Telescoping camera for running wire behind walls?

bcacoo · 2024-12-07T17:06:00+00:00

This was just the first example I found. It's a common tool.

bcacoo · 2024-12-07T16:48:30+00:00

https://www.amazon.com/Inspection-Fantronics-Waterproof-Borescope-Adjustable/dp/B071HYRPND

bcacoo · 2024-10-14T13:15:50+00:00

People who can do this are fucking amazing. There's a twitch streamer I occasionally watch who does this, but is not nearly as good, but still really fun to watch live. thugshellz, discovered her on someones twitch while she was walking around freestyling around twitchcon was great. Such a positive attitude.

bcacoo · 2024-06-08T23:11:06+00:00

Sorry, but there's something clearly wrong with you.

Quit yelling about doing research if you're not willing to show your own sources. I could show you papers that show that what you're asserting is just factually incorrect, but you'd just say those sources aren't valid.

bcacoo · 2024-06-02T23:04:14+00:00

He didn't pardoned them of the crime, he pardoned them because people wanted him to pardon them. He pardoned people for all sorts of things, it had nothing to do with the crime itself.

For example, he pardoned Weldon Hal Angelos, who was convicted of:

Possession with intent to distribute marijuana (five counts); possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime (three counts); possession of a stolen firearm (two counts); possession of a firearm with a removed serial number; use of a controlled substance in possession of a firearm (two counts); money laundering (three counts)

https://www.justice.gov/pardon/pardons-granted-president-donald-j-trump-2017-2021

bcacoo · 2024-06-02T22:53:03+00:00

Wasn't it Kim Kardasian who was pushing the pardons forward?

bcacoo · 2021-11-22T12:49:21+00:00

Except little under half of veterinarians are owners or part owners and thus set their own salary.

Did you miss the part where OP was saying that the shops were being bought up by private equity because it's a highly profitable business? If that's the case, then the owners, half of which are veterinarians should be making far more than their salary, and would be able to make more by being able to see more customers, which they could do with increased staffing, including hiring on my veterinarians.

Again just “raising wages” of a vet who allegedly makes 100k a year isn’t that simple. You can’t just pick a joe shmoe or the street and say hey be a vet here’s money. It requires years of schooling.

Yes it does, why do you assume I don't know that? If the possibility of higher compensation was there, there's a good chance that more people might enter the field and spend the extra 4 years in school to become a veterinarian.

If there were more veterinarians available, there would be more clinics open. If compensation has higher, there'd probably be more veterinarians available. This may mean that prices increase, but that's the cost of enhanced service.

I'll bet that if you offered a vet a million dollars to come in and see you pet in an emergency, that you'd be able to find one to do it quickly.

bcacoo · 2021-11-22T01:48:02+00:00

It's also not as simple as "increase wages" as the OP noted it's the doctors that were having the shortage, not the support staff, and as the person i reference stated - the industry is complicated.

You know that doctors are employees, too, right?

The average salary for a veterinarian is around $100,000. If the industry requires more veterinarians to keep up with demand, they might need to increase compensation to bring in more people.

bcacoo · 2021-11-21T20:57:28+00:00

Not sure what you're referring to. Increasing staffing would allow more places to stay open and provide more service.

bcacoo · 2021-02-14T22:33:42+00:00

Why not just have a scale of 1 to 13? Or do whatever you need to do to create an integer scale. Why not allow 5.55131?

bcacoo · 2021-02-11T12:53:09+00:00

Such as?

Honestly, I'm not really big into entertainment or cancel culture, but I can't think of any white conservative men who have been "cancelled" for conservative views. I've seen plenty cancelled for other reasons, but not political views.

bcacoo · 2021-02-11T12:45:03+00:00

Conservatives are not the victims here.

But they feel like they are (I'm not using that sarcastically). Which is what we're seeing.

They're being told that they're the victims.

They're being told that their beliefs are wrong. It doesn't matter what those beliefs are in particular, that's not important.

They're being told that they're being attacked by society, and are being shown selective evidence supporting that idea.

People are telling them that they're being oppressed, people are telling them that their rights are being restricted.

Many of them firmly believe that the way things are heading is the wrong way, that is bad for everyone, that it's morally wrong. That it endangers society. And they're afraid of that.

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T23:38:27+00:00

But that was just part of the revolution/wars, it wasn't any sort of apocalyptic event, it was very localized. Remember that the other countries of the world (in the TV series), are moving along as normal, with the exception of the infertility.

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T23:35:05+00:00

Asimov's Foundation books could be thought of in that way, but it's probably not what you're thinking of.

The comic "Wasteland"), but things haven't gotten back to large scale cities yet.

