The ad supported bullshit: isn’t this the majority of new subs for netflix and those companies who have ad supported tiers?

Sounds like you want less of a game and more of an animated choose your own adventure story book.

I play games as active entertainment (e.g. my own effort contributes to the game) rather than just a pick an option and see the outcome kind of thing (e.g. passive entertainment, I don’t put effort in beyond select an option.) I see appeal to both since I grew up reading choose your own adventure books.

I find that active entertainment satisfies a different need and grows a skill, whereas passive entertainment is just like heroin - a good drip probably feels good but chasing that next high gets harder and harder and harder to reach the first height.

e.g. Sometimes you want to play sports, sometimes you just want to get high.

The latest deal between Foxconn and Wisconsin reduces the planned subsidies for the project, which ultimately could have cost taxpayers over $4 billion. Foxconn is now eligible for $80 million in tax credits, down from $2.85 billion. Governor Tony Evers said those credits are in line with those for which any company is eligible. They’re performance-based and will depend on whether Foxconn hits capital investment and employment targets.

Emphasis above is all mine. This is non-news. They talked about what could have been but the subsidy was based on actual invements being made and people being hired.

Foxconn created ~1500 jobs (e.g. ~11% of what they targeted) and only got ~2.8% of the subsidy. Didn’t Michigan win?

How much do you think the taxpayers are on the hook for from the deal? Just curious what you think.

This is an intelligent guy. He isn’t