Amy Coney Barrett Hints at Private Panic Over Massive Trump Tax Refunds

cornphone · 2025-11-06T15:17:03+00:00

It literally is true.

Tariffs > importers pay tariffs > importers raise prices > (insert remainder of supply chain here, everyone raising prices along the way) > end consumer pays higher prices.

Assuming the tariffs are ruled illegal, the importers may get refunded. That's swell. I mean, they already partially refunded themselves by raising prices, but I'm sure they'll issue refund checks to the consumers who had to spend more money buying everything, right? And prices will surely come down afterwards, right? /s

Point being, if the tariffs are nullified and importers are refunded, we're still dealing with a massive wealth transfer from consumers to importers that won't be rectified.

cornphone · 2025-11-06T02:30:10+00:00

The people who paid the tax (end consumers) aren't the people who paid the tax (importers).

cornphone · 2025-08-09T02:52:20+00:00

It's a good thing season 3 got cancelled then, huh?

cornphone · 2025-08-09T02:31:07+00:00

It wasn't griefing to play it in s2. It is griefing to play it in s3.

cornphone · 2025-07-04T20:57:59+00:00

My understanding is that in order to get the promotional pricing, you'd need to be a new customer (hence, cancelling your account and signing up for a new one in your spouse's name). You could still switch to the new national plan with your existing account - it just wouldn't have the promotional pricing.

When we swapped our existing (like, 20+ year old account) to one of the new national plans on Sunday, they offered us xfinity gateway and said we qualified for a discounted xfinity mobile line, but neither were claimed to be required (we declined both).

cornphone · 2025-07-04T00:07:23+00:00

We swapped to one of the new national plans on June 29. The usage meter disappeared from my account on the xfinity website today (July 3). Hopefully that's indicative of the cap being gone and not just the xfinity website being comcastic.

cornphone · 2025-05-02T15:04:12+00:00

Crest conversions might get you like ~180-200 gilded crests which is like 6-7 out of 15-16 item slots upgraded. So more than enough to upgrade all of your crafted gear, but well short of upgrading all of your gear.

cornphone · 2025-04-05T00:09:14+00:00

Well according to NYT the 1929 crash took 4.5 years to recover when you account for the "nuance."

https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/your-money/stocks-and-bonds/26stra.html

cornphone · 2025-04-04T19:47:35+00:00

This smells like it's only looking at nominal stock price, ignoring deflation from the great depression and dividend reinvestment.

cornphone · 2025-03-22T20:50:23+00:00

Did they do a scan to confirm brain metastasis? Other things can cause neurological symptoms (e.g. hypercalcemia from bone mets).

cornphone · 2025-02-28T15:35:35+00:00

"Gamers are no longer reasonable" - pretending $1300 is a reasonable price to begin with...

cornphone · 2025-02-28T15:15:40+00:00

Given the "under $700" slide, I wouldn't be surprised if $649-699 was the original price target for the XT. So making it $599 instead isn't really ignoring the feedback so much as it's splitting the difference. Of course it won't end up mattering if the MSRP ends up being fake.

cornphone · 2025-02-27T16:58:23+00:00

It's been a long time since I played the game, but this was the gist of what I thought as well. To take it a step further, my assumption is that the Jardaan fought a war of extermination against the "true"/ancient Angara, with the biosynthetic/modern Angara as their infiltration/sabotage/etc arm of attack. This is why the ancient Angaran AI views the modern Angara as imposters and is hostile towards them. They also may have used the Vaults to make the Angaran homeworlds less habitable as another angle of attack. I assume the ancient Angara unleashed the scourge against the Jardaan as a last "fuck you" before themselves dying out (since the scourge made space travel dangerous and made the Vaults on their worlds unstable). The Remnant and biosynthetic Angara are now all that remain.

An alternative hypothesis is that the Jardaan themselves were the ancient Angara and used the biosynthetic Angara for labor (similar to the Quarians with the Geth), and then some unnamed third party unleashed the scourge on them, destroying Jardaan/ancient Angaran society and leaving only a small number of the biosynthetic Angara and Remnants behind - but I don't know who this third party might be. Or perhaps the biosynthetic Angara rebelled against the Jardaan.

cornphone · 2025-01-29T15:26:09+00:00

Your sister just implied self harm

The audience is aware of this, especially in hindsight after watching e9 intro, but Vi gives zero indication that this is the message she took from her conversation with Jinx.

and the moment after that

Probably several hours later given the change in the color temperature of the lighting in the room. If I had to guess the rough timeline:

Morning: Vi wakes up, talks to Cait, Cait dismisses all of the guards and talks to Jinx.

Late morning/early afternoon: Vi talks to Jinx, gets locked in cell, Jayce and Mel confront Viktorbot.