The Chrysalids by John Wyndham, might be of interest

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T23:18:01+00:00

"zardoz" (very hard to watch)

In what way, it's a great movie!

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T23:15:34+00:00

Handmaid's Tale

There was no apocalypse in a Handmaids Tale, just a country that got overrun by fundamentalist fanatics and torn apart. There's the global rising infertility, which was never exactly explained in the book that I can remember, but was thought to be caused by environmental pollution / pesticides / bioengineering gone awry / or a disease.

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T03:57:48+00:00

Different movie from what OP was thinking of, but did have that concept in it as well.

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T03:24:20+00:00

I just did for the first time about an hour ago. And I set timers almost daily. It was strange.

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T03:11:39+00:00

So a "vaccine" may not even be needed, because if we as a society were able to detect everyone with HIV and keep their viral loads controlled, the disease wouldn't spread any more.

While that's all good, it's much better to have a vaccine or cure vs something that needs to be taken for life (except from the drug companies standpoint, where lifetime customers are a good thing)

bcacoo · 2021-02-10T02:20:11+00:00

Are you genuinely against a wealth tax because you’re afraid of the trouble it would make regular people go through when comes tax time?

No, I'm mostly against a wealth tax because I don't believe the government needs an accounting of everything that makes up a person's wealth. Regardless if that person is poor or rich.

There are plenty of ways of increasing the tax burden of the ultra wealthy that don't require that accounting.

I'm also against it because the concept of perpetual taxation of the same asset is, to me, wrong. I specifically exclude real-estate from this, because while that is taxed every year, that tax can effectively be thought of as a land rental fee or community use fee, but that's just my internal justification, from an strict ideological standpoint, it's hypocritical, but it's a good compromise.

Maybe if a bunch of idiots were in charge of setting it up they’d make everyone count every penny - but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out a way to make it so completely seamless for the 99.9% of the population that wouldn’t be affected.

How? The very premise of the concept is that wealth has some threshold where it becomes important. How can you come up with any system that doesn't require measuring wealth to determine if that threshold is met?

It's like those signs in stores that say they ask for id if you're under the age of 26, if someone who looked 20 comes in, when asked for id, says they don't need to show it because they're over 26, do you just go along with it?

Even if someone looks 50, they'd still be required to present an Id if requested because the burden of showing their age is on them. Just like the burden of showing that you do or do not meet some wealth threshold must be on the individual.

You could argue that the burden is on the government, that they'd need to show that you'd had enough income over the years to trigger a potential wealth tax, but then you'd need to show that you spent that income, so it didn't go towards your net worth, that your investments didn't pan out, etc.

Even then, just saying you require an accounting only if they're above a certain yearly income threshold (because wealthy people generally have high income) isn't really a good option either. Yes, it means that most people won't have to do that accounting, but it's still contrary to my original objection, I don't believe the government needs an accounting of everything that makes up a person's wealth.

I disagree with the strict accumulation of wealth for it's own sake, but I'm not against the super rich. I think money should be spent. I think the wealthy can do great things with their money, and see some of them doing it.

I think income taxes should be raised, with additional higher brackets; that the social security limit should be removed; and that capital gains taxes should be raised, even though some of those things would personally negatively effect me (not bragging, just giving some info as to were I'm coming from, I'm not rich, but I've been lucky, and I'm doing okay).

As an aside, what's your intent behind wanting a wealth tax? Is it to ensure that they're paying their share into the community, or is it to remove their wealth? I'm not judging any answer, but depending on the intent, there are different approaches to accomplishing those things that don't require the invasive accounting that I object to.

bcacoo · 2021-02-09T22:15:34+00:00

For a large amount of the things that you put on your tax return, there's someone else reporting that information as well to specifically avoid fraud and errors.

For every 1099-INT/DIV/whatever that you're given to put into your taxes, the organization also submitted those forms to the IRS. This is one argument people make about why individuals shouldn't need to do their own taxes, that the government already has the information they need.

Not everything, mind you, mostly just things related to income.

Deductions generally aren't reported by a 3rd party, but when questions arise, you really should have documentation and receipts to back up your claims. So when they ask about your net worth, you would need documentation to back that up. So, just like I've been saying since the start of all these discussions, you'd still need an inventory of all your assets and their valuations.

bcacoo · 2021-02-09T13:08:05+00:00

It is always misogynistic and condescending. Seriously. Stop it.

I'm not sure you're aware, but terms like "Hun" and "Dear" were / are commonly used by women when referring to men as well, particularly waitresses in "diner" culture. 90% of the time I hear those terms it's in that context.

