Was not expecting a Blood Mountain meme this morning, of all things. What a great song on a fantastic album.

What the actual fuck is that image on the screen?

Oh for sure, I’m not trying to defend the American tax system as being good by any means - it’s most definitely not. But for most people it’s not as bad as some folks seem to believe.

Yeah, I’m not by any means trying to say that the American system is the best way of doing things. It’s definitely not, and to be honest I’ve never quite managed to get my state withholding right - I almost always owe a little bit (usually a hundred dollars or so). But some folks seem to have gotten some strange ideas about how bad it actually is.

I’m not sure what country you’re talking about, but I assume the U.S. We do have taxes deducted from payroll, and you fill out a form telling the employer (and the IRS) what amount to deduct based on estimated income, family size, and a couple of other factors. Then in April we have to file our official tax form declaring actual income, and if we owe less than what was deducted from our paychecks we receive that back as a refund, but if we underestimated we have to pay whatever taxes are remaining. The reason that filing taxes is so complicated is the sheer volume of deductions, exemptions, credits, etc that have been piled on top of the tax code over the years (plus lobbying by the tax prep industry). It’s a stupid system, but it’s not as stupid as some people seem to be assuming in this thread. If you set up your withholding right, you shouldn’t ever owe taxes when it’s time to file.

Now, if you’re self-employed or a contractor (and considered self-employed) the whole thing kind of falls apart and it’s a lot easier to wind up owning a bunch of money. Like I said, it is a stupid system, just not quite as crazy as some people seem to be assuming.

Yeah I grew up in Georgia and I’ve never seen whatever that bullshit on a plate is, lol.

Mostly what I see are pedants who keep arguing that actually it’s a coyote circling the chickens, and that calling it a wolf de-legitimizes actually crying wolf, and that wolves had a very specific platform, and all the while the coyote is getting closer to the fucking henhouse.

Okay, I gotta admit that got me pretty good…

Really leaning into the shit in shitposting, huh?

Milt is, apparently, a thing which is eaten in a number of cultures. I couldn’t find any other non-fish examples, though, which was a little surprising.

Yeah! I think I mentioned it in another comment in this thread, but a friend of mine has recently gotten really into Gong Fu style tea and I’ve tried several white teas with him, and they didn’t give me that jittery feeling at all.

Yeah it makes my teeth chatter, it’s very strange. I didn’t noticed a big difference between full vs. empty stomach but I wasn’t paying much attention to that either.

I will say that most types of tea do this to me, to varying degrees. Black teas are the worst, green tea isn’t nearly as bad. I’ve had some Chinese white teas and I barely noticed any jitteriness, but those teas really aren’t very strong to begin with.

I tried switching to black tea a couple of years ago because I realized that coffee was making my anxiety worse, but fucking hell did tea give me the jitters. I think I just have a bad reaction to tannins in general and apparently black tea is super high in them.

Awaken, awaken, awaken, awaken

Take the land, that must be taken

Awaken, awaken, awaken, awaken

Devour worlds, smite forsaken

I mean, it’s basically a cheeseburger with an accent, hard to go wrong there. It looks delicious.

To be fair, I just looked that up and it does seem like something we would come up with…