arch_8ngel

It is a fully "refundable" tax credit -- whether you owe taxes or not, if you're eligible for the credit, FILE and get the "Recovery Rebate Credit". EDIT -- though you are almost certainly required to file every year, anyway, unless you are earning poverty wages, so it should "just happen" when you file and do the Recovery Rebate Credit form at the end of your tax filing.

It would be a pretty enterprising individual to fell a metal flagpole in a residential area. EDIT: my initial reply from the city is that anything taller than 14 feet required a permit and should have had other restrictions as well. Trying to ascertain what those restrictions are, and whether this asshole ever had one in the first place.

If it was going to toe the line that close to violence, anyway, I'd just muster a posse and run the guy out on a rail the old fashioned way

Yeah, I'm checking with the city to see what rules exist around flagpoles themselves -- I am suspicious theirs might be too close to the street and I could force them to move it -- at least give them some inconvenience for their racism. But the flag itself is probably permissible, since the city code rules about "signs" exclude flags of essentially all "non-commercial" entities. I'm also considering attempting a casual conversation with the neighbor where I say "hey, just thought you might like to know that your anit-BLM flag is actually a formalized group of NeoNazis that have existed since 2015" Maybe they don't fully appreciate the line they're crossing. (that flag has been a gradual escalation from a Trump/Pence flag to a Confederate Flag to a "Blue Lives Matter" flag -- to the current neo nazi White LIves Matter flag)

Anyone have suggestions on how to get rid of a neighbor's prominent "White Lives Matter" flag?

The low-numbered Might and Magic and Wizardry games get a much better graphical treatment on home consoles than they ever did on the PC. The only downside of the console releases is an inability to port your characters from one game to the next -- but as I understand it that feature may not have worked as intended in the first place. Prince of Persia "feels better" on the console IMO -- though I'm sure you could make the argument that the control is more precise with a keyboard.

Really? I thought LIF and LIF2 worked during a fight. Like I said, it's been a good long time since I've played through it -- so I could well have a faulty memory on that aspect. I've never played through with such a fighter-heavy party -- might try it sometime.

1 or 2 charges of LIF2 is still a substantial difference in the battle with Chaos and the revisit of the Fiends, IMO. But I also never had the patience to spam buying health potions in the original NES release, so I think I spent a lot more time in the temple of fiends revisited with less than full health than I would if I was playing the PS1 re-release (where mass-buying was included as a convenience feature). Having the risk of dying earlier in a given fight (or just being unlucky with an insta-kill spell) would put me in the position of wanting at least 1 shot of a full revive to even the odds. But honestly -- my preference for the White and Black wizards comes down more on the side of "completionism"/"collecting" since I probably read the NES Strategy Guide for the game cover-to-cover on a regular basis for a couple of YEARS before ever buying the game -- just felt like a huge waste for those spells to exist in-game and never have any of them!

My "current play" has been a mix of Master of Magic and various stuff with the kids (my 4 year old gets a kick out of Double Dragon 2 or River City Ransom - and both kids love Legend of Zelda and a few puzzle games that get requested as "the game without bad guys")

You get your first Level 8 spells at Level 25 (if the guide I'm checking is to be believed) Like I said, been awhile since I played it, but I've never, ever, leveled up to 30, and I've definitely had casters with Level 8 magic. To each his own, but playing a game like FF, I like collecting the "stuff", which magic spells make up the majority of, so I just don't get my fix with a single red magic user

Been a long time since I played it, but I thought there were upgraded LIFE spells that only the White Wizard could get.

He won't have a white wizard, though -- don't think I've ever tried beating that game without one since I like having the life spells.

It sounds more like the brain fog from having been on an artificial heart pump for chest surgery. My granddad had a bypass that involved open surgery, and they used what he referred to as "the pump" -- evidently known for generating long-term brain fog. At least, the descriptions I've read for covid-fog sound very similar to what he talked about.

I enjoyed it in the theater, because any Indiana Jones experience in the theater is pure fun. But it is definitely worse than Temple of Doom, IMO. Temple of Doom still has the benefit of practical effects -- and personally, I think it gives a better treatment to exotic mysticism in an adventure setting than Crystal Skull manages to do with its aliens.

You're missing my point that while the president has a lot of power to say "no", he doesn't have a particularly potent magic wand to wave to say "yes". Irrespective of who is president, you're dealing with senate filibuster, along with the optics of party-line votes that serve to continue the appearance of a winner-takes-all culture war.

