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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: November 10th, 2023

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  • I use FiraCode Nerd Font Mono instead, but it also does not have a specific italic font. In my config, only the “normal” section is defined, but all my bold and/or italic text looks like it should. Apparently, alacritty will apply a heavier weight or slant to the “normal” type face if you simply omit the “bold” or “italic” sections. So, what you have right now should Just Work.

    Allegedly, you can omit the “style” specification in the “italic” section (ie: just add "italic": {"family": "FiraMono Nerd Font"}, to your config snippit above), but i haven’t actually tried doing it that way.



  • While i do think life exists elsewhere in the universe, I think the chances of extraterrestrial biological entities coming to our planet is exceedingly unlikely. Space is just too big, and there isn’t any hard evidence that faster-than-light travel is even possible.

    Although, the universe isn’t just big – it’s old. There could be some ancient civilization from an ancient planet that became uninhabitable long ago. If they were technologically advanced enough to escape their solar system before things went tits-up AND were able to live multiple generations fully in space AND they just so happened to set out in our direction, I guess it’s possible that they found us. Even then, i would expect any UFOs or whatever would merely be probes, not the actual biological entities themselves.



  • I do think governments should explore taxing unrealized capital gains too, though.

    Oh, boy do they ever.

    One big issue is that they can take out loans with stock as collateral. Yes, they eventually have to pay the loan back (and sell stock to do so, thus paying some capital gains), but they can still get around paying their fair share of captial gains (eg: sell the underperforming stocks to minimize capital gains, or just take out a new loan to repay the old one). While I can see the benefit of being able to use your stock as collateral for a loan, there needs to be changes to how capital gains are calculated in this case.

    Another issue is that when they die, the inheritor of their stocks gets them with the cost basis reset (stepped-up basis). Let’s say I have stock that I purchased for $10/share. I die when the price is $100 and leave it to my sister, and she sells it when the price is $110. She only has to pay capital gains on $10/share, not $100/share. If you combine this with a cycle of taking out a loan to repay your previous loan until you die, this means that your estate can settle the final outstanding loan with virtually no capital gains tax at all, since the stepped-up basis for your stock goes into effect once it goes to probate (ie: before being distributed to creditors and beneficiaries).






  • Our pastor did a whole six-week long study of Acts, talking about how we needed to give more so we could fund mission trips and whatnot. I got caught up in it all (he was quite the orator, I’ll give him that) and donated a decent chunk of the money I’d been saving up to get a new iPod.

    My sister went on one of the mission trips and had to pay for literally everything out of her own pocket. Despite the plentiful donations for, allegedly, that express purpose.

    Cherry on the cake was that they soon broke ground on a new youth group building (which we didn’t need), complete with a coffee house (with prices and menu comparable to Starbucks). All I could think of was Jesus getting pissed at the vendors and money changers in the temple and flipping tables over. “‘My house will be called a house of prayer’, but you are making it ‘a den of robbers’.”