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Everything posted by AeroHorn
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Time to rescind tax free status from religious institutions
AeroHorn replied to PenelopeWitherspoon's topic in Cloak Room
From my limited experience, some people are severely overestimating religious organizations' reach and moolah. The organizations I am aware of, the salaried employees (usually less than 3) are paid at a rate of about $30-40/hour, which is barely manageable in the bay area. And these people usually have an MA and likely a PhD equivalent. They are primarily providing services to the congregation itself and managing outreach activities. Dozens of volunteers do the work, whether it is free clinic, hot meals, winter clothes, legal advice, temporary shelter, etc. Most of the fundraising is for these activities and 100% of it reaches the intended audience. The congregation takes the salaries, etc. as something they owe and covers it through the (voluntary) monthly donations. Needless to say, there are no profits, but real curtailing/shutting down of services due to shortfalls in fundraising. I bet all the real estate tax of all the churches/synagogues/mosques/temples/gurudwaras in the bay area doesn't compare to one Stanford University Tax Compliance at Stanford. All this handwringing regarding tax exemption of religious structures is absurd. As far as propaganda is concerned (the main reason behind this discussion), the amount of messaging I get from non-religious sources is >100x that of religious sources on a daily basis, ranging from consumerism and hedonism to philosophical and cultural appropriation. Those who say religion is evil, I agree that "religious" people have committed atrocities, but the biggest atrocity going on right now is being committed by Chinese atheists against Uighur Muslims. But because it is not religious people doing it, it is business as usual. -
I don't understand this desire to play aggy. I can understand us reluctantly agreeing to listen to them if they are clamoring for it. But aggy is not interested. I doubt the game day would be any better when playing aggy when compared to any other P5 OOC we have on schedule. For multiple reasons, it would be just a distraction with almost no benefit. Let aggy be content with the second tier SEC status. We can continue to focus on our OOC approach of playing schools from across the nation.
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I have seen them being driven around the bay area by their test team. I have seen only from the the outside. It looks quite plain with maybe a slightly better front than Model S, but overall Model S looks better, imo. It also looks a bit smaller than Model S. Their interior, based on the pictures, is more conventional luxury than the spartan European design that Tesla does, which most people prefer I think. As an aside, the test engineers driving the vehicles stick to the speed limit, most likely being their company policy. They stick out like sore thumbs since everyone else is going at 75-80mph. Also, they are a new company and will face growing pains. The price matches Model S. This will make it hard from them to scale quickly.
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wild finish! Great to see a defense play win the game.
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Rich people don't pay much in taxes (now in CR) - ProPublica
AeroHorn replied to Wally Fairway's topic in Cloak Room
Us sub-millionaires pay anywhere in the range 30-40% when federal, state (CA), real estate and sales taxes are added, not including Medicare/Social Security payments. The biggest hit I see is from vesting of RSUs that are part of the overall compensation and paying ordinary income taxes on them. Since dividends are taxed at a lower rate, do these rich guys create their own "fund" consisting of their RSUs that are traded by the fund and it pays "dividend" to the owner thereby hiding the ordinary tax due when these people have millions of dollars worth of RSUs vesting? Does this happen? -
1997. I was a poor grad student (at UT) with research assistantship (20hr/week + insurance). Didn't sign up my newly wed wife for insurance and she got pregnant. Got to add her during yearly signup 3 months before due date. All the visits including child birth and post checkups over 5 months or so cost me a grand total of 0 dollars. Not a typo. The fortunate thing is that only one of the many insurance plans that UT offered didn't have a pre-existing condition clause, which I thankfully signed up for. That was Prudential. Now, all work plans cost $500+ in monthly premiums and take $30-50 just for walking into a medical place.
