tmyakal

I just watched Anna and the Apocalypse last night. Christmas/zombie/musical. Very fun little film.

There was a game a few years ago called ScreenCheat. Four-player splitscreen shooter, and everyone is invisible. So you find your target by looking at their screen to figure out where they are in the level.

The big jumps in spending on that graph started in 2012. Occupy Wallstreet protests were in the autumn of 2011.

I’ve never had a 9-to-5 that was actually 9 to 5. It always starts at 7:30 or 8.

But you guys not buying new phones is reducing productivity by a third of a percent! Think of the potential losses!

It’s blatant price-gouging. Any stock in the store has already been sold to them at an agreed price. They can set a number and make their set margin.

Updating prices after each delivery might make sense (if their procurement department is absolute dogshit at negotiating contracts), but updating prices throughout the day is just someone trying to see how hard they can push their margins to drain every cent out of their customers.

bad school districts often pay more per kid than good districts

Do you have a source on that?

Property taxes paying for schools is a remnant of redlining. More affluent districts with nicer houses end up with more funding per student, and “bad” areas where minorities live because of literal centuries of economic disadvantage continue to get shafted.

I think we should ditch property taxes and replace them with much higher state-level progressive taxes that are distributed so that every public school student gets the a good education.

Yeah, I saw that $30k for a car and immediately dismissed everything this person said. I’ve never in my life paid more than $8k for a vehicle.

gameplay didn’t evolve

Massive understatement. The PS5’s biggest titles were remakes and direct sequels. Coupling it with the “upgraded” versions of PS4 games like Ghost of Tsushima, Last of Us Part 2, and GTA5, even the marketing seemed to boil down to “This is just a really nice PS4.”

How would you even do that? Marketing is tied up into every single purchasing decision we make. The colors and fonts on the packaging; the perceived value or luxury of the store you’re buying it from; the placement of the products within that store; the price of the product itself. All of these signal things about the perceived value of the product and influence what people purchase.

I’m paying for the insurance, but the nearest in-network provider taking new patients is a 90 minute drive. Is that a cousin to “You can’t afford healthcare”?

The real move is to say your name and phone number at the start and end of the message, that way if they need to pay it again because they didn’t record the info quick enough, they don’t need to listen to the entire message again.

… for now. Trump is going to move on to white people who disapprove of him eventually.

Jack Welch did not singlehandedly ruin capitalism. He was a symptom of the problems capitalism is designed to create.

The Juggernaut video was 2005, and the Fenslerfilms clips were around 2003. So neither of those are '90s

reliable and familiar that won’t break the bank.

This is why car companies are not going to offer EVs that people actually want without government intervention. I remember GM leasing EVs back in the '90s to some acclaim. But they didn’t let anyone buy out their leases and they discontinued production by the end of the decade because most of their money came from service. And a bare-bones electric car has very few service requirements.

Manufacturers need the bullshit features because they need something important and breakable for consumers to come back with. Even if it’s just planned obsolescence driving another purchase, like it sounds like the article’s author is heading towards.

Anna and the Apocalypse is pulling holiday double-duty. It’s a zombie survival musical set in the days before a school’s Christmas break. Insanely ambitious genre-bash, especially for the shoestring budget it was produced on, but a very fun way to kill 90 minutes.

Scrooged is undeniably more a Christmas movie than a Halloween movie, but it’s got some great spooky vibes. Especially with their portrayal of the Ghost of Christmas Future.

I don’t think Valve really wants to be in the hardware market. That said, with the success of the Steam Deck and the numerous Deck-alikes like the ROG Ally or Legion Go, I have to believe they’ll try to talk manufacturers into doing a Steam Machine 2 at some point.

In a similar vein, my first thought was “did they control for economic factors?” Lower-income families are less likely to have adequate healthcare, less likely to enroll a child in pre-school or daycare, less likely to see an educator intervene if the child is missing milestones.

Especially in the US, there’s a history of conflating economic factors for genetic factors because of who has historically held wealth. Turns out playing golf doesn’t make you live longer, it’s just that if you can afford to play golf, you can probably afford healthcare and more nutritious foods.