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Author Topic:   Phat Unplugged
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 89 of 352 (888675)
09-27-2021 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 88 by Phat
09-27-2021 11:34 AM


Re: Production Backs The Dollar (clean up suggestion)
Friendly clean-up suggestion.
Where you start the quote, you also start italics which you never close, so the forum software cannot see the /quote tag.
If you remove that i tag for italics (or else close it as you had intended), then the quote tags should work correctly.
Personally, I've taken to always using the Preview button before submitting my reply. That catches most of my own tag typos.
 
 
Here is that part of Phat's Message 88 directly above with format corrections (ie, not his entire message, so still refer back to the original):
Phat writes:
This guy caught my eye:
What ‘Backs’ The Dollar? Easy: Production
Here is what he said:
quote:
Some people falsely assume that money is ‘backed’ only by something that already exists – something that exists before new money is issued. They imagine a fixed quantum of gold, for example, or some other commodity or precious metal. When these people hear pundits or politicians attacking the Fed for ‘printing money,’ they accordingly assume it’s a bad thing – something that automatically causes … inflation.
But this is a mistake – a mistake with huge consequences. And it’s not hard to see why.
Let’s start with inflation. The thing to remember about inflation is that it’s a relation. Say that again: Inflation is a relation. To simplify slightly, it’s a relation between the quantity of money on the one hand and the number of available goods and services on the other hand. Hence the colloquial definition of inflation as ‘too much money chasing too few goods.’
I know that some of you will criticize me for not putting my answer in my own words but at this point, I don't understand some of the concepts enough to know the words.
Once Phat has made the corrections himself, I will remove this from mine. Please reply to Phat's own message, not to this one.
Edited by dwise1, : ABE: QS of portion of Phat's message with format corrections

This message is a reply to:
 Message 88 by Phat, posted 09-27-2021 11:34 AM Phat has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 176 of 352 (898714)
09-28-2022 12:20 PM
Reply to: Message 173 by Percy
09-28-2022 10:12 AM


This experience with recent chatbots has left me feeling that perhaps some significant aspect of what we deem progress is merely change combined with forgetting a lot of what the previous generation knew. Who thinks that virtual buttons are an advance over real buttons? Who thinks that TV as it transitions to streaming has gotten better? Has anyone here had a car accident or near accident because they were forced to look at the touchpad while driving because the buttons can't be felt?

I have a universal remote with real buttons. I don't have to look at it for most functions. I tried one with virtual buttons a little over a decade ago, it was the high-end popular one but I forget the name now, and I programmed it up the kazoo, then abandoned it after only a week. I don't like having to look at my remote to hit a button.
I had an iPod, then when its battery died I upgraded to an iPod Nano. I loved that trackwheel and consider it one of the only things that Apple really got right. I had my daily playlist that I would set to shuffle and then put the Nano in my shirt pocket. If I decided to skip the song that came up, all I had to do was to reach into my pocket and skip it completely by touch. My friend at work drove a motorcycle and would do the same thing with his.
Then they discontinued the iPods and replaced them with the iTouch. Now you had to free up both your hands, hold the iTouch in one hand, look at it (a wonderful idea if you're riding your cycle), and use the other hand to press a virtual button. No more trackwheel!
I never got an iTouch, but rather kept my Nano and used it at work until I retired in 2018. For a few of those last years I never used iTunes, which is still on my Windows box, but rather charged my Nano on my work computer's USB. When I recharged my Nano a few months ago iTunes wanted to start deleting songs, so I quickly pulled the plug and recharged the Nano on my laptop (no iTunes there).
As I said, I loved that trackwheel and still think it was the best thing that Apple ever came up with. I mean, when I got cable I was extremely disappointed that I didn't have it on my remote so that I could fast-forward so much more efficiently ("What do you mean you can't do that?"). And they dumped it! Though I recently saw an ad for an Apple streaming device and I'm pretty sure I saw a trackwheel on its remote. Still sticking with my Roku.
Also, virtual keyboards on phones with AutoCorrupt just drive me crazy for anything more than a quick text. Nothing beats touch-typing on a computer keyboard.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 173 by Percy, posted 09-28-2022 10:12 AM Percy has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 185 of 352 (899221)
10-10-2022 6:36 PM
Reply to: Message 184 by Phat
10-10-2022 7:50 AM


