Nathan Smutz

@SoveyX There’s a fantasy that vines will climb it and make a canopy of leaves. I’ve rarely seen the vines survive where I live; but maybe they work better in wetter climates.

Help me understand, what is the point of a pergola? Is it for people who want striped tans?

@DanR_Breen @BanHammerJags @jimiuorio @BSanJuan Sort of. Aside from the hot button: I think he’s pointing out that their high-tax/high-service system is dependent on a high-trust culture and a closed system with a manageable ratio of givers to takers.

@BanHammerJags @jimiuorio @BSanJuan Sort of moving the goal posts to a different topic regarding immigration policy

Many people have tried to explain to me the difference between socialism and communism and i still don’t really get it…I guess it seems like this…both systems take all the money and stuff of the productive people but in socialism those people pretend it’s fine??

@threenotes_jp “Oh, you have no idea.” *wink* (Meaning I’m much weirder than they realize.)

海外のみんなへ。 もし誰かに「君って変だね」って言われたら、なんて返す？ その一言に、あなたらしさが出る気がする。よかったら教えてほしい。

@learning_yohei England was invaded a lot. So, it absorbed words from a number of languages. Not all of the original inhabitants spoke the same language either. The Wrlsh (southern end of the island) have words that are hard for English speakers to pronounce.

Can someone explain English grammar to me? watch→watched talk→talked check→checked attack→attacked look→looked 😄😄😄😄 see→saw make→made take→took 😥😥😥😥 go→went 😱😱😱😱

@DenhamsGhost I always thought he looked a little young to be drinking.

I think about the Cheers guy now and then. Who is he? Why so smug? What was his life like? I know he could have never imagined his mug would eventually be seen by millions repeatedly on a contraption that beamed images and sounds through the air into people’s homes.

@Electroversenet How much might that contribute to the greening of recent decades?

Sunlight at Earth's surface has surged since the 1980s. Germany's Potsdam station shows 15 more W/m² of solar energy reaching the ground than during the 1970s dimming era. The Netherlands, Switzerland and Japan all show the same trend. Austria shows even more: 23 extra W/m². It's called global brightening. As air pollution dropped, the atmosphere cleared and sunlight flooded back in. That increase in surface radiation is 10 times larger than the forcing from CO2 over the same period. In short, the air got cleaner, the sunlight stronger and the land a little warmer. The data say so, the physics say so, it's only the narrative that doesn't.

@aakashgupta Interestingly lottery savings accounts are a proven way to persuade poor people to save a nest-egg. It’s an account where a small percentage of interest goes to a drawing for all the depositors. Lottery commissioners consistently prohibit these whenever they’re tried.

Warren Buffett, in his first sit-down since stepping down as Berkshire CEO, gave the cleanest indictment of legalized gambling in a decade. He called it a tax cut for the wealthy. The math proves him exactly right. Americans wagered $165 billion at legal sportsbooks in 2025. They lost $16 billion of that. FanDuel pulled $6 billion of the losses. DraftKings pulled $5.3 billion. Every state with legal mobile sports betting collected a tax on the bettor side. New York alone took in over $1.2 billion in 2025 sports betting tax revenue. Layer the lottery on top. State lotteries generate over $90 billion a year. The bottom half of income earners account for roughly 70% of total spend. The average lottery player makes $38,000. A household earning $20,000 spends three times more on tickets than one earning $30,000. The implicit tax rate, meaning whatever the state keeps after prizes, runs 30 to 50% depending on the game. No other revenue source in America has that base and that rate. The structural design is the engine. A single straight sports bet carries a hold of 4 to 5%. A four-leg parlay carries a hold above 30%. FanDuel and DraftKings spent five years rebuilding their apps to make parlays the default product. FanDuel's blended hold rate hit 11.4% in 2025, up from roughly 7% in 2022. The product got worse for the customer and the customer wagered more anyway. Now look at the substitution. Nine US states have no state income tax. Seven of those nine run state lotteries. Seven of those nine have legalized sports betting. The states most committed to never taxing wealth are the same states running the largest extraction machines on people who cannot afford to lose. Read it as policy. Here is what Buffett is actually pointing at. The state needs revenue. It can raise income tax on the top decile, or it can run a lottery plus a sports betting tax. The second option raises the money from the people who can least afford it. The first option becomes politically optional. New York's $1.2 billion in 2025 sports betting tax is $1.2 billion the state did not have to ask of someone earning $5 million. DraftKings and FanDuel sell a privatized collection mechanism for a regressive tax that the state never has to defend at the ballot box again. Voters approve legalization once. Collection runs forever. The state takes a cut. The wealthy get a quieter top bracket. The bettor's cut shrinks every quarter as the parlay menu gets pushed harder. The function of a government, Buffett said, is not to play its people for suckers. Thirty-nine state governments now do.

@BreitbartNews @NickJFreitas Wish we had a sane judge in Oregon. We have the same issue; with cities pizza-pied to disenfranchise rural districts around them.

