Um Ackshually, there are many places where even “undocumented” people can be considered “registered” in this sense. “Undocumented” simply means lacking the authorization to be (and work) in the country, and is really just a minor paperwork violation unless an actual crime is committed in rhe process.

So, many localities will try and integrate these people into the community, and provide them the same local services everyone else gets, by simply not asking them to show their passport first. So, they might be able to get their name on utility bills, and use that as proof of residency to get a drivers’ license, in spite of their lack of status. (This notion that undocumented people still deserve human dignity really irks Conservatives, even though they all had ancestors who held the same status here at some point.)

This is really at the heart of what a “sanctuary city” policy is all about. It’s a recognition that a local government has a responsibility to all people living in it, regardless of their immigration status. And that local officials really don’t have the tools to be able to determine that anyway, so a local official won’t care about someone’s immigration status unless they are on the wrong side if the law. (Which also exposes the lie that these cities are less safe. If anything, sanctuary policies make it easier to kick out the miscreants, because no one is spending time chasing down undocumented people who are not causing trouble, leaving more time to find the bad eggs)

I would start with Duck Soup.

Which Marx Brother is your favorite?

There are backup plans, they are just more costly. Big Gas companies will just pass that cost down the line. Trust me, those companies were never in danger of losing money.

No, you won’t have to pay taxes on that cash when importing it. But you can bet that CBP will ask nosy questions about where you got it. And unless you can satisfy them that you got it by legitimate means, they will assume you got it by illegal means and confiscate it. It’s called “civil asset forfeiture”. Look it up.

However, as a US citizen you still technically owe income taxes on all your worldwide income. But you would settle that with the IRS regardless of whether or not the money ever makes it back to the US.

Now, this situation is one of the few legitimate use cases for crypto. Find someone locally who will sell you a few hundred BTC with that cash, and now CBP has nothing to find at the airport. Then cash it out once you are in the States. The IRS would still be interested in where you got the money, because they monitor all the ways to get cash out of the Crypto ecosystem into the US. But, as long as you have documentation of your lottery win (and crypto transfers) and file it all it shouldn’t be an issue. I would prefer to take my chances as a documemted rich person by the IRS than as a rando who shows up at Newark with a briefcase of foreign currency.

The toilet handled solid and liquid waste differently. Solid waste was stored for disposal on earth, liquid waste was stored in a smaller container and intended to be periodically vented out into the void. But the mechanism for that froze, and the container they had to store it in was too small for the whole trip, so they had to use a backup supply of pee bags for pee instead of the toilet.

I wonder if we were saved from an even worse fate, and if the toilet had worked as planned we would be destroyed at some point in the future by a race of aliens who we accidentally peed on when we threw our pee overboard in space

That may not work the way you think it will, but that’s a spoiler for the second movie, IIRC.

Just get a carrot nose, you can be the snowman. His schtick is that he can’t wait for Summer, because he doesn’t realize he’ll melt.

(Yeah, that’s a spoiler, but if you haven’t seen the movie yet you don’t care)

Generally a good piece, but I have one nit to pick:

Here’s the truth nobody wants to admit: the music industry isn’t run by musicians anymore. It’s run by promoters, ticket scalpers, streaming executives, and a shadowy network of middlemen who’ve figured out how to extract every last penny from your nostalgia and FOMO.

When was the industry ever run by musicians?

50 years ago, didn’t Roger tell you the name of the game, boy? He called it “Riding the Gravy Train”…

Every defendant in the US is entitled to a presumption of innocence, and the Prosecution is obligated to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. So, a defense attorney can be seen as performing a valuable service, to keep Prosecutors in check, and make sure they are doing their jobs correctly.

But I do wonder sometimes if these defense attorneys ask their clients whether or not they did the thing, or if they expressly say “Don’t tell me whether or not you did it”…

See my edit, it’s Jacksonville Beach FL

Where is this?

