No, Including Sales Tax in the Price Isn’t a Good Idea
Having spent extensive time with expat circles in Europe, no one is more self-flagellating than Americans. One complaint that inevitably comes up is that sales tax in the US isn’t included in the sticker price. Unlike in Europe, you’ll pay more at the register in most US states than the price you saw on the […]
How to Make ChatGPT Your Language Tutor
I consider few skills more beneficial than language learning. Languages open your doors to whole new worlds. Learning German and then Spanish and Catalan, this wealth of opportunity quickly, shall we say, addicted me. I’ve since started working on Chinese, Russian and French. The problem is that the hours of immersive communicative practice necessary to […]
5 Experiences That Deconverted Me From Communism
In college I was—literally—a card-carrying member of the Communist Party of the United States of America, or CPUSA, as well as several other silly organizations like the IWW. The Party paid for me to fly around th country and attend workshops (why the CPUSA has the funds to fly inexperienced and irrelevant college students around […]
5 Arguments Against AI—and Why They Are Wrong
It can help you build a website, organize your thesis, learn a new language or turn your thoughts into images. The newest leap in human technology is amazing and helpful, and as a writer, I have long been excited about AI’s progress and what it means for the future. As always, though, progress has inevitably […]
The Marshall Plan Didn’t Rebuild Germany, Sound Money Did
In 1939, Germany had a GDP of nearly $400 billion, having surpassed the USSR to make it the second most powerful economy behind the US. Immediately after the war in 1946, it had dropped to just $160 billion, lower than the UK and France.1 Food production had been reduced by 50%, housing stock by 20% […]