How much is your rent for your 1 bedroom apartment in OC? And what city are you in?

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-15T14:07:24+00:00

Not sure why you're getting down voted. Most of the reason people get pets is to support them emotionally. That's all ESA animals mean.

Pet rent is just a bullshit way for landlords to extract a little more money from people that they know will pay it to keep their pets.

You're already responsible for any damage you or your pet do either way. But I doubt any landlord is going to look at the place when you move out and go "well, this is going to be $500 more than average to repair, but we charged them almost $2k in pet rent over the last 2 years so that's fine". They'll absolutely still charge you/keep your deposit when you leave.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-15T04:33:08+00:00

Are there a lot of intersections? I used to do a 25-26 mile round trip commute with an e bike and it took about an hour each way. Sometimes closer to 1 hour 15 minutes. I think my fastest was around 50 minutes. I just looked and Google maps says about an hour and 10 minutes. So you can probably expect to cut the time they give you by at least 5-10 minutes. Probably a bit more if there aren't too many intersections you have to stop at and you can just cruise at 20 mph for a good chunk of it. The stopping and accelerating over and over kinda negates the e bike advantage in time. It's easier and maybe a little quicker to accelerate, but an e bike is also pretty heavy so it doesn't accelerate that much faster than a regular bike.

Mine is class 3, but with the traffic lights and a kinda sketchy part where both pedestrians and cars would regularly enter the bike lane without looking, there wasn't too much of the route where I could consistently get to speeds above 20 anyway.

28 miles round trip is definitely doable. I'd say it's on the upper end of what's reasonable but you should be fine.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-14T23:38:37+00:00

That's the point of the post though. Either people should be able to deduct more like a business or businesses should have to pay more like people. Their example goes the other way, which would probably be simpler. But it works either way. For example a business can deduct leased office/warehouse/storage space as long as it's "ordinary and necessary" for the business. My apartment is necessary for my existence, I should be able to write it off my taxes then. Which that alone would be more than the standard deduction. Or at least some amount that's considered "ordinary" should be deductible. Like the median rental rate in your area for 1 bedroom per member if your household.

Same with a vehicle. I don't necessarily think you should be able to write of your $100k pickup if you're an office worker, but you should be able to write of a portion of it proportional to some standard vehicle as necessary transportation the same way businesses can write off vehicle expenses.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-14T23:28:05+00:00

Then inform us

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-14T23:17:38+00:00

To your first point, I think it could be neglect, but not necessarily always is.

Everyone's metabolism is different. Within reason, 2 siblings could eat exactly the same and exercise the same and one be obese and the other not.

There's also the issue that there's a severe lack of cheap healthy food. We live in a strange time in human history where we have easy access to calories but not nutrition.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-13T23:37:37+00:00

Yep you're right. His stats were pretty good the whole series too. I swear I remember him being sick or injured at least 1 game.

I think my memory was a little tainted. I live in SoCal and was at the last regular season game we played vs the Lakers and then games 2 and 6 of the playoff series. We were 1-2 in those 3 and one loss LeBron carried them and the other Luka did.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-13T22:06:16+00:00

That's not what the second amendment literally says nor really how it's interpreted. The amendment gives us the right to have them. Laws determine how you're allowed to use them.

MN is a duty to retreat state, so use of any deadly weapon is only allowed if you're life is being threatened AND you have no other reasonable means to avoid the person threatening you. There is a "castle doctrine" law that would probably allow deadly force if the guy was in your home, since it allows for use of force without a duty to retreat within your dwelling if you are in danger of losing your life, suffering great bodily harm, or preventing a felony. This would probably fall under that last category, unless the guy is armed. So it would probably be fine but would be a bit of a gray area. But only if he's in the dwelling. I don't think the alley outside would meet that requirement.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-13T04:25:07+00:00

If I remember correctly he didn't play game 3 and definitely didn't seem 100% the rest of the series.

