I remember my college had a suicide awareness day where among other things they told people to tell their suicidal friends to call the hotline if they felt suicidal.

Now imagine you are that person and you reach out to a friend for help only to have them tell you to call someone else in a canned speech you were told to tell others.

I’ve seen designs that only have one metal component a nail. There’s several 22lr designs that use entirely printed barrels. They won’t last as long and need to be designed around the material qualities, but do function safely.

There’s also a few designs that can be made with parts from hardware stores without any particularly expensive machinery (like mills or lathes). People can even rifle barrels at home through electro-chemical machining which isn’t as complicated as it sounds.

As a other commenter mentioned machinegun is a legal definition in the US, for a firearm capable of automatic or burst fire.

Here the author is referring to Glock switches an aftermarket design that exploits the design of semiautomatic Glock pistols to convert them to be automatic.

My understanding is that typically most of them tend to be ones bought online and shipped from China in bulk then resold once in the states.

As an American who has been to the EU I can say with certainty that each one of those factors changes within an hour drive from my home. Making them a US v EU debate on an individual scale is meaningless. There’s nice parts and bad parts of both.

It depends IMO picture or thumbnail with serious gore yes. Simply text or images in article no.

If people don’t want to see posts about certain subject matters they can filter out keywords to avoid them.

Legislation on packaging should really be entertained as well. For many products a biodegradable form of packaging would be completely viable.

People don’t like when you punch down. When a 13 year old illegally downloaded a Limp Bizkit album no one cared. When corporations worth billions funded by venture capital systematically harvest the work of small creators (often with appropriate license) to sell a product people tend to care.

Last I checked there was an instance rule preventing the posting of pictures of cheese without a trigger warning.

But nobody got convicted so the investigation doesn’t count!

The Due Process Clause will do that.

If you’ve heard the term ‘high explosives’ that refers to thoses that are supersonic while ‘low explosives’ are subsonic.

Under the Administrative Procedures Act they get to create rules to interpret the law. Which enables non elected officials who work there to make changes to how laws are implemented to meet their understanding of best policy.

https://www.regulations.gov/search?agencyIds=IRS&filter=Deductions

The Federal government doesn’t have a sales tax on consumer purchases goods that they charge regular people (-a few very specific things). Most sales taxes are done by states, some states have none.

And the business isn’t dodging paying sales tax w/ deductions because again most things they spend money on aren’t being taxed on purchase. They’re having their amount of income the government can tax reduced as a reward for investing in themselves to promote economic growth.

Also private citizens have tax credits (which are preferable to deductions) too if they purchase certain things like EVs. If you buy a new EV the government will give you a few grand.

Talk to an accountant if you haven’t it sounds to me like you may be able to claim some deductions.

If for every $100 gross income you make you pay $20 in taxes and $80 in expenses you may be able to claim some of your expenses to reduce your tax burden.

Why does being profitable justify being even more profitable by paying fewer taxes?

It’s not about encouraging profitability (that only one proof of a real company) as much as allow businesses to grow, without people faking businesses to write off personal expenses. Properly reporting expenses can allow new or growing businesses to reinvest in themselves. I agree that there should be a different structure for large business but I’ll give a hypothetical to outline why it’s important for small businesses.

Let’s say a new family owned machineshop does $200k in sales in its second year. Pre-tax after all other expenses the business has netted $50k. Post tax (-$40k) they’ve got $10k left to reinvest. They want to buy $20k worth of machinery to grow the business. If they can deduct $20k for the machinery from the $40k in taxes the can buy it. If not they can’t.

Meanwhile the large international conglomerate machineshop down the road makes $400k a year post tax. If the want $20k in new machines they just buy them. This isn’t because they run a better business w/ better margins or product but because they have more volume.

Yes the main appeal of a LLC is that you aren’t liable if your LLC gets sued. As a sole proprietor if someone slips and falls in your store they can recover damages from you personally. As an LLC they can only get the business’s funds.

This means that even if awarded damages from a civil case tanks your business your won’t be out of a home and your personal bank accounts are safe (not considering the burden of lossing your source of income).

Small businesses absolutely can, and should claim any valid expenses. In theory audits are not punishments. They happen to large companies too. But in practice small businesses often don’t have full time accountants keeping their records and some receipts are lost after the cost has been reported.

Like many compliance regulations bookkeeping has costs that larger business are easier able to bear. Small businesses do get some aid notably a lot of money went out during covid, but big businesses have the people and resources to take advantage of that aid more than a solo proprietor who wasn’t even aware. Although small businesses never seem to get those “to big to fail” bailouts.

To touch on the hobby point if you run a business 40 hrs a week and lose twice what you make a year the IRS probably won’t mind. But if you’ve got 3 businesses you use to right off expenses (like craft brewing equipment, leather working tools, or art supplies) and you only have ever sold a single belt on Etsy over the span of a year they’ll probably have an issue.

But at least it sounds like they know how to have a good time.

The Appalachians run from Alabama to Newfoundland, CA. The highest point is only ~6,600 ft today due to erosion but the range is among the oldest in the world the oldest sections being estimated 1.2 billion years old.

The ones pictured probably aren’t even 2,000 ft but they’d still be apart of the Appalachian mountain range.

I feel like there’s a ton of small walkable cities/towns nestled deep in the Apps. If they’ve got solid Internet I could see them being in a niche of communities of mostly remote workers.

Local affiliates and independent papers tend to be much better.