Answer to #3 is no, you don’t pay property taxes on your own assessment of value, the city assessed it for you.

No comment as he didn’t give specifics, but he is concerned. Get drunk when you can and Jon put out some very sage advice.

@George-K said in Genius:

there are good people on both sides

Agreed, and it is good to always keep this in mind. Political affiliation doesn't say much about whether one is a good person. (With the obvious exception of Democrats, who are all bad.)

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@Aqua-Letifer said in American Thinker du jour - Chiropractic edition:

@Jolly said in American Thinker du jour - Chiropractic edition:

@LuFins-Dad said in American Thinker du jour - Chiropractic edition:

@Jolly said in American Thinker du jour - Chiropractic edition:

Back to this one...

I think we can agree a lot of it is horseshit, but I threw this one in here for a reason...Yes, it is outrageous in many ways, but what can chiropractic treat? Back aches, yes, but what else? I've heard people testify it helps with headaches, sinus problems, etc.

The question remains, what is it actually capable of? And for what percentage of people?

I'm not sure I've seen any exhaustive studies done one way or another, with an open mind and a scientific approach.

Placebo effect.

Maybe. Or maybe there's something that works for some people...

Not masks, though.

There is no placebo effect on masks, unless you mean a psychic rather than physical effect. Viruses ain't people.

@jon-nyc said in Ted Koppel on the Ukraine Conflict:

I know Nina, I was one of her grad students.

Tell us more.

Silly boy, rules are for the little people...

Uh, no.

Thanks, everyone! Spent the day recuperating from the night before.

I watched this performance of hers:

At 96, she doesn't play like Yuja Wang of course, but I'd say she can still kick @jon-nyc 's ass. Very cool. It's a little annoying why they couldn't give this lovely lady a piano that is freshly tuned, though.

@LuFins-Dad said in “Due to mass refusal to participate in hostilities…”:

There’s no question in my mind that this war already represents a fundamental change in our shared history and future, but there are still multiple directions this can go…

Doesn’t seem they have eschewed old fashioned brutality yet.

If it works for you it works for me, although I am mildly surprised that it would matter either way since it is a subjective topic and therefore always open to debate.

@Jolly said in Priceless:

Is there money in it for the Chinese?

The CCP may care more about leveraging this development to achieve their geopolitical goals, whatever they are, more than they care about making money from running bankcard transactions for Russia. Not that I know for sure, it just looks to me that with Russian‘s comparatively small economy, the money from running Russia’s bankcard operations would be negligible compared to China‘s own economy.

This Visa/MasterCard boycott is yet another market tool that, while may be effective at punishing an economically weak Russia, may not be effective at all if you try to do that same against China — it will be much more costly for Visa/MasterCard to give up revenues from their operations in China, and China has its own payment card networks that are more popular than Visa/MasterCard anyway.

@Mik said in Interesting if legit:

All of which leads one to suspect the worst - Putin is backed into a corner and delusional.

The question is if there is anybody close enough to him with a semblance of sanity?

Or is there a link in the chain somewhere below that can remove him from effective control?

People who thought such things made the argument that restrictions would be lifted once Biden was in office. It seems odd that these guys didn’t update their priors when that didn’t happen.

Idiots.