Re: Reanswering a 7 year old question
My current church is probably Ed Taylors Calvary Chapel. dwise1 remembers Chuck Smith in California. (The Jesus Freaks and all that. Calvary Chapel became somewhat of a franchised name, but if I understand correctly, each individual Calvary Chapel has a character and (perhaps) a specific mission or calling of its own.
I seem to recall from long ago as new Calvary Chapels were springing up in other parts of Orange County that they were independent, but there was also some tenet of faith that they had to maintain, or maybe some kind of organizational requirement. I think the one in Mission Viejo was the first new one and that it was founded by Chuck Smith's son. All I heard about it was from a couple with young children who joined our UU church: they had gone there and were appalled by being commanded to beat their children, so they left and were glad to find our church. Also, conversation in the dancers' group of the 50-plus singles ministry of Rick Warren's Saddleback Church turned to talking about that same Calvary Chapel church and how extremely legalistic they were -- you know, like the NT mischaracterization of the Pharisees as being, obsessing over every little dot and tittle of every little law (even though the Golden Rule came from the Pharisees who taught that it replaced all the other laws). IOW, those fundamentalists were exactly like they accused the Pharisees as having been.
Chuck Smith's (he died a few years ago well before the pandemic) Calvary Chapel was the first one, to my knowledge. It's called "Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa" even though for as long as I've known of it (starting around 1969) it has always been in Santa Ana -- actually, on the Santa Ana side of Sunflower Avenue, which forms the border between Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. My older sister and her husband are members and he verified my suspicion that it had gone through its own "church in a box" phase (as our UU church had done during which we'd get a public use permit to use school auditoriums) and that they would meet at a member's house in Costa Mesa.
But while each Calvary Chapel can have its own "personality", I've noticed that that personality can evolve over time. I have noticed that happening with the Costa Mesa church.
I use the analogy of the evolution of a virus as presented by Michael Crichton MD in his book, The Andromeda Strain. Basically, a virus will evolve into forms with strategies that enable it to reproduce more (basic natural selection in action). In the case of the extraterrestrial virus in the book, it started out very aggressive and deadly, but it's not a very good strategy for a virus to kill the host before it has a chance to spread, so variants that are not so deadly will spread more readily and take over. Thus there's a tendency for a virus to become less deadly over time. In the opposite direction there's the example of syphilis which was fairly benign in the native American population where lack of much clothing allowed for it to spread readily through skin contact. But it became virulent when Europeans brought it back with them and it could not spread as readily through the layers of clothing Europeans wore, so becoming more virulent was its new strategy.
Church personality evolves in a similar way. At first, it was going through explosive growth which was driven by aggressive street proselytizing (not unlike your plan to accost and covert school children in back alleys, remember that discussion?). During that time, you couldn't turn around without somebody trying to convert you. In fact, that trait of that church still impacts it as non-members, remembering having suffered through that time, still want nothing to do with fundies and regard them with contempt. At first the term "Jesus Freak" was meant as an insult, but like blacks have done with the "n-word", the fundies chose to embrace the name. Though it probably didn't hurt that many of them were burned-out hippies and "freak" is another name for "hippy" and some of their slogans were borrowed from their former drug culture (eg, "Hooked on Jesus" was a popular bumper sticker at the time.
It was during that time that I read their proselytizing training materials (much use of cartoons depicting a "conversation" with the intended victim in which the "saved one" would hit his mark with difficult questions intended to be unanswerable by the mark and hence would either throw him off balance and more open to conversion or else to discredit him and his position in the eyes of bystanders. Half a century later, we still see that tactic being used by creationists like Kleinman and Dredge (candle2 and eWolf have tried it, but they're even weaker at it than Dredge is).
