Well… The word “FAIRLY” was written in all caps.

Also American, I had something similar happen with an Ambulance. I did not get transported, but they still charged $2700. So, it might depend on where you live, or which ambulance company responded to the call.

Don’t worry, we didn’t give them the idea. Ford filed for a patent to do exactly this in 2021 and published it in 2023.

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/03/1160932390/ford-patent-repossession-self-driving-cars

Is anyone else bothered by the last panel where they suddenly switch places?

The point of this research was to avoid even that.

It’s pretty awesome that it even breaks down in soil:

In soil, sheets of the new plastic degraded completely over the course of 10 days, supplying the soil with phosphorous and nitrogen similar to a fertilizer.

Then maybe introduce some incentives to make up for that 7% or else force their hand by introducing steep penalties for any plastics that are used which aren’t up to a higher standard like this… Or a little bit of both.

Good thing Nancy can leave a bad review and walk down the street to the next Ice Cream shop where they don’t do this.

So, there are some misconceptions about this on both sides. While some may misunderstand how tax brackets work, there absolutely are certain income thresholds where barely going over a certain amount will net you less money overall.

Edit: To clarify, you should accept the raise. In most cases all you need to do to avoid “losing money” at any of these points is to lower your AGI by contributing to an IRA, 401K, etc.

For example (using 2025 numbers here for a single filer):

• EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) @~$50k (if you have 1 kid) you miss out on a $4k tax credit. So there’s no point to getting a raise that puts you between $50k and $54k (don’t actually reject the raise, just make sure you lower your income by contributing to an IRA or something like that). https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/can-you-take-earned-income-tax-credit

• IRA Deductions @ $79k you start to lose out on IRA deduction benefits https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/what-is-a-traditional-ira

• Medicare Premium Increase (for those on medicare)
  @ $106k your medicare tax increases by $888, so you don’t want a raise that puts you between $106k and $~107k
  @ $133k medicare tax increases by $1.3k, so you don’t want a raise between $133k and $134k
  @ $167k medicare tax increases by $1.3k again
  @ $200k medicare tax increases by $1.3k again
  @ $500k medicare tax increases by $444… https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/medicare/what-is-the-medicare-irmaa

• Roth IRA @ $150k you start to lose out on benefits from having a Roth IRA @ $165k you can no longer contribute to a Roth IRA, so if you’re close to this limit, you’re going to do what you can to stay under this income bracket as much as possible (contribute to an HSA, 401k, IRA, etc). https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/roth-ira-contribution-limits

• Child Tax Credit @ $200k you don’t get as much of a child tax credit, but luckily this drops off fairly slowly at a rate of $50 per $1k that you exceed that $200k limit. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/qualify-child-child-care-tax-credit

There are probably a few other taxes/credits I didn’t include, but this is just a quick example with what I could look up at the moment.

Agreed, this is what the Forward Party is trying to do. They want to help people get elected at all levels that will support and help make changes so that we’re not stuck in some 2-party system.

Although, I think that approval voting or STAR voting is better than ranked-choice voting.

So, it is possible to incentivize clouds to rain with lasers. It’s part of “cloud seeding” tech that is already done today in Dubai.

But this just triggers rain on certain clouds, it’s not going to trigger a hurricane.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/arielcohen/2021/07/28/dubai-is-using-laser-drones-to-shock-rainwater-out-of-the-sky/

I’m confused.

What prominent figures on the left have said something to the effect of “If we lose, the election was rigged!”??

I can only think of prominent figures on the right who have made statements like this.

Or are you saying that those who are against the 2 party system typically fall under the thinking that the election is rigged?

Cheers! I just realized that I also typed it wrong initially so that you lost other limbs. I edited the other comment with the correction.

Here, you dropped this \ To prevent anymore lost limbs throughout the fediverse, correctly escape the arms and shoulders by typing the shrug as

¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯

Edit: Fixed missing arms as well. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Running this through some random inflation calculator, looks like that would be ~$119 USD today.

https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/

I wish we made decisions based on happiness levels rather than GDP.

These countries are obviously doing something right and the rest of the world should take notes from them: https://worldhappiness.report/news/happiest-countries-prove-resilient-despite-overlapping-crises/

I can’t think of any successful communist countries. They’ve all quickly devolved into totalitarian regimes, or else they’ve had to adopt a capitalist economy because a communist economy just didn’t work.

Relevant xkcd:

https://xkcd.com/1138/

As long as they bring some whiskey and rye

Well, it won’t be easy for Florida to go hang with Hawaii and California.

*swell