efaardvark

I did not play KSP today. Last time I played I'd managed to gather a bit of science and upgrade my tech. I've been trying to get some play time in to hire some more kerbonauts and build a space station and a science/exploration ship, but shit keeps happening IRL. Maybe tomorrow?

Himouto. Cute slice-of-life. For the first 3 episodes or so anyway. After that... nothing really happens. No character or plot development to speak of. Could easily have stopped at 3 or 4 episodes and nobody would really be missing anything. Or maybe one of those short-form, 10 miniute/episode animes. [mal type=anime id=28825]

Pft... babes. Just wait until you're 54!

I wish I spent that much time sleeping! (I would have liked to sleep in this morning for instance, but had to get up and make a trip to the store to buy parts to fix the toilet and put up some shelves.) I'll be working Thursday too, so in my case it'll probably be more like:

I always get a return, though the reason behind it sucks. Back in the dot-com era I had some shares of a science and tech fund. On the way down a lot of people were cashing out of any technology stocks. I didn't, but as the other shareholders cashed out, the fund was selling shares to generate cash to pay them with. As the fund sold shares they generated "internal" capital gains for the fund. Unfortunately, the way mutual funds work they have to pass along any capital gains to ALL shareholders, not just the ones that cash out. Even though the share price of the fund was dropping and I was losing money on paper, I got hit with an unexpected capital gains distribution at the end of the year from the fund. Because I hadn't paid taxes on it by December I wound up owing about $6k to the feds in April when I filed. This I paid. Sent the check along with my tax forms, which were filed on time. But because I owed so much the infernal revenue service assessed an extra penalty, and the next year I had to pay "estimated" taxes every quarter based on the previous year's income. Thank you sir, may I have another? Of course the next year I didn't get another such distribution, so I wound up being forced to over-pay my taxes by $6000. In order to avoid this sort of thing in the future, ever since then I've had an extra $$$ amount over and above the usual withheld from my paycheck. So now every April I get (most of) it back as a return. Or how about this one? (As long as I'm bitching about taxes. ) I have solar panels on the roof. Solar's cheap these days, but it cost a significant chunk of change back 15 or so years ago when we built our system. Fortunately the state of California had a deal where if you filed the proper paperwork and included the receipts for what you paid they would reimburse you for half the cost. You had to install and pay for the whole system first, then file and hope you get the check, but it was a good deal. We filed successfully and got a nice check. Unfortunately the infernal revenue service claimed that the check was "income" and we had to pay taxes on it. Needless to say, the IRS is NOT my on my Christmas list.

I do watch quite a bit of YouTube. I don't really follow anyone religiously though. Being into space, science, and Kerbal Space Program, of course Scott Manley features prominently in my play history. Pretty much every NASA, SpaceX, and Blue Origin video will get a watch. For some reason I also like Gaming Mike's No Man's Sky game play. I think it is because NMS is kind of a laid-back game and I can have the video running w/out it being too distracting when I'm working on other things. (I'd like to run NMS myself, but there isn't a linux-native version and I haven't been motivated enough to bother getting it running with something like WINE.) Occasionally one of his other playthroughs (Star Citizens, ESO, or Conan Exiles, for example) will catch my eye as well. The rest is pretty random. Cat videos and other stupid stuff my friends and family send me. I'll sometimes get a bug to listen to some particular song so I'll type the name of the song in and follow that train for a few clicks. That sort of thing. Nothing really worth repeating.

They nickel-and-dime you to death. I'm in Los Angeles county. 22% income tax from the feds, 10% from the state. That's over 30% right there. Social Security tax is another 10% on top of "income" tax. Property taxes are only 1%, but the median market value in my area is ridiculously high, especially since the banksters have been allowed to mark-to-model. (Zillow says the median home price in L.A. county is $616,500, for $6150/year in property taxes, which is basically another 10% of your income if you make $60k/year.) Then if you buy anything there's the 9.5% sales and use tax in L.A. county. Then there's the "hidden" taxes like car registration. Depending on your location there may also be local taxes/assessments/fees to pay off bonds, etc. It all adds up. I'm not even counting "required" expenses like federally mandated health care (at whatever rate the companies want to charge). Normally that's called a tax. I think there was even a lawsuit over obamacare that came to that conclusion as well. We're basically socialist, we just don't admit it because it isn't politically palatable.

I'm pretty random. It is only recently that I even created a MAL list. Before that I never really had a list. Once in a while I'd keep a short list of titles I wanted to look for the next time I went shopping. Other than that, just memory and my crunchy or Plex queue.

Don't even get me started. A few years ago I broke down all my pay stubs, sales receipts, etc. and put them in quicken for a year. (Yes, this is a pain in the a--. I don't recommend it unless you're a masochistic accountant.) Anyway, turns out when I added up everything - sales tax, car registration fees, income tax, property tax, all those inscrutable government-required fees on your utility bill, etc. - I would up paying nearly 60% of "my" gross wages for that year to the various governments whose jurisdictions I fall under.