In that initial "Jesus Freak" phase, they were very virulent using hardcore proselytizing tactics against everybody they could and it did work in growing their numbers, so it was successful and persisted ... for a time. A key teaching, more of an obsession for many of them, was The Rapture and The End Times. And finding "666" everywhere they could -- in barcodes (eg, claiming that the Mark of the Beast would be a barcode tattooed on your forehead in order to buy anything), I'm pretty sure I saw a gov't building (IRS or Social Security I seem to recall) in Santa Ana at the time with a 666 street address, but the one that they have all missed in the present day is Jared Kushner's NYC address of 666 Fifth Avenue.
True story: at one job our company president was third-generation fundamentalist and his son was fourth-generation. Since their connection predated and bypassed the Jesus Freaks, they did not engage in proselytizing and were actually very nice people to know and to work with. The son graduated from high school and went to attend Northwestern in Chicago, but he'd fly back home between semesters and would work with us (automated greenhouse control systems). After his first semester he said school was going OK, but he felt lonely since he didn't know anyone. Knowing that many colleges have campus Christian clubs, I suggested he try one at least for fellowship. He said he had tried that and would never make that mistake again. All those clubs would do would be to devise plans for converting the other students. That was around 1990 and they were still at it.
So what changed here? The story goes that early Christians took Jesus' promise to return within their lifetimes very seriously to the point where they wouldn't even plant trees because they would never mature to bear fruit before the Second Coming. But finally they had to admit that it wasn't going to happen so they returned to planting trees and other activities for building the future.
The same happened at Calvary Chapel. These burned-out hippie Jesus Freaks started getting a life and having to start building a future: they fell in love and got married, got a job or even a profession, bought a house, had children, then grandchildren. Their numbers were already up and growth in church membership came from having children (which would then drive a later phase). As a result they engaged much less in overt proselytizing and more in simply "witnessing". Not only did they have less need to drive up membership, but they also had other priorities (the ones that come with getting a life) as well as less free time to engage in proselytizing.
Oh, that drive to proselytize is still there, but it seems to be funneled into anti-abortion and creationism. And they always did and still do push for what's now called Christian Nationalism (formerly Christian Reconstructionism, Dominion Theology).
One thing that may have weaned them off the End Times fanaticism was when it came to something of a head in the 80's with the arrival of a conspiracy theorist who claimed to have formerly been a practicing Satanist with stories of newborn babies being sacrificed, etc. He stirred up a lot of trouble at Calvary and Melodyland (a theater-in-the-round across from Disneyland when then became a church). I've asked them casually about it and nobody wants to talk about it; I'll allow that the stories I heard are probably exaggerations.
Well, now they seem to be entering a new phase of more aggressive proselytizing because of their children -- the chickens are not coming home to roost, but rather are fleeing the coop. Even churches' own youth ministries admit that they have a very serious problem as about 75% (figures range from 65% to 80%) of their children raised in the faith are fleeing, running as fast as they can away from religion. Youth ministers are trying to figure out what's causing it and they blame everything else that they can but never consider that it might be caused by those children's experiences growing up in that religion. Of course, I immediately want to blame the pack of lies which is creationism and will point to instances of deconversion after discovering the truth about science and evolution (and the age of the earth, etc). But if you read the testimonials at deconversion sites such as ExChristian.Net: Testimonials you find that in many cases it they deconverted because of psychological damage that the religion had done them.
But whatever the causes, there's still the fact that churches are losing the next generation, so their membership is dropping. When you lose the kids, then you have to go out and recruit new members. Which from what I hear it's what's happening at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa. My sister and brother-in-law are about 80 years old and they are feeling disaffected at Calvary. Besides losing their old friends and Chuck Smith, the mood/personality of the place has been changing. MAGAt influence, COVID denial, Christian Nationalism, Qanon conspiracy theorizing, push to return to hardcore proselytizing, etc. I think my sister still meets with her Bible study group, but they no longer feel very much at home there now. They are getting ready to move to Georgia and will probably look into attending a church there.
So while an individual church can have its own "personality", that personality can and does change over time.
 

