StatisticalOutlier

I think that's what we got in the U.S. a couple of weeks ago--two women who know each other and maybe have a podcast. So maybe y'all are just a little behind.

I just realized I don't actually know what a monkey's anus looks like, and I'm sure not gonna google it. But here's what I think it looks like.

I think the 15/15 rule was excessive, too. Something like 10/10 would be reasonable. Shoot--maybe they actually had a 10/10 rule but told people it was 15/15 because they knew they'd try to push it. I had a post deleted recently because I questioned a reality TV show contestant's choice to have a beard that makes his mouth look like a monkey's anus. I'm quite confident that would have been acceptable snark at TWOP, which is why I miss it. I don't remember being on any of the "toxic" forums at TWOP, or if I was, I'd just stop going. No discussion among people I don't actually know is important enough for me to subject myself to content I find upsetting. (Obviously, I'm not on any social media. 😀 )

I like that rule. I find it disrespectful for someone to expect other people to read his posts but he can't be bothered to read theirs, especially since this person is probably saying something that's already been said. Or worse, something that's been said and rebutted, which he'd know if he'd read the previous posts, so all he's doing is putting the misinformation back out there.

I wish someone who actually knows what happened with the "plot" would divulge names, dates, and actions. I still don't understand what happened at all.

She said weeks, not days. I'm with Bill on this--I can't eat what's not there. I don't enjoy having an unfulfilled craving, but I get over it.

If he did, he can (and actually should) use that as a factor in deciding whether he wants to be married to her, regardless of whether she intends to continue having one-night stands during their marriage. Wait just a second. Did he really say "Clare's and my marriage"? I would consider staying married to him just on that basis alone.

Yep. That's what I was referring to when I was talking about the impossibility of dealing with these people. Or, well, it's not impossible, but you're going to lose no matter what you do. Ignore them? You're a coward and hiding something. Present evidence? It's fake.

I found it odd that he singled out Wyoming as a state that hadn't expanded Medicaid to adults. The whole state has only 600,000 people. I know it's important to low-income adult Wyomingians, but a more impactful example would be Texas, which also hasn't expanded Medicaid to adults, and has 5,000,000 uninsured people--almost ten times the total number of people in Wyoming. And Florida has 23,000,000 people, and also hasn't expanded Medicaid. I can't remember if it was explained, but Medicaid is available to very low-income people. Obamacare was designed to cover people who make above a certain income (like $15,000 for a single person, give or take a few thousand) to get a subsidy that makes health insurance affordable. For those who make less than that, they were to be on their state's Medicaid program, with states receiving federal money to cover some of the costs of expanding Medicaid eligibility to everyone. However, not all states expanded their Medicaid eligibility to include non-parent adults, so in a place like Texas or Wyoming or Florida, people who don't make enough to qualify for an Obamacare subsidy get no help, as in zero, with their health insurance costs. They don't get a premium subsidy for buying a health insurance policy on the Exchange, and they aren't eligible for Medicaid. I'm sure this is too into-the-weeds for the show he did, but if you're just going to do a drive-by on Medicaid expansion and people who qualify for no help whatsoever with their healthcare costs, why pick the state with the smallest population in the whole country? It has fewer people than the District of Columbia!

So here's what came out of Brennan's mouth: Brennan: I felt there was a massive mismatch from the very beginning. And the hurdles that we encountered very early on I personally could not get over. Emily: What were the hurdles? Brennan: When I first saw you I was like, pretty girl, you know, cool, fun, making me feel comfortable. An hour later I'm talking with your friends and they're telling me that you get ghosted all the time. You love one-night stands. You're selfish. Emily: I don't think they said I had one-night stands or I'm selfish. Brennan: Someone was telling me that. So I'm already feeling turned off at this point. So the next day, we talk, you have no idea where your money goes. Alarm. Emily: I make more money than you, OK? Brennan: No you don't. Emily: Yes I do. Brennan: You lied about that. So that was cool. That for me is not what I was looking for in my future wife. Clare [interjecting her opinion for some unknown reason]: That's fair. That's fair. Brennan: So when I heard that I was turned off. ------------- This money business is new, right? But what I find really interesting is that in response, she says (truthfully or not) she makes more money than he does. Objection, your honor! Irrelevant! I noted in the thread for Part 1 that Clare was asked, point blank, if she visited Cam in the hospital and she said "yes." But actually, she didn't. When Cam said she hadn't 'visited him, she talked about how she wanted to, and how Cam wouldn't return her calls, and Cam told her she brings bad energy. That, apparently, equals "yes" when asked if she visited him. And Emily did something similar at the beginning of this episode. Brennan: You got caught lying about making out with someone at the bar. And-- Emily: I told you the truth about the Australian. Brennan: But how many times did I ask, though, before you came clean? Emily: I was scared to tell you because I didn't want that to be your easy out. And these are the two who spend the most time accusing the men of lying.