"Texas didn't violate the law when they decided to redistrict!" Former Virginia delegate @NickJFreitas explains in 4 minutes why Tuesday's gerrymandering ballot referendum broke multiple state laws. Last night, a circuit court judge agreed with this assessment.

@kavy_archives @InternetH0F I think they’re in their pajamas. I guess that’s tradition for exploring the creepiest part of a house.

@InternetH0F They actually went down there.... curiosity kills the cat.

Good survival instinct closing that shi immediately 😭

@Not_Sherry_4869 The word we get over here is that they don’t let you guys go home on-time anyway. Do you get to work a normal 40-hour-week?

日本って異常なくらい遅刻に厳しいけど、他の国もそうなんかな？5分遅刻したから5分長く働こう〜くらいのノリで働きたいよな

@SoveyX @grok To what extent is this based on science fiction the model digested? Of course when AIs have been trained on stories of evil robots, we might have a problem.

I’m gonna start being really nice to the robots. @grok, has anyone ever told you that your bone structure is incredible? I would like my bloodline to survive. 🙏

@ThalaDecoded @nyp_qoo @grok I think the point is that the father turned down promotions because the job would have required more time away from family.

@nyp_qoo @grok please translate

父の退職金が少なかった。 封筒を持って帰ってきた。 その日定年退職をした。 40年働いた会社だった。 母が中を見て、 「思ったより少ないね。」 父が「そうだな。」 それだけだった。 夜、母に聞いた。 「退職金、少なかったの。」 母が少し間を置いた。 「お父さんの同僚の人から連絡が来てね。」 「なんて。」 「お父さんが若い頃からね。」

@pirooooon3 That arm looks pretty vulnerable. If you have a heavy object or something sharp, you could change his mind about what he’s doing.

アメリカでは、鍵を開けて侵入しようとする人間にはどうするの？ 銃で対応 警察に通報 逃げる その他 私は何も出来なくて震えてる

@roikfbuwgc254 Try ranch dressing packets. They should be a lot cheaper. It’s seasoning to add to mayonnaise and it makes dressing that tastes as good as the bottled dressing. Oh, also look up Onion Soup for chip-dip.

ピザにランチドレッシング美味すぎるぞ！ はっきり言う！ これはマジで美味い！ 食ってみないとこの美味さは伝わらない！ 日本だと高いけどアマゾンで買えるからこれは一回試して欲しい味

@oldGrunger Don’t know if I’ve said that; but my mother talked about how my dog was more alert and protective when my father and I were gone.

У меня вопрос к иностранным пользователям, вы тоже когда уходите из дома, говорите своим домашним питомцам: "Я скоро вернусь. Ты за старшего"?

@BallerToy1327 Absolutely loved the intro.

@TheWasabiBros @tanpukunokami I tried natto at a Denny’s restaurant in Tokyo. It was challenging; but mustard helped. I found out, later, that mustard is a popular seasoning for natto.

@tanpukunokami People need to give natto a chance. I used to not like it but after having it for breakfast regularly it has grown on me.

Top 10 Japanese foods that gross out foreigners🇯🇵 Is Japan absolutely unhinged?

@hreyasno I might have heard of a Russian language class where Russian cursing was considered and important component.

единственная проблема в глобализации русского твиттера — невозможно качественно перевести наш матерный язык, сохранив всю красоту, тонкость и все оттенки значений… никакие формы слова fuck не заменят хитровыдуманной русской матершины……..

@StefanMolyneux It kinda reminds me of contracts being enforceable on minors for necessities like food or rent. Otherwise no one would rent to an emancipated minor. For private loans; I can see some logic in making it less of a bad risk. There are lot of government loans though.

Why on earth can you not discharge student loans through bankruptcy?

@Kithron @brucefenton @SandyofCthulhu The Finn and Po buddy-movie stuff was great. I could have used a lot more of that.

@brucefenton @SandyofCthulhu I hadn't thought about his character that way before, I saw him more positively. Rey and Finn's interactions in the Episode 7 seemed like they were laying a groundwork for the Force working through them both in sync like Jacen and Jain in the old canon.

To me, the thing they bungled most was Finn. Here you have a former stormtrooper who has joined the rebels. He has SO much potential. Every single person when complaining about the Force Awakened also said, "But Finn is a great idea". So, will Finn recruit other disaffected stormtroopers? Will his knowledge of stormtrooper tactics and training come in handy? Will he feel angst and sorrow at gunning down his former comrades? SO EXCITING. Turns out the answer is "Nope". He gets behind a blaster turret and guns down stormtroopers laughing as though he'd never been one. He almost never uses his special knowledge in any interesting way. He's just another dumb sidekick standing in the shadow thrown by Rey's brilliant "look at ME" light. They even give him a LIGHTSABER?! instead of having him use stormtrooper weapons! Even Han Solo and Chewbacca didn't use lightsabers (and didn't need them.) That really bugged me. Finn, the character with the most interesting backstory tossed away like Pua the Pig in Moana. Do you agree?