This message is a reply to:
 Message 184 by Phat, posted 10-10-2022 7:50 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 186 by ringo, posted 10-10-2022 10:33 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 187 of 352 (899254)
10-11-2022 3:46 AM
Reply to: Message 186 by ringo
10-10-2022 10:33 PM


Re: Reanswering a 7 year old question
Members of my high school friend's family converted to fundamentalism through Chuck Smith's Calvary Chapel. He and I, both still atheists, became "fellow travelers" where we learned what they were teaching and preaching.
I had left Christianity half a decade before because I started reading the Bible to see what I was supposed to believe and I found that without a doubt I could not believe what I was reading, so I left. My mistake was assuming that I had to take what I was reading literally, which I don't even know whether my church required that. So it's ironic that now I was seeing a church that explicitly required my stupid assumption, biblical literalism, which means that I really couldn't believe what they were selling. Then studying creationism a decade later succeeded in permanently immunizing me from such religious nonsense.
My friend and I would read their materials and discuss them. A popular genre were "novels" about the End Times, all of them badly written. Many months ago (years probably) I watch a YouTube video discussing why Christian movies are bad; I think that it is this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_3J6Go5Ng&t=421s . Either this or another video compares Christian films and normal films for their cinematography and editing showing where Christian films fall flat and why they do. This video gets into a reason for that, which is that, whereas normal films are made by filmmakers whose goal is to make cinematographic art, Christian films are made by preachers whose goal is to preach a sermon. And I think that the same was true of those Christian novels and which was why they were so poorly written.
We also read every Chick Pubs tract we could lay our hands on (and they were laying around everywhere). Always good for a laugh. A few decades later in a public restroom someone what left Chick tracts in every stall, which I found to be a poor idea. The pages are too small for effective use as toilet paper in case the regular stuff ran out -- Sears & Roebuck catalogs they ain't!
 

This message is a reply to:
 Message 186 by ringo, posted 10-10-2022 10:33 PM ringo has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 202 of 352 (906287)
02-09-2023 2:40 PM
Reply to: Message 197 by Stile
02-02-2023 12:32 PM


