Illegal activities.

Income from illegal activities, such as money from dealing illegal drugs, must be included in your income on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 8z, or on Schedule C (Form 1040) if from your self-employment activity.

Stolen property.

If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.

While you obviously wouldn’t be expected to know everything — or even most — of what the tax code says, there is something the IRS expects people to declare as income that is so absurd, you won’t believe it.

According to the IRS, “If you steal property, you must report its fair market value in your income in the year you steal it unless you return it to its rightful owner in the same year.”

For the entirety of the pandemic, Democrats and their media allies have used case numbers to trash red states. It never mattered that New York dwarfed Florida in deaths per capita despite the latter having a far older, more vulnerable population. Ron DeSantis was evil and every new infection was a moral failing, according to the left.

But now that COVID is slamming the Northeast at higher rates than the South’s summer wave, the goalposts have been uprooted and launched into orbit.

As we recognize that covid-19 is not a deadly or even severe disease for the vast majority of responsible Americans, we can stop agonizing over “cases” and focus on those who are hospitalized or at risk of dying.https://t.co/S4OQD7R58u

— Jennifer 'pro-voting' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) December 28, 2021

The architect of The New York Times’ anti-American “1619 Project,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, admitted in a weekend interview that left-wing educators have no intention of inviting parents into the classroom when it comes to their children’s curricula.

“I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” Jones said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “I’m not a professional educator, I don’t have a degree in social studies.”

Jones, the same writer whose signature project is riddled with so many “errors and distortions” that the National Association of Scholars demanded that the Pulitzer board revoke her award, has watched her project be incorporated into at least 4,500 classrooms nationwide.

In the same interview on Sunday, Jones touted her project as a “great learning tool for students.” //

Another reason the left conceals its desire to manipulate school curriculums without parental input is the homeschooling revolution it’s produced.

Census data shows more than 11 percent of U.S. households are now homeschooling, with 2.6 million kids making the switch since the pandemic began, according to an analysis from the Bellwether Education Partners.

Meghan McCain @MeghanMcCain
The 2021 census saw a phenomenal growth in homeschooling. Up 5 million from 3.2 million.

If democrats want to be the party of parents don’t and shouldn’t get to have any say or control over what their children are being taught in school, your party is going the way of the whigs.

Steve Guest @SteveGuest
Nikole Hannah-Jones: Parents shouldn't be in charge of their kids' schooling: "I don't really understand this idea that parents should decide what's being taught. I'm not a professional educator. I don't have a degree in social studies." Yet she wants the 1619 Project in schools.
Embedded video
6:49 AM · Dec 27, 2021

Russia's Supreme Court has ordered the closure of International Memorial, Russia's oldest human rights group.

Memorial worked to recover the memory of the millions of innocent people executed, imprisoned or persecuted in the Soviet era.

Formally it has been "liquidated" for failing to mark a number of social media posts with its official status as a "foreign agent".

That designation was given in 2016 for receiving funding from abroad.

But in court, the prosecutor labelled Memorial a "public threat", accusing the group of being in the pay of the West to focus attention on Soviet crimes instead of highlighting a "glorious past". //

There were shouts of "shame!" from those in court as the decision was read out.

The ruling also shines a light on the rise in repression in modern-day Russia, where Memorial's own human rights wing now lists more than 400 political prisoners, and independent groups and media are increasingly blacklisted as "foreign agents".

In court, lawyers for Memorial argued that the group's work was beneficial for the "health of the nation". They declared Memorial a friend of Russia, not its enemy, and called the case for liquidation absurd and "Orwellian".

Among the sites the group failed to mark with its "foreign agent" status was the vast database of victims of political repression that it has assembled over three decades of work.

The team argued that any mistakes had been corrected and that shutting down a prominent and respected organisation over such technical errors was disproportionate.

In a statement later on Tuesday, International Memorial said it would challenge the ruling and find legitimate ways to continue its work. Russians needed an honest reflection of their past and no-one would succeed in "liquidating" that need, it added. //

Vladimir Putin has placed great store on the Soviet victory over the Nazis in World War Two, part of his hankering for the old days of superpower status - a far more attractive focus for many Russians than the parallel history of secret courts, prison camps and firing squads.

"Why should we, descendants of the victors, be ashamed and repent, rather than take pride in our glorious past? Memorial is probably paid by someone for that," the prosecutor claimed in court. //

"A power that is afraid of memory, will never be able to achieve democratic maturity."

"Власть, которая боится памяти, никогда не сможет достичь демократической зрелости."

Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, director / директор @AuschwitzMuseum https://t.co/0Oqsc1xvDf
— Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) December 28, 2021

Gitea - Git with a cup of tea
A painless self-hosted Git service.
Gitea is a community managed lightweight code hosting solution written in Go. It is published under the MIT license.

