think anyone missed that.

The issue is that it can be applied to everything else, yet it isn't.

We can maximize utilization of wealth if we distribute it.

We can maximize utilization of land if we build more communal pools/third places and sleep in pods instead of individuals each building their own.

We can maximize utilization of transport if we all stopped having our own cars or private planes and all used public transport.

We can maximize utilization of everything if it was available to everyone at all times.

Humanity just hasn't been interested in maximizing utilization, and I certainly doubt that Altman is. That is the crux.

TL;DR: It's only a fair take if it's a principled take.

Edit: Even constraining it to their specific RAM usage, it's also highly inefficient for each person to individually pay them for their own generations over deduplicating generations into open data stores, where I can just look at previous output instead of regenerating my own.

If you are taxed as a (lower than 100%) percentage of your donation, there's still a calculus that could make any amount worthwhile if leading to a lower percentage tax/higher percentage gain on your entire principal.

> Had Citizens United gone the other way, do you really think the Trump administration’s FEC would fairly decide which movies are allowed to be shown in the months before elections?

Had Citizens United gone the other way, do you think Trump would have won?

> I'm saying the idea of a US military that exists in only a defensive capability is as realistic a possibility as no military and trusting the world to be chill.

> They are both zero percent likely to happen.

You didn't provide a third option.

> So why hypothesize and carry water for either idea?

If all possible ideas are completely unrealistic, why comment at all? What could they do better?

This is the one I find most hilarious, as Ontario was named after the lake, not the other way around. So the temper tantrum reaction in trying to spite Canada wholly misses the mark.

[Citation needed]

Yes, a lot of publications reported on the presidents action. I do not have the same experience as you that there's widespread use of the alternative name outside of this context.

> You are defending that. Because the US military does those awful things and has done forever.

I both acknowledged and specified the difference.

> You might think you are defending the idea of a peaceful defense force in the US but that's never existed and probably will never exist.

Let me ask you this instead: What do you see as an alternative? Abolishing the entirety of all military force, or electing officials that do not abuse the existing or reduced scale military force for unjust causes? Or some third option?

> How can anyone look at hundreds of years of US imperialism with rose-colored glasses anymore?

I quite explicitly did the opposite of that.

> Who is really misguided into thinking the US army is defensive in nature?

Let me put it this way:

* Had Ukraine not had an army, it would not exist right now.

* Had Ukraine had a bigger army, it might not have been invaded at all.

* Had Ukraine had the biggest army in the world, it might or might not have abused it for nefarious reasons.

The argument I made is that the US (and any country) needs it for case 1 and 2 (can also be solved through defensive alliances, though Ukraine had assurances that were broken), but the US has gone the wrong way for case 3.

This however does not invalidate case 1 and 2.

> You have constructed a beautiful straw man.

I'm unsure how to respond to this other than state that it's ironic.

> What is the evidence for it working otherwise? Every Country that has tried Wealth Tax has rolled it back.

Both Norway and Switzerland has a wealth tax still. The only reason other countries rolled it back was just a bidding war for perceived investments, in other words tragedy of the commons.

> It is not a capital gains tax (which already exists). Wealth tax is a tax on unrealized gains. It definitely leads to erosion of stock value.

If you're holding stocks that never increase in value, I don't think this is a credible assumption.

> You have just encountered a classic Catch-22 here. Without income, you cannot pay tax. Without paying tax, you have no revenue and hence no income.

No, I'm indicating that the avoidance of an income is specifically to avoid tax, not because of an inability to produce an income.

Oh wow, I didn't look at the price of the Xreal Aura, assuming it was something in the range of 399 to 599. Yeah, if it's the same price as the Steam Frame there's absolutely no contest.

I assume they mean literally. He won a plurality, not a majority.

It's a preposterous idea with the size of the military forces of US currently. It would not be preposterous with 0 military force.

And to be clear, the US has abused the army for half a century for unjust causes, and I'm not defending that, but the concept of an army can be moral in the context of rivalling aggressive nations.

While I'm some degree of a pacifist, it's tough to argue against the concept of a defense army, in the face of human nature. Defense in the larger sense also has to mean (preventative) intervention, for example world war 2 might have ended very differently unless the US joined.

I also recognize that the US has perverted this concept countless times since with blatant imperialistic motives, it does however still not break the concept of a just responsive military force.

TL;DR: They're not selling their souls if they (mistakenly) trust elected officials to work for the will of the people and only deploy for just causes.

> Taxed assets are always going to be way lesser than any hypothetical tax on stocks.

This is not a universal truth.

> Rent collected can easily be used to offset property tax on the asset. Now you cannot collect rent on stocks

You actually can, it's called securities lending.