Re: Matt Dillahunty
His temper with feedback is extremely short. He seems to get very angry very quickly with people who challenge him on anything. I usually don't find him to be wrong on his actual facts, but I do find him to be pretty wrong on his tactics and the way he deals with people who do not agree with him.
I've watched several of his videos and that is not what I have seen. Rather, he gets angry with people who refuse to discuss but instead try to derail any hope of a discussion.
We've seen that too often. In the recent past every time a Trump apologist would be interviewed (eg, Kelly Ann Conway on Bill Maher, Ben Shapiro at any time), her "reply" to a simple question would be a fire-hose torrent of rapid-fire nonsense that had nothing whatsoever to do with either the question or with the topic being discussed. And while that is going on, the host is left with trying to stop the torrent and get an actual answer, but all in vain. Once that fire hose is opened, nothing can stop it and all hopes of any kind of discussion is washed away.
I see so many of callers to Matt Dillahunty on Atheist Experience pulling that same kind of crap as they call in with their bald assertion followed by a steady stream of preaching during which they completely ignore Matt's attempts to ask the necessary simple questions.
Unlike Bill Maher et alia, Matt is able to put the caller on mute as he tries to get through to the guy. And before he has to do that, Matt repeatedly warns the caller to please stop voluntarily before he has to force it by putting him on mute. In my experience, Matt always gives fair warning. And he always puts them on mute in order to get a word/question in in edgewise, never just because they disagree with him.
And when Matt has to hang up on a caller, I've always only seen it to be because of the caller's disruptive behavior and never only because the caller disagreed with him.
You've heard of "And don't let the bastards grind you down!" (adopted by US Army General "Vinegar" Joe Stilwell as his motto during WWII). Matt has been at this for years, during which time "the bastards" have ground down his patience, much as creationists have ground down mine over the past four decades. As a result, he knows that he has to keep them on a tighter leash, especially if he doesn't want everybody's time (and the show's air time) to be wasted. And he will be less forgiving with them. Though he does always explain why he hanged up and what was wrong with the caller's position and/or arguments.
It could well be that Matt might be attracting those miscreants with his "Hang-up" reputation. In order to feed their hunger for fake stories of persecution, they call his show and misbehave deliberately in order to get him to hang up on them so that they can then go back to their churches to use this "treatment" as further evidence of their being "persecuted".
Consider this article reposted from Quora:
quote:
Why do people get angry when I try to share the word of God with them? I only do it because I care about them deeply and don't want them to end up in hell. I feel like some people avoid me because of this. Is there any way to get through to them?
by Doug Robertson, studied at University of Maine
Updated Dec 11 2018
The entire process is not what you think it is.
It is specifically designed to be uncomfortable for the other person because it isn't about converting them to your religion. It is about manipulating you so you can't leave yours.
If this tactic was about converting people it would be considered a horrible failure. It recruits almost no one who isn't already willing to join. Bake sales are more effective recruiting tools.
On the other hand, it is extremely effective at creating a deep tribal feeling among its own members.
The rejection they receive is actually more important than the few people they convert. It causes them to feel a level of discomfort around the people they attempt to talk to. These become the "others". These uncomfortable feelings go away when they come back to their congregation, the "Tribe".
If you take a good look at the process it becomes fairly clear. In most cases, the religious person starts out from their own group, who is encouraging and supportive. They are then sent out into the harsh world where people repeatedly reject them. Mainly because they are trained to be so annoying.
These brave witnesses then return from the cruel world to their congregation where they are treated like returning heroes. They are now safe. They bond as they share their experiences of reaching out to the godless people to bring them the truth. They share the otherness they experience.
Once again they will learn that the only place they are accepted is with the people who think as they do. It isn't safe to leave the group. The world is your enemy, but we love you.
This is a pain reward cycle that is a common brainwashing technique. The participants become more and more reliant on the "Tribe" because they know that "others" reject them.
Mix in some ritualized chanting, possibly a bit of monotonous repetition of instructions, add a dash of fear of judgment by an unseen, but all-powerful entity who loves you if you do as you are told and you get a pretty powerful mix.
Sorry, I have absolutely no wish to participate in someone's brainwashing ritual.
Another version of that refers directly to creationists and how talking with them is like playing chess with a pigeon:
quote:
"Debating creationists on the topic of evolution is rather like trying to play chess with a pigeon; it knocks the pieces over, craps on the board, and flies back to its flock to claim victory."
Forrest Valkai is still young and hasn't been ground down to the point of no longer being able to enjoy a skirmish. It's the difference between the FNG and the old veteran (eg, SFC Hulka, Stripes (1981): "I'm getting too old for this shit!").
Besides Matt's reputation serving as a lightning rod attracting the worst kinds of caller, the editorial choice of which shows to release to video might filter out most of the calls wasted on bad callers while releasing ones that enhance Matt's reputation. Just mentioning a possible source of bias.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 197 by Stile, posted 02-02-2023 12:32 PM Stile has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 203 by Phat, posted 02-11-2023 6:22 PM dwise1 has not replied
 Message 204 by Stile, posted 02-13-2023 10:18 AM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(2)
Message 231 of 352 (911524)
07-12-2023 1:07 PM
Reply to: Message 230 by Phat
07-12-2023 12:01 PM


