There is no guarantee that they will get paid. For that to happen, congress will have to pass a spending bill that not only authorized future spending but also explicitly gives back pay for the time they were working without paying after the shutdown.

So far this has always happened, but I do remember some noises about not doing it around the last shutdown.

So especially after those comments last time, there is no certainty that if you come in to work for the government during a shutdown you will be paid.

There’s a reason the country lost credit rating, and it’s because people are slightly less confident that it will actually pay its debts, including simple payroll.

For me, given my age and all…five million.

Which kind of rich do you mean? The ‘this person is truly wealthy but it’s not unreasonable’ or ‘this person is unacceptably rich and should have their money taken away if not worse’?

The former can be somewhere around…$10,000,000 or so. Lower the older the person is really (cause I consider rich versus remaining expected lifespan), so maybe even as low as $6,000,000 for someone who’s currently 40.

The latter where it’s simply unacceptable for people to have that much I’d start the cutoff around $400,000,000 or so.

And slight sidenote on the unacceptable levels: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos both are so unacceptably wealthy that they could make one person a day wealthy by my $10,000,000 standard…every day…for 100 years…before running out (and that’s assuming they stopped accruing money at the beginning of this)…and still be unacceptably wealthy to a crazy degree.

Oh and all my numbers are assuming no additional income and definitely no interest or investment (but also assuming the money remains the same value it has today).

I can’t imagine coming in to work if I’m not being paid on time. Indeed, if there’s even a whiff of maybe I won’t get paid, I’m not coming in unless I’m paid in advance.

Every government worker that is told they’re not getting paid should do that. Money in my account now, before I come in to work.

That guy failed. It makes a big difference when they actually get killed.

I used to think that way. Indeed, one of my favorite quotes is from D&D, where an Arcanaloth, a being who is literally the physical manifestation of neutral evil, says “My friend, do you truly believe we consider ourselves evil? No, we seek only good. It’s just that our definitions don’t quite match.”

But more and more in the real world I have come to believe these people know that what they are doing is wrong…and they don’t care.

I might have been on epic’s side if they had delivered a storefront/launcher at least as good as Steam, then found they still weren’t able to compete and only then decided to try the exclusivity crap.

They did not. They have a launcher/store that is far worse than Steam or even GOG (which is an accomplishment; GOG’s isn’t all that good and yet they manage to be worse by a large margin), and they didn’t even attempt to provide a better product/service. Instead they just started throwing money in order to secure exclusivity.

It shows all they want is to muscle into the market, not provide anything better for people.

We just need a general rule: no company may offer more in compensation to any person than one hundred times the value the company paid in compensation to its lowest paid worker.

Add in words and details to make sure there aren’t any loopholes, of course, and the problem will be largely solved across the board.

The time to do this would’ve been immediately after it was discovered that Trump took classified documents and had them in his home during visits from foreign agents.

The Republicans would’ve howled about it, but I think it could have been done, at that moment. Like, have the first news about it not be talking about the documents, but simply that former President Trump has been detained and will not be allowed to communicate with anyone but his legal representation, because of suspicion of potential coded communication to enemy agents.

Nice attempt at using the curse, but I see another possibility:

She dies that night anyway. Comes back undead. Is killed at the appropriate time for the necklace curse. Curse fulfilled.

I really hope the media loses these hard, honestly. At this point I don’t even mind if Trump benefits some, I just want to see the media that sanewashed Trump and pretended there was anything reasonable about him returning as a presidential candidate get what they deserve.

It was actually a majority this time, don’t forget. Over half of Americans chose Trump.

Upside is the cult of personality is attached to Trump, and no one else has been able to pull it off him. Trump is only effective because somehow, for some insane reason, he, personally, has a lot of devoted followers.

Sam aged, Frodo did not. I recall several mentions throughout the books that Frodo was considered unusually young-looking for a 50-year old hobbit, just as Bilbo himself was very young-looking for 111. Owning the ring seems to basically just pause your aging, even if you’re not using it.

Sam was also twelve years younger than Frodo, but since Frodo stopped aging for 17 years, he wound up effectively older, physically speaking.

Yes, I have always from the first time I saw the movies thought that’s what they needed. A five second clip of that and nothing else about the movie has to change!

If your only source is the movies, one of the annoying gripes about them is they have this deceptive editing that makes it seem like Frodo left the Shire within a relatively short timespan after the birthday party.

Frodo got the ring on the 22nd of September of 3001. He leaves Bag End on the 23rd of September…of 3018.

Ice sinks to a certain point. If being attached to the shelf was holding that ice up higher than it would float, it’ll sink.

Don’t know if the movie shows it sinking further than that though, but the general assertion that ice doesn’t sink at all is definitely mistaken.

Maybe Valve needs to stop pushing updates for things they certified working until they certify the update won’t break them.

Never understood why Steam forces updates, but this would be a very good reason for them to do a 180 on it and let customers choose the version they want instead of forcing an update to the latest.

Things in Russia might not be great, but they’re not on the same level as North Korea by far.

NK is genuinely quite successful at isolating its population, Russia is not. Russian living conditions aren’t horrible, they don’t experience famine and such, etc. They have internet, and many of them that are otherwise not technically inclined seem very well versed in how to evade the state censorship and control of communication. Other day I was playing D&D with some Russian friends when they started blocking Discord in Russia, and we figured out a workaround within the hour and within a day they had Discord working again, and these guys aren’t otherwise heavily inclined to towards computer shit. They’re above average level of user knowledge, but they’ve become knowledgeable in this very specific area.

From what my Russian friends say and I gather from their descriptions, it’s a lot like Republicans here; the ones that support Putin and the current government are doing it in spite of obvious evidence they have no trouble seeing.

Now I would assume they’ll isolate these North Koreans quite a bit, the language barrier will prevent them from talking to the average Russian and so on. The ones they bring home, for domestic propaganda purposes, will be the most loyal, willing to go on with whatever story they’re told to tell about their experiences.

It’s better if the police budget is spent on replacing tires rather than purchasing even more unnecessary surplus military equipment which they will then try to justify using.