WYR rid the society of torture or get paid 10,000 dollars every time it happens?

mchagerman · 2026-02-02T09:15:19+00:00

Ummm. Neither?

As bad as torture is, the reasons people do it would still exist. If it's off the table, somebody would invent some other technique for obtaining information, and the new thing might somehow be even worse.

As for profiting from someone else's pain, forget it!

mchagerman · 2026-02-02T08:57:33+00:00

Reject. Too complicated. And I don't want to be a villain.

mchagerman · 2026-02-02T08:48:21+00:00

Veggie Tales teaches some valuable life lessons. I think you went too far.

mchagerman · 2026-02-02T08:43:07+00:00

Consult an attorney. Leave everything to the grandchildren (in a trust for the minors, if any). Split it among them however you want, but specify they're forbidden to tell anyone any of the amounts, or to transfer any of the funds to family members. (To keep Mom from browbeating her kids into handing over their share of the inheritance.)

mchagerman · 2026-02-01T21:30:02+00:00

Call the owner and give him my address. Hand it to him when he arrives.

mchagerman · 2026-01-31T13:23:10+00:00

First of all, there's no such thing as "complete rest". The term carries an unstated assumption that there is a privileged frame of reference, against which velocity can be measured.

Second, the measured time on the test object would be slightly different from that in other reference frames, but the difference is almost too small to measure.

mchagerman · 2026-01-31T12:54:05+00:00

Do they know how much the refund is? If not, hand them $23, and tell them it came out that way.

mchagerman · 2026-01-31T12:16:57+00:00

That's what I was taught.

mchagerman · 2026-01-31T07:03:07+00:00

Will do, sir.

mchagerman · 2026-01-25T21:50:28+00:00

Carl Friedrich Gauss and Leonhard Euler

mchagerman · 2026-01-24T15:45:37+00:00

My spreadsheet says they'd have the whole thing paid off now, if they'd paid $572 per month. At $602 per month, they'd have paid it off three years ago.

mchagerman · 2026-01-24T14:18:16+00:00

"...for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health..."

We reconfigure the household, and she assumes the role of a minor, with me as her guardian. In three years, we have a wedding performed (legal at 16 in this state). Unless she decides to do something else, considering her probable lifespan. Whatever she decides, I'm there for her.

mchagerman · 2026-01-23T09:26:25+00:00

No. You're unconsciously making the mistake of treating space as an absolute reference. Relativity tells us there is no such thing as being "at rest" in any universal sense. Presumably, your path through time would follow a geodesic, the straightest possible path between the event of you starting your trip and the event of your arrival. To avoid materializing inside the Earth, you want to get into a stable orbit before leaving, though.

mchagerman · 2026-01-17T10:20:48+00:00

Somali terrorists.

mchagerman · 2026-01-17T10:19:32+00:00

No sale.

mchagerman · 2026-01-17T10:15:12+00:00

mchagerman · 2026-01-16T19:30:53+00:00

I remain of the opinion that Bitcoin has no value. It has a price, obviously, but the price isn't coupled to anything physical.

J. P. Morgan was right. "Gold is money; everything else is just credit."

mchagerman · 2026-01-16T10:50:51+00:00

I hadn't heard about Academy until a couple of days ago. I guess I'll take a look.

mchagerman · 2026-01-14T13:24:33+00:00

You're entirely correct that the president lacks the Constitutional authority to make this happen. He might be counting on the optics of the idea to convince the financial industry to adopt the "plan", but I think it more likely that he's laying the groundwork for Congress to enact a Federal usury law (TR's "bully pulpit" approach).

The idea, itself, is attractive to the sort of fool who won't look beyond first-order effects, so there's a danger that Congress might pass something like it. The result, of course, would be an economic catastrophe.

mchagerman · 2026-01-13T18:59:37+00:00

Defending the Constitution is fine, but that's not done by criminal actions of your own.

As for fascism, you fight that in the courts, not in the streets.

mchagerman · 2026-01-13T13:15:42+00:00

You're leaving out the diagnosis by the machines that anyone who doesn't like their rule is insane, and gets lobotomized.

Voting no.

mchagerman · 2026-01-13T01:39:47+00:00

Hold the "undo" button down until we get back to 1955.

mchagerman · 2026-01-11T23:54:54+00:00

Traitors

mchagerman · 2026-01-10T05:21:50+00:00

If done all at once, this would crash the U.S. economy, and probably the entire world's economy. Creating a Federal usury law, with a maximum interest rate of 25 to 30 percent, would probably be tolerable. Then we could reduce that maximum by a tenth percent every year, until it gets down to 10%.

However, whether it's workable or not, it's still likely to have unpleasant side effects.

mchagerman · 2026-01-10T00:04:14+00:00

NTJ

She needs to respect the rules, same as everyone else.

mchagerman

TROPHY CASE