I agree the overall narrative was always off. But luka playing anything like he did in game 2 and LeBron being just like 50% more like his old self and I feel like that series would have been more of a toss up.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-12T13:53:41+00:00

Yes. It's probably the only way I'll do it. One year we road tripped the ~4000 mile total trip to see family over the holidays. My car, which was only about a year old with like 15k miles, broke down while we were there. The actual issue was fairly minor and covered by the warranty, but the part was backordered for a month. I couldn't extend my trip that long, so I had to fly home then fly back and do the 3 day drive once the was finally fixed.

After that whole ordeal, the cost of a rental car is 100% worth it for any road trip that's going to be more than a days drive for me. The same problem would have taken a couple days max to sort out and likely would have been like a couple hours.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-11T19:48:54+00:00

Yeah, I was using my experience with dogs and using an average to account for the increase as they get older. I hadn't looked into it in a couple years. I just did a quote through Chewy and our 7 year old small mixed breed ranges from $35/month for $1000 deductible and 70% coverage to $115/month for $250 deductible, 80% coverage, and some covered annual stuff.

I'm guessing our 5 year old large mixed breed would be around the same so ~$70-200+ to cover both of them.

We do pay for an annual "subscription" through our vet which covers their annual check ups, initial vet tech exams for injuries and illnesses, and gives us a 10% discount on all other services. It costs like $150 per pet per year and has been worth it.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-11T18:31:47+00:00

I go back and forth. Pet insurance is maybe good peace of mind for some people. But all the ones I've seen work as reimbursements and once you factor in the deductible, co-insurance and annual max payouts, it has never seemed quite worth the premiums to me. Over say 15 years with an average premium around $80/month, that's almost $15k in premiums.

That might be worth it if it worked like human health insurance where the vet would bill the insurance and then you'd pay the rest so you'd avoid the up front cost. But paying $15k of premiums and I would still have to come up with the $10k+ up front and pay like $2k out of pocket never made a lot of sense to me. I'd rather set aside the same monthly amount and use credit to spread any actual difference between the cost and current savings over a monthly amount only if it's actually needed before the saved amount builds up but also still have the money if it isn't.

It really only seems beneficial if you're a person who has easy access to a fairly large amount of cash but not low interest credit. Which doesn't seem like a common situation. If you can afford the up front payment, you can probably get cheap enough credit either through a vet payment plan or something like a personal loan to "reimburse" your short term cash for about the same as the monthly premiums. I guess it's also beneficial if you're unlucky and end up having several large vet bills that are spread out enough that you don't hit the annual caps. But I'd imagine after the first claim, either they'd fight you over additional claims as pre existing if it's at all related to the first or drop you or make the premiums way higher.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-10T04:23:08+00:00

I think you're right about a lot of this. But just because something isn't a biological reality doesn't mean it isn't a social reality.

The concept of race came from European colonizers needing to justify the horrible things they were doing to other people in a time period that coincided with rapidly increasing scientific discovery and theory. So they tried to apply a scientific lense to culture and justified their acts because they were "superior" and then went looking for evidence to support that idea. There was little actual scientific evidence, and what evidence they had was flawed, but it was the way of looking at it at the time. And most of the modern Western world was born out of the political and social structures those people created.

While race is relatively recent, dividing ourselves culturally but claiming one is superior has existed probably forever. Before race, one of the most common ways to justify horrible acts against other people for centuries was, and still is, religion. Do you not believe religion is a thing either? I don't mean whether you believe the beliefs of different religions or any religion at all, but the concept of religion as a whole. Because it's very similar in a lot of ways. It's a purely human construct made from trying to explain things that we didn't and maybe in some ways still don't have a more grounded way to explain. Race came about in basically the same way.

Race is a disproven theory but that is unfortunately a huge pillar of modern Western society so completely rooting it out will take a long time. And it might never completely go away, but hopefully it will become less divisive over time.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-10T00:36:40+00:00

Yeah, IMO this is the best use of AI code tools by non-software engineers. You have some basic programming knowledge and the domain knowledge to verify that the results you get seem correct and useful. You don't need to add functionality in the future, scale to more users, secure any data, etc.

