(with that inane, corpo, fake-happy whistling song)

The word ‘standard’ does not appear in the article.

What are you talking about?

This is what is in the article:

The Trump package does, however, include a temporary tax deduction of up to $6,000 for seniors ages 65 and older, and $12,000 for married seniors.

But this only even affects people who have both SSI/SSDI and enough additional income to get over that standard deduction + the additional deduction.

https://smartasset.com/retirement/is-social-security-income-taxable

Combined Income = Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) + Nontaxable Interest + 1/2 of Social Security Benefits

If your combined income is above a certain limit (the IRS calls this limit the base amount), you will need to pay at least some tax. The limit remains unchanged in 2025 from 2024 – $25,000 if you are a single filer, head of household or qualifying widow or widower with a dependent child. The 2024 and 2025 limit for joint filers is $32,000.

The average social security payout is ~$1980 a month, or $23,760 yearly.

(not sure if thats before or after your $185 medicare deductions, ie premiums, probably before, but w/e)

So… if your only income is Social Security, chances are you never had to pay any taxes on it anyway.

What bumping the deduction does… assuming it is actually as described in the article… means that if you have another source of income, a pension or 401k, a trust paying you out, part time employment, whatever…

Well now you can take more of that money, up to I guess $31k for a single person, before you would start to get taxed.

…

So… woohoo, a fairly small amount of people can now live a life of poverty, instead of abject poverty, until taxes kick in.

For the record, with a 1/3 rent to income ratio, thats uh… now you can move up to $860 from $660 rental.

Or you can factor in that additional $200 a month as the cost of losing your food stamps (whole lot of social security recipients on that) and the just increasing cost of food now that no one is working the fields, because they’re scary bad icky brown people who need to all be fed to alligators, apparently.

Oh right and Section 8 was gutted, so a whole lot of Social Security recipients will either be getting kicked out of their housing (section 8 is a subsidy to landlords, many low income land/slumlords will go broke without it) or seeing their rents jacked up.

…

Oh right, theres also the whole… substantially gainful income thing.

If you’re on Social Security, see this tax deduction cap being raised, and then go get additional income?

Well, now you may not qualify for any payments from Social Secuirty anymore, at all.

SGI calculations and codes are waaaay too complex for me to summarize here, but arguably thats the point, to confuse the shit out of people and then either discourage them from economic activity, or just kick them off the benefits.

…

Also also, just for fun… that average of $1980 a month, average Soc Sec payout?

Assuming a month with 4 solid weeks, 40 hrs a week… thats $12.38 an hour, thats what you’re living off of.

I don’t even think you can get a full meal at McDonalds for one hour of that anymore.

I’m on SSDI, I got this email.

Here’s the full text:

Subject:

Social Security Applauds Passage of Legislation Providing Historic Tax Relief for Seniors

Body Text:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is celebrating the passage of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, a landmark piece of legislation that delivers long-awaited tax relief to millions of older Americans.

The bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits, providing meaningful and immediate relief to seniors who have spent a lifetime contributing to our nation’s economy.

“This is a historic step forward for America’s seniors,” said Social Security Commissioner Frank Bisignano. “For nearly 90 years, Social Security has been a cornerstone of economic security for older Americans. By significantly reducing the tax burden on benefits, this legislation reaffirms President Trump’s promise to protect Social Security and helps ensure that seniors can better enjoy the retirement they’ve earned."

The new law includes a provision that eliminates federal income taxes on Social Security benefits for most beneficiaries, providing relief to individuals and couples. Additionally, it provides an enhanced deduction for taxpayers aged 65 and older, ensuring that retirees can keep more of what they have earned.

Social Security remains committed to providing timely, accurate information to the public and will continue working closely with federal partners to ensure beneficiaries understand how this legislation may affect them.

It is probably only true in the sense that… ~90% of Social Security recipients have Social Security as basically their only source of income, basically for a single person if you make under ~$25k a year, thats under the threshold, and your benefits are not taxed.

So they’re just restating the status quo, and claiming it is actually a massive improvement because of this wonderful thing they did not actually do.

1984 shit.

I quite literally yelled at the introduction of ‘the cloud’ as yet another stupid corpo buzzword.

…

I was working at MSFT the first time someone hsd ever asked me if I had a ‘cloud’ backup.

What? Do you mean a remote server, offsite?

No, no, in the cloud!

5 minutes of research later.

Oh, so yes, you do mean on a remote server somewhere.

No, no, in the cloud!

head_desk.jpg

Remember when the internet was more than like 5 websites?

Gen Z doesn’t.

I thought so too untill they threatened to call the police.

Or playing League.

It is extremely easy to use the internet without using google.

I’ve done similar things in a coffee shop before, just working on my own code, and I have actually been ‘politely’ asked to leave by the staff.

The staff evidently being a bunch of morons who thought I was… hacking into … something?

They didn’t know what, but they were very concerned.

I was unable to convince them I was not, because ‘terminal’ = ‘hacking’ to idiots who only know anything about computers via movies and tv shows.

quite ironically, they are using syntax, specifically / , to indicate a specific kind of meaning afterward.