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Modi's government is the most fascist while in the garb of democracy. Trump could have only dreamt of what Modi has achieved, from complete take over of the supreme court and the election commission to police forces and media outlets. He has only two motives, oppress Muslims and make it the only election platform to get elected, and loot India by wholesale takeover of all resources through his select few billionaires (the Ambanis). He has taken over media and weaponized Whatsapp/Facebook. He hasn't held a press conference since 2014 and many of his elected party members (state and central) are murderers and criminals, who openly call of genocide and terrorize various communities. He has successfully bribed/threatened multiple whole state elected governing parties to switch to his party (imagine Trump bribing/threatening multiple blue states elected ruling representatives/government to become Republican overnight and bow down to him). His party is completely anti-science with cow-worship as the most visible of many weird practices where people drink cow urine and cover themselves in cow dung thinking it will cure them of many diseases. He famously led ringing of the bells and clanging of pots to scare away covid when pressed to address the pandemic last year. The less said about their take on caste system, the better. He has destroyed India, which was a multi-faceted jewel with hundreds of religious, cultural, linguistic and ethnic hues with thousands of years of history. Indians have traditionally been peaceful people that know how to live cheek by jowl with people that are very different from each other, and if this hate filled campaign doesn't end, the outcome will be worse than what happened in Germany during 30s and 40s; and it won't just effect Muslims, but also many of traditional lower castes.
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Good points. My experience is entirely on the tech side, especially as a small (<1000 people) R&D company in the semiconductor industry. Patents are essentially ignored in the decision making process, with cost and performance as the primary drivers. Even if a big tech company licenses the patent portfolio and had tech transfer contract, they will stop royalty payments within couple of years because from their perspective, the years-long legal process and the eventual settlement is still cheaper to potentially a lot cheaper than continuing the royalty payments. Due to rapid changes in the tech field, the goal is to settle/license/monetize now because the landscape may change in 3-5 years, whereas the timescale is longer in pharma and hence makes sense to go for injunction rather than settle, as you mentioned.
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Patent licensing is a very small portion of designing and delivering a high volume product. When a company wants do something, they will do it regardless of others having patented it or not. They will claim that their method is different. The patent holder sues, they go back and forth and settle. Look up Apple-Qualcomm, Apple-Samsung and many others. These companies know how to design and build stuff, but may not have been the first to do it, hence the legal wrangling to get that fixed. At the end, the patents are invalidated or the patent holder gets couple of percent of the revenue as royalty. Qualcomm didn't have to implement their CDMA tech in Apple's design centers/factories as part of the deal; Apple knew how to do that and just wanted Qualcomm to not bother them. There is the threat of Qualcomm having courts block Apple products, but the court typically nudges the parties to settle for a fair licensing deal. Of course, the above board approach is to talk to the patent holder, get a license beforehand, and it may include technology transfer contract too where the patent holder teaches the licensee how to implement it in their factories including equipment, processes, etc. Same thing in big pharma, I suspect. Nothing stops Johnson & Johnson from implementing what Moderna is doing as long as they don't expect Moderna to come teach them. If they can do it and want to, they will and let the lawyers deal with the aftermath. If they can't, then patents are not really the issue.
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Or 30 years back, but who is counting. (old man mumbles)
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This Baylor team reminds me of the UNLV team from 20 years back, except that they played like one in the finals too.
