The other argument I’ve heard is so that people will see how much the government is taking from them, and be angry about it. This would be particularly useful for politicians who campaign on smaller government.

Why would you convert to decimal naming conventions when using a binary numbering system? Or do you think numeric values like 42(dec) have inherent names? That’s as silly as thinking that the freezing point of water is 0 degrees or, even worse, 32 degrees.

This is programmer humor.

10…

1…

0. Why are you still here?

The punishment was easy, so the intent wasn’t as great. You know, the difference between a bullet to the head and repeated bashing with a rock. I’m sure in all these instances, the lack of effort was a relief to the target of the action.

I’m not sure which president you’re referring to. Trump made a pretty big excuse when Khashoggi was killed for why he wasn’t even going to wag his finger at Saudi Arabia. Or we could talk about his excuse for why he couldn’t reform the ACA.

I honestly think you and I are on pretty close to the same page as far as American politics are concerned, with the exception of the value of activist votes in the presidential election. I do hope your system gets updated to the point where the will of the people becomes or returns to being relevant, depending on your opinions about American history, and I hope mine gets fixed before that is no longer the case.

It really is amazing what one can do when the obstructionists are on your side.

The last time Trump was in power, he passed a tax bill that is estimated to have had a net negative impact on the 72% lowest earning people in America. Some of those changes stay in effect until 2028. I don’t imagine he will have less of an impact this time around.

British Citizen in 1910: India is a conflict that was resolved 100 years ago.

I didn’t realize things had progressed to this point. I thought there were still some mainstream distros that would qualify as Free, but the only ones GNU endorses are ones I’ve never heard of. There do still seem to be some non-GNU projects with a freedom-first philosophy.

There are discussions about open vs. free going back over 20 years, that I know of. The divorce happened long ago, but they’re still neighbors.

There have been plenty of studies that refute this, from various countries. I can only conclude that this belief/wish stems from a variant of the puritanical work ethic where hard work will lead to prosperity, and winning the lottery isn’t hard work so will obviously not lead to prosperity.

I’ve won the lottery. Sure, it was only a few grand and my life didn’t significantly change. Studies on winners of truly large amounts of money, in the millions, tend to have more successful outcomes, with the studies I’ve seen putting between 66% and over 80% retaining their wealth for 5 or 10 years after winning.

You made me spit out my cat burger.

Doing something that demonstrably doesn’t work isn’t how you get what you want. If you want an option besides Democrats and Republicans, voting for someone else where those two options have a lock on winning does nothing besides vent some spleen.

I’m not saying doing nothing is the solution, or even voting for the two main parties is the solution, but doing something that has been shown to be completely ineffective is not the solution.

My multivitamins are shaped like balls!

The trick is to not show discomfort after slapping your testicular tumors.