FriendOfDeSoto

If this is news to you: most obituaries are written and produced during the subject’s lifetime. Unless they leave life at a statistically unlikely age, the biggest chunks are in the can or pre-written so you can get a single person to do the voiceover over it all. Writers often start writing obits in the press. It lessens the burden of fact checking when the person actually punches their ticket.

So the Bidden footage was probably pre-produced. A similar package exists for the orange one as well. And Rob Reiner’s would have been done as well. Although certainly nobody would have anticipated the way he died.

At this point in time you must suspect so-called AI to have its tendrils lodged in a lot of this stuff. I would suspect this less at media companies that still have more than a handful of actual humans employed. So the networks are probably okay. On clickbait dot news I’d be more suspicious.

But can I tell you that - regardless of the content - this feels more like a blatant attempt at getting more YouTube views with a patreon link in tow?

By most accounts, 25 Dec as a day in the calendar is a historical accident. The boy was probably not born in winter. Calendar problems, ancient Roman holidays, and the proximity to the winter solstice made this a historical game of telephone until a pope just set it in stone (some orthodox churches don’t agree but January is probably only marginally more correct for his birthday).

Traditionally, Christmas lasted so long it usurped solar new years. On the 8th day of Christmas my sweetheart gave to me … a shitload of weird stuff. Mostly birds, for some reason.

Correct me if I’m wrong here but isn’t in UK English “Christmas” still used to describe the whole year end period encompassing the year change. To me they are two close but still separate events with a bit of decorational overlap. So I understand your question why there aren’t more New Years songs. But the answer may simply be: history and tradition. People tolerate Christmas tunes until the 31st and then they’re all cheered out. And NY for most is just a reminder that it’s back to work now.

I mean, logically, it would make sense to push VPNs into illegality or create a lot of gray area there if you’re also planning to introduce the Aussie social media ban. Logically. I personally think both are no good.

I’ve read some headlines about illegal streaming being targeted and shut down in Europe. If there was lobby money invested, I suspect it is the likes of sports rights holders who would like you to pay them extortionate amounts of money and not sail the high seas for the price of a VPN.

Modstå, kære dansker.

If omnipotent deity of your choice forbid this ever lands at the ECJ I’m not sure they will side with the privacy/freedom of speech side of the argument.

I did not have the feeling that we’re talking about fully formed adults here.

TYL you cannot trust a statistic that you haven’t forged yourself.

Somebody is going to jump into this. But I would keep my eyes open beyond just the Chinese market. Vietnam and Thailand are interesting places to watch. V because of the relative sweetheart deal with the trumpist of tariffs. And T because they already do a lot of SSD manufacturing. And China, more than any other country, will be at the mercy of a particular person’s bowel movements on Pennsylvania Ave.

I don’t think those particular comments, in writing and devoid of tone, not meant for public distribution (and she’s probably not running for political office or something justifying higher scrutiny), necessarily qualify as ableist per se, more skirting the line. I’ve said very dumb things in my youth and context is important, even in chat threads. But the rest of the picture you painted of that person is: asshole. So for my money it doesn’t really matter if she ticked that particular box as well. Stay away.

You could argue my take is too accepting of the current situation and I would agree with that. At the same time, I would argue yours is simplifying things quite a bit. Subscription TV channels came after free-to-air channels with commercials. This may depend on where you live in the world but most places have at least one local station or a selection of them broadcast through the air, not cable or satellite, and not subscription based. Financed through commercials or in some countries also through a license model (like in the UK). Cable/satellite/subscription channels are iterations on the model brought to you by capitalism. Ads in public transport can lower ticket prices. Billboards can help lower rental rates in buildings and their revenue adds to the tax intake of the community they’re in. If you think it already takes too long to get potholes fixed, it would take even longer without them. Not all roads are toll roads. I get it: you don’t like billboards. You’re going to get all these unintended side effects if they were banned tomorrow.

Online ads are insufferable. I’m running 3-4 plugins to avoid them. I’m also normally watching broadcast TV on DVR so I can skip through the commercial breaks. I bail on any subscription service that adds ads.