This! Well, maybe not the more violent thunderstorms, but certainly snow or rain makes for excellent sleeping weather, IMHO. It can also make it extremely hard to get up in the morning! I just want to stay curled up snug & warm under the covers.

This is not true! All capitalism requires is productivity, and it doesn't even specify how that comes to be. As long as someone wants what you have and has something that you want more then a "capitalist" exchange can occur. "Capitalism" is simply the trading of goods and services in a manner that both parties freely exchange something they have of lesser value for something they consider to be of greater value. In its simplest form it does not require money. If I have an apple and you have an orange but I don't like apples as much as oranges and you don't like oranges as much as apples then we simply trade. Win-win. That's capitalism at it's most fundamental. Note that this can easily be used to encourage specialization. If I have a useful skill but no time and no food and you have an apple but no applicable skill then instead of "spending" my time scrounging up my own food then I might use my time and skill(s) to do something for you in return for your apple. You can spend your time growing apples (and developing the skill(s) to grow apples) and I can use my time doing something like growing oranges, or sewing, or chopping wood. Again, no "money" required. All that "money" does is make the transactions more efficient and allow them to occur at different times. If I always had to carry around all the things that I might want to barter for any of the things I might want to obtain then I’d have to carry around a lot of stuff! That or always be brokering elaborate multi-party chain deals to get what I want using what I have on hand. My apple might also spoil before I find someone who wants it AND has something I need. Much easier to produce (there's that word) and sell what I don't need to people that want it in exchange for some kind of proxy that that we all agree can be used as such, then value everything in terms of this "money". Then I can just carry around a pocketful of coins or bills (or whatever) and exchange those for anything I might want as needed. The particular item used as “money” is usually selected for its durability, its portability, and its inability to be duplicated (counterfeited). Traditionally this means something like gold or other precious metals. Banksters and their politicians have a hard time playing their shell games if they can’t produce “extra” on demand however so in practice the gold often winds up being replaced with promises of gold, and eventually simply unbacked promises. That typically works until somebody points out that the emperor has no clothes. Unbacked promises represented by easily-duplicated tokens are called “fiat” currency, and economic systems that rely on them historically don’t end well. Take Rome for example, whose once-valuable silver coins were mostly tin at the end. Or Zimbabwe for a more recent example. For a while Zimbabwe's economy was reduced to trading cigarettes and whisky as "money" when people stopped accepting Zimbabwe's paper currency. Unfortunately, when the fiat fails it is usually the economic “ism” in use that takes the blame instead of the debased monetary and/or political system. Regulations to limit distortions and inefficiencies created by things like fraud and coercion are also desirable under capitalism, as in any economic system. Again, this isn't a capitalism thing so much as a governance issue to make sure everyone plays fair.

That was ok. My inner tween liked it. Certain episodes were good, but overall probably not one I'll watch again. I actually liked the second season better, which doesn't happen that often.

Just wait until VR becomes a thing. Seat belts mandatory!

Rocket Girls. If Kerbal Space Program were an anime, this might be the result. Except the girls are a lot more kawaii than Jeb, Val, and Bob. [mal type=anime id=1942]

Raining like crazy here. Nice for a change, though I worry about mudslides in the areas that burned last year.

Money is good. Money is necessary. But there's a point where enough is enough. People that keep going beyond that to collect hundreds of millions or billions of dollars are seriously mentally unstable in my point of view. (I would even go so far as to make a blanket statement that all billionaires are sociopaths.) Money should be a means, not an end. Not to say that I don't like spending money, but tbh I'm fine not spending it as well. Concentrating on other aspects of my life can be lots of fun too. I have a similar system. I have even put myself on an allowance. My paycheck (less 401k withholding) gets direct-deposited to my savings account, and I have a set amount every month transferred automatically to my checking account. The amount that gets transferred is enough to pay the bills, with a little extra for fun. If I want to buy something then I wait until I have enough in the checking account to buy it. I try to look at the savings account as little as possible. This system tends to keep me out of trouble.

Starting Tsurune today.. [mal type=anime id=36653]

Tonight is a Queen night. 80s Queen with Freddy singing is about as good as it gets. I may even have to watch Highlander tonight, (The first of course. There is only one.)

You're fine. I'm not sure what the OP was after so I was just going for a description of the visuals while you were describing the story/plot-device(s) behind them, No worries.

A Place Further than the Universe does look promising from what I've seen/read. Haven't watched it yet, but definitely on my list. Asobi Asobase didn't tickle my fancy. Non-funny jokes, mediocre art. I dropped it. Hope that sort of thing doesn't become a trend. Yuru Camp was good. (And Yama no susume as well... kind of in the same vein.) The others .... I'm a binge-watcher and usually (at least) a season behind so there's a lot of recent stuff I haven't gotten to yet. I liked Goblin Slayer though, and the first season of Tensura (slime).