The only way in which shares can more-or-less translate to real money at their face value is if you use them as collateral on a loan. This is how rich people are rich: they use their shares to take out loans which provide them with spendable money. Money now is always more valuable than money in the future, due to inflation and opportunity cost, so most rich people are almost always in monumental amounts of debt, but because they were able to spend a bunch of money up-front, they’re able to invest in things that bring them even more money to pay the debt off. Example: if you had the money to buy a house and rent it out to tenants, the rent you receive will EASILY cover the mortgage - the trick is getting the collateral to get a mortgage to begin with.

The only danger is that banks and lenders write in a clause that if your share prices (ie the collateral the loan relies on) drops below a certain value, you are forced to sell the shares off and give them the proceeds, so that they can recoup at least some of the money they lost on your bad collateral before it devalues completely. This could, theoretically, happen to Musk if $TSLA drops below a certain threshold, which is what half the Internet seems to be hoping for.

Well it is, in the sense that rather than you becoming slightly better at things, everybody else becomes much worse, thereby you are still above average even though you have gotten worse.

Well, yes. It’s no use just paying and not actually downloading it, for obvious reasons but also for the reasons I assume you mean, whereby once you have the files you’re no longer reliant on GOG to keep them available.

Just buy your games on GOG. No DRM

I would develop some city neighborhoods and set up some community land trusts to run them.

Alternatively, and I’m playing devil’s advocate here, but maybe there was more concern that someone might try to assassinate Luigi. After what happened with Jeffrey Epstein, authorities might have figured “the people will lose their minds if Luigi dies in custody, so let’s not take any chances”.

Interesting! Added to my wishlist.

I honestly think it would be interesting to play a game by sound alone, where you play as a blind person (maybe Daredevil or Zatoichi or something) and you navigate the world by listening. Ironically, it’d probably need to be on a VR headset so that the game can detect you turning/tilting your head and adjust the stereo balance accordingly.

Maybe Zatoichi would be best, as you could hear an enemy swinging a sword like “SHING” and “SWOOSH” etc, and maybe that would give you enough information to block or dodge. You’d probably also need haptic feedback to tell you when your blade connects.

Maybe there could be graphics, but only to recreate the sense of smell, like the screen is pure black except when you smell something and then a word appears on the screen like “rose” or “blood” etc.

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That’s a rug pull, though. Both the American and EU states only agreed to join their respective unions in the first place on the promise that these systems of balances would give them this level of input on union policy. Without such assurances, what small nation would ever agree to become inevitably subordinate to the whims of a larger state? It would never happen, and the western world would remain fractured into small nation-states constantly warring with each other, failing to cooperate and probably getting picked off, one by one, by nations like China or Russia which have no such qualms about forcing a union through conquest.

No, these unions were negotiated in good faith and if we’re unhappy with them now, then the answer should be secession. Brexit proved that nobody is forced to remain in the EU if they don’t like the deal.

The EU has a similar system:

• Each EU member state gets ONE seat at the EU Council, regardless of population. This is comparable to the US Senate.
• Differences in population size are accounted for by EU Parliament, where the number of MEPs (Members of European Parliament) a member state gets is determined by population. This is comparable to the US House of Representatives.
• Finally there is the EU Commission which is the executive branch, comparable to the US president and cabinet.

The point of the EU Council/US Senate is to protect isolated regions from getting steamrolled by urban regions. Farmers are comparatively few relative to city industry workers, but any nation, union or federation is built on the back of farming. However, due to the distance and lack of interaction between city dwellers and rural dwellers, it’s easy for city dwellers to grow disconnected from the reality of just how important the rural dimension is, and vote for laws that only suit the city. It is utterly necessary to create a system which balances the two. Otherwise you’d have, like, three states (New York, California, Texas) making all the decisions, with the other 47 states having to like it or lump it.

Yeah, I was testing how robust the formula was by using the first adjective, curse word, and noun that I could see in my immediate environment. I’m not convinced it holds up.

Nothing much you designated pussy field.

Put simply: if RCV had been in place for the US presidential race in 2024, the Gaza issue wouldn’t have split the Democratic vote.

Don’t blame me; I voted for Kodos

i’m not advocating that

You don’t have to. Forbes already publishes a real-time up-to-date list of the richest people in the world.

https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/#5b60b1453d78

It can be sorted by net worth, country of residence, industry the person made their fortune in, or age.

or sometimes no candidate

How does FPTP help in that scenario?

risks more people accidentally voting different than they wanted

Can you describe how that might happen?

It’s not just the USA that’s in dire need of it. The UK should also adopt it. First Past The Post (FPTP) voting encourages polarized extremism. Because it functions on a Ricky Bobby-esque “if you’re not first, you’re last” philosophy that punishes moderates for being moderate.

Poe’s law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author’s intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law

Poe’s law is based on a comment written by Nathan Poe in 2005 on christianforums.com, an Internet forum on Christianity. The message was posted during a debate on creationism, where a previous poster had remarked to another user: “Good thing you included the winky. Otherwise people might think you are serious”.[4]

The reply by Nathan Poe read:[1]

Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is utterly impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone won’t mistake for the genuine article.

The original statement of Poe’s law referred specifically to creationism, but it has since been generalized to apply to any kind of fundamentalism or extremism.[3]

Fun fact:

“Reign” is what a monarch does. “Rein” is the strap with which a rider controls a horse. When a rider allows a horse “free rein”, it means the rider is holding the reins loosely so as to allow the horse to steer itself.

I have saved you a letter!