/sarcasm

/s

/joking

/j

I’ve seen all these used to more explicitly indicate that the previous statement was sarcastic, or a joke, due to irony being largely dead, but also to help with people may not natively read/speak/write english.

correct, you and droppedpacket beat me to it

Is this supposed to be a joke or have we truly gotten to the point where … coding in a terminal via like hyprland or w/e, without relying on an what is basically an annoying tutorial character from a video game that acts as an assistant…

This is psycopathy?

Having actual competence in one’s field?

Oh god we’re all doomed, they’ll soon be alternating between worshipping us demigods, or burning us at the stake.

EDIT:

Welp, I’m sure thats a good sign, lol.

Exactly.

The place is a literal tinderbox in terms of forest/brush fire risk, and its… beyond being a metaphorical tinderbox in terms of basically being a warzone…

…

In WW2, the Japanese sent mini hot air balloons up into the pacific jet stream, with rudimentary sensors, that would drop an incendiary bomb when they ‘thought’ they were over the US West Coast.

This didn’t exactly burn down the entire West Coast, the vast majority of them failed, got blown to who the hell knows where, dropped their firebombs over the ocean, into somewhere humid, failed to detonate…

… but a few of them did actually start minor to moderate forest fires, and/or blow up on fhe ground in a curious hiker or kids face, from California up to British Columbia.

Everything is much drier and hotter now, than during WW2, and military gear, mass civil unrest… yeah, whole lotta things in that situation can potentially start an actual fire.

…

Conversely: Imagine LA in a fire scenario like last winter, started by nature or random idiots or sparking power lines, whatever, but uh now its functionally under military occupation.

They’d likely attempt to assert some kind of control over infrastructure decisions, get in the way of legitimate local govt efforts to help with the fire, who knows maybe fail to evacuate a detention center in the path of a growing fire.

I give LA 35% odds of largely burning to the ground first.

Also, saying this is the kind of thing that might actually get the Sinaloa Cartel to do a hit on Jake Paul.

(or i guess i wish your life is so dull and uneventful such that you never need therapy again /j)

I would entirely seriously prefer this.

You’re talking to a high functioning autist who got two bachelors degrees simultaneously and then went off to work for various Fortune 500 companies…

… who came from a dysfunctional white trash family of abusive narcissists who all gaslight each other by default, all have various drug/alcohol addiction problems… as well as criminal records, fairly extreme religious views, fairly 90s white nationalist militia types.

Last time I talked with my dad, he was explaining to me how Tom Hank’s son killed raped and ate babies for their adrenochrome (Q Anon insane shit), and then proceeded to take me to his garage where he showed me how he assembles untraceable ghost guns by ordering parts without serial numbers separately snd then doing some light machine tooling to construct them.

… I am very much enjoying my having ghosted all of these fucking nutters, but quite seriously, when I tell therapists things like this, they often suspect I am delusional, exaggerating, lying, etc, to the point of trying to diagnose me with some kind of disorder involving persistent hallucinations.

either way the only reason I responded was to say sorry i disturbed you. not really sure i mean that any more, that was kind of a dick reply but whatever

you’re in ‘therapist’ mode, thats why you sense hostility from me.

you presume you have a better … at least potential, understanding of myself, of any topic you feel you are well versed in, than I do or potentially may, and you speak and ask rhetorical questions with arrogance and authority, presuming you will be able to prove yourself as correct.

then on a dime you will flip to acting offended or outraged, as if you have not been being rude the entire time, by not actually reading or understanding what I say, and by throwing in your own assumptions first, then coming to conclusions, then getting emotional over those conclusions… when you could have just asked for clarification in good faith.

I have already expressed to you mutliple times that I require a therapist who understands how to communicate with and to a high functioning autist… and you continue to exemplify why this is the case; you have no idea how to connect with an autist, as evidenced by the fact that you do not understand why I do not appreciate the things you have been saying to me, the way in which you have been saying them.

In less words: you could stand to be more humble, less conceited.

I mean, I explained why I don’t really need a basic therapist beyond just going over the basics of CBT, which I’ve already done now… but sure, ok, thanks?

For what its worth, I’m not the single downvote your comment here has.

Fair point.

But we’re on .world here, ie Reddit 2.0, ie, almost everyone is much closer to a normie who is way more uninformed than they think they are and way more confident than they should be.

But also, again… fair point.

I would like to see a river of geckos some time in my lifr, that sounds fascinating haha!

As to whether or not its serious… I dunno, sure yeah, could be fake, could be real, no real way of knowing, but interacting with an asshat of a landlord has been a pretty common occurence in my life, seems at least plausible to me.

Ah, I’m an elf from the woodlands (rainy part of PNW), not familiar with them personally.

I did once trek east toward Mordor and freeze up and slowly retreated from an aggrevated rattlesnake in the badlands… can’t say I ever saw a gecko though.

… But I have seen a good number of newts back home. They can be … mildly neurotoxic, but they thankfully tend to stay in their bogs and such.