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Cake day: February 23rd, 2024

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  • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoScience Memes@mander.xyzPolitical Science
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    6 months ago

    Even ignoring the primary arguments of bodily autonomy and health, both physical and mental, you can’t be pro-life without being superstitious and anti-science. Being pro-science allows you to base your opinion on things like viability and brain activity instead of things like conception and heartbeat which are meaningless outside of religious nonsense.

    But aside from that, he listed them separately so I don’t know why you’re linking this meme to the opinion that one follows naturally from, or is inseparable from, the other.




  • All covered in the link. The addition of January and February and later moving the new year from March to January is the reason Sept-Dec are no longer the seventh-tenth months. Not July and August, which were renamings, not additions.

    Edit: I suppose my first comment should have specified early Romans. The way I wrote it could be read as all those changes happening after the Romans.


  • That’s a common misconception. For the Romans, the year used to start with March and only have ten months. January and February weren’t even named, it was just the time between harvest and the new year. Several calendar changes followed over the centuries. Adding two months (January and February). Moving the new year to January, which made September-December no longer 7-10. Adding random one-off months to realign with the seasons. And a couple different tries at leap days, among other things.

    This gives a quick overview.

    Edit 2: To clarify, the above changes were all made by the Romans, they only started with a ten month calendar.

    Edit: The fifth and sixth months were originally named Quintilis and Sextilis before they were changed to July and August.








  • roscoe@lemmy.dbzer0.comtoScience Memes@mander.xyzMalaria
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    8 months ago

    The part where he “gets to keep more of it.”

    $1 in charitable contributions does not lower your tax burden by $1, and certainly not more than $1.

    If that dollar would have been taxed as capital gains, assuming 20% capital gains and 3.8% NII tax, it saves 23.8 cents meaning the $1 donation costs 76.2 cents.

    If that dollar would have been taxed as normal income, assuming a marginal tax rate of 37%, it saves 37 cents meaning the $1 donation costs 63 cents.

    (These two examples are not intended to be an exhaustive list.)

    Charitable contributions cost money, just not as much money as they would if there wasn’t a tax deduction.




  • In Alastair Reynolds’ Revelation Space series, the victors of a “dawn war” far in the galaxy’s past were machines and they decided to wipe out any sentient life in the galaxy for reasons that aren’t important here, but not life in general. But by the time we came around they had degraded to the point that they weren’t doing a good job anymore and a few civilizations were just starting to slip out into space. Then they get detected and destroyed.

    So the combination of wanting to destroy civilizations, but not all life and breaking down over time would allow it.