Agreed on economic issues, but I disagree that liberalism is conservative on social issues the way that Australia’s Liberals are. I think classical liberalism in an American context would be most closely associated with American libertarianism. Liberalism has a huge hard-on for laissez faire economics, but it also should ostensibly emphasize individual freedom more than anything else when it comes to social issues. Both Republicans in the US and Liberals in Australia might speak platitudes about their desire for free speech, but if you challenge that even a little you’ll quickly find that they’re just hard right wing conservatives hiding behind the moderated mask of liberalism.

Fuck Intuit and H&R Block, all my homies use FreeTaxUSA.

From what I understand, some degree of nuclear power is always going to be necessary. This is because while we tend to think of excess power in the energy grid as being stored away, this in fact is not the case and we only use power as it’s actively available. Excess power is wasted. The major downside of renewables is that they’re circumstancial. Solar energy is only available during clear days, wind power is only available on windy days, etc. Until we massively improve our energy storage capabilities we’re going to need some kind of constant supply of power backing the other ones when they aren’t available. Without adequate nuclear energy available, that’s going to be fossil fuels. And when compared to coal, oil, and natural gas, nuclear energy is unbelievably better for the environment. The only byproduct is the spent fuel which is dangerous, but we have control over where it ends up which is more than can be said for fossil fuels.

This isn’t necessarily always true. PCSX2, the main PS2 emulator, for example needs a BIOS file that can only be obtained from an actual PS2 (or “illegally”). I’m not sure why that emulator requires it when others don’t. The closest thing to an explanation I could find online just said “legal issues”, but didn’t go into details. That makes me suspect that there was pushback from Sony about the emulator. So if such emulation laws were to be written they absolutely should protect in stone the right to create and use emulators. If a company can find a loophole to block you, they will.