The problem online is the cause of the problem. It’s the simplicity with which data can be collected and the lack of regulation. It’s also generally still paying off a debt incurred when in the early days of www users got accustomed to getting everything ‘for free.’ Traditional media has lowered the price dramatically of its own offerings to get new eyeballs online while older streams of income still paid for most expenses, like the income from TV commercial revenue or sales of printed paper. And as these traditional sources of great rivers of money decreased over decades, the ones that replaced it were digital trickles in danger of drying out. That brought about a “militarization” of online ads, ever more targeted and annoying. This problem needs a multi-pronged approach including regulation of data collection and new financing models for media in general.

Chose your own dystopia. Where no ads exist and everything is pay per view/read/report/etc. Or the one we’re in.

The bigger problem with traffic deaths is that we developed a system of transportation that relies heavily on cars that are mostly driven by humans. Removing billboards is not going to improve on that that much. But underwear model billboard pileups are a thing. But so are those caused by drivers on their phones and my guess there are way more of those.

Tracking and selling of information has gotten out of hand, no doubt. It is political decisions or a lack thereof that got us here.

Btw everybody thinks they’re immune to advertising. And we’re not.

The unofficial wisdom of marketing is that half of any advertising budget is wasted. They just don’t know which half. So they continue. This whole thing boils down to the fiduciary responsibilities to provide as much value to shareholders again, the bane of capitalism. They cannot afford to check which half is wasted.

And just for some context here: personally I don’t mind billboard ads to be honest.

I think the abundance of tools available to block ads online hints at a movement in itself. We don’t need a leader or a central committee.

The wrinkle I see here is that a generalized ‘everybody’ hates ads but ‘everybody’ is also aware of the fact that they finance a large swath of stuff that we would have to pay for otherwise.

Of course not. If we blamed the language for the bad actions of the people who spoke it during, there would be virtually no language left in a pristine enough condition to learn.

That being said, tempers can boil over. So maybe don’t shout your Duolingo answers at a full Starbucks. I mean, that’s good advice regardless of the language but you know what I mean.

None of those ch’s are guttural and you skipped an h;)

6-7.

6-7.

I don’t know about the origins of this meme but I know basketball and the NBA are insanely popular in China.

The delightful thing is that it works in reverse also: ask a native English speaker to pronounce “Eichhörnchen.”

That depends on when it will break out. If it’s tomorrow, China and Russia will be buddies or at the very least will be in a non-aggression pact situation. Most of Europe will side against Russia but might be more mealy mouthed towards China (even if they decide to start it by going after Taiwan and that escalates from there). The US will, as it is tradition in a world war, not enter until much later or unless attacked first. And on whose side? Depends on one person’s bowel movement on that day an no longer on treaties and commitments. One of the many crucial areas to watch will be if the US honors the security alliance with Japan.

I say it depends on when because if we give it another 25-50 years, attitudes may shift. The US could try going for a more sane leadership and affirm its NATO membership. Sentiments towards Russia may shift in Europe, especially if the US is progressing further towards Idiocracy.

Best boss I ever had.

It’s an assumption that many people will be unemployed and unemployable in other functions. So far, every big change (like the Industrial Revolution or the advent of computers in the workplace) have lead to temporary displacements, and the longer ago it happened violent side effects. But in the big picture, we have found ways to put the human resource back into the machine. Accountants were supposed to go extinct with the arrival of Microsoft Excel. But their numbers have increased because they can do more useful things with their time than doing the math. The assumption may be more fear mongering. (And it’s too early to tell if you ask me.)

So I don’t think they will kill us off just yet because it isn’t entirely clear that we’re not needed. It’s also possible that so-called AI frees up people and resources that can be channeled into what are chronically underfunded professions today, like teaching or medical care. We have a tendency to think in Matrix or 1984 terms of the future when more positive outcomes exist.

From what I read, a lot of these character choices (with the exception of Japan/Korea, they might have chosen those themselves) were made with the dual considerations of being similar sounding to the country name and the hanzi’s meaning being flattering to the people of the country. And there are plenty of country names that are entirely phonetic (e.g. 意大利 for Italy or 澳大利亚 for Australia, Mexico, etc.).