I stayed in this location as a solo tourist for four nights last year. I was in a "cocoon" not a capsule. My room looked a little different from the photo at the website for 1 person, in that there were no hooks on the wall for hanging clothes, but there was a low, small table that could be used to set a laptop computer on top. No chairs, no TV, no windows, but with a sink/toilet/shower. It was OK, although I probably wouldn't do it again, since I can afford something more traditional if I choose (like the Tower Hotel, which I moved to for another four nights).
The facility was nice, clean and modern (it is in the Trocadero building, I think they have over 700 rooms when I asked), but the cafe didn't open until something like 9 AM so I had to go out several times in the morning for my coffee. I ended up using the bathroom mirror backlight as a night light, otherwise it is pitch black.
One way to describe it is as a very pleasant jail cell, which (of course) you can leave at will.
Putting down "N/A" for battery life aspect of a paper book clearly shows the bias here. Further, failing to mention ownership and permanence aspects of the content is a glaring omission. And then there is durability and risk: if I drop a book it likely is still fully usable. And it's much less likely that someone would steal a book compared to an electronic device. Eventual disposition also matters: a book involves no e-waste and will not last for centuries in a landfill.
Saying “N/A” for battery life isn’t biased, it simply highlights that books don’t need a battery at all, unlike e-readers. As for durability and theft, books can be damaged by water, fire, or time, while a well-protected e-reader keeps hundreds of books safe... Regarding environmental impact, pointing out e-reader e-waste while ignoring the pollution caused by producing paper books clearly shows bias, making books requires cutting down trees, which are effectively killed in the process, plus transportation and processing, while one e-reader can replace hundreds of physical books over its lifetime.
Many years ago, in college, I used to volunteer for Recording For The Blind, reading various math texts aloud. I had to verbally describe every illustration in the textbook, including graphs, using a few concise statements. Not perfect, but possible.
You can describe any graph to some low level of detail, sure. But does it actually help anyone? Do people with complete blindness, for example, gain anything from hearing a description of the graph of f(x) = x as "a straight line at a 45° angle crossing the graph at 0", compared to what seeing people gain from viewing that graph?
>the US has a law that erases the tax bill for dead people
That is true, but there is a theory, applied very weakly, that supports this. The idea is that a decedent's estate is subject to a wealth tax on its fair market value, therefore to also subject the unrealized gains within the estate to income tax would be double taxation, which is to be avoided. The flaw is that the exemption from the estate tax is relatively high (something like $13,000K), so there would not be any double taxation is most cases, but it's treated that way nonetheless.
> They're only deferring the tax on $70-80K, correct?
Yes, if they sell normally. But usually capital gains tax is lower than that on the income so overall they're saving.
To be explicit: They use the $70-80K depreciation to offset their rental income (which often means they pay no tax on the income for that year and several years after). They'll pay it eventually when they sell, but at a (usually) lower tax rate.
There are tricks like 1031 exchange to avoid paying taxes when they sell, but I don't know how depreciation benefits factor in to those.
First, depreciation on real property is about 27 years. 80k annual depreciation indicates a 2.2m purchase price.
Corporate capital gains don't get a special rate. They're taxed the same as regular corporate income. The 1031 like kind exchange is also very difficult to achieve as the bar is very high even under the Trump admin.
> First, depreciation on real property is about 27 years.
That's straight line depreciation. Look elsewhere in the thread and you'll see cost segregation and bonus depreciation. To give you an idea, I once invested $50K in a multifamily property and my depreciation for the first year was $18K. I never paid taxes on any of my income (but did pay more taxes when it was sold due to the lowered cost basis).
Are you equating receipts with tax level? Tax is a rate applied to an income or wealth amount. Note that GDP includes government spending, which is not subject to tax but is based in part on debt.
If you are in favor of more taxes nominal vs effective rates is not a can of worms you want to open. Effective tax rate was lower in the past even if the nominal was higher. SALT was amounted to basically nothing back then whereas they are far more now.
sure but that sword cuts both ways. it is well documented pretty much nobody actually paid top nominal rates in the 50s because there were so many loopholes
Why choose that metric rather than income, corporate, capital gains, etc. tax rates? Seems like it could obfuscate who bears the burden of those taxes.
My main used of the Tektronix terminal was to preview troff[0] output before sending the final product to the phototypesetter[1], which cost a nominal fee per page as I recall.
[0] Unix program to format high quality printed documents, similar to newspaper/magazine/book printing
[1]machine using photographic paper to output typeset pages, supporting a variety of fonts
The ADM3A was slightly more than a dumb TTY; it supported direct cursor addressing despite being made of SSI TTL chips. It was the main platform for vi. I bought a used one at a government surplus auction and, many years later, wrote an emulator. Thanks to termcap/terminfo, most TUI programs work adequately on an ADM3A emulator.
No graphics, though, not even TRS-80-style pseudographics. Not even inverse video.
>the standard deduction is now large enough that most people don't get to deduct the interest anymore.
They don't get to itemize their interest deduction, but they still get to deduct from their taxable income an amount equal to or greater than the interest they paid.
The standard deduction was not significantly increased in order to reduce total deductions, it was simply to remove the need to itemize them as often. (And incidentally, to replace the personal exemption deduction which was removed.)
This is in reference to changes to U.S. income tax beginning in 2017.
> They don't get to itemize their interest deduction, but they still get to deduct from their taxable income an amount equal to or greater than the interest they paid.
But they get to deduct that amount regardless of whether they paid any interest, so if they take the loan they're paying all of the interest themselves relative to what happens if they don't take the loan.
The facility was nice, clean and modern (it is in the Trocadero building, I think they have over 700 rooms when I asked), but the cafe didn't open until something like 9 AM so I had to go out several times in the morning for my coffee. I ended up using the bathroom mirror backlight as a night light, otherwise it is pitch black.
One way to describe it is as a very pleasant jail cell, which (of course) you can leave at will.