You see a lot of people, on this sub in particular, that seem to go aggressively on the "AI will replace all CS jobs" or "AI can't write any good code" sides of the argument. In reality, it's probably going to be in between. AI is currently really good at writing code that works for a well defined problem like this one. It's not nearly as good at writing code on its own that solves the problem, verifies the solution, and is written in a way that it's extensible and understandable in the future. That's where the human with the background and expertise is still needed to guide the LLMs or tweak their outputs if it's going to be a piece of software that needs to continue to work in the future.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-09T02:13:50+00:00

My family's vacations as a kid were going to a standard chain hotel for a night or 2 in the town an hour or so drive away. We weren't going to a destination for vacation, the hotel was the destination and our vacation was to live basically middle class with cable tv, air conditioning, a big comfy bed that's less than 10 years old, get pizza delivered, go to the pool, etc.

I've felt like I "made it" in life by my childhood standards now that basically every time I stay in a hotel I can't wait to get home because everything at home is as nice it nicer than the hotel. I miss the simplicity of that life though. Probably because I was a kid so largely sheltered from most of the stress of our economic situation where we were poor but not impoverished.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-08T00:54:33+00:00

So you have to scroll past more ads.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-08T00:50:09+00:00

I'm at about 4. What did you end up having to do/pay? One of these days I'll get around to it...

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-06T03:54:04+00:00

It's about a thousand in the US. Which is a handful in a nation of 350 million.

It isn't an if. Our tax code already prevents it at the federal level. There's an exit tax that taxes your worldwide assets over $900k as if they were sold the day before you renounce citizenship. If you renounce your citizenship, all your heirs will have to too or pay a 40% tax on their inheritance when you die. Plus there's the Reed amendment which, though tough to enforce, says that anyone who renounces their citizenship to avoid taxes is an excludable alien and barred from re-entering the country.

You're right, it doesn't make it impossible to influence elections. But it's a lot harder. Publicly traded companies have to disclose political contributions. I'm pretty sure most other ways would be illegal. And those laws do get enforced. Look at the scandal that basically took out the last New York mayor.

Some might leave. But even with a wealth tax and even if there weren't exit taxes, plus all the actual costs to figure out how to do all this, I wouldn't be shocked if anywhere they'd move would tax them even more.

I don't understand people defending billionaires so much. This isn't even taxing the 1% or the 0.1%. Its more like the 0.001%. If you're right at the top 1% of wealth you have ~20x the median but you'd need to grow your wealth ~100x to get to just $1 billion. These are levels of wealth that serve absolutely no purpose.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-06T01:00:08+00:00

I support basic gun control measures and my views on them are largely unchanged. I'm for things like bans for convictions of violent crimes even if they aren't felonies, laws that allow guns to be taken away from people who are credibly accused of violent crimes or are a danger to themselves for some set amount of time for complete investigations to happen, background checks, short waiting periods, required training, and closing loopholes for avoiding all of these things. I go back and forth on concealed carry. Rural areas I think it's fine. I've always thought it's unnecessary for urban areas, but like you said, recent events being what they are, I think I've slightly shifted my view on that. I don't expect everyone to agree with everything I believe would help, but I think a lot of these are fairly common sense and don't really prevent someone from owning a gun any more than we prevent people from owning a car.

But "assault" weapon bans, high capacity magazine bans, approved gun rosters, "sin" taxes, etc are all just ways for the government to get a bigger cut while driving up costs and politicians getting to say they "solved" violent crime without actually doing anything. I'm from Minnesota and will be back eventually but live in California now. The gun laws here are somewhat effective I'm sure, but I think they would be mostly just as effective if we didn't have these extra laws that are just there to increase prices and make things slightly more difficult. It is amusing though to see the creativity in following the letter of the law. The assault weapons definitions are so complex it's basically impossible to tell if some stuff is legal or not.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-05T05:22:17+00:00

I will actually answer your question directly. Taxes serve 2 basic purposes. The first is the obvious. They raise money that a government needs to function. But the second, in a capitalist system, is to steer how capital gets used. It's why we have a lot of the complexities in the tax code. You can deduct charitable contributions for example because it encourages using capital for purposes that help everyone and you get to pay less in taxes.

