Blogaround

1. If you've signed up for Bluesky, you've signed up for offloadable moderation. (January 1, via) "So instead of communicating, for instance, 'if you see a flagrantly racist post, report it to staff, and we'll take it down,' the BS stance on the matter is 'if you see a flagrantly racist post, use this optional feature to label it as racist, and other users can opt-in to your moderation judgment about that post while we as a platform continue to host it.'"

2. New Residency Based Tax Bill Introduced in the House of Representatives (December 18) Cool, this is a bill intended to help US citizens living abroad who don't owe US taxes but are still required to file every year.

Let me tell you a bit about what I have to do in terms of filing US taxes, as a US citizen living in China long-term: If you are a US citizen abroad, you have to file a US tax return every year, even if you don't owe anything. If you are outside the US for at least 330 days of the year (er, not exactly "the year", it's a bit more complicated than that, but to make it easier to understand I'll just say "330 days of the year"), then you can exclude all your foreign-earned income, and you do not have to pay US income tax on it. (I have an American friend in China who told me about how he had to carefully plan exactly how long his US vacations would be, otherwise he would owe tens of thousands of dollars in income tax, yikes. My US vacations have been short enough I haven't had to worry about this.) Anyway, I meet this requirement, so I don't owe any US income tax on my income from my job in China. I also have income in the US, just interest on bank accounts, nothing big, and that would be taxed but it's low enough that it's less than the standard deduction so I don't owe any tax on that either.

(I'm lucky since my parents have tax software and just do this for me. But I imagine it would be quite a pain to have to figure out how to file taxes on your own, and what's the point if you don't even owe anything.)

So, I'm glad to see this new bill which is aimed at simplifying all this for Americans living abroad. In practical terms, I'm not sure it will help *me* that much- looks like I will need to file anyway because I do have some US income, but at least I won't have to fill out the FBAR form, so that's nice. Seems like it will be most helpful for Americans who don't have any US income.

3. A Profile In Courage (December 18) "With so many terrible examples of how not to take on Trump, Judge Juan Merchan in Manhattan shines a light on the correct way forward."

4. All right, I have no idea what to make of this, but the orange antichrist said that any international student who graduates from a US college should automatically get a US green card (I found this link via Jay Kuo).

Various thoughts that I have about this:

• He says a lot of things. Just because he says something doesn't mean it has any connection to what he actually believes or plans to do. So we shouldn't view this like it's an actual serious policy which is going to happen.
• I like this! Think about it: International students graduating from college in the US. They've already lived in the US for several years. They already have their stuff here. They're likely already renting an apartment, and have a US bank account. They already have experience speaking English and interacting with American society. And then when they graduate, they have to worry about if they'll be able to find an employer who can sponsor them on a work visa- they have a limited amount of time before their current visa expires. Why not just give them a green card so they don't have to be stressed about whether or not they'll suddenly be kicked out of the country due to the unstable whims of their employer? That would really be a huge help.
• This would be a huge change in immigration policy. Does the orange antichrist realize that? (I very much don't think this will actually happen, because it's such a huge change.)
• This video (I don't know the original date of it) has surfaced now, in the context of the conflict between the "just really racist and anti-immigrant" faction of MAGA and the "US tech companies need to be able to hire highly educated immigrants from Asia" faction of MAGA. (Please note that ELON MUSK IS AN IMMIGRANT. On some level, I've always been baffled by his support of the MAGA movement. I guess he's just so incredibly confident that he will be seen as "one of the good ones.") I try not to care that much about these internal fights where both sides are terrible.

5. Biden Commutes 37 of 40 Federal Death Row Sentences: WTF? (December 23) This is a post from Rev. Jeff Hood. He is a spiritual advisor to inmates on death row, and an activist who believes the death penalty should be abolished. He is not happy with Biden for commuting 37 out of 40 death sentences- why not all 40? He calls this "a moral abyss of federal sentencing that only pursues death sentences in rare cases, prioritizing some murder victims above all others."

Well, yeah, I agree that it doesn't make sense to commute 37 out of 40. When I saw the news that Biden had commuted 37 out of 40 death sentences, I was happy to see it because it's better than not doing that, but I do feel it's weird to not commute all of them. Feels like 3 of them were not commuted simply because they're the ones we've all seen in the news, that we have feelings about- but the 37 whose sentences were commuted are also murderers. If you read about them, wow, they've done really horrific things, it's not like they're "not as bad" as the 3 that you had already heard about. I think commuting these death sentences should be about an ideological belief that it's immoral for a society to have a death penalty. It's not about "oh these criminals don't really deserve the death penalty, but those other ones do."

6. I'm Suing Honey (January 3) Wow! Legal Eagle is bringing a class action lawsuit against Honey for stealing affiliate commissions.

7. Siri “unintentionally” recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M (January 3, via) "The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden, Reuters noted (claims which remain disputed)."

8. As Trump rewrites history, victims of the Jan. 6 riot say they feel 'betrayed' (January 5) "'All these elected officials, they don't care about the officers - people like myself that put their lives on the line to protect them,' he said. 'We did our job and gave them the time to escape, to evacuate the building. And they seem to have forgotten the fear that Donald Trump's mob made them feel.'"