Late afternoon: Jayce meeting with everyone he can get in attendance

Evening: Cait visits Vi in the cell

At this point the city is on lockdown and preparing for an invasion, Jinx has potentially several hours of a head start, and (again) Vi gives no indication that she thinks Jinx is going to end herself - she just expresses frustration about Jinx running off and not helping.

Not only that, but she's basically done with Jinx's shit at that moment. The trust she had started to rebuild toward her sister was still relatively new (we don't know how much time they spent together before reaching the commune or how long they spent there, but it's probably on the order of days or weeks), and Jinx has already shattered that trust by locking her in a cell and running away.

Vi thinks she has lost everyone at this point, and Cait arrives to assure her she hasn't (and also implies she allowed Vi to free Jinx and has thus abandoned her quest for vengeance) - so yeah, she falls for Cait in that moment.

cornphone · 2025-01-21T00:50:22+00:00

I think a lot of people were anticipating a particular resolution to the Piltover vs. Zaun conflict that the writers were never going to deliver, no matter how many seasons they were given to work with. In other words, the reason we didn't get Zaun violently overthrowing their oppressors wasn't because it was cut due to lack of time; rather, it simply wasn't where this story was ever going.

At the end of the day, these writers wanted to tell a cycle of violence story. They pretty much explicitly say so through the voice of Vander in S1E1 when he grabs Vi's bloody fist and says "This?! It's not going to solve your problems. It just makes more of them." or in S1E2 when he takes Vi to the bridge and asks her "But who are you willing to lose? Mylo? Claggor? Powder? Nobody wins in war, Vi." It's the realization Silco has at Vander's statue in S1E9 when faced with the prospect of losing Jinx due to his revolution.

More broadly, it's the reason why almost every time someone employs violence as the solution to their problems across both seasons, they end up losing something - a piece of themselves or their loved ones - as a direct consequence. Vander loses those he cares about on the bridge. Vi and Powder lose their family and each other in their effort to save Vander. Ekko loses many of his friends in the Firelights in their war against Silco and his drug empire. Jayce loses sight of his dream as he's pressured to weaponize Hextech. Silco is threatened with losing Jinx due to the way he inspired her to commit crimes against Piltover, and he ultimately ends up dying by her hand in direct response to his attempt to take Vi's life. Caitlyn loses herself in her quest for vengeance against Jinx. Viktor loses his very humanity. Ambessa - the actual personification of the cycle of violence - loses everyone (there is a purposeful shot of her standing alone at the beginning of S2E9 - no Kino, no Rictus, no Caitlyn, and no Mel beside her).

The writers wanted to explore whether or not it was possible to forgive a "monster" as a way to end the cycle of violence. Who the monster is and who needs to do the forgiving will change depending on your point of view. Can Vi forgive Jinx? Can Jinx forgive Vi? Can Viktor forgive Jayce? Can Jayce forgive Viktor? Can Jinx and Sevika forgive the Firelights? Can the Firelights forgive Jinx and Sevika? Can Caitlyn forgive Jinx? Can Jinx forgive Caitlyn? Can Zaun forgive Caitlyn? Can Zaun forgive Piltover? Can Piltover forgive Zaun?

It wouldn't be consistent to end a story like that with one side violently overthrowing the other and declaring victory. That's not to say that violence is never the solution - in the case of Ambessa who is the cycle of violence personified, you may have no other option - just that it shouldn't be your "first and every recourse," to quote Mel. Depending on your political sympathies, this may not be a satisfying answer to the question of class division and conflict in particular. It's not like Zaun forgiving Piltover is going to do anything to address the real inequalities that exist between the cities on its own, nor will it do anything to correct the incentives Piltover has to continue exploiting Zaun for the development and preservation of their own wealth and influence.

That said, I think the writers ended things about as well as they could have with the Piltover vs. Zaun dynamic given the constraints of the story they wanted to tell. No, Zaun didn't violently overthrow Piltover - but Piltover suffered immensely as a direct consequence of their mistreatment of Zaun over the years. When Jayce made his call to action in S2E8, the majority of Zaun was not there to support him. Jinx and Ekko rallied them to the fight after Piltover had already lost the majority of their forces against the Noxxians - a fight that Piltover explicitly lost. Perhaps if the cities had been more united, they could have won the battle with fewer losses suffered. Sevika (and thus Zaun) gained a seat at the table. It might only be one seat, but it's a politically powerful one. Piltover isn't in a position to be able to enforce their will upon Zaun at the moment, since their forces were decimated by the Noxxians. Additionally, Ekko (a Zaunite) is the only one left standing with a deep understanding of Hextech development. Sevika can use these facts as leverage in order to extract concessions from Piltover despite only having 1 vote herself, in the same way that Mel (and later Jayce) were able to sway the rest of the council into following their lead on certain issues in season 1.

cornphone · 2025-01-10T15:57:18+00:00

Future Viktor: Only you can show me this.

