@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

ConnorMoran

@ConnorMoran@esq.social

Portland, Oregon Attorney focusing on state & federal tax, nonprofit and business formation, tax controversies, and estate planning. Oregon State Bar Taxation Section Executive Committee Member. 2022 OSB Tax Section Mentor of the Year.

Previously IRS Senior Attorney, opinions are my own. He/Him.

In spite of how this profile is written, most of what I post or boost is funny or weird or about spaceships.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

RickiTarr, to random
@RickiTarr@beige.party avatar

This was a fun one, so let's do it again. What is something you've learned that seems unlikely, even though you know it's true? Here's one I think about a lot:

Sight, while being something something many people are born with, is not an innate ability, but something we learn to do. People who were born blind or were blind for a long time, who get sight, have to learn to see.

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@Mary625 @RickiTarr @mmdolbow

Sell-by dates are really never about consumer food safety, they are for inventory management and freshness. It's a sell-by date because they want the store to sell it by then, but the assumption is not necessarily that the person immediately consumes it.

If an egg is rotten, you'll know it. And salmonella you manage with food handling not really age.

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Theory: the opening scene of Scream is why millennials never answer a call from an unknown number.

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Am I a total humorless crank if I email NPR to suggest that it isn't great to use a known hoax photo as the lead image for a news story, even a fairly fluffy one?

https://www.npr.org/2023/08/21/1195016459/monster-hunters-largest-search-for-the-loch-ness-monster-in-50-years

(Head photo is famous "Loch Ness Monster" photo, long known to be a prank)

They eventually do mention the dubious origin of the photo, but it's waaaay down at the bottom.

ConnorMoran, to law
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

I've maybe even asked this before but for the law friends following the crypto legal battles--I understand at least in broad strokes that there's a legal/statutory interpretation question about whether cryptocurrencies are "securities" for legal purposes.

But is there any credible policy reason to treat crypto differently from other kinds of investments?

@law

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

The arguments I've seen are:

  • This is an overreach by the SEC (not really an argument, just a restatement of the conclusion).

  • Securities law sucks, so we shouldn't be shackled to it. (Debatable, and if anything argues for including crypto and revamping the whole system to not create perverse incentives to use unregulated crypto.)

  • Crypto is too new and needs its own rules.

That's the most plausible, but I guess I'm not seeing the meaningful distinction from other investments.

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@ericjmorey
@law

(Caveat: I'm just a humble city tax lawyer who knows pretty much one thing about securities law. Which is "if you think you might have a securities law question, ask an expert.")

That maybe flies as a technical legal argument but not really a congressional intent argument under the terms of the Securities Act and Commodity Exchange Act, since foreign currency contracts are explicitly included as securities in the former and excluded from the reach of the latter.

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@ericjmorey @law

The definition of commodities, by the by, is one of those gems that keeps me going down these law rabbit holes.

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@mjc @ericjmorey @law

Yes, the foreign currency contracts are distinct from the underlying assets, though I'm pretty sure at least coinbase offers derivatives.

The ultimate point of the statue is to make sure investors have a remedy for fraud and have the info they need to invest.

For actual currencies, the key info is public and anyway most countries are not marketing their currency as an investment.

(Edge case: conspiracy grifters selling Iraqi Dinar that supposedly would go to the moon)

ConnorMoran, (edited )
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@ericjmorey @law

The story of why it is illegal to have onion futures is fascinating--basically one guy was manipulating the market and the farmers felt especially over a barrel because of their perishability.

My amusement is mostly that Congress made it illegal to sell onion futures by defining onions, uniquely among all goods and articles of any kind, as NOT a commodity.

Also amusing they had such a detailed list and then ALSO such an inclusive catch-all.

MissingThePt, to random
@MissingThePt@mastodon.social avatar

Trump surprises nation by making it almost 24 hours before violating judge’s condition of release not to commit a crime.

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@MissingThePt

I'm not surprised, but it is funny to me that his account name is still RealDonaldTrump even on a social media site he owns

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Apparently there have been a bunch of "oh, how terrible stuff is in Portland, Oregon" stories in the New York Times lately?

Hopefully they mention Portlanders experience violent crime at about 1/4 the rate of New Yorkers, Portland's homeless population per capita is like 60% of New York City's, and for all the snide remarks about decriminalization of drugs, overdose deaths in New York were an order of magnitude higher than in PDX per capita in 2022.

Barros_heritage, to nature
@Barros_heritage@hcommons.social avatar

THE ILLUSION OF MORAL DECLINE by Adam M. Mastroianni and Daniel T. Gilbert (Nature, 2023).

"In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Finally, we show how a simple mechanism based on two well-established psychological phenomena (biased exposure to information and biased memory for information) can produce an illusion of moral decline."

#Nature #Illusion #Memory #Moral #Past #Psychology

@academicchatter
@histodons
@psychology

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06137-x

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

@MHowell @Barros_heritage @academicchatter @histodons @psychology

On the other hand: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidents_of_the_United_States_who_owned_slaves

(Not to mention how the whole Trump conspiracy is basically a replay of how--successfully--Jim Crow ruled a huge part of the country up until my parents lifetime. Or how Reagan won by landslides with similar politics.)

