Matthew Miner's Basic-ish BlogMatthew Miner's Blog

Sometimes I might say something

Citi has recently announced that it will pay its employees' travel costs for them to get abortions. This is in response to the recent Texas Heartbeat Act, which allows private citizens to sue each other for having an abortion, effectively outlawing abortion in Texas. While I think the Texas law is in direct contradiction of Roe v. Wade, I also think Roe v. Wade is wrongly decided, both from a legal perspective and from a LONANG, moral perspective. No matter how cowardly or underhanded...

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The IRS has announced that Tax Day 2022 will be April 18, instead of the usual April 15. At first blush, you would think this is because of Good Friday obviously, the holiday celebrating Jesus' death for our sins. Other news sites are falsely reporting this as the reason. However, a little bit more thinking would give you pause. You would think, "Wait a minute, Good Friday isn't a federal holiday." Which is correct: it isn't. I've never gotten work off for Good Friday. So why would the IRS,...

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act added 26 USC § 199A, which gives a 20% deduction for taxpayers' "qualified business income." This was intended to give small business owners a deduction to match the corporate tax cut. However, it does not apply to all small business owners, and reading the law and determining who qualifies can be quite confusing.

There are many nuances with this law involving earnings caps, business types, and other random things that you should go over with your accountant and/or...

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Nobody likes inflation, but it is occurring. As of February 2022, the US has seen 7.5% inflation over the past year, as judged by the Bureau of Labor Statistics's Consumer Price Index. This is the highest it's been since the early 1980s recession. This means that the average consumer is spending 7.5% more money overall for the same things now than they were this time last year. Not everything has gone up 7.5%—some things like dairy, medical care, alcohol, housing, mechanics, and air fare haven...

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One game gaining some popularity among the cryptocurrency craze is RollerCoin. Its players have been promoting it through its referral links, claiming that it is one of the funnest play-to-earn games. You can alleged earn money just playing for free. At first it seems like a simple little idle game, but the main content is actually playing little minigames. There's Match 3, Breakout, 2048, and other classic arcade games, and you have to play these games (or pay real money) to power up your com...

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In Android 8, Google added adaptive icons, essentially making all apps use the same shape for their icons. This is widely adopted now and you can often customize the shape. However, if you do not like the concept of adaptive icons and prefer the legacy icons where apps are free to use their own shapes, you are in much worse luck nowadays where seemingly everything only cares about adaptive icons. Most launchers don't even have an option to use non-adaptive icons. Many instead have options to for...

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