Killed by Google is the Google graveyard; a free and open source list of discontinued Google services, products, devices, and apps. We aim to be a source of factual information about the history surrounding Google's dead projects.

Press inquiries and other assorted death threats?
Throw a knife@killedbygoogle.com.

Count to date: 245

Extensions for Pale Moon, Firefox & SeaMonkey made by JustOff:

Browser detection using the user agent

Serving different Web pages or services to different browsers is usually a bad idea. The Web is meant to be accessible to everyone, regardless of which browser or device they're using. There are ways to develop your website to progressively enhance itself based on the availability of features rather than by targeting specific browsers.

But browsers and standards are not perfect, and there are still some edge cases where detecting the browser is needed. Using the user agent to detect the browser looks simple, but doing it well is, in fact, a very hard problem. This document will guide you in doing this as correctly as possible.

Note: It's worth re-iterating: it's very rarely a good idea to use user agent sniffing. You can almost always find a better, more broadly compatible way to solve your problem!

His first instinct whenever he is challenged seems to be to lie and deflect all blame. He can never take responsibility for anything. It’s so reflexive with him sometimes the lies are not at all thought out, and so are incredibly obvious.

Biden did just that today when he was confronted by New York Post reporter Steve Nelson on the White House lawn.

Nelson asked about a report in Vanity Fair that Biden had been offered a plan in October by health experts to get 732 million test kits out to Americans before the holiday season hit so that could help reduce the crush of people wanting tests.

The 10-page plan, which Vanity Fair has obtained, would enable the U.S. to finally do what many other countries had already done: Put rapid at-home COVID-19 testing into the hands of average citizens, allowing them to screen themselves in real time and thereby help reduce transmission. The plan called for an estimated 732 million tests per month, a number that would require a major ramp-up of manufacturing capacity. It also recommended, right on the first page, a nationwide “Testing Surge to Prevent Holiday COVID Surge.” //

Steven Nelson
@stevennelson10
'We didn't reject it,' President Biden told me, responding to Vanity Fair report that his administration rejected a holiday #coronavirus testing surge https://vanityfair.com/news/2021/12/the-biden-administration-rejected-an-october-proposal-for-free-rapid-tests-for-the-holidays
12:25 PM · Dec 27, 2021

Um, so where were those 732 million tests for the holidays that just went by if you didn’t reject it? If you’re going to lie, at least make it a more manageable lie, like you were never offered it. With this lie, he just confirmed that there was a plan offered to him. It wasn’t put into play because nobody got the tests before the holidays. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki even acknowledged just before Christmas that they were just working out details now for something to go into effect weeks from now, that they hadn’t even signed contracts for it. But that was only after the media flipped out on them over the past couple of weeks that they even said that.

Biden just can’t stop lying. He can’t even keep track of what he’s saying anymore which is why none of it makes any sense.

Would love a detailed breakdown from Ars on the impact of these launches on the climate and environment. Thank you!

Everday Astronaut has an excellent article on this: https://everydayastronaut.com/rocket-pollution/

Summary: some exotics suck, but modern rockets are inconsequential at current volumes.

The impact of rocket pollution is mostly symbolic, especially tourist flights. They're seen as the most conspicuous consumption by much of the general public. Why should an average Joe who is struggling to get by sacrifice to combat climate change while billionaires are dumping hundreds of tons of carbon into the air to fly to space?

There are already good answers to that question, but they are nuanced, and the answer could be quite clear. Bezos' rocket already runs on Hydrogen, he should be paying a little extra for green Hydrogen, just for PR reasons. Musk has already committed to using synthetic methane on Starship. Branson doesn't have an easy answer, but he's mostly irrelevant in the symbolism arena. //

Would love a detailed breakdown from Ars on the impact of these launches on the climate and environment. Thank you!

~16.25 billion gallons of jet fuel burned per year.

One Falcon 9 launch, 25,000 gallons of Kerosene in the 1st stage (the 2nd stage is effectively burning it above the atmosphere, so not sure you can count that).

30 launches in 2021. 750,000 gallons of kerosene.

Total around the world launches of Rockets in 2021 was, what? 60 ish? Many smaller rockets. Let's just double that though and say 1.5 million gallons.

That is ~3.33% of all of the jet fuel burned...in one day. For an entire YEAR of launches at the current rate.

Metholox will produce somewhat lower emissions per joule of energy released to launch a rocket.

So basically, you are talking less than 1/10th of 1% of the entire aviation industry. It would be nice if it was zero emissions. Also of note, SpaceX is looking to do carbon capture and generate methane for launch at some point (though not soon, they will be using in situ wells at their launch facility for the methane).

