Various web links I found to be of interest recently.
Oligarchs are robbing America blind, and the IRS is powerless to stop them.
The IRS publishes data each year on the tax gap, the difference between the estimated amount due and what it collects. This is noncompliance, and the numbers are staggering. The agency estimated that the gap for 2022, the most recent year available, was $696 billion-roughly the combined 2024 budgets for the Departments of Agriculture, Education, Homeland Security, State, and Treasury. But that's a gross underestimate, because in the realm of offshore tax havens, the IRS is flying blind. "The projections do not fully represent noncompliance," the IRS report gingerly admits, "because data are lacking." Charles P. Rettig, the IRS commissioner in 2021, put the gap at about $1 trillion per year, significantly greater than America's bloated defense budget. For perspective, the 1975 tax gap was only $40 billion. In short, even as the ability of the government to collect taxes owed has declined enormously, the ability of certain Americans to evade them has exploded.
As anti-war politics gain ground, Weiss's Free Press is pushing to remove Trita Parsi from the US. Bari Weiss, founder of The Free Press and ideological commissar at CBS News, is the purest example imaginable of a free-speech hypocrite. She is quick to resort to the typical language of liberalism in calling for an open marketplace of ideas, touting The Free Press as a forum for robust debate. But she has actually spent her entire career suppressing opposing points of view, especially on the issue closest to her heart, Zionism.
So, there's a guy named Sam Harris, been a pretty prominent political commentator in the U.S. for quite a few years. He really kind of specializes a lot in what he claims is the kind of thread of jihadism or Islamism to the West. And he's also a supporter, a defender of the state of Israel.
And he wrote a post a couple days ago that's been getting a lot of attention-I've seen it sent around a lot-about why he won't debate critics of Israel. His argument is that he won't debate critics of Israel because the things that he believes are so self-evidently true that it would be a waste of time to subject them to interchange with someone who holds a different point of view. And, because Sam Harris is a pretty kind of highbrow defender of Israel, I just think it's worth looking at the statements that he considers to be self-evident statements of fact. And you can ask yourself whether, in fact, you think they are the case or not.
A team of scientists from the University of California, Davis, published a paper Monday detailing a years-long study of a brain computer interface (BCI) system implanted in a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig's disease), which destroys motor neurons and causes loss of motor control and eventual paralysis. According to the team, their patient, Casey Harrell, has been living with BCI implants since 2023 that are still working today, giving him the ability not only to control a computer cursor with his thoughts, but also to speak.
Roxana Küwen Filmed at Nuremberg Juggling Convention Gala 2015
From Spain to Japan, experiments have repeatedly shown a left-turn bias, but exact mechanic 'is still an open question'
With many people refusing to pick up calls from unknown numbers, scammers are shifting strategies and impersonating the phone numbers of contacts. Scammers are combining two powerful tactics to steal your money and data:
We record first-person cleaning footage to help train the next generation of household robots. That data is valuable enough for us to offer cleaning services free of charge for a limited time.
So, for a limited time, we cover the cost of professional cleaners. In exchange, they record first-person video while they work.