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conuly) wrote2025-09-04 03:55 amPSA text from celli
The survey is being conducted as part of the Department of Treasury and the IRS’s efforts to fulfill a reporting requirement to Congress under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act. The law directs Treasury to deliver a report to Congress by Oct. 2, 2025, on several key issues related to free tax filing options for the public.
Treasury and the IRS encourage taxpayers to share their perspectives and help inform this important congressional report.
Translation: We have to report to Congress about the public's interest in Free File (filing directly on the IRS website) because they want to quash it, so here's a survey!
survey here
There are a couple of leading questions that I personally found HIGHLY entertaining. But I do recommend that if you are an American taxpayer you take a look at it/take it.
There was one question that asked what's important in filing taxes, and it had an "other" option that opened a handy text window, so I used that text window to tell them all about how filing taxes is a waste of time and money when the IRS already has all that information. There is absolutely no reason they can't just send you a bill or a refund every year, with a receipt, and you'd only have to file if you had to correct errors or had income or deductions that had been unreported for whatever reason.
conuly) wrote2025-09-02 09:16 pmDoes anybody have an explanatory link?
The OP is specifically confused about the use of the prhase "such as" in the highlighted sentence. I said that this is not wrong, it's just formal and old-fashioned, but like most Americans I've had very little formal education in English grammar and with google I still can't find either the words to define it or a few well-placed citations by prestigious authors.
andrewducker) wrote2025-09-01 12:00 pm- ai,
- beauty,
- cryptography,
- europe,
- fashion,
- funny,
- labour,
- links,
- mathematics,
- music,
- ohforfuckssake,
- quantum,
- regulation,
- rights,
- socialnetworking,
- technology,
- usa,
- war
Interesting Links for 01-09-2025
- 1. Big Tech Companies in the US Have Been Told Not to Apply the EU's Digital Services Act
- (tags:Europe USA socialnetworking regulation )
- 2. How far away is quantum computing from affecting current cryptography?
- (tags:cryptography quantum )
- 3. Why haven't quantum computers factored 21 yet?
- (tags:quantum mathematics )
- 4. What do AI fashion models mean for the future of beauty standards
- (tags:ai fashion beauty )
- 5. Why Labour Looking Into Changing The ECHR Matters
- (tags:Labour rights OhForFucksSake )
- 6. Who will win the Eternal Struggle?
- (tags:war funny )
- 7. The Qweremin (a qwerty theremin)
- (tags:music technology )
siderea) wrote2025-08-31 11:57 pmVance is Worse [pols, US, Ω, Patreon]
0.
With all the eager discussion of the possibility of Trump dying in office, I am in the delicate and unfortunate position of not actually being in favor of it.
Don't get me wrong. I, too, would enjoy to seeing something very bad happen to Trump. What I'd best like is him getting his just deserts – ideally being arrested, indicted, tried, found guilty, sentenced, having appealed, the appeal failing, appealing again, having that appeal fail, petitioning the POTUS for clemency and it not being granted, him being duly executed by the state as the traitor to the Republic and the Constitution he was proven to be. I'm not generally a big fan of capital punishment, but I am in fact willing to make exceptions; he seems to think he's an exception to a lot of things, and here I would agree with him.
But that's not going to happen, not in this time-line, and it's probably for the best that it doesn't.
Perhaps he will simply keel over dead, and I confess I will take at least a little bitter satisfaction in it.
And it's certainly not that I don't wish us all to be spared even another moment of this Trump presidency. Of course I do.
Alas, as much as I hate to crush the pleasant fantasy of us being redeemed by the deus ex machina of artheriosclerosis finally doing its job and carrying off our oppressor: Vance is worse. Much, much worse.
1.
( It's perhaps understandable that you would not realize this.... Read more [6,770 Words] )
This post brought to you by the 219 readers who funded my writing it – thank you all so much! You can see who they are at my Patreon page. If you're not one of them, and would be willing to chip in so I can write more things like this, please do so there.
Please leave comments on the Comment Catcher comment, instead of the main body of the post – unless you are commenting to get a copy of the post sent to you in email through the notification system, then go ahead and comment on it directly. Thanks!
duskpeterson) wrote2025-09-01 12:54 amUPDATE: Tempestuous Tours + introducing early access fiction
BLOG FICTION
Tempestuous Tours (Crossing Worlds: A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands #2). A whirlwind tour of the sites in the Three Lands that are most steeped in history, culture, and the occasional pickpocket.
