There are deeply embedded cultural practices around writing and reading and these are not going to change quickly and easily.
And:
They cherish the book. And they believe that this is an artifact that they want in their lives.
Google failed me — once again. I couldn’t turn up a single chart showing the history of typewriter sales compared to home/office computer sales. It’s probably out there, but Google isn’t finding it.
Filed under Digital Overthrow
1909:
No people ever felt the want of work or poverty for a long time without reaching hands against their political institutions that they might find in a change some relief from their distress.
Filed under Collapse
Philadelphia officials clear 19,400 fugitives
This is the only bit that matters:
You’re never going to find these people. And if you do, are you going to prosecute them? The answer is no.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
Basically he’s saying that he and all the rest of the court and law enforcement machinery refuse to do the jobs they have.
And you wonder why corruption is everywhere? Why you’re cheated right, left, center, up, down, top, and bottom?
Yet these bastards will dare get up on their hinds legs and victimize those who lost their jobs and are out of work.
They will self-righteously preach about morality and other bullshit.
While they are the welfared bastards, collecting a paycheck for no work while employed!
Remember that.
They should get zero mercy.
Filed under Collapse, Pottersville
If you have a Web site, and you ever put Google ads on it, and you ever made a penny off those ads, congratulations! The Internal Revenue Service owns you.
According to the IRS you are a private contractor employed by Google; you are a business; and you will have to pay business taxes and the rates that go along with them. Doesn’t matter how big you are, how long ago you put those ads there, or whether you made $20 or $20,000 off them.
Boldfaced emphasis added by me.
WordPress puts the ads here. I don’t even see them unless I come in from a device other than the PC I use at home.
Do you know that this government can wind up killing most of the Internet with one capricious tax decree?
The decree would be: IRS calculates the monetary value of using a free site and taxes us based on that use. There are “in-kind” taxes that could easily be contorted to make this happen. The IRS could rule we’re obtaining taxable value in a way that makes us all wind up owing them something.
Or: They could decree that since WordPress is deriving monetary value from the ads on this site, I am therefore a WordPress contractor somehow liable for the value I’m adding to their system.
Yes, go ahead, IRS. Try to pull this shit.
Speed up The Overthrow.
Update: This gets worse. What will the IRS rule about affiliate links? Will everyone with Amazon affiliate links be capriciously deemed a contractor of Amazon and owe business taxes?
Update 2: What about those embedded Amazon Kindle book previews? Could they be ruled advertisements? What about any links that point to any commercial site at all? This thing could snowball very, very quickly.
Update 3: See: Cancel Christmas? Dissecting a Tax Drama? which is written by a CPA who specializes in taxes.
Filed under Blog Notes, Collapse, Pottersville
In Changes At The Rubicon API Building, I noted the creepy blue wooden wall was replaced with a chain link fence.
Now that fence has been changed.
Filed under Other Hardware
Mike Cane’s xBlog 