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As Mayer recalled, when a big story broke at The Star: “You could see history happening. People would cluster over a reporter’s desk, pile into the boss’s office and sometimes break into incredibly loud fights. There were weirdos in newsrooms, and fabulous role models occasionally, and the spirit of being part of a motley entourage. Now it’s just you and the little cursor on your screen.”
Opinion | Requiem for the Newsroom
nytimes.com
Initially, Japan’s traffic lights were green as green can be. Despite this, the country’s official traffic documents still referred to green traffic lights as ao rather than midori. While international traffic law decrees all “go” signals must be represented by green lights, Japanese linguists objected to their government’s decision to continue using the word ao to describe what was clearly midori. The government decided to compromise. “In 1973, the government mandated through a cabinet order that traffic lights use the bluest shade of green possible—still technically green, but noticeably blue enough to justifiably continue using the ao nomenclature,” Allan Richarz writes for Atlas Obscura.
This Is Why Japan Has Blue Traffic Lights Instead of Green
rd.com
The result is that you get a tax deduction worth $2 million, the charity gets $130,000, and the lawyers get the rest of the value of the yacht. This shouldn’t work, and it doesn’t work, but it’s funny to think about. A good pressure point in the tax code is the charitable deduction for non-cash assets: If you have some unique non-traded asset (art, yacht, etc.), you can donate it to charity and deduct the market value of the asset, and if there is no market value then you and the charity have some leeway to make it up. You want the value to be high (so you get a bigger deduction), and the charity doesn’t care (it isn’t paying the made-up price), so there are incentives to make up a big number. The IRS knows this and tries to crack down by requiring appraisals, etc., but if you can generate what looks like a market transaction at the made-up price, I guess that helps. But if you generate what looks like a fake transaction, it doesn’t.
The SEC Cracks Down on Crypto
bloomberg.com
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