Latest installments:
EARLY ACCESS
A Visitor's Guide to the Three Lands: Novel and Side Stories (Crossing Worlds), which includes an expanded version of Deadly Introductions, is now available to my Patreon and Ream readers. The omnibus will go into general release next month.
NEWS
Early access previews at Patreon and Ream
I'm now providing one-month-early previews of my new e-book fiction through Patreon and Ream. I want to give a treat to readers who financially support me, while still making those stories quickly available to the rest of my readers. The early access model seems to be the best way to handle that.
( General news and upcoming fiction )
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dw_maintenance2025-08-31 07:37 pmCode deploy happening shortly
Per the dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.
There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.
andrewducker) wrote2025-08-31 10:14 pmLife with two kids: A matter of probability
Except...that a few months ago we used the app Chwazi, where everyone puts their finger on the screen and then it picks someone (to be first player in a game, for instance). And Gideon loved it. So last weekend when I asked who should get out of the bath first he said "We'll play the finger game." - and I asked him if he'd be sad if he didn't win, and he said no, and then he and Sophia played it, and he lost, and I had to wash the hair of a sobbing child, who kept saying "I thought I would win!"
So this weekend, I asked him who was getting out of the bath first, and he said "Finger game!" and I said "Do you remember how sad you were?" and he said "Very sad!" and I said "So you should just choose." and he said "I have a plan, this time the person who loses will go first." And, of course, he won. And so, again, I had to wash the hair of a crying child who thought he'd found a way to beat probability.
All of which is to say that if you want to beat people at games of chance then I recommend 5-year-olds, who are both terrible at understanding it, and completely fail to learn from that.
Mississippi site block, plus a small restriction on Tennessee new accounts
A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.
The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.
In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.
The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.
Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.
Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.
thewayne) wrote2025-08-31 10:54 amIn a study, wearing rose scent for ONE MONTH increased growth in the brain's gray matter!
From the article: "Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba in Japan asked 28 women to wear a specific rose scent oil on their clothing for a month, with another 22 volunteers enlisted as controls who put on plain water instead. (and that's not entirely accurate: 29 women wore the scent, but one was unable to do the post-MRI)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed boosts in the gray matter volume of the rose scent participants.
While an increase in brain volume doesn't necessarily translate into more thinking power, the findings could have implications for neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia."
There was no change in the areas of the brain where smell or emotions were processed, which is interesting. But "significantly more gray matter in the posterior cingulate cortex or PCC (linked to memory and association)."
They don't know why this change is happening. One thought put forth is that the rose scent is acting as an irritant, which is interesting. I'm hoping they do longer term studies to see if it actually affects dementia-related illnesses! Of course, I'd also like to see this study replicated using men. It's the same problem of most medical studies using only men because they don't want to have to bother with accommodating women's hormonal variances, it's just so yucky and unpredictable! Then they proclaim that everything applies equally to all women, and they just don't.
The scent-wearing group were 29 participants aged 41–69 years, the control group 22 participants aged 41–65 years.
https://www.sciencealert.com/smelling-this-one-specific-scent-can-boost-the-brains-gray-matter
The full paper is currently available at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923024000297?via%3Dihub
If it becomes restricted, I downloaded the PDF and would be happy to supply it.
thewayne) wrote2025-08-30 08:20 pm"It was great when it all began!" 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
A lot of the movie cast is still with us, though we lost Meatloaf a few years back. Interestingly, the movie was not a success in its initial run, it wasn't until the midnight circuit picked it up and the shadow casting and other fun started and it took on a life of its own that it really became a success. According to the article, RHPS may be the origin of cos-play!
I'll definitely be ordering this when it comes out. As it happens, I listened to the soundtrack just a week or so ago.
https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/08/celebrating-50-years-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/
conuly) wrote2025-09-01 06:04 pmSo, the title said something about the Argonaughts or maybe the Hugonuts?
Them, repeating the wrong spelling: Nope, absolutely not!
( Read more... )
mtbc) wrote2025-08-30 03:07 pmImmigration and wealth
In the meantime, Britain declines. Local councils now struggle to provide even basic services. The health system is becoming several kinds of joke, despite the dedication of those working within it. Even those graduating with good undergraduate degrees typically can't get a job that pays well enough for them to be soon on the road to buying a house within reach of the job.
Furthermore, our population is aging. As we end up with fewer working people, and more people needing assistance, the situation can only worsen. Given that our history puts us somewhat in others' debt, I would like to imagine that we could kill two birds with one stone: welcome young families from the British Commonwealth so they can live and work here, providing services and paying tax, ideally building new towns and cities too, while probably also sending some money back home to their families.
