You gotta be ducking kidding me.

Vote count is not complete, but it appears likely to fail; it's currently 45% yes, 55% no. https://electionresults.sos.ca.gov/returns/ballot-measures

California Proposition 40 was a ballot measure to enact a one-time, 5% tax on "billionaires." The proposition was actually pretty straightforward and easy to read, and had language to retroactively impose the tax at the start of 2026, so wealthy people couldn't leave California today to avoid it. Though some did "leave" prior to 2026 in anticipation of it's passage.

I'm oversimplifying here, but the idea a was that if you are the beneficial owner of assets worth more than 1 billion, the state would levy a one-time tax on 5% of the assessed value of all of those assets. How the state would determine beneficial ownership, and how they would determine the value of non-market based assets (like privately held companies, sports teams, art, etc..) was the subject of much debate.

There was enormous ad-spending against the measure by wealthy individuals. Additionally there were a couple of ballot measures placed on the ballot specifically intended to confuse voters; a highly effective tactic because when voters are confused by propaganda, they tend to vote no across the board.

There is also increasing voter fatigue on ballot initiatives for debt spending and taxes. We usually have several per ballot.

If you're unfamiliar with California politics, it seems surprising that voters would vote against this, but if you're familiar with the process, it's failure was pretty predictable.

I think the rejection is pretty straightforward... It's a lack of trust. California doesn't have a revenue problem; it's got a spending problem. When you couple that with some well known cases of "taxes on the wealthy" morphing into taxes on the ordinary over time (like AMT), it makes voters suspicious that this proposition was actually for it's stated purpose, and even though slippery slopes are a logical fallacy, people don't always employ logic when voting.

There are other factors too of course, but the bill's sponsors failed to overcome the general distrust voters have of their elected officials and California tax authorities.

People will watch what's put in front of them, and the recommendation algorithms on social medial aren't neutral.

That's how I read the phrase spectre of probes, but lame duck implies that the sitting president would be restrained in some way. But so far, nothing in his adult life has stopped him from breaking the law; certainly not the Democratic Party. I wanna believe they will this time, but that's a sucker bet if ever there was one.

It's been a thing with other manufacturers for years. Unless you're Apple marketing, then no... you've never seen it before. It's the first time anybody's done it, and you're gonna love it.

You don't need to imagine this. That's exactly how many consumer safes work.

I bought a safe from Costco (USA) that had a Securam lock on it. I had a police officer friend causally mention that if they needed access, they'd call the safe company and get the backdoor code. I was a little shocked by this, so I emailed Securam. They said that actual use of such codes is at the discretion of the manufacturer that uses their locks, and they referred me to the safe manufacturer.

I emailed the manufacturer, and the customer support agent confirmed what my cop friend said. So I asked what security protocols the manufacturer had in place to authenticate callers and verify they were actual police, and also how they validated the warrant or court order used to get the info. The CS person didn't understand the idea that someone might be pretending to be an officer, nor that even a real officer might be making an unlawful request. She said that if an officer calls and asks, they give them the code. I asked the agent to send me a copy of their policy on this. A day later I got an angry response from the CS lead saying denying what the CS agent said, claiming that they don't have backdoor codes, and don't give them out to officers.

Posted on MSN, lol.

Damn. They are spending a lot to market this movie.

YouTube feels like entirely shady stuff these days.

I mostly use an alternate front end, but every once in a while I go to YouTube and its a wall of AI slop videos and stupid tiktok-like shorts. It's near unusable.

Not even. Near the end of of covid, I had people using my house address and mailbox for about 20 fraudulent EDD claims.

I called EDD and the only fraud claims they would hear were employers defrauding employees. They refused to even take the info I was giving them. I called my state congress woman to ask if her office knew of a way to report these. EDD never got back to her staff with any way to report them either. They just don't care.

The tax authorities, on the other hand, absolutely will come after you if you have money they think is theirs. But that's not cuz they care about fraud, they're just wired to always get the money, no matter what.