Obligatory “you do what’s right for you,” but just sayin’, be very careful with this strategy. I know people who panic sold in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic out of fear and then missed out on the recovery. Sold low, bought high. Set them back 20 years.

RemindMe! 10 years

Lol, this is the best comment I’ve read all week. Thank you for giving me a good laugh, I needed it!

Gotcha, so in summary, anything that relies on an internet service, such as Signal, Matrix, or Simplex, is vulnerable to government ordered blocks via black list that ISPs are compelled to enforce. Am I thinking of this right?

Out of curiosity, is there anything stopping you from suggesting SimpleX? How does SimpleX compare to XMPP or Matrix?

Are there any other messaging options that are more resistant to government ordered shutdowns than Matrix?

Interesting—I feel like I see Matrix touted as more private than Signal b/c of Signal’s phone number requirement. What compromising metadata does Matrix require that Signal does not?

The ITEP report cited by the article calls out the fact Tesla uses the accelerated method of depreciation and amortization instead of the straight line method. This means instead of depreciating an equal amount every year over the course of a machine’s life, they are weighting these expenses more heavily in the near term in exchange for a lower expense (read: lower tax deduction) down the road. This Investopedia article explains it in more detail for those who care to learn more.

The ITEP report calls out other tax credits as well, such as carrying forward net operating losses from previous years. For anyone who cares, the full details are in their 2024 10-K filing. Open up the document, do a Ctrl+F search for “Note 13 – Income Taxes” and look at the tables on pages 80 through 82. I admit that there are several line items that I do not understand. I plugged them into Perplexity AI and asked it to explain them in layman’s terms. My brain’s too fried at this point, but I’ll leave the link to that explanation here (again, in case anyone out there cares to learn more).

Lots of good answers here already. I’ll just add that Jon Stewart recently did a great segment that touches on this. Basically, he says if everything the government does is “OmG nAzIz FaScIsTz TrAiToRz!!!” then people who aren’t already paying attention will continue tuning it out. I forget at which time in the video he gets to this point, but honestly the whole 20-minute video is worth a watch.

deflect delay deny

Is there some way of safely circumnavigating these types of blocks in countries under oppressive regimes? I know about VPNs and TOR, but are those methods actually safe?

You’re mixing multiple subjects here, one being the logistics of blocking a federated system like Lemmy, the other being whether the wrong person finds the content of such a system objectionable and labels it a “national security issue.”

I’m being a tad pedantic here, but my reason for pointing this out is that I think #2 is not far fetched at all, but I’m unsure of how feasible #1 might be and would love if somebody who knows more than I do would chime in.

EDIT: Looks like some have already discussed #2 in the other comment thread started by Teknikal.

Were the cans and string ethically sourced, though?

making someone else’s tragedy about them

esteem boosts

Interesting take. When someone says they are blessed or grateful for whatever reason (even in the context of another’s tragedy), I see it more as acknowledging how much of our own circumstances are outside of our control, a perfectly normal and healthy thing to recognize and nothing to do with boosting one’s own self esteem.

This made me laugh… and cry.

Go ahead and roll for persuasion on your motion to abolish persuasion checks in healthcare.

your actual wealth didn’t change

Actually, it did—it was cut in half.

Looks like we are not going to agree on this, which is okay—I enjoyed the discussion nonetheless. Have a nice day.

Fractional reserve banking does not mean the debt does not exist. The debt very much exists. Nobody takes out a loan and just sits on it. As soon as the loan is created, goods and services are traded. At the end of the day, each party to downstream transactions can go to the bank and withdraw the balance of their account in cash. The fractional reserve system only works as long as not everyone does this at once.

When a borrower becomes insolvent and the loan cannot be repaid, the lender records it on their books as a loss. They cannot just pretend the loan never happened.

Of course, now we’re mixing subjects because OP asked about student loan forgiveness, which would necessarily come out of tax payers’ pockets (not the same as when a lender takes the L because the loan cannot be repaid).