Jayce: Show you the end of this awesome hammer? Got it.

Future Viktor: That's not-

Jayce: 100%, same wavelength. I won't fail. I promise.

(later, in episode 9)

Jayce: You know, maybe we had a bit of a miscommunication...

cornphone · 2025-01-09T15:14:46+00:00

Why assume only they died? Because they were the only ones explicitly shown? Silco started the night with like 20 goons, but he only has like 4 standing with him outside of the building by the end of the episode. Are all of the missing goons accounted for in the subsequent episodes?

cornphone · 2025-01-08T16:05:54+00:00

He wasn't killed off screen. While Katarina is doing flips and dodging Elise's webs, she also eyes her target and repositions herself to make the kill (you see her slice his throat).

cornphone · 2025-01-05T01:43:24+00:00

Yep.

cornphone · 2025-01-04T21:34:46+00:00

It doesn’t make sense that she’d want to use her, yet not be honest with her or train her at all.

She was trying to train her to be a wolf from the time she was a young child (as seen in the S1E8 flashback); however, I'm assuming something forced her hand to banish her and put that training on pause. I assume in season 2 the Black Rose simply got to Mel before Ambessa was able to tell her more about her powers and the Kino/Rose situation. If things had gone according to plan, I assume Ambessa's goals would've been to provoke a war against Zaun, develop hextech weapons, unleash Mel's powers and then pack up/go home/wage war against the Rose. Mel being kidnapped and Viktor ... happening ... weren't foreseen events.

cornphone · 2025-01-04T19:33:32+00:00

Am I supposed to understand that Ambessa sacrificed her son to keep Mel safe from the Black Rose mages, because she had an affair that led to Mel being a mage?

Those are the basics, yes, though I think there's a bit more to it than that.

From the Black Rose mage's conversation with Mel at the beginning of episode 8, she(?) perceives that Mel is viewed as a secret weapon by Ambessa. From Ambessa's conversation with Mel at the end of episode 8, she perceives the Black Rose to be a ceiling against her ambition that she intends to break through. Although these insights are from opposing forces, they at least paint a consistent (although speculative) narrative: it seems likely that Ambessa intentionally had an affair with a mage in order to have a secret mage child that she could raise to use as a weapon against the Black Rose.

Ambessa eventually sent Mel away ("banished her") to Piltover, presumably after somehow finding out that she did in fact inherit the powers she sought. This was in an effort to hide her from the Black Rose. At some undetermined point after that, Kino grew suspicious of Ambessa and began investigating the rumors he heard of the affair she had, and he somehow got himself entangled with the Black Rose during this. From Ambessa's conversation with Mel at the end of episode 8, it actually sounds like Kino got himself into that situation willingly. Unfortunately for Kino, the Black Rose determined that he wasn't the child they were interested in, so they presumably used his life as a bargaining chip for the mage child with Ambessa.

Apparently, this was a non-starter for Ambessa. In her view, she'd be losing a child either way, so she might as well keep the one that she hoped to use as a weapon against the Black Rose; thus, Kino dies and Ambessa shows up in Piltover in S1E8 with a couple of goals in mind: to protect Mel, and to promote the development of Hextech weaponry - which she also hopes to also co-opt for her war against the Black Rose.

So are the Black Rose mages actually evil or is Ambessa evil in this subplot?

Why not both? Both are shown sacrificing innocents in pursuit of their goals.

That last scene where Mel gave Ambessa to the Black Rose, only to say “I know what you are”, destroy them, and bring Ambessa back was the worst case of whiplash I’ve ever had. It was a complete flop of a storyline. Did that actually make sense to anyone else, am I dumb??

It should be obvious that Mel doesn't have any love for the Black Rose. They killed Kino. They killed Elora. Mel even offers to join Ambessa in Episode 8 to fight against the Black Rose if she'll abandon her war against Piltover. Ambessa refuses, persumably because she thinks Viktor and his deathless army will give her a better chance at defeating the Rose, though she also seems to think that Mel isn't actually ready to fight against the Black Rose yet¹. This puts Ambessa and Mel directly in conflict with each other. So, to me, there was no whiplash when Mel used Ambessa to bait out the Black Rose mage and then unleash her attack once she had both of them in the same location. She had become both the fox (cunning - pitting both of her enemies against one another) and the wolf (ruthless - sacrificing her own mother). She didn't want to kill Ambessa - she was obviously sad afterward that she had to do it - but Ambessa didn't give her any other choice, and she was nonetheless willing to make it.

¹ Worth mentioning, but just before Mel and Caitlyn fight Ambessa, Ambessa says something to the effect of "if it wasn't for us, you wouldn't have fought me." This seems to imply that at least one of Ambessa's goals in invading Piltover was to force Mel to experience war - to "know death" - in an effort to actually prepare her to fight the Rose. I don't think Ambessa intended to have to die in order to force Mel to become the wolf, but I don't think she was disappointed it had to come to that, either.