Edit: Found it! Jacksonville Beach, FL

30.280765 N 81.393002 W

Bitcoin burns so much energy because it’s developers are stubborn. It’s really that simple. Ethereum transitioned to a different algorithm that uses a fraction of that energy and only a few dorks care.

He managed to keep it up until all of a sudden he couldn’t. Madoff was undone when he had to produce 440 million that he didn’t have.

Meanwhile, Tether was able to meet billions on withdrawals, several times. After Terra collapsed, I seem to recall they saw $15B in redemptions, but I can’t find any reputable links on that. If Tether was a scam, shouldn’t it have failed a long time ago?

People outside of crypto don’t realize how massive Tether is, and how much money it has under management. As much as the crypto bros dislike Central Banks, Tether has turned into one. If Tether were to ever implode, it would take most Crypto businesses with it.

FYI, you posted this 9 times

Tether is an interesting experiment here. They are traded as smart contract tokens on top of various blockchains. They don’t really have any intrinsic value, other than Tether LTD saying “every Tether is 100% backed by currency reserves”, and releasing unsatisfactory “audits” now and then. It’s main utility is that it provides foreign exchanges with a way to trade in something that is like Dollars without opening them up to the regulation that comes with trading actual dollars. It’s market cap is currently in excess of $180 B.

But, USDT has been around, in one form or another, since 2015. And while other “innovative” crypto products have crashed and burned, Tether has been able to keep its peg and has never failed to meet redemptions. Furthermore, it doesn’t need to be a scam. It’s whole point is to always be worth one currency unit, so all they have to do is invest that currency in safe conventional investments and they can literally make billions of dollars with very little overhead. The most obvious answer is that they are not a scam.

I still don’t really trust them, but I have used them on exchanges, always making sure to trade through Tether to something I can redeem on a US exchange for actual dollars. But, I have to acknowledge they have lasted longer than most crypto entities. I wish they would get a complete audit together, but at some point their reputation for having lasted so long needs to be worth something?

You’re not wrong, but why is not having the backing of a government a bad thing?

I found crypto earlier than some. (not everyone – if I had more I wouldnt have to work anymore, haha!)

IMHO, the main value proposition of crypto is permissionless peer-to-peer payments. If we both have crypto wallets, and you send me an address to make a payment to, I can send that without needing anyone’s approval first. I don’t need any bank to agree to have me as a customer first, or any government to approve why the transaction is taking place. All I need is a functioning payment network, and the original Bitcoin white paper solved how to provide that and preserve anonymity. (Really Pseudo-anonymity, but only the nerds and Monero shills care about the difference)

As an academic experiment regarding permissionless payments, it is a resounding success. But, it turns out, Governments have laws regarding who can pay who, and about scamming people, regardless of the medium. So, just because Bitcoin enables permissionless payments doesn’t mean you can pay whomever you want, or makes scams somehow permissible.

Furthermore, the rapid increase in crypto prices really doomed any chance at all for useful adoption. Because people don’t want to spend crypto anymore. They view it as a Store of Value, and who can blame them, given how it has risen from nothing to a > $2T market cap, even after the recent downturn? You used to be able to use crypto in regular transactions, but not anymore.

What’s most remarkable is that there is any issue that can get a unanimous ruling from this Court.

“Scientific Community” is kind of a broad term. It is composed of a lot of smarty-pants types who are unlikely to take “no” for an answer, and will keep trying to fix the problem.

In the end, you may be right, and there’s no way to stop the runaway train, and all these folks will accomplish is getting our hopes raised while they earn their PhD’s and present papers in worldwide conferences they all burned jet fuel to get to.

But, what if you turn out to be wrong, and one of those poindexters actually figures out how to scrub CO2 from the atmosphere in an economical fashion, and they manage to stop the train? That person will be instantly famous, and the Nobel Prize might be the least of their accolades. They will be remembered as one of humanity’s greatest minds. If they happen to be British, they will be buried in that cathedral next to Newton and Darwin and Hawking, that’s how important it will be.

So, they will keep trying, because it’s as close as you can get in this life to immortality.