> So the only way to pay tax on stock value (which is assessed by a valuer at that particular point in time) is by either paying it out of personal pocket, taking a loan or selling the stock. None of those options are feasible.

1) Why not. 2) Sounds like someone needs an income (which is already taxed and would have solved much of the tax avoidance).

> It absolutely will. When you tax stocks, you are eroding its value. Why would anyone want to continue to keep their wealth in stocks when they could just cash out and not lose any of that value?

A lesser gain is not a loss.

> Lets assume a hypothetical scenario where all jurisdictions impose a tax on stocks. Then they'll retire by investing in assets or heck just keep it in their banks.

What untaxed assets would those be? Are you saying the bank interest would be higher than other investments minus tax?

I am having trouble following your argument to your last conclusion.

The only photos of food I care about are customers posting them from the restaurant to for example google maps. I guess these can be gamed/smurfed as well, but I think mostly not, and they'd have to prompt for a bad photo from a mediocre phone camera taken by a person not caring much about framing.

I am "creating", at least designing, games with my kids. It's not that I couldn't possibly do it before, but I certainly would never have the time to.

I explored frameworks and engines, and landed on Bevy, I asked for a rudimentary arena, isometric perspective, 4 players, xinput support, portable desktop and wasm targets.

After that part done we've made the characters into chickens using no assets, only primitive mesh, having a trail of feathers, flapping wings on jump/double jump as well as gliding, picking animation, bite/grab, zenith shadows on characters (despite being unrealistic, in favor of platforming), physics objects, a few game modes like soccer, bowling, etc.

Each of these were iterative additions, so it's like previous development, only the coding/debugging time is largely removed. Is there bloat? Absolutely. But it still works, and while it's not a "real" game yet, I do believe it's original, it's certainly evolving exactly to our design, however confused it is.

I agree (at some point), which is why we seriously need to rethink current systems.

Everyone can't be a jester. Entertainment is an inherently asymmetrical profession in terms of creator per consumer.

> I simply have never heard of or read about anything similar ever happening in the US

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supr...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-ru...

https://www.cato.org/blog/king-v-burwell-clear-example-legis...

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fir...

https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-... (Trump v CASA, Trump v Illinois)

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a966_1b8e.pdf

Sure, but it was certainly a difference between those projects you authored and those you inherited, at least in time-to-productiveness.

For 10-15 levels or so, then your upgrade choices start to matter.

I only played through it once, but I'm convinced I'd do better on a second run, and a third, etc.

It's not hypocrisy if your argument is that "might makes right", but if your argument is that the US has other principles, it is indeed hypocrisy.

And in that case, so much for "western ideals", if it's purely "America first, no ideals".

> Your argument ironically refutes the original point.

Only if assuming that colonialism is distinct from capitalism. And if not, your original comparison is not applicable.

You edited your comment, but reversed your argument from citing a poor Bengal village as an example of a society that "doesn't incentivize growth" to an argument that the colonization tragedy was that they prevented growth instead.

> So England went from being twice as rich per capita as Bengal, before colonization, to being more than 10 times as rich at the time of independence.

Are you arguing that the British were successful due to capitalism or colonialism, or are they linked?

> Direct revenue extraction was relatively low

First off, "relatively low" is doing some heavy lifting here. Further, "Direct" ignores the direct extraction from the land taxes being used (indirect) to buy commodities in turn exported to Europe, meaning Bengal paid for the privilege of giving away local resources.

> and the famines were structural in the region for thousands of years.

EIC maintained tax collection and grain hoarding during the 1770 Bengal famine, leading to tax revenues in 1771 that were actually higher than in 1768 despite millions dying.

Have you considered colonial revenue extraction, oppressive tariffs and following famines over centruries might have contributed in exactly the way you attempt to refute?

Previously you could play all the games you "own" on Steam, because in layman vernacular, you own the game and however you play it is up to you. Then lawyers got involved and somehow Geforce Now was meaningfully different than streaming from your own computer for the same game that you've already purchased and are only playing one instance of at any given time.

This is entirely separate from the article.

We can't argue the latter without quantifying the former. All terms are misused by someone, but if it's statistically insignificant that's not an issue. I'm not convinced this one is sufficiently misused to detract from the common definition.

People call some work AI slop "without even reading it" when the intention/substance of the work might exist somewhere buried within a wall of impenetrable LLM text (aka "the slop").

Good AI output is indistinguishable from human output. The whiff you mention is the reasoning pleonasm and tautology (intended) escaping into the output and the "author" not proof-reading/editing it out.

80%. You can't do that unless you significantly cut costs somewhere. The timing is certainly indicative.

That's much more coherent than other pitches I've heard, so it's the old post-war Stalin strategy?

As you say, I don't buy it as a reasonable fear, but I can at least buy it as a rationalization.