The cap was in place because the Social Security benefit doesn’t increase above the that income.

I don’t think that’s necessarily a good reason for the cap to exist. I expect it’s a compromise to get rich people and idiots on board.

The Oatmeal did a comic worth reading about this: https://theoatmeal.com/comics/believe

Some people are really loathe to do any self reflection or assessment. I gather their sense of self and worth is very fragile, and looking too hard might make it collapse.

Like, some people you could say “Eating meat is bad for these reasons” and they’ll just lash out. Not enough emotional HP to tank the hit.

I’m not rich to the point of no longer needing to labor, but I did hit the social security cap one year. I was pissed when I learned why my take home jumped up. I would have rather kept paying.

It’s selfish to want to keep a little more of your vast wealth like you describe. That’s cartoon villainy.

Right. Cognitive dissonance. We all suffer it sometimes. I guess it takes uncommon courage and clarity to work through it. Most people would rather do the least effort to preserve their sense of being a good person.

Being sexist is bad

They are good

They don’t like this show because it has a woman lead

That’s sexist

But they’re good

Can’t change “sexism is bad”. Can’t change “they are good”. Only thing left to change is the reason they don’t like the show. Easy-peasy.

It’s kind of insane to me that there’s an annual cap on social security payments. If your salary is high enough, you stop paying into it partway through the year. That’s ass-backwards. You shouldn’t pay anything for the first chunk of money, and then pay more as you make more.

Why aren’t the pro-brexit people being shamed? Stripped of their wealth and made to spend the rest of their miserable lives doing community service?

It’s always been pretty bad for large chunks of the population. This seems like a low point, but there have been many lows in living memory. Civil rights movement in the 60s. Vietnam war. War on drugs. Countless cruelties done to non-whites and queer folks.

Even the idealized stuff of “buy a house on one income” was more for white people than anything else. Redlining, mortgage discrimination, “and then the white people burned down our house” were all realities.

This country has always been deeply racist. The wealthy ownership class has largely been soulless ghouls. Maybe they build libraries and museums for a while, but they still oversaw tremendous suffering and poverty.

if you tell people that certain opinions are not allowed to be expressed, then they will tell you another reason they dont like the show. That is what happens. If you want the actual reason, you have to allow it to appear.

This is interesting. I feel like people are allowed to say “I don’t think women should lead”. They just don’t like the consequences of having that opinion. They want to say something cruel or afactual without anyone uninviting them from parties.

Many fans are seeing this star trek as being a vehicle for removing masculinity from the show,

If that’s true, it’s another example of conservatives having atrocious media literacy. There’s ample masculinity in the show. Perhaps they’re upset that it’s not exclusively the kind they want to see. Conservatives are not known for enjoying other perspectives and new takes.

Which I guess is your first point again. They have unwelcome beliefs so they’ll contort them into something they feel has less consequences. That’s easier than admitting maybe they’re wrong or their beliefs are bad.

This was a favorite for a long time, by the high water marks: https://thehighwatermarks.bandcamp.com/track/suicide

It feels like suicide or something worse

I’ve got this curse on me

It seems I only dream about the things

that shouldn’t come to be

always I try to find a way it feels

it seems to real to me

I just can’t let it go

I’ll let you know

Just what it means to me

As days go past and it all moves too fast

And I won’t think about it

And when I do it all comes back to you

And I don’t want to change that

Markdown fornatting is really tedious to do on the phone so I’m not going to fix that more.

But the song sounds upbeat, but it’s lyrics are a sad loop they want to break and also don’t want to.

Mergers and acquisitions should not be allowed so often.

I feel like online discourse about media is spoiled by loud fringes. There’s a distressing amount of people who don’t like women, queer folks, minorities, etc. They won’t say that’s why they don’t like a show. Some of them might not even realize. They just feel unconsciously uncomfortable when there’s a woman in charge or two men holding hands, and they reach for a more socially acceptable reason to reject it.

There was discussion about what the NYC subway announcements should say instead of “ladies and gentlemen”.

My vote was “listen up you little shits, [this train is going express until canal Street or whatever]”

I think they went with “everyone”, however.

Depends on the app. Some let you see all versions, I think.

41.3 / 50

Kind of hard, but partly confounded by not knowing the best way to use the sliders. Once you start messing around and seeing other colors, I start forgetting the original.

From the copy I thought it would be harder, and more people would be scoring badly, but the comments here seem to show most people near my score. But maybe only people who did well are commenting.

Yeah, I was going to say I saw almost this exact joke recently. That was the other one I saw.

Editing is a power not all people should be trusted with.

You all know at least one person (or are the person) who would text a yes/no like “Did you see Dave today?” and then when you write “yeah” edit their message to “Can I borrow your car?” or something you wouldn’t have said yes to.

I know a couple people here who own apartments. Median income here I think is like $115k. None of them are much more than that.

I’m pretty sure property taxes aren’t progressive and I’m baffled as to why.

Make it so like the first 100k is taxed low, and then ramp up so people with millions of property pay through the nose.

I don’t know if it’s favorite of all time but I thought of this one now:

haha and then what ;) by jawbreaker reunion. Probably gave some software nerds a headache trying to incorporate the semicolon and parenthesis. Points for a confusing band name, too.

https://jawbreakerreunion.bandcamp.com/album/haha-and-then-what

“Patches” might be my favorite track on it.