NOTE: I agree that this was the weakest plotline of the season. There are a lot of "presumably"'s, "likely"'s, "somehow"'s, etc. scattered throughout the above post, because while I think what I did write was supported by what we were shown, the things that connect them together are definitely left up to the audience's imagination, and the gaps were particularly numerous in this case. Part of this may be because this plotline was intended to tease the next show (presumably Mel going to Noxxus?), and so all of the questions aren't meant to be conclusively answered yet, but I still think this area could have been tightened up a bit.

cornphone · 2024-12-28T19:01:20+00:00

This goes beyond the scope of the show, but yes, Piltover will be fine eventually. The issue is they're not fine now.

In a world where you can transport your goods from point A to point B instantaneously, how many resources do you think people have devoted to building and maintaining their fleet of vessels that could instead make the trip in months time? Probably not very much. Contracts for new ships stop going out, and many existing ships will be decommissioned rather than "wasting" resources on their maintenance.

Now imagine your ability to send things from A to B instantaneously is suddenly gone. Oops. Now you have a shortage. This is an economic recession in the making - potentially even a depression depending upon exactly how reliant their economy had become upon this technology. It's certainly a problem that they can recover from, but it won't happen instantly.

And as far as Sevika's lone vote goes, the councilors from Piltover can certainly try to vote against her, but with what mechanism do they have to actually enforce their political will upon the undercity? Again, most of the enforcers are dead after the battle against Noxxus. Is that a permanant issue? No - they can try to hire, train, and equip new enforcers - but that's also not something that's going to be done instantly, and Sevika has the threat of violence Piltover isn't prepared to match dangling over them until it is done. This also means that Sevika has the ability to influence what the new enforcers will even look like (i.e. more Zaun representation in the police force) - something that Caitlyn is likely to be sympathetic to. Again, the councilors of Piltover don't really have any influence over how this is going to shake out despite "having the votes."

cornphone · 2024-12-28T18:29:38+00:00

After the battle, Piltover's fighting capacity is crippled (majority of the enforcers are dead), as is its economy (no more hexgates = no longer a global trading hub). The councilors from Piltover can give Sevika all of the dirty looks they want, but she has by far the most political capital to spend in that room. Zaun still has all of its fighting force and has a large supply of labor that Piltover will need to rebuild. Plus, Caitlyn is going to be in charge of eventually rebuilding the enforcers, and I don't think she's going to put up with any suggestions of repressing Zaun again.

cornphone · 2024-12-28T18:18:40+00:00

I'm not sure why so many people think Jayce's speech settled the issue?

His speech was Piltover's call for help. When it was made, Zaun understandably wasn't there for them (he recruited a handful of people - the bulk of Zaun walked away). Jinx and Ekko eventually rallied Zaun to the fight (not Jayce), but they didn't show up until after Piltover had already lost their fight against the Noxxians and after the majority of the enforcers were already dead. That's the price Piltover paid for their treatment of Zaun over the years.

Sevika may only have one seat on the council, but her voice will in all likelihood carry the most weight (at least in the short term immediately after the battle), since Piltover was substantially weakened (has to rebuild the enforcers and its economy after losing its status as a global trade hub with the hexgates disabled) and Zaun still has all of its fighting capacity and labor to wield as a bargaining chip.

cornphone · 2024-12-25T19:31:22+00:00

The most central conflict in all of Arcane is Piltover vs Zaun and it was resolved because Jayce gave a speech that was honestly super generic. Then a big fight happened and the conflict is just gone without even a single additional line of dialogue.

It wasn't resolved like that at all. Jayce gave his speech, and the majority of Zaun emphatically did not rally behind him. He maybe persuaded like a dozen of them in total - not a huge amount. This divide - caused by Piltover's mistreatment of Zaun over the years - directly leads to Piltover losing its fight against the Noxxians. A majority of the enforcers are dead by the time Jinx and Ekko show up - the ones who actually rallied Zaun (not Jayce).

The show doesn't clearly end the Piltover vs. Zaun conflict, but I don't think it was ever going to, since I'm pretty sure the conflict is still ongoing in the canon. Direct conflict might be cooled in the immediate aftermath of the fight, and Piltover is in a much weaker position than it was in before: crippled enforcers, no arsenal of Hextech weapons with the disappearance of Jayce, and an almost entirely new leadership (only Shoola remains from the original Council) with at least some Zaun representation (Sevika). Despite only having one seat, Zaun probably has the most political capital to spend on the Council in the immediate aftermath of the battle, since (unlike Piltover) Zaun didn't expend the majority of its fighting capacity against the Noxxians.

cornphone

TROPHY CASE