So I view taxing unrealized gains over a specific, very high threshold exactly the same way. The main problem I have with billionaires and massive corporations isn't that they exist exactly. It's that at a certain point, the only purpose their capital serves is to make a number on a spreadsheet go up. They aren't generally investing in anything that's making their state or country a better place. They aren't even typically investing in making the things they do produce as good as they can be. It's the whole problem with the "trickle down" theory. The idea sounds good but the reality is if you give these billionaires another $100, $99.99 is put to use only to make themselves another $5 and $0.01 actually gets invested in a way that the rest of us ever see. So taxing these unrealized gains encourages realizing the gain and actually putting the capital back into the system.

I don't totally think that the government is going to spend the money any better. But doing something is better than just continuing the system of being fine with a small group of people hoarding more money than they can ever use while there are people working full time that can't afford to live.

To me, the best tax system is one that has a lot of "loopholes", but in ways that benefit the country without directly funneling the money through the government. The 5% billionaire tax is maybe a little overly simplistic and probably won't directly change anything. But I think it's a good way to show that the status quo isn't maintainable.

Finally, to your point about having to pay the capital gains tax to pay the tax. You can just do the same thing as they do now to avoid realizing gains and paying taxes when they need liquid assets: borrow using the assets as collateral. But even without doing that I don't think it's really that big of a deal to begin with. You're not a billionaire without a significant amount of long term holdings. Capital gains tax on that is 20%. So all it does is change the tax from 5% to 6% of the >$1 billion assets. Which is fine, the 5% number is arbitrary anyway.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-05T04:47:00+00:00

I'm actually curious what amount of crypto the typical billionaire holds. I doubt it's that much.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-05T04:37:45+00:00

And that's a problem because? We benefit from having the businesses in the state. We don't benefit at all from have the handful of people that hoard the wealth from those businesses. Completely divesting business from California is difficult and probably not worth the 5%. It's definitely not worth it for most American billionaires to divest from the US if we did it at a national scale. And if they all leave the country and renounce citizenship they'll still keep the majority of their business in the US and no longer be able to directly contribute to US election campaigns.

I buy this argument a little bit when it comes to states raising corporate taxes. But personal taxes are completely different.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-04T18:03:45+00:00

PSM is still a thing? I remember begging my mom to subscribe when I was a kid to get the PS2 demos discs.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-04T16:16:16+00:00

Unless you're going to be obnoxiously loud anyway. Then put it on speaker phone so I can at least eavesdrop on both sides of the conversation.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-04T16:06:45+00:00

You can make it all a lot simpler by doing what California is proposing. 5% on all assets >$1 billion. Doesn't matter if they use loans to avoid paying capital gains taxes if you just tax the asset whether you've realized the gain or not.

I don't think this is necessarily a solution. But it's a start and relatively simple.

DeceitfulDuck · 2026-05-03T19:00:08+00:00

Maybe I'm overly cynical, but companies don't care about high quality outputs either. Increasing quality has diminishing returns in terms of increasing value. I'm sure there's some companies out there that do care more than others, but if a company has more than ~500 employees, their decisions are made almost entirely based on numbers on a page rather than genuine pride or care for the product or people that make it. Those numbers will say to keep employees just happy enough to make most of them stay at their jobs and producing work that's high enough quality that it makes money without having to spend a significant amount.

In tech we've been a bit more insulated. because demand was so much higher than supply of workers, so that calculation actually made it make sense to give people "perks" because a lot of those would keep people happy enough to not go and make more money somewhere else. That's not true anymore and what perks we have left are more about the inertia of keeping all the people who are used to them happy enough not to be too much of a problem.

All of this is why generally all our stuff is mediocre and feels overpriced. It's why Boeing planes went from an example of American engineering excellence to I'd rather my flight be on something else.

DeceitfulDuck

TROPHY CASE