I'm down for hangouts! No car though.

It's not bad. It's a tool. There are bad ways to use it, sure. But there are plenty of pretty awesome applications beyond the realm of privacy. Rallying against the cloud seems very silly to me, like complaining about ovens or hammers.

Staying in Tokyo the whole time or going anywhere else? I can suggest some places if you want. The $1 sippy sake from 7 - 11 make great gifts, i brought a ton back but I wish I'd grabbed more!

What languages / tech are you going to be working on?

Not usually. Invested wealth grows about 6% a year. Your 95 will likely be about 100.7 next year.

Yes you could theoretically tax someone into poverty, but since inflation is -3% a year that would happen to them anyway if they don't invest.

We can plan on taxing income every year, but we can only tax a dollar of wealth once, then it's not available in following years.

That doesn't make sense, why would that be the case? Wealth taxes can be yearly just like income tax.

Taxing that doesn't even come close to the tax burden we put on the middle class.

Lets explain it this way. Let's say I'm rich. I have 5 million in a trust that I live off of. Every year I draw down 3%, about 150,000, and that is what I live on for the year. At most and assuming my tax guy is a total idiot, I pay 15% capitol gains tax or about $22,500 for the year.

Now lets say I'm upper middle class and I earn that 150,000 in my job. I'm paying about 28% of that in taxes, even if I've managed to property caffeinate my tax guy. That's $42,000 for the year.

The burden of taxes for the person still working is much, much higher then the rich guy. Many wealthy people I know don't pay taxes as they are able to keep their reported income below 20k.

Edited for typos

So a big part of the reason I haven't gotten too into comics is I read fast. They seem so tiny and expensive for not a lot of story. Are these longer? Are there anthologies or something I can get that are the length of more traditional books? Or do you just buy like 5 at once? Do libraries have these?

I'll give it a go either way just wondering where to start.

Tax the rich doesn't have to mean income tax. We could tax wealth, for example. The average millionaire realizes less then 3% of their net worth every year. Taxing that doesn't even come close to the tax burden we put on the middle class.

So I'm going to Emerald City Comic con this year because a ton of authors I like go. Do you have comics you'd recommend? I've never really read them before but I figure nows the time to give it a go.

I'm not assuming that, like I said, if they don't invest they are losing money to inflation (which has a historic average of 3%). So the government will drive them to zero either way. Your money needs to grow over time.

I think these examples you gave are definite problems we would have to figure out if we implement something like this. But if France, Italy, and most nordic countries can, we probably can too. I also think its much, much more common for rich people to not pay taxes then I do for the cases you describe (someone overnight owning a 10 million dollar business without time to set up liquid reserves isn't showing up on my facebook feed that often). If we never implement systems because there are possible edge cases we wouldn't have taxes at all :)

I didn't say the nutrition industry helps with these problems, the nutrition industry is very good at it's primary goal which is making money. I linked the article because I agree with the quote. Telling overweight people to just eat less isn't helpful. Telling them how to do it in a sustainable, enjoyable way is.

Will check it out, thanks!

I'm really with you on hating his writing style. He's got a lot of climber's pretension he seems to buy into. Reading his description of each person on the mountain I felt vaguely guilty, like I was listening to a shameless gossip talk trash about everyone else. I understand each person processes trauma differently, I'm not passing judgement on him as a person. I just don't think I'll be reading any of his other books any time soon.

You can probably get pretty close with a smartwatch! Not the same, I know, but still cool.

I would personally budget less for graphics. 1/3 of your budget on the card alone is a bit much, your card has 4gb of DDR5 which you'll only use for gaming. Meanwhile the rest of the system is going to be on 8gb of DDR3. I'd scale back the card a bit and upgrade the ram. I'm a little worried about the power supply, thats as low as I'd personally go. Might trade up the wattage for a non-modular one.

Otherwise looks good! Have you built one before?

Playing through Soma on and off when I have time. Otherwise it's just Hearthstone and 2048 on the bus.

Is there any word on an android port? I'll nab it for PC if I have to but I have a lot more phone time then PC time these days.

Dune is confusing as hell at first, so it's only gunna get better from there. Hope you enjoy!

I pay 1700 for a 2BR on the hill, 1500 with a roommate is crazy. The best way IMO is don't look online. Walk around neighborhoods and call. Places fill up so fast many landlords don't bother to advertise. Random spots in Seattle are sketchy, do your research on a neighborhood before you go. In my spot you might get mugged and you definitely will get your car window smashed, but no one will murder you. Make sure you aren't in one of the more murdery spots.

I like the idea of a coffee meetup, sounds fun! Have you tried Victrola? They're my favorite.

I like Slate but never been to the other one. In fremont? I'll have to check it out, we've been looking at houses around there.