It was a play on the post immediately prior (time-wise) to mine, by another user, titled “Outside Prague.”

Although the mist makes it look far away, St. Vitus is really only a short walk from where this was taken.

What amazes me is how much it changed.

When I went, it was a black city: all of the buildings were dark gray, because if the centuries of coal and smog. Then Europe went through a period of cleaning, and buildings you thought were made of dark stone, it turns out, were actual white! Or ecru, or some light stone. Utterly changes the feel of the city.

Someone could ho out and put a couple of red LEDS in the “head” so you don’t have to rely on chance reflection. Maybe someone else in the house will get a startle.

Self-employed is different. You can deduct all sorts of things the majority of employees can’t.

So let’s go back to coffee and pot. Coffee isn’t deductible because it’s a drug people are addicted to; it’s counted as food. If you’re eating edibles, then… maybe? If they’re, like, pot brownies with some nutritional content, almost certainly. If they’re gummies, IDK. Maybe they count as food as much as candy does. Alcohol has calories, and counts as food, probably as much because it’s so socially ingrained as part of a meal any other reason.

If you’re smoking or vaping, though, a better comparison would be cigarettes. Cigarettes and vapes are not deductible, even for self-employed. And your Xanax example - again - is deducted as a medical expenses, which only counts if you have a prescription.

Another example: you can’t deduct homeopathic remedies, or other pseudo-science supplements. You can’t deduct anything that you don’t have a prescription for as a medical expenses. You can’t deduct acupuncture, because it’s not officially recognized as a legitimate medical treatment. You can’t deduct massages, unless you can get a doctor to actually prescribe you a message, like for PT.

So, going back to your original post: for self-employed, coffee is deducted as a food, not a medicine, and comes out of a daily allowance. Cigarettes can’t be deducted as a food or a medicine, and so aren’t deductible. And unless you have a prescription for pot, or are buying edibles that you’re deducting out of your meal allowance, you can’t deduct it.

Are you in the US? Unless you’re self- employed, you can not (legally) deduct food - including coffee.

If you’re playing that game, maybe you’ll get away with it, but maybe you won’t. If you do, you’d better have your paperwork ready - receipts for everything you’ve deducted - because if you’re audited not only will you be fined and have to pay back taxes on ask of the stuff you’ve been deducting against the rules, but they’ll also question every legitimate deduction.

Now, if you have a medical prescription for pot, you can deduct medical expenses - although, if you’re itemizing, you have to be spending a shit-ton on pot to equal the standard deduction. You can’t take the deduction and itemize your expenses.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Immigration? Hah! Murder! Theft. But mostly murder. Musk would already be gone, Trump too. Putin. It would practically be a death sentance to be a world leader.

Who gets to “write off” coffee? You can’t deduct food as business expenses.

Also, pot is an intoxicant. You’re being stoned, or drunk, at work is usually frowned upon.

The comparison to coffee is disingenuous. It’s like comparing coffee to chocolate - chocolate has stimulants in it, but only an idiot would compare the amount of chemical effect to that of a more powerful stimulant like caffeine.

I prefer the original, more correct, “octopizzle.”

Now that’s a proper hat. Shelter yourself and 6 of your friends from sun or rain!

Hmmm. That’s canon, and everything I can find confirms it, but I can’t find a source that ignores anything but the original movie; all of the Original Timeline incorporates information from the sequels.

I need to go watch the original again. I still remember that, within the movie, Reese - the only source of information about the future war - says they were winning until Skynet became self-aware, implying that humans stopped winning. Can you find a quote where Reese says they’d defeated Skynet, or were about to? The quotes I found imply otherwise.

To be clear: I’m not debating canon. You’re right - when including all the movies, in the Original Timeline the humans destroy SkyNet. What I said, and still believe, is that in isolation in the first movie Reese does not say humans were winning the Future War, nor had they beaten SkyNet.

It was too hammy. The entire T-800 arc was pandering. The T-1000 concept was interesting, and there were good scenes, but I felt it followed the Star Wars trend of increasingly pandering to younger crowds.

I’ve never seen this before, but it makes so much sense.

Who originated it?

I’d like to call out that authoritarianism can exist in all forms. Unless you literally define “Left” as “Anarchism.” And even under Anarchism, strong men will crop up; the oxymoronic fact of anarchism is that it’s the best environment under which cults of personality to prosper. You could easily have an authoritarian regime where you’re sent to a Correction Camp if you use someone’s preferred pronouns incorrectly, or decide you want to take a ride your fossil-fuel motorcycle. I think it’s always an important fact to recognize that authoritarianism can arise in nearly every system.

It’s just politely getting out of the way of pedestrians.

Skynet did win.

Conner led a rebellion, after the machines won. Terminator was an attempt to go back and squash the rebellion before it started.

By Terminator, the rebellion hadn’t (yet?) been successful, and all it did was ensure the leader of the rebellion would be born. The second was an fight over ensuring/preventing the paradox caused by the first.

I didn’t follow things after that, but, and I thought the second was not as good as the first so I gave up on the franchise; but in none that I saw was Skynet ever prevented. The fact that the third movie, which I didn’t see, happened means that the MacGuffin in the second movie wasn’t needed for Skynet to happen.

I thought you meant, like bendable. Then I realized, you meant, like a buttplug.

But do we really believe the posters think what they’re posting is a popular opinion? Maybe they really think it’s unpopular, because of their IRL experiences, or what they see online.

I think it’s because people know what’s unpopular, but the heavy stuff, they don’t want to be associated with. So they choose milquetoast unpopular opinions, which aren’t really unpopular as much as maybe a minority. Like, a majority of voters voted for Trump, but thinking Kamala would have been better isn’t unpopular, it was just the minority opinion among people who got their fat assess out and voted.

Now, saying “only white, biologically born males should be allowed to vote” would be a truly unpopular opinion, but although there are absolutely more than zero people on Lemmy who believe this, no way in hell they’re going to post that.

So people stay with “safe” unpopular opinions, like… “NYC is the ugliest city I’ve ever seen.” Sure, you’ll learn some new insults from the responses, but nobody’s going to troll through your post history and throw it in your face in every argument, or follow you around and downvote everything you post because of it. Ok, maybe some New Yorkers will do the latter, but you know what I mean.

Consequently, because they’re just minority and not truly unpopular, all of the people who agree come out of the woodwork, incensed that this entirely reasonable opinion would be posted a being “unpopular.”

Thank you for coming to my Ted-L talk.

Man, that’s just playing Russian Roulette with a ban hammer.

Interesting. I think anytime you make statements that aren’t scientifically - or, indeed, even epirically - provable and claim they’re “facts”, you’re going to get a reaction out of someone.

First laugh of the morning, thank you!

Some people take the validation of others quite seriously. Internet points, for them, are not at all fake - it’s a measure of their worth.

I’m not a psychiatrist, so I can’t say whether this is healthy, but I’d guess not of it’s causing them angst about something that has no direct effect on the base 3 levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.