Until such a point as rocket launching maybe approaches >1% of aviation emissions I think we can safely consider it a rounding error.

edit actually the above should be less than 1/100th of 1%. //

Would love a detailed breakdown from Ars on the impact of these launches on the climate and environment. Thank you!

A very large percentage of the information about those hurricanes comes from satellites. So there’s a pretty big impact from rocket launches.

Coffee is very chemically complex; its different components affect us in different ways.

You’ve probably heard it before: drinking coffee is good for your health. Studies have shown that drinking a moderate amount of coffee is associated with many health benefits, including a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. But while these associations have been demonstrated many times, they don’t actually prove that coffee reduces disease risk. In fact, proving that coffee is good for your health is complicated.

While it’s suggested that consuming three to five cups of coffee a day will provide optimal health benefits, it’s not quite that straightforward. Coffee is chemically complex, containing many components that can affect your health in different ways.

These picks spotlight true stories and popcorn flicks that will inspire, challenge, and give you a good time at the movies.

The charge Didion brings against Woodward, that he only obtains insider information by protecting the interests of those insiders, she also levels against the entire industry.

“The genuflection toward ‘fairness’ is a familiar newsroom piety, in practice the excuse for a good deal of autopilot reporting and lazy thinking but in theory a benign ideal,” wrote Didion. “In Washington, however, a community in which the management of news has become the single overriding preoccupation of the core industry, what ‘fairness’ has often come to mean is a scrupulous passivity, an agreement to cover the story not as it is occurring but as it is presented, which is to say as it is manufactured.”

In the book, that essay appeared under the headline, “Political Pornography.”

According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) survey, “84% of Christians are satisfied with their life: 24% answered “very satisfied” and 60% were “satisfied”.”

“Blanket booster programs are likely to prolong the pandemic, rather than ending it, by diverting supply to countries that already have high levels of vaccination coverage, giving the virus more opportunity to spread and mutate,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a news briefing.

The result, which helps explain nearly a century of one party’s political dominance there, was that on Tuesday Evie cast her ballot to reelect the same man who presided over Chicago that scary night when she got mugged on a dark stretch of city sidewalk.

A document containing President Abraham Lincoln's signed pardon of a Civil War soldier has been the source of much controversy since its 1998 discovery, after historians concluded that the date had likely been altered to make the document more historically significant. A new analysis by scientists at the National Archives has confirmed that the date was indeed forged (although the pardon is genuine), according to a November paper published in the journal Forensic Science International: Synergy. The authors also concluded that there is no way to restore the document to its original state without causing further damage. //

then was a pardon for a Civil War solider in the Union Army named Patrick Murphy, a private who had been court-martialed for desertion and condemned to death. The pardon is written perpendicularly in the left margin of a letter dated September 1, 1863, requesting a pardon for Murphy. Lincoln's statement reads, "This man is pardoned and hereby ordered to be discharged from the service." It was signed "A. Lincoln."

It was the date that made the document significant: April 14, 1865, meaning the pardon was likely one of the last official acts of President Lincoln, since he was assassinated later that same day at Ford's Theater in Washington, DC. The pardon was broadly interpreted as evidence for a historical narrative about the president's compassionate nature: i.e., his last act was one of mercy. The discovery made headlines and brought Lowry considerable renown.

Lots of hurdles to come, but a good start for the new observatory.

And while we don’t know how many were actually infected on the Carnival Freedom, we do know that the Symphony of the Seas docked several days ago with 48 positive cases, despite 95 percent of the ship being fully vaccinated. Of those who tested positive, 98 percent were fully vaccinated. In other words, there’s no possible way to blame that outbreak on the “unvaccinated.”

Forty-eight positive tests out of thousands of people on board may not sound a lot, but when you do the math as a seven-day rolling average, something common in judging COVID infection rates, that’s actually around the same positivity rate as New York City (800 per 100,000 vs. 1050 per 100,000), which again is seeing record high case numbers.

What this says to me is that vaccine passport systems are completely nonsensical. We’ve known for a long time that everyone spreads COVID-19, and now Omicron is even more transmissible. Given that, you are accomplishing nothing of value by segregating the vaccinated and unvaccinated.

Instead, these vaccine passport schemes are simply meant to punish and shame. There is no reason to stop a person from eating at a restaurant or going to a baseball game because they are unvaccinated. They represent no more of a statistical risk of spreading the coronavirus than the vaccinated person sitting next to them.

Besides, isn’t the entire point of getting fully vaccinated that it supposedly works? And if it works, what does it matter who the vaccinated interact with? None of this makes any logical sense, and again, that’s the point. This is about bending people to the political will of the left, not actually protecting anyone.