You can look at previous versions of the website on archive.org (an incredibly useful tool these days). It appears (and we of course have to account for the fact that a website is an advertising tool) that a guy started the business at least 10 years ago (he's the "founder" on the current website) as what looks like a one-man shop fixing carbon fiber bike frames. There was another guy working there for a little bit, and then more recently Cameron shows up on the website as an "engineer" (he has a master's degree in composite engineering). And then later Cameron is listed as "Engineer and Co-Owner." The shop has always been "by appointment only," which is not uncommon for businesses like this. You contact them to let them know you need your carbon fiber bike frame fixed because you don't want to spend $2,000-$5,000+ on a new one, and they'll arrange for you to drop it off or, more often, you ship it to them.

And of course my question was, "Do you still believe it?" Which was not really answered, as usual. There would be an important difference between "No, of course not" and "Yes I do" and "I don't want to but I just can't shake it."

Agree. And as I said, it's a semantics issue. But if there's an accurate way to express something, especially when it comes to taxes and the like, I'll always push for the accurate wording. People generally pay lower tax on retirement income, but that's because after they retire, they're usually in a lower income tax bracket than when they were working. But not always. Say you made $50,000 a year while working, and on the day you retired you inherited $2,000,000 in cash, which generates $100,000 a year in income. You'll be in a higher tax bracket than when you were working, which means you'll be paying more tax on retirement money you socked away than if you'd paid tax when you earned it. That's because the retirement distributions are taxed as ordinary income, and that wouldn't be the case if they were "taxed at a lower rate." Well, Charles Schwab is who fucked up my Roth IRA conversion, resulting in my having to pay tax on the entire amount in one year instead of spread over five years. I'd calculated that my income was going to stay below the next marginal tax bracket even if I converted my IRA if I took the option to spread the conversion over five years. But Schwab fumbled the paperwork and the entire conversion was pushed into one year, which did put me into a higher tax bracket and is something I never would have chosen to do.

This appears to be the actual sign:

A semantics issue: social security income is taxed as ordinary income, just like distributions from retirement accounts. It's included with your other income to arrive at "combined income," and the tax on that total is calculated using the usual tax table, at the end of the instructions. Where the difference comes into play is how much of your social security income is taxed, and once you calculate that, you add it to your other income and use the same tax table you use for everything else. Up to 85% of social security income can be subject to tax, and it depends on how much other income you have. It's not like there's a special X% tax rate for social security income. This is in contrast to long-term capital gains, which ARE taxed at a different rate--either 0%, 15%, or 20%. The rate is dependent on your taxable income, but the long-term capital gains don't get lumped in with your income. Retirement account distributions get lumped in with your income in determining your tax, and a portion of social security benefits gets lumped in with your income in determining your tax. And short-term capital gains get lumped in with your income in determining your tax. All of these use the same old tax table we're used to using to calculate the tax, and are therefore taxed at the same rate. The long-term capital gains tax, because it does have a separate rate, gets calculated independent of the tax table, but you still use the tax table to calculate the tax on ordinary income (wages, retirement distributions, short-term capital gains, a portion of your social security income, etc.). How to manage distributions to fund retirement is a case-by-case situation, and of course depends on accurately predicting how long you'll live.