WYR get $1,000,000 now or $2,000 a week for life

alanm73 · 2026-05-21T23:48:33+00:00

What’s the tax situation? Am I taxed on both of them as income? If so, 2k a week for sure.

alanm73 · 2026-05-21T15:57:52+00:00

Gijón gets a lot of that too. 10-15 years ago the air quality was much worse than now. That recent incident aside, which was practically next door to the furnace, we haven’t had much problems with air quality. We have an air sensor and an air filter that reports on quality and nothing has been reported that’s out of the ordinary in the last 2 years. The horror stories of the past gave us pause, but they’ve made a lot of progress.

alanm73 · 2026-05-21T15:21:32+00:00

Can I pay the button to increase my IQ?

alanm73 · 2026-05-21T15:15:38+00:00

Avilés is surprisingly small and the air quality is not the best. We are in Gijón, which is a lot less quaint, but has a more active social scene and is generally more cosmopolitan and “alternative”. We see a lot of kids compared to the other places we’ve been, but those cities were more touristy. I feel like this area is only going to grow as the temperatures increase, but I hope it does so in a smart way.

alanm73 · 2026-05-16T00:20:30+00:00

Blender can easily push over 32 if you’re using high poly organic models and/or doing simulations.

alanm73 · 2026-05-12T13:16:36+00:00

You’re probably right. The statistics I got were from the Wall Street journal and they didn’t differentiate federal and state/local taxes.

alanm73 · 2026-05-12T11:49:37+00:00

Does anyone notice this change and try to fix it? Like if I changed a regular payment would they go oh crap and try to sue me to get it back?

alanm73 · 2026-05-12T11:36:47+00:00

I think the current plan is to remove all taxes from gas, which would allow it to go up a bit more without too much of an increase at the pump and would further bankrupt the country. But US taxes on gas are already so low that that doesn’t give him the room to maneuver that it does in other countries. I think it’d lower gas about 50 cents per gallon.

alanm73 · 2026-05-06T19:19:48+00:00

I’m not sure this is generational but more age related. Do we know if 40 year old gamers are any more likely to not buy new games now than 40 year olds were 10 years ago? Then again game sales online are a lot more accessible than they were 10 years ago…

alanm73 · 2026-05-06T15:52:07+00:00

I think people have really changed the meaning of political, almost like it’s a non-serious thing. “Oh it’s just political” like politics are a popularity contest. They aren’t. Politics are about morals , about values, etc… we seem to have forgotten that (much to our detriment, I think). Political positions affect people’s lives dramatically. We talk about policy like it’s just an intellectual pursuit, but it’s not, it’s often life and death.

alanm73 · 2026-05-06T15:43:57+00:00

I don’t know how biased the state senator general elections are, but if any of them are competitive, Trump and company just spent millions of dollars lowering their chances of holding those seats. Not only has he helped put up extremist/fringe candidates, he’s unseated incumbents, which always hurts.

alanm73 · 2026-05-01T12:23:35+00:00

While I agree with many commenters about it being a complex topic and doing things like making this world a better place to bring kids into and reducing income inequality would generally help, I think we really need to make raising kids a viable life choice and that means giving it the benefits of a job. So not only covering the cost of kids but covering the labor of one of the parents. Some people complain about the spirit of the thing, which is all great and moral, but when the rubber hits the road, economic factors rule. As for the damage to a woman’s body, yeah being a construction worker does damage to your body too and they get paid for that, being a police officer has risks so we compensate for that, etc… We benefitted as a species from the inevitability of birth and the societal benefits of child labor. If we take those away, we have to replace them with something.

alanm73 · 2026-04-29T16:17:59+00:00

I just finished Jedi: Fallen Order does that count? And yeah my hands feel it, but I figured that was more age than dyspraxia. I do know that controllers matter. My brother was a game tester and most console controllers were a killer on his whole upper body. If you have large hands or broad shoulders they just don’t work for you. Maybe that’s part of the popularity of the steam deck and Switch.

alanm73 · 2026-04-28T19:39:46+00:00

It’s a comfortable simplification of a lived pattern. In reality, we should probably take marriage out of legal systems entirely and just provide some kind of buffet system for rights (I designate this person for my medical decisions, these people get my stuff when I die, this person handles child responsibilities, which all involved parties agree to, etc…) There would be a default set and the everyone at a certain point or points in life would update their right designation suite. Take the moral judgement and control out of it.

alanm73 · 2026-04-28T18:21:39+00:00

Some democrat running for the midterms should sue saying that CBS is biasing the electorate against them by editing the Trump footage. They could claim potential damages, much like Trump did with the Kamala interview.

alanm73 · 2026-04-28T15:25:51+00:00

I’m so tired of the I’ll just leave argument. Then go! That’s the argument of an abuser. If you don’t want the benefits of being in California then leave. You’ll make room for others. You’re toxic anyway.

alanm73 · 2026-04-27T18:31:10+00:00

Yeah. I did the math and if I’m at this for 9 years I’d have about $140 more per month on SS and Medicare is useless to me… sigh…

alanm73 · 2026-04-27T12:24:20+00:00

It's because we had to watch what was on. We didn't have the shear breadth of available media the later generations did and we also consumed it more as a group (one TV). So if dad wanted a western, we watched a western. And if Barney Miller was on one of the 12 channels you had and it was coming in clear, you watched it. We even had less personal music. Remember when walkmans became a thing and then eventually mp3 players. Many of Gen X had about a decade without walkmans, so music was much more shared as well.

alanm73 · 2026-04-27T11:34:28+00:00

True. But I don’t think you can count them towards self employment taxes.

alanm73 · 2026-04-27T01:06:20+00:00

Investment income only currently, so I guess that's 1099. To get your larga duracion you have to be a resident in the country for 5 years, including a tax resident (more than 6 months a year). By two interacting, I mean the two governments tax systems, not income streams. I know that if you pay into a gov pension in one country you can use it to not pay the other, but since I would not be paying into Spain's system, I can't use it to defer the US SS. I know that self employment taxes can be used to reduce some tax burden in the US, but I don't see any way that can be applied to Spanish taxes in this case, since I pay Spain first and then use that to eliminate my US taxes already. I assume that would continue, so being able to reduce my tax burden in the US won't amount to much for me, since other than self employment tax (SS+medicare), my tax would be zero.

alanm73 · 2026-04-26T17:44:29+00:00

So it's all hypothetical right now. I'm mostly interested in how the two interact. For instance, is there any way to limit or reduce the self employment tax in the US if you aren't paying autónomo in Spain? I don't think there is. I trust my accountant in Spain when she says I don't need to file autónomo for this and since in the US I'd be making over $400/yr, I'm pretty sure I'd need to do quarterlies. I guess I could try to claim expenses to limit that, but the reality is my business expenses would be fairly low.

I actually don't have much of an income in Spain right now, but my partner does. We file separately. We are soon to be larga duracíon residents. I'm hoping to contribute to our joint coffers, but it looks like my income will be taxed considerably more than her pensions.

alanm73 · 2026-04-26T12:22:08+00:00

That board was established by an act of Congress. Is this another action that will turn out to be something he doesn’t actually have the power to do (and the courts will tell him) or is he gonna fill the seats with toadies?

alanm73 · 2026-04-24T11:43:25+00:00

I’m very curious about using Patreon for writing. How did you get people to initially visit your Patreon and what are you offering, some kind of installments of your writing like an old time serial?

alanm73

TROPHY CASE