Re: ECHO CHAMBERS
Let me recommend to you a documentary that I recommended to Faith on 26 Feb 2020 in Message 5067: The Brainwashing of my Dad -- it's even on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS52QdHNTh8 as well as streaming for free on Pluto, FreeVee, Plex, Filmzie, and FREE, as well as bring available through a subscription (Gravitas) or rental (eg, Prime).
I wrote:
dwise1 writes:
It would be a good idea to watch The Brainwashing of my Dad (website at https://www.thebrainwashingofmydad.com/, also streaming on the Roku Channel, Pluto, Vudu, Amazon Prime). The revocation of the fairness doctrine gave rise to right-wing talk radio. The format of talk radio carried over into Fake News Network where the host raises his voice and becomes angry, thus inducing and feeding anger in his audience. No facts, just a lot of angry noise.
From Wikipedia:
quote:
Synopsis
As Jen Senko tries to understand the transformation of her father from a nonpolitical Democrat to an angry Republican fanatic, she uncovers the forces behind the media that changed him completely: a plan by Roger Ailes under President Richard Nixon for a media takeover by the Republicans, the 1971 Powell Memo urging business leaders to influence institutions of public opinion (especially the media, universities, and courts), the 1987 dismantling of the Fairness Doctrine under President Ronald Reagan, and the signing of the 1996 Telecommunications Act under President Bill Clinton. The documentary aims to show how the media and the nation changed, which leads to questions about who owns the airwaves, what rights listeners and watchers have, and what responsibility the government has to keep the airwaves fair, accurate, and accountable.
Content
Senko's father, Frank, was originally a "nonpolitical Kennedy Democrat" who began changing into a far-right Republican in the 1980s, she said.[1] On her father's lengthy commute to his place of employment, he listened to conservative talk radio, which Senko believes started the change in her father's personality. In particular, he listened to Rush Limbaugh and watched Fox News. Towards the end of his life, Frank's views mostly changed back to being somewhere in the middle due to his wife exposing him to less biased media. He died in January 2016 at the age of 93.

Like many Americans, especially retired men, her father started listening exclusively to conservative media (talk radio, FOX News) and subscribing to a conservative email site, all of which fed him a constant stream of far-right content. I worked with people like that and would walk in on them having a heated self-affirming discussion about huge Democrat conspiracies that I had never heard of. They hear nothing besides that content which is designed to enrage and terrify the elderly (eg, Ailes has been quoted as requiring content that would "scare your grandfather" -- fear and anger shuts down the neocortex, thus disabling rational thought).
Another victim of that media was interviewed in the film, a truck driver trapped long hours on the road with nothing to listen to on the radio except right-wing talk radio. The interviewee described the effect on him, turning him into a FOX-bot, until one day he stumbled upon NPR, a rational and informed source to listen to. We should also remember that poll testing respondents' knowledge of current events found that conservative media viewers/listeners knew significantly less about current events than did those who didn't follow the news at all.
Watch it. It is after all on YouTube and hence, in your mind, must be true.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 230 by Phat, posted 07-12-2023 12:01 PM Phat has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 236 by Phat, posted 07-13-2023 1:12 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 243 of 352 (916276)
02-29-2024 10:40 AM
Reply to: Message 239 by Phat
02-29-2024 6:56 AM