Believe what you want, I guess, but the reality I see on the ground is that "socialism" is still an effective punching bag in a pretty significant segment of America. But I do think you're being disingenuous if you want to claim that "using socialist rhetoric" is what won the election for Obama. Universal healthcare needs a better branding campaign that isn't conducted in the midst of an election cycle. There was way too much "noise" from primary competitors trying to explain how it would work, financially, and if any of them really want it to happen, they need to come together with a good plan that they all stand behind -- and then compete with each other on other merits. Because absolutely none of the candidates in the primary are individually qualified or knowledgeable enough to make it work on paper, and it takes teams of analysts and specialists to really figure it out correctly. If Democrats (on any end of the party spectrum) want it to happen, they need to get that team to do the job correctly ONCE, so that the messaging about healthcare is consistent, clear, and accurate. Not having a socialist-enough president isn't why that isn't going to happen.

I think you are misunderstanding how different opinions in some states are if you think that democrat candidates lost because they didn't push socialist positions as their primary message. The vast majority of Americans would be better off with it. But in a lot of states, whether that is the active messaging, or not, there is a lot of built-up fear of anything that even brushes up against the "socialist" label. I really think you are overestimating what Bernie's chances would have been, and how easy it would have been to run attack ads against him in a national campaign situation -- where even without getting into the socialism, getting into the fact that he had a heart attack during the primaries being seen as a major disqualifier on health grounds. And for as old as Biden and Trump are -- Bernie is EVEN OLDER. A way better strategy would have been to run a younger candidate that wasn't a dinosaur. But as it is, I'll settle for a single term out of Biden where he might step aside in 4 years and lets a younger person step up to the plate. All of these guys are way too fucking old.

That last bit just goes to show how important "the middle" actually was in defeating Trump... i.e. people that don't feel compelled to vote straight-ticket.

Trump mustered the 2nd most number of votes in history in his loss, so we're fortunate that so many people wanted a ham sandwich. "State races were tight" because a significant amount of voters are susceptible to messaging that made it sound like socialists were going to completely take over the system. Bernie would be uniquely susceptible to playing into that messaging.

I think people in the farther left demographic massively over-estimate the vote at that end of the democratic party, and it doesn't sound like you are adequately considering that anyone winning elections in this country, at a truly national level, has to build a big tent to succeed. What I am confident in, is that the kind of messaging the right wing could bring against Bernie would actually be substantive and damaging, in terms of how he would be portrayed to the majority in the middle -- and at the very least, Bernie would have a fundamental inability to embrace a "return to normal" stance, since that is counter to his intentions. Instead, we got a year of lazy throw-away insults about "sleepy Joe", and attacks against his son -- where they had to resort to character assassination attempts, because they KNEW that a "moderate democrat" had MASSIVE appeal as a "return to normal" during a time of fundamental political insanity.

Federal student loan debt is $1.5 TRILLION. Private student loan debt is $113 Billion. For comparison: Total credit card debt is $1 Trillion Total mortgage debt is $10 Trillion Total corporate debt is over $10 Trillion I don't think the amount that has converted to private loans via refinancing is a meaningful factor in the discussion, when you look at the loan cashflows that banks have on their books.

On that first point, that is just fundamentally untrue. How are the banks the losers in that equation? The federal government is the one forgiving the debt, not the banks. And regarding your edit -- you seem to be missing how important the moderate voting block is, and their ability to stomach a moderate democrat, but NOT having a willingness to turn out in the same numbers for a far left candidate like Sanders, regardless of a dislike of Trump. I don't think it was a mirror situation of 2016 where pretty much any Republican was going to destroy Hillary (who herself had fairly weak core support, and had turned off a huge swatch of the potential democrat voters, along with being particularly distasteful to cross-over voters) Instead, it was a situation where Trump continues to enjoy a status as a cult leader, and the ONLY WAY he was able to be unseated was a 1-2 punch of a miserable handling of the pandemic combined with a moderate candidate that drew broader support. Most people are somewhere in the middle, and at risk of alienation based on the extremes of either party affiliation.

You must just have a higher tolerance for shrieking hysterical women than I do.

The actor for Short Round was in Goonies and was an instrumental character in both movies. Anyone that dislikes Short Round can go fuck themselves.

I'm not saying we needed a Karen Allen repeat. But we didn't need Willie, either. Even if you decide the movie is better with a "damsel" instead of a partner for Indy, you can have a "damsel" who doesn't spend more time screaming than speaking and doesn't exercise a pitch-range that makes your ears bleed.