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America is one of the most toxic places I've ever been
AeroHorn replied to Wanker Bob's topic in Daily Texan
As a foreign "immigrant" (I put immigrant in quotes because I was just applying for graduate schools in a place known for good graduate schools, and more importantly, was getting paid in the process; never considered myself an immigrant because I felt, maybe naively, that I belonged equally here), I can unequivocally state that there are many things that make US an envy of the world, and why people like me want to come to US. The basic societal rules are the most important, and these are what make US great. The fact that there is, for the most part, essential equality in buying and selling, moving and settling, working and playing, being treated about the same regardless of how you look or talk, form own cultural/religious circles, shout on streets and stand for elections, etc. is very very very important. Even in the smallest of towns, there is essential camaraderie after a brief hesitation by the majority of people. There is relatively lot less exclusivity and exclusion. Only in US can you be very different, form your own circle of difference, and everyone will just let you be. For example, even though my ancestors have been in southern India for thousands of years, if I say or write a text that the government thinks is critical of them, they will throw my Muslim ass in jail without any recourse. Even the most liberal of western European countries do not tolerate, let alone celebrate diversity as US does, except of those "diverse" aspects that they have decided are part of their identity. Then they are not really diverse, is it? No country gives the same platform to so much diversity as this country. Of course, this country has the slavery history that it weaned out from in fits and starts, and continues to marginalize the Black community systematically. As an "immigrant", I owe my life experience in the US to the sacrifices of the Black community. They have paid and continue to pay a heavy price so that we can be doctors and CEOs. I get Brisket's points, but his observations are not unique to US, but more a state of the world. Show me a place where intolerance, authoritarianism and inequity isn't on the rise. Whether the rich (US, east/west Europe, Australia, Israel), middle (Turkey, Saudi, Brazil, China, Russia), poor (India, Iran, Egypt) or insignificant (Myanmar, Sri Lanka, most of the Arab countries, central Asian *stans, Balkans, central America, sub-Saharan Africa), the world is hurtling towards organized fleecing and populist vigilantism. Ironically, the only country that is slightly limping in the other direction is Pakistan. Their PM is a good guy, but of course all the surrounding goons (Modi, MBS, Netanyahu) hate him. If he cannot survive for long, they will fall back to military rule. tl;dr: I agree with Brisket's gloom, but it is worldwide, and US is still the best of the lot.- 478 replies
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I could be wrong, but having grown up in India and only reading about these cases since I have lived in nice suburbs with educated parents in the US, I think there is a cultural element that is in some sense American; an inclination to individual expression/rebelling and finding ones own way as opposed to valuing conformance to set values and be part of the rat race found in most other places but particularly Asian countries. India is a very poor country and 90% of the schools neither have the infrastructure nor the teachers that the worst schools in US have. But even a laborer with kids playing in the sewage while he/she works, while illiterate, yearns to send the kids to school without knowing anything about what a school is because he/she wants their kids to learn and knows that learning is an enormously valuable commodity in itself. And those kids if given a chance will apply themselves even though they would be lucky to get in the bottom school of the aforementioned 90%. Tens of millions of college graduates come out with most of them not finding a job, but they in turn will push their kids to learn and the kids know that learning is their job as a kid. tl,dr: kids and parents have to see that learning is cool. When you know it is cool there are a million options outside school.
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This looks like something Bollywood does to make their movies 3 hours long.
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Their OL is bad, but Mahomes is negating that somewhat with his moving around, but besides on the last drive, he has thrown only to covered guys, mostly Hill. He is looking, but not finding other receivers.
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The difference, besides the flags on KC defense, is the other KC receivers not stepping up with Hill locked down. More than KC defense (besides iffy penalties), it is their offense that is lacking any imagination. Without Mahomes scrambling, they would be 0.
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ND QB was basically their offense. His throws while moving around the pocket were impressive.
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People pulling their masks to speak in others' faces never fails to amuse me. Why wear a mask then?
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His silence could be because, being a narcissist hypochondriac, he is too busy complaining about not getting the service a sick soul needs to worry about the outside world. Anyone who has dealt with a hypochondriac drama queen knows that, having a "legitimate" reason for demanding attention, the patient will completely shutout everything else because the immediate and the near is of the highest urgency.
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I agree with ndawg. He is a guy who, having way high regard of himself, would ask for every cure, just to be safe. An example is him going into his bunker because of a few peaceful protesters way out there with more security people carrying military hardware between the protesters and himself.
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Whenever I read the name Bowman, I say it in the voice of Smaug.
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That TO makes no sense. If you want to call TOs call on the previous play.
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Mond is passing for ally oops to 7 footers
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