This 100%.

The education system was not OK, and has not been for a while. Its main goal is limiting liability, not educating kids.

“You have a presentation on Tuesday at 10. Here’s the PowerPoint deck. Don’t mess this up for me and I might top you up with another fiver ;)”

Yeah, I have an old SSD in an SSK container and that’s where I’ve banished windows to. As long as GRUB can find the right drive and system partition, it’s not hard.

Feel the love of Free Open Source Software.

That’s why I put it in quotes. Its sarcasm to us, but sounds legit to the ignorant consumer.

Because the benefit is that we’ve habituated ourselves to a system where $9.99^plus tax^ is both good advertising, and it means that the vendor passes the tax on to the consumer. As if they can just their up their hands and say “Sorry man, I don’t like it either. Here’s how much you owe the government.” Gas prices all include a tax of 9/10 of 1 cent per gallon for the same reason.

It also likely stems from early on implementation where no one was sure of the vendor actually paid all those taxes after all, so it’s a bit of “added transparency” even though it’s not really.

Of course, it’s 2025, this would be an easy thing to undo, but Americans are creatures of habit as much as anyone else. Try and charge a Boomer $10 even and say tax is included, they will absolutely think you’re ripping them off.

A book about this was published last year. “Your Face Belongs to Us” by Kashmir’s Hill

Because the question of what the top tax rate should be has to be defined by the question that should come first: “What services should this government offer?” So economists won’t agree unless you first define what the taxes should be doing.

Someone who doesn’t understand how the government works sees the government as an enemy can’t answer the question because its immaterial to them. They don’t care to know or find out.

Have they never seen Eurovision before? That’s how it works pretty much every other year.

Nice try, pickpocket on the metro

How dare it work!

It’s because we don’t use a VAT, so taxes are not consistent rates by item or by locality. So for small shops with irregular supply chains, you price the thing however matches your bottom line, then let the register do the work on the final price.

For large chains, it’s about consistency. The McDonals 99 cent menu might vary state by state and city by city from the $1.25 menu to still $0.99. An advert for a TV at Walmart would have to list dozens of different prices applicable across the, many within a nominal price of each other.

There’s practical reasons, and Americans seem to think a VAT is essential communism (why, I have no clue), so its not likely to change any time soon.

Yeah, but I’m not THAT happy.

Who TF is scared by Mint?

Did a clean upgrade/install of Mint about 10 hours ago. I’m back to business as usual. Minor tweaks, no tinkering.

2. Got some shit done today. That’s a happy bat.

Yeah, doing a same parallel tracking, I would have a 13 year old. shudder

Not sure, other than a general combo of “question everything” and understanding the scientific method. I’ve never had to teach it before.

My Dad quoted this a few times, until he finally realized how incredibly untrue this can be when he falls for too many online scams.

Child, please.

Enjoy those knees while you can.

Source: Old enough to have a 25 year old kid.

Do you not back up your 2FA when you set them up?

People should need to take a test before they can be on the internet.