ToaKraka
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User ID: 108
ToaKraka
Dislikes you
1yr ago
I wonder what an "S&P 500, but weighted by profit rather than by market capitalization" index fund would look like.
The appeals panel's full rationale:
At the outset, we reject the notion that Chase's J-pay email constituted a threat to LGBTQ+ inmates, others, or his girlfriend, none of whom received the email. We recognize the DOC's concern and interest in preventing inmates from threatening each other or making threats against others. However, Chase's email, though vulgar, reprehensible, and distressing, does not constitute a clear and unambiguous threat based upon the objective analysis required under Jacobs v. Stephens.
In Jacobs, our [state] Supreme Court addressed whether a comment made by an inmate to a corrections officer constituted a threat. The corrections officer had asked the inmate, Jacobs, for his identification card and he responded, "Fuck you, I ain't giving you shit. If you want my ID, step in the back room." Another witness reported that, as the officer turned to walk away, Jacobs stated, "Come on, come on, I'll fuck you up." On appeal, Jacobs argued that there was insufficient evidence to support the conclusion that he threatened the officer with bodily harm. He asserted that, while he used abusive language, he did not intend to threaten the officer.
Our Supreme Court held: "The determination of whether a remark constitutes a threat is made on the basis of an objective analysis of whether the remark conveys a basis for fear." And a reasonable mind could conclude that Jacobs had threatened the officer. The Court noted, however, that other witnesses heard him make additional threatening comments. It stated: "When words of an inmate are of such a nature as would reasonably convey the menace or fear of death to the ordinary hearer, then that is a threat of bodily harm and therefore punishable under [the prison regulations]."
Here, Chase's email was directed to his girlfriend and allegedly offered to explain that he is not gay and how offended he was by her question. Unlike Jacobs, there were no witnesses to Chase's words, although they are memorialized in the email. His specific comments and disdain for the LGBTQ+ community, however, were not directed at any particular person, and there is nothing in the record to support a finding that Chase intended to harm any of his fellow inmates who may be gay, or his girlfriend. We are not persuaded that Chase's unsent email reasonably conveyed any menace or put any individual in fear of death to constitute a true threat of bodily harm.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
Doesn't exactly look like "fun thread" material
You are supposed to laugh at (1) the prisoner's writing two pages of "no homo" and (2) the appeals panel's being forced to defend the prisoner's right to send "repeated[] express[ions] of hatred of individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community" that it finds "vulgar, reprehensible, and distressing".
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
Maybe he's alluding to the fact that government employees have lenient bosses and leisurely schedules that allow them to take solid two-week or three-week blocks of vacation leave around Christmas and New Year's, and large proportions of them use this opportunity to the fullest.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
- During a telephone call, a prisoner's romantic partner asks him whether he is gay. The prisoner becomes angry and ends the call. On the next day, he writes a two-page email explaining that he is not gay, he hates homosexual people, and if he had been at home he would have shot her for insulting him so badly.
- The prison reads the email, blocks it from being sent, charges the prisoner with the offense of threatening another person with bodily harm, convicts him of that offense, and imposes punishment of 90 days of solitary confinement, 60 days of lost good-behavior credit, and 15 days of lost recreational privileges.
- The appeals panel reverses. The prisoner's objective in writing this email obviously was to convince his romantic partner that he was not homosexual, not to threaten her or anybody else with bodily harm. Therefore, the conviction was arbitrary, capricious, and unreasonable.
In order to get a horizontal line (HTML element <hr/>), you need to type three hyphens ("---"), not a bunch of em dashes ("———").
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
GURPS also incorporates rules for forced marching, terrain difficulty, and encumbrance, but I omitted them from this simplified overview.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
Markdown is just a middleman format. Writing in raw HTML and CSS from the beginning makes more sense.
Obligatory mention that GURPS, unlike Dungeons & Dragons, has multiple sets of rules for long-distance travel, depending on how much detail you want. Assuming default humans with no encumbrance at all:
- Basic Set p. 351: Hiking achieves a speed of 50 miles per day, at no cost.
