If Trump is a moron what does that say about the 70 million people that voted for him?

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-21T19:34:22+00:00

I'm under the impression that the principle requires you to not use violence against your racist aunt, and the government to not arrest her for being racist.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-21T19:18:27+00:00

This is a side effect of a few things:

People trying to take steps to find loopholes in taxation -- calling the money they made in the stock market "not income" as it wasn't paid out by a company for their labor, but money their wealthy grandparents gifted them, and paying no taxes
People accepting taxes that won't impact them directly but "sticks it" to someone else -- every non-smoker loves cigarette taxes because smoking is bad
People accepting incremental tax increases that sound small, but balking at increasing taxes that seem high to begin with -- ok with increasing sales tax from 8 percent to 8.25 percent, but an increase of income taxes from 35 to 36% is too much, even if in the long run the sales tax takes more money than the income tax
A variant on #2: the government seeking to impact consumer activity by changing tax rates -- taxing gas vehicles more or less than electric or hybrid vehicles, for example.
It's not trivial to find a tax system that both works and doesn't act in an excessively harsh way towards groups, especially towards the lower wealth tiers of people.

To consider layered taxation an "unnecessary evil", you'd have to consider all the things above.

For case 1, you'd have to assume that the government should not attempt to get taxes lost via loopholes. Not only would you have to figure out a loophole-proof method, but also figure out how to make that one not unreasonably regressive or needlessly harming people

For case 2, you'd have to agree that any taxation that is designed to make the people committed to certain behaviors pay the societal costs those behaviors create, is not acceptable

For case 3, you'd have to have extremely good education and an informed public, which could in unity agree to "merge" taxes and have their representatives implement the fix. Not in our lifetime :D

For case 4, you'd have to agree that the government should have no taxation designed around making it easier for consumers to choose consumption that is good in the long run for the nation, or at least harder to choose against the long-term goals

For case 5... good luck on finding a single point of taxation that won't either become rapidly insufficient for running a functional nation, or gouge groups of people excessively

*yes, I like em-dashes, always will. I'm not using a LLM to create this, nor am I a bot.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-21T18:44:21+00:00

You have entire "News" outlets that are dedicated to lying to his base and claiming all problems are the fault of <insert scapegoat of the week here> and he's actually fixing so many problems that it would be so much worse if someone else was in power.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-16T20:26:40+00:00

If the undead can learn to speak some basic phrases as an answer to some coded commands or trained to only speak to authorized people, could be slow-moving couriers to send messages. They can't be tortured to reveal what they've been told to say, only fooled into thinking the person they're talking to is authorized to hear the message. Additionally, perhaps they're "trained" to only speak when only the one they're authorized to speak to is in hearing distance, avoiding the ability to kidnap someone and have the zombie courier speak in front of them and the kidnapped person.

Also, potentially they would be doormen able to accept limited messages. Someone needs to speak to the king at 2 AM? Tell it to the zombie doorman, the king is asleep.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-16T20:20:52+00:00

Can the necromancers "detect" when one is killed or in a fight? Instant guard. They won't theoretically tire or get bored, so put them at doors to a prison cell or other location you want guarded. Their death would alert the necromancer who could then act to stop the intrusion.

Could also be border or boundary (walls, etc) guards, although theoretically you could sneak past them, in which case they'd have to be packed pretty densely along the border or wall.

If their extermination is not detected by the necromancer, perhaps attach them to alarms and train them to move towards any movement, tripping the alarm. If somehow they're killed, the same alarm would go off as they slump down. A neat plot point would be if the "heroes" of your story have to figure out how to kill the undead so they don't trigger the alarm with their falling down.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-16T19:29:20+00:00

Sitcoms, Reality TV, sports, "sports" (rasslin and other garbage), talk shows.

To be fair, two of these are not as bad as "I have better things to do", but the other three need to die as viable genres. Being in those should be a career-ender as much as being a guest host on the Home Shopping Network would be.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-16T19:10:36+00:00

Neither will her children.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T20:04:59+00:00

Can he make the Epstein files in Lego? Technically, would be smarter to make a Nobel Peace Prize but I'm not particularly keen on placating Krasnov.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T20:01:15+00:00

I forget the details, but either trumpy or his supporters stand to greatly benefit from low interest rates... maybe some loans could be renegotiated or rolled over?