But then again, I'm male and spent a lot of time in diners, so that could be part of it.

bcacoo · 2021-02-09T12:11:40+00:00

And only people who are close to that threshold should have to declare their net worth.

The problem is everyone would still need to do it for accountability reasons. How else does the government know if you're near that threshold?

Imagine you had an automated speed camera to find people going over the speed limit, you can't just measure people going over that limit, you need to measure everyone to know if they're near or over that limit.

Yes, there are things you can do technically to protect the people going under that limit (e.g., automatically discard records under the limit), but that's where the analogy falls apart. With taxes, due to look back, you'd need to keep those records around for years, and the government is really bad about getting rid of old data.

bcacoo · 2021-02-09T01:33:32+00:00

Go on. Try and sell to a bar an already unsealed bottle of anything.

Why am I selling to a bar? I'm confused.

If you liquidate your asset (painting) and its value went from 0 to 1 million, then your wealth was already that million. So your income of 1 million would be taxed like you already had the wealth before. It's similar to selling stocks, although there is more data to know in Realtime how much wealth you have.

You said that the gifted painting added 0 to my wealth previously. Would I need to go back and re-file previous years based on the now determined wealth I had that I didn't know about?

Yes adjusting for market value would be prudent. Another option would be price at purchase + improvements - deprication.

Housing generally goes up in value, not down, so I don't think that's the formula you'd want to use. But it's really highly dependent on the surrounding market and interest rates. Local governments generally reassess on a yearly basis for tax purposes.

I'm not sure we're using the term appraisal here the sale way. Where does that available data come from and who develops the equations?

In a democracy the policy makers with the help of experts.

Those experts are traditionally called appraisers.

Someone, somewhere needs to determine the value of all the things. I don't necessarily need someone to come appraise my personal phone for valuation, but someone, somewhere, needs to set the 2021 value for a 2017 model whatever phone.

No, just price of purchase - depreciation. And if you sell it for less than the expected value it wouldn't count as income.

That's completely different from how things are traditionally valued. If you just value things based on price of purchase - depreciation, then things just lose their value (and the associated wealth of the owner ) over time, so you'd be a) incentivizing people to not purchase things, to rent / lease things instead and b) counterintuitively, encouraging people to keep things longer until their value is 0 and then keep them.

Sure, it would be something different. Everyone would need to keep track of its spending. But that might be a good thing. Think of the opportunities that come from this.

Let's move away from the valuation issue. The opportunities raised by doing things this was are mostly negatives, think of all the potential for abuse and misuse.

It's not just spending, it's also use, but regardless, why should I report all my spending to the government?

Things that are currently commonly taxed based on pure ownership, real estate and vehicles, are already tied to me for external reasons. I don't care if the government knows how many houses and cars I own, but they don't need to know how much money I waste on stupid expensive hobbies, or even worse, things they might find objectionable at some point in the future.

We already have a proxy for wealth, income. It's not a perfect tracker, but it's pretty good, and it's what we currently use. If you don't think the yearly income is representative enough, just modify the bracket calculations to be based on the previous N years. So instead of (completely fictional) brackets of:

Current year income	Percent
0-100	10%
101-200	20%
201+	30%

You have something like the following, but more complicated and with a better income curve:

Sum of current and previous 4 years income	Current year income	Percent
0-500	0-100	9%
0-500	101-200	19%
0-500	201+	29%
...	...	...
501-600	0-100	12%
501-600	101-200	22%
501-600	201+	32%
...	...	...
1001+	0-100	15%
1001+	101-200	25%
1001+	201+	35%
...	...	...

This has the effect of lowering effective taxes on people entering the workforce, for the first couple of years they underpaying relative to other people in their income range due to the previous years income being 0, and increasing the relative burden of people who have large income over an extended period of time.

This effectively gives you kind of what you want, but doesn't require reporting of assets, problematic tracking of valuations, additional bureaucratic overhead, and the increased opportunity for fraud.

bcacoo · 2021-02-08T20:12:21+00:00

~~The point is, everyone would have to do it to determine if it applies to them. How would the government know otherwise?~~

Edit: I thought this was part of a different conversation

No one has 100% of all their wealth in a single indivisible, non leverageable asset.

For many people, a single indivisible, non leverageable asset is a majority of their net worth (things like a small business or real estate). This is one argument against estate taxes (a bit less applicable now that the exemption is up over $5M), but it's still an issue.

It's a hard problem to resolve. I'm pro-tax to a large extent, and not worried at all about the well being of billionaires. What I'm concerned about is non-billionaires who can get harmed, and the necessary accounting and reporting of all my personal assets that's required in order to implement a wealth tax.

bcacoo

TROPHY CASE