- Low-Tech Companion 2: Weapons and Warriors p. 32: Hiking achieves a speed of 2.5 miles per hour, at a cost of 1 FP (Fatigue Point) per hour. Once you've lost 7 FP, you move at half speed. Resting regenerates 6 FP per hour. Some quick algebra indicates that the optimal strategy for a 16-hour day is 14 hours and 40 minutes of hiking mixed with 1 hour and 20 minutes of resting, for an overall speed of 37 miles per day. But you may want to keep your FP higher than 3, just in case you are ambushed while hiking.
- The Last Gasp (Pyramid vol. 3 iss. 44 (Alternate GURPS II) p. 4): It's unrealistic that your speed isn't reduced until you've lost an entire 7 FP. Instead, your speed is reduced by one-fifth after you've lost 5 FP, and by two-fifths after you've lost 9 FP. Also, it's unrealistic that your FP regenerate at 6 per hour. Instead, your reservoir of FP is divided into 5 points of mild fatigue, which regenerate at 1 FP per 2 hours, and 5 points of severe fatigue, which regenerate at 1 FP per 8 hours. Some quick algebra indicates that the optimal strategy for a 16-hour day is 8 hours and 40 minutes of hiking mixed with 7 hours and 20 minutes of resting, for an overall speed of 22 miles per day.
- Dungeon Fantasy 16: Wilderness Adventures p. 21: Hiking achieves a speed of 2.5 miles per hour. Instead of doing a bunch of finicky FP math, just assume that you spend 30 minutes striking camp in the morning, 3 hours resting throughout the day, 30 minutes pitching camp in the evening, and 12 hours actually walking, for an overall speed of 30 miles per day. If you are ambushed while hiking, you are missing 1 FP when the encounter starts.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
On 4chan's /o/ board I've read about the phenomenon of repeated repossessions from people too stupid to understand finances, but I never sought out any official materials on the topic, so I was surprised to stumble across it while browsing random (pseudo-)court opinions.
This IRS investigation was due to poor accounting, not to any allegedly-exploitative lending practices.
This is the Friday Fun Thread. I posted this opinion to enable people to laugh at the car buyers. Alternatively, you can laugh at the dealership, if you prefer:
Around 2014 Mr. Aboui decided to close HPPO because his family was experiencing serious health issues and because HPPO was unprofitable.… HPPO ceased business by 2018.
Respondent [the Commissioner of Internal Revenue] began an audit of petitioners’ and HPPO’s returns in September 2015. **At that time petitioners’ accountant was gravely ill, and he later died. His death contributed to a lack of progress on the audit. In October 2018 petitioners gave a power of attorney to a new representative who erroneously told the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) revenue agent (RA) that HPPO was a cash basis taxpayer and that HPPO did not include the total sale prices in gross receipts in the year of sale. Other actions by the new representative further delayed production of HPPO’s records.** Petitioners later replaced the representative in an attempt to resolve the audit. However, by that time, after working on the case for nearly five years, the RA decided to close the audit.During the audit petitioners produced or provided access to the DMV sales reports and dealer jackets as well as other records. These documents contained sufficient information to determine HPPO’s gross income but likely not HPPO’s deductible expenses. Petitioners delayed providing access to HPPO’s accounting software because HPPO did not retain a license for the software after it ceased business. The RA never had access to the software, but petitioners reactivated it before trial.
Or you can laugh at the IRS:
Because the RA concluded that petitioners did not provide sufficient records or access to HPPO’s accounting software, she went through the arduous process of reviewing thousands of pages of bank statements and canceled checks to determine whether the debits from HPPO’s bank accounts were used to pay expenses related to HPPO’s business.
When the parties were preparing for trial, petitioners offered thousands of pages of records to substantiate HPPO’s expenses and COGS as well as HPPO’s income. Despite encouragement from the Court, respondent did not review the records.
The RA testified that she treated HPPO as a cash basis taxpayer. The Code requires the IRS to use a taxpayer’s chosen method of accounting as long as it clearly reflects income. It is clear to the Court that HPPO used a hybrid method of accounting that reported its gross receipts from car sales using the accrual method and its expenses (and possibly other income) using the cash method. Taxpayers are permitted to use hybrid methods. Respondent has not argued that HPPO’s hybrid method does not clearly reflect income, and we find that it does. Rather, respondent tries to deny that the RA used the cash method even though the RA testified at trial that she used the cash method.