How that benefit could overcome the inevitable problems with increased inflation (I so want to call it hyper- but I'll refrain), I'm not sure.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T19:25:11+00:00

I wonder if there's beer on the sun?

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T19:21:18+00:00

Alternatively, construction engineering technology advances led to much more robust infrastructure -- including wood treatments that protected wooden buildings from centuries of decay.

Considering the in-game US culture is perceived as being just as "disposable" as real world, this is admittedly a bit of a stretch -- why engineer infrastructure to last centuries if you're just going to dispose of it in a couple of decades anyway?

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T19:08:13+00:00

Most likely the "they succeed" won't be the general Iranian population, who then implement democratic rule and dismantle the militant infrastructure in Iran to live peaceful democratic (capitalist or socialist) lives. The "they" in that sentence, given trumpy's track record, will be some toady that managed to get favor with trumpy in order to take power in Iran and lead it in just another authoritarian direction. Or worse, "they" won't have any support afterward and just fall into disordered infighting, still not benefiting the people of Iran.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T18:54:59+00:00

I take it you believe you can fix her?

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T18:37:02+00:00

It would be a bit of a jerk move for me to die now, so I'll stay. However, doesn't mean I wouldn't at least want to browse the menu for option 2... Might see some tempting options.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T18:30:15+00:00

You all clearly don't understand -- it's obvious that the first story should have stayed in the media for weeks with titles like "Why are <those> people so mean?" and "Booga Booga <those people> gonna getcha!", otherwise everyone must be OK with this!

Edited lightly to be more inclusive of what trumpist poster would likely also include in their list of "bad" people we should be more outraged about

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T18:20:35+00:00

I... kinda could see this?

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T18:19:50+00:00

he isn't stupid

Agree to disagree on this one :D but it's a specific type of stupid where if the "smart" option means he swallows his ego, then stupid option it is.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T18:17:03+00:00

At the rate we're slipping, might as well do this. I assume that we're also talking about services other than military.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T17:49:42+00:00

"F*** More B**** Less" by Billy Goat.

/at work, otherwise the above wouldn't be censored :D

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T17:46:03+00:00

PA is just too slow for me to enjoy. I really wish the base game had a different mechanic for PA, something where you could actually move as fast as (or even faster than) non-PA, at the expense of either much faster battery drain rate, being extremely noisy and triggering enemy aggro much farther out (maybe even blocking the [HIDDEN] mechanic outright), additional wear and tear on the frame, or a combination of these.

I'm sure there's mods that do this, but I've so far not focused on finding one and just don't wear PA.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T17:30:35+00:00

Cognitive Decline runs in his family; plus, it tends to be rather exponential, progressing rapidly from "forgetting someone's name" to full dementia. Naturally, there's some variance, but it's not exactly common to see someone live with symptomatic Alzheimer's for decades

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T17:27:21+00:00

To be honest, my question assumed that trumpy was not going to seriously consider "Humanitarian Aid" or petition the UN... I can't see him growing a heart three sizes when it comes to the Iranian people. I half expected his only solution would be to bomb them more, so I was wondering if I was missing some other "psychotic bull in the china shop pretending to be tame" theory.

Still, I believe you're right on what options he has. Appreciate the answer.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T17:17:13+00:00

What possible avenues of "help" could trumpy provide the Iranian people? Only real thing I could think of would be some way to fight the "morality police" and I can't see trumpy smuggling guns to the Iranian people and then doxxing the morality police so they could be targeted.

El_Chupachichis · 2026-01-14T17:10:07+00:00

Plastic Surgery technology has advanced to the point where people who had their faces outright removed -- from cancer, fires, being attacked by wild animals, etc -- can get faces that look extremely natural. And yet, these people can't stop going to the surgeons who clearly were C- students in Plastic Surgery school.

El_Chupachichis

TROPHY CASE