Of course, what I describe is not far off the immigration policy we had between, er, around WWII and Margaret Thatcher. We've seen how the Windrush generation has been treated since. Further, populist anti-immigrant rhetoric abounds so we're not about to be saved by welcoming workers from overseas. So, what's the plan? We could make domestic families have lots of babies (not that they can afford anywhere to put them) or we can erode the health service far enough to stop the old people from living for too long.
Looking at the high prices, poor services, and xenophobia, I'd be happy to self-deport. However, for the meantime there are kids in education that I don't want to disrupt. Once everybody graduates, I wouldn't fault any of us for moving elsewhere. In the meantime, I can continue to hope and vote for change, both in the UK and the US.
conuly) wrote2025-08-31 10:29 pmSo, I've now created a DW feed
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chopwood_carrywater_feed. I thought that getting it in my email and on my reading page would help prompt me to call (or email, listen, I have limits) my congresscritters.( Read more... )
mtbc) wrote2025-08-30 10:12 amKeyboard shortcuts and modifiers on the Mac
This switching of shortcuts between Linux, Mac, and Emacs-on-Mac is awkward partly because, as above, some of these are quite similar, and I don't yet see a system that helps me remember. Far easier for me was back when I used to use a Programmer Dvorak keyboard layout at work, and regular Qwerty at home, partly because those are just so clearly different. Also, probably it helped that I wasn't switching frequently, just a few times per day.
siderea) wrote2025-08-30 04:20 amThis one will be [curr ev]
Every day, a man walks to a news stand and pays for a copy of Pravda, unfolds it, looks at the front page, and throws it in the trash. Every day he does this, for months, until finally the news seller asks the man, "So what is it you are looking for on the front page every day?"
"I'm checking for an obituary."
"Comrade, the obituaries aren't on the front page."
"Oh, this one will be."
darkoshi) wrote2025-08-29 11:04 pmold dream
Dream: I was with a group of people (coworkers?) given the opportunity to go skydiving (over Columbia?). The opportunity was presented on short notice while we were doing some other group activity. My first thought was sure, sounds fun. So I got into the small plane with everyone else and sat in a seat in the middle on the right side. The chair felt small and uncomfortably close to the window. I realized that I'm terrified of heights and I'd refuse to jump out of the plane once it got up high in the air. So as the door was closing I said I couldn't do it and asked to be let out. But I think it was too late; they didn't want to open the door again. So I thought that I'd just have to stay in the plane after everyone else jumped out. After waking up and thinking about it I realized there had been no mention of nor training on how to use a parachute first, nor were we given parachutes.
.
It reminds me of the time in high school when I was standing on stage with other National Honor Society members and/or inductees. The speaker had been telling a story about being up in an airplane with the principal of the school, and I hadn't realized it was a joke until the punchline. Then, envisioning the principal jumping out of the plane without a parachute, I couldn't stop breaking out in (possibly well-concealed?) snorts of laughter for the rest of the ceremony. I didn't have anything against the principal, by the way, it just seemed so funny and incongruous.
mellowtigger) wrote2025-08-29 04:02 pm1,452 ppm
I'm a member of an organization in Minnesota called MN350. It takes its name from the carbon dioxide parts-per-million that we wish we had. We passed 350 ppm long ago. We should aspire to having numbers that low again in our future. This year, I can't remember if I've seen any measurement in my house (even with windows open) below 500. The longer that humans burn fossil fuels, the higher that number will go.
I mention it now, because a few minutes ago I took additional measurements on 2 floors of my house. I was so tired again today, and I spent about 2 hours trying and failing to get some needed sleep just now. I thought maybe the sleep apnea was a lot worse (which might also be true), but I used the app on my smartphone to check the readings on the AirThings device (mentioned last year too), and the CO2 level was not great. I grabbed the even more portable Aranet and placed it next to the bed. It immediately switched over to the "red zone" alert level. That's not good.
- ground floor: 1,250ppm CO2
- upstairs bedroom: 1,452ppm CO2
Okay. So... I need to stop talking about how tired I always am and actually do something about the air quality indoors. I need to finally schedule that sleep test, so I can also get a new sleep apnea solution, since I didn't use the old machine when it gave my face a rash everywhere that it touched my face.
I'm tired of being tired. The potential causes are measurable. I just need to overcome inertia and rationally do something about these issues.
mtbc) wrote2025-08-29 07:24 pm