Mr. Aboui was incredibly forthright in this testimony. He admitted that HPPO received cash and used it to pay wages and other expenses. Also, HPPO acquired significant inventory through trade-ins that was not accounted for as debits in HPPO’s bank records. These facts, in addition to the RA’s calculations that show reporting of gross income significantly greater than HPPO’s deposits for 2013–15, make use of the bank deposit analysis to determine HPPO’s COGS and deductible business expenses extremely inaccurate. Furthermore, there is no indication from our review of HPPO’s returns that it deducted the payments from HPPO’s bank accounts that the RA identified as nondeductible.
Random opinion from the US Tax Court:
During the years at issue Mohamad Nasser Aboui was the sole shareholder of HPPO [Corp. Autoville Motors], an S corporation for federal tax purposes. HPPO owned several used car dealerships. Mr. Aboui formed HPPO in 2009 by consolidating multiple used car lots that he owned. He contributed $5,167,089 of used cars to HPPO for its starting inventory.Most of HPPO’s customers had poor credit. Many did not have checking accounts and paid HPPO in cash. Often HPPO used the cash to pay its employees and other expenses and did not deposit it into HPPO’s bank accounts. HPPO offered in-house financing to its customers. It financed approximately 90% to 95% of its sales and retained security interests in the cars. When HPPO financed a car purchase, it reported the sale price as income in the year of sale.
Customers repaid the loans in less than 10% of HPPO’s sales. HPPO repossessed approximately 25% of the cars within three to four months of purchase and approximately 50% within one year. During the years at issue HPPO was unable to repossess over 250 cars after the buyers stopped making payments. When HPPO repossessed a car, it typically was in worse condition than when HPPO had sold it, sometimes with serious mechanical issues from the buyer’s failure to service the car.
HPPO bartered with mechanics for repair services in exchange for rental of HPPO’s garage space or as payment for the purchase of a used car. Mr. Aboui started using the barter system to recoup equipment and other costs that he incurred to set up HPPO’s repair services. Typically, the cars that HPPO sold to the mechanics were older and required too many repairs for HPPO to fix for resale. The mechanics submitted invoices for their services. HPPO reported the invoiced amounts as expenses and also reported the related income.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
[Here's one], but it's a 1998 custom build.
You forgot to add the URL.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
Maybe the client said "I want a big house", and the architect failed to explain to the client that a big house was not needed. (Bigger house → more billable hours?)
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
Relaxing progressionslop from Acaswell:
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A Budding Scientist in a Fantasy World (first two volumes moved to Kindle)
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
note your graph is by number of transactions, not dollar value of the transactions
The graph for that metric indicates near-identical median transaction sizes of around 230 dollars. (Mean transaction size is 250 k$ for Bitcoin vs. 50 k$ for Litecoin.)
Given the market-cap differences between the two, if Bitcoin had a decent protocol for transactions, I expect there would be 15–20× as many BTC transactions per day compared to LTC.
I don't see how that's relevant to the original question of whether Litecoin has "died out". In my opinion, even if Litecoin has died out as a store of value (I have no opinion on that question), the combination of half-as-large transaction volume and near-identical median transaction size means that Litecoin has not died out as a medium of exchange in comparison to Bitcoin.
ToaKraka
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1yr ago
the forks have basically died out
Litecoin is a fork of Bitcoin, and I would not characterize it as having "died out". Its transaction volume is about half that of Bitcoin.
Actually, according to this (not-very-trustworthy-looking) website, it would look quite different.
Very lazy assessment of the 28 companies that are in the top twenty of either capitalization or profit
Some notable differences:
Apple: 12.9 % of capitalization, 6.5 % of profit (6.4-% decrease)
Nvidia: 11.2 % of capitalization, 4.0 % of profit (7.3-% decrease)
Microsoft: 10.9 % of capitalization, 6.0 % of profit (4.9-% decrease)
Amazon: 7.9 % of capitalization, 3.4 % of profit (4.6-% decrease)
Saudi Aramco: 6.0 % of capitalization, 12.0 % of profit (6.0-% increase)
Berkshire Hathaway: 3.3 % of capitalization, 7.6 % of profit (4.4-% increase)
CEMIG: 0.0 % of capitalization, 14.2 % of profit (14.2-% increase)
Toyota: 0.8 % of capitalization, 2.3 % of profit (1.5-% increase)
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