Re: Sharing Transcript snippets
I have to agree with AZPaul3's Message 242:
AZPaul3 in Message 242 writes:
Define your acronym, please. What the hell is a CBDC?
A standard writing practice I learned either in college or in the military (the latter, I seem to recall) is that you define an acronym the first time you use it in a document ; eg:
Examples:
Name first then acronym:
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
Or reverse that order with acronym first followed by its definition:
CBCD (Constant Bearing, Closing Distance)
In addition, larger documents (including books) may include a glossary of acronyms.
The object is to clearly communicate information, not to baffle your audience with your bullshit. Hiding the definitions for your terms is the kind of crap that (at risk of being redundant) stupid lying deceiving creationists constantly pull in their boundless zeal to do Satan's work. Do not be that guy!
Part of the problem with acronyms is that they are extremely ambiguous: the same acronym can mean many different things depending on context. For example, NBC and ABC can be broadcasting networks (first radio networks, then TV), but they can also stand for types of warfare: Nuclear, Biological, Chemical, earlier Atomic, Biological, Chemical. Or scores of other meanings (see NBC; researching the meanings of ABC is left as an exercise for the reader).
BTW, you should have noticed that my own frequent practice is to define the acronyms I use the first time I use them.
For example, your use of CCP kept confusing me, since it looked like you were using Cyrillics, ССР (translit: "SSR"), for Soviet Socialist Republic.
And for CBDC (four different meanings given), are you sure that you didn't mean CBCD, which describes the sensor track of incoming ordnance or enemy craft on an attack run against your ship? That would certainly make more sense considering your sense of dread, since CBCD does have a definite effect on one's pucker factor.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 239 by Phat, posted 02-29-2024 6:56 AM Phat has seen this message but not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 247 of 352 (916281)
02-29-2024 11:27 AM
Reply to: Message 246 by Theodoric
02-29-2024 11:18 AM


Re: Sharing Transcript snippets
Who TF is Adam Taggert?
My father-in-law's favorite response was: "En su propria casa se conoce." ("He's known in his own house.")

This message is a reply to:
 Message 246 by Theodoric, posted 02-29-2024 11:18 AM Theodoric has not replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 287 of 352 (916563)
03-06-2024 1:21 PM
Reply to: Message 282 by xongsmith
03-06-2024 12:59 PM


Re: Pounding the pound
please keep weight and mass separated in your brain.
Very true and I was starting to also reply about this, but then it got messy.
In the Wikipedia article, Pound (mass):
quote:
Usage of the unqualified term pound reflects the historical conflation of mass and weight. This accounts for the modern distinguishing terms pound-mass and pound-force.
I provided that link so that Phat can follow it and learn more.
So because of the conflation of mass and weight, they went ahead and defined an new kind of pound which measures mass instead of weight. But when one merely says "pound", what exactly is he talking about? By creating a distinction between pound-mass and pound-force, unless one is very careful with one's wording, statements about pounds can be very ambiguous, especially in the context of gravitational fields different from standard gravity (9.8 m/s2 or 32 ft/sec2), such as the moon's.
Ambiguity increases when talking about gold since that could introduce a different kind of pound, the troy pound, which Wikipedia says is a unit of mass.
I am so glad that in my physics class we only worked in the metric system. They did have us play with slugs for a while, but then thankfully we went back to metric.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 282 by xongsmith, posted 03-06-2024 12:59 PM xongsmith has seen this message but not replied

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dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 322 of 352 (916619)
03-07-2024 6:23 PM
Reply to: Message 318 by Tanypteryx
03-07-2024 4:06 PM


