croon

> 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.