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Ugh, can I get some large language model to take this academic paper and write it again but interesting?

I've gotten so spoiled by practical practitioner-oriented tax writing at like BNA/Bloomberg Law and Tax Notes that I forgot how dry the style of academic legal writing can be even on similar topics.

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Appreciate this NPR article making it abundantly clear that large fires in western North America are a normal, expected, and essential feature of the forests...AND that climate change exacerbates them to a dangerous extent

(and in the US at least, a century of blanket fire suppression and the dispossession of the indigenous nations who maintained the forests through controlled burns are also a major contributor to present megafires)

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/21/1188618934/canada-wildfires-answers

ConnorMoran, to gaming
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

> PORCH. You are approaching your home. The door into your home is to the SOUTH. Sitting here is a MYSTERIOUS BOX.

GET BOX

> You now have a MYSTERIOUS BOX.

> PORCH. You are approaching your home. The door into your home is to the SOUTH.

NORTH

> Why would you want to go NORTH? Home is here. You don't want to go back to work, do you?

> PORCH. You are approaching your home. The door into your home is to the SOUTH.

SOUTH

> Continuing....

#AdventureGames @aaronareed

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

> LIVING ROOM. You enter your living room and set the MYSTERIOUS BOX on your ottoman. In the LIVING ROOM is a MYSTERIOUS BOX, a BACKPACK, and VARIOUS CLUTTER.

Get clutter

> You don't want to clean up now, you want to open your MYSTERIOUS BOX!

Open box

> The MYSTERIOUS BOX is taped closed.

Remove tape

> You don't want to use your fingers to remove the tape, that's annoying and uncivilized. Perhaps a knife?

Use knife

> You do not have the CAMPING KNIFE
> Continuing....

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

> LIVING ROOM. You are in your LIVING ROOM. In the LIVING ROOM is a MYSTERIOUS BOX, a BACKPACK, and VARIOUS CLUTTER.

Open backpack

> You open the backpacking BACKPACK. In the BACKPACK are various ITEMS YOU SHOULD PUT AWAY and a CAMPING KNIFE.

Get items

> I don't know what you are trying to do.

Get items you should put away

> I shouldn't put anything away. I'm a computer!

Get items I should put away

> You don't want to clean up now, you want to open your MYSTERIOUS BOX!
> Continuing....

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

> LIVING ROOM. You are in your LIVING ROOM. In the LIVING ROOM is a MYSTERIOUS BOX, a BACKPACK, and VARIOUS CLUTTER. The BACKPACK is open and contains a CAMPING KNIFE and ITEMS YOU SHOULD PUT AWAY.

Get knife

> You now have a CAMPING KNIFE!
> LIVING ROOM. You are in your LIVING ROOM. In the LIVING ROOM is a MYSTERIOUS BOX, a BACKPACK, and VARIOUS CLUTTER. The BACKPACK is open and contains ITEMS YOU SHOULD PUT AWAY.

Use knife on box

> Success! You have opened the MYSTERIOUS BOX!

The same box open with a book partially covered inside with "50 YEARS" visible.

ConnorMoran, to threads
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

This NPR article treating twitter's status among social media as a "beloved throne" that #threads is trying to take amuses me.

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/06/1186191438/threads-twitter-instagram-musk-zuckerberg

Meta, that poor David scrambling for the unconquerable throne of checks notes the 23rd most popular social media platform by active daily users.

If they fail here, they'll have to console themselves with poor Facebook, struggling along with 10x Twitter's daily active users. And Instagram with 2x

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

I guess it's not yet time to retire my "journalists think Twitter is more important than it is because journalists are all on Twitter" sign.

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

(I mean, yes, obviously they are trying to capture twitter's users, but it's more like a vast empire trying to incorporate a much smaller neighbor than it is an upstart scrambling for a throne)

ConnorMoran,
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Everyone seems to forget that Facebook did rip off Twitter and make a much more popular social media site...Facebook.

While FB already existed, Facebook's newsfeed was ripped straight from Twitter about six months after Twitter launched.

That was the same time FB opened to all and not just students with .edu emails, so the only Facebook most people know is in many ways a Twitter clone. (I was in college when FB launched so I did know the pre-feed site. It was fine.)

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

This whole #threads thing feels oddly like that Twilight Zone episode when the aliens wipe out a neighborhood of suburbanites just by rumor of their existence leading to paranoid self-destruction.

"In the end, the people of the Fedi Extended, Extinguished, and Exterminated....themselves."

ConnorMoran, to random
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Seeing a little flurry of new follow requests, thus a little wave of self-boosts of fave old posts.

People asking to follow--highly recommend an post, having some icon, and maybe a few posts and boosts in your page so I have reasonable confidence you are real and don't deny you as potential spammer.

Also I and others are much more likely to follow back with that stuff.

ConnorMoran, to RomanceBooks
@ConnorMoran@esq.social avatar

Updated

I am a professional tax lawyer, and I do sometimes post about that but much more I'm here for loopy jokes and blog posts that strike my fancy.

Big fan of CWs, don't hesitate to ask me to CW a topic.

Some of these like Romance novels are somewhat aspirational, would love to see more about it in the feed

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