Re: The Problem With Excessive Government
Well, except for the fact that he supports the politicians who are voting to do away with Social Security and Medicare because they don't know the difference between socialism and social programs, and because they are just fucking assholes!
Or because it's just business.
As I recall the figures, 15% of wages goes to payroll taxes (FICA) in order to fund Social Security and Medicare. The employee pays half of that (7.5%) and the employer pays the other half. If it's a large company then payroll taxes can take a sizeable bite. It seems to me that that is the reason Republicans keep trying to kill Social Security and Medicare, because that's what their owners want.
An interesting corollary grift during the Trump Administration was when Trump declared a moratorium on paying payroll taxes, a deferment. For the rest of the year (about 4 to 6 months as I seem to recall) businesses could choose to defer those taxes (ie, it was voluntary for the companies). He tried to sell it to the public as benefiting them by "giving" them more take-home pay, but what he didn't tell them was that in the beginning of the next year they'd have to pay twice the normal payroll tax, thus reducing the amount of their take-home pay. The only one to benefit was the company who could report larger earnings or have extra money to work with (eg, invest). The companies who chose this would profit from the extra money so that having to pay it the next year wouldn't bite as much (if at all), but the employees would have spent that extra money instead of investing it and so would be made to suffer for Trump's "largess".
Kind of reminds me of G.H.W. Bush's "worker tax break" which was only reducing the amount withheld for federal income tax, but without reducing our income tax. We still had to pay the same income tax, but now we had less withheld with which to pay it. So the nasty surprise for many was that they not only wouldn't get a tax refund, but they actually owed money and suddenly needed to come up with the cash.
Going further back, there was Reagan's much touted "huge tax break" which in my case (a young engineer with a family just starting out, so definitely lower middle class) nearly doubled my federal income tax.
Needless to say, every time Republicans start promising to reduce our taxes, I become very afraid.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 318 by Tanypteryx, posted 03-07-2024 4:06 PM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 323 by Tanypteryx, posted 03-07-2024 7:06 PM dwise1 has replied

  
dwise1
Member
Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


(1)
Message 332 of 352 (916629)
03-07-2024 8:10 PM
Reply to: Message 323 by Tanypteryx
03-07-2024 7:06 PM


Re: The Problem With Excessive Government
I've not been as ingenious. I opened a 401K when I finally worked where it was offered (about 25 years before retiring) and chose to contribute the maximum when I could -- if you never see it you never miss it. Then I just forgot about it and it grew quite nicely.
In the meantime, I had always paid away more on the balance of our mortgage. I taught myself using a spreadsheet (Multiplan on a TI-99) and one of my first projects was to map out all the payments of the 30-year mortgage on our first house. The point where we would get the principal down to half was around the 24-year mark -- sickening when you see it. Hence wanting to pay that off all the sooner. After the divorce, my pay-off schedule was reset, but I accomplished it in about 12 years (not being married anymore, my expenses were much less). And since I had paid off our credit card debt with a consolidation loan over a decade earlier and instituted a policy of paying off the balance every month, after I paid off my car I have been debt-free.
My Social Security check covers almost all my expenses and my military retirement (reserves, so about 1/5th of a pension from active duty) covers "balloon payments" (eg, property tax, car and home insurance). I am about to take my first Required Minimum Disbursement (RMD) from my 401k, but there's nothing I need to spend it on. And I don't have to worry about medical expenses due to my military retirement benefits.
But on the matter of tax planning, my tax situation is simple and basic. However, working out withholding when I was married was tricky. We both made about the same amount (she a bit more at the time of the divorce), but the W-4 calculations were based on a single wage earner, so they always withheld too little especially when her income increased to approach mine. One year, we owed more than is allowed, so something had to change.
My solution was the only ingenious thing I did, or at least the only actual financial planning that I did. I created a spreadsheet to estimate this year's taxes based on last year's return and to estimate how much we needed to withhold based on that estimate. Once I knew how much we would be short, I submitted a W-4 with that amount added as additional withholding. That worked out well and I continue to use a variant of it, now to also examine how my RMD will affect this year's taxes (basically, it increases my taxable income to nearly double the RMD, since it makes more of my Social Security taxable). BTW, my goal was to come as close as possible to just barely covering our taxes, since that big refund others look forward to is just our money that the government has had and been using interest-free.
It was because of that spreadsheet that I was able to avoid GHW Bush's nasty trick.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 323 by Tanypteryx, posted 03-07-2024 7:06 PM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 336 by Percy, posted 03-07-2024 8:30 PM dwise1 has not replied
 Message 337 by Tanypteryx, posted 03-07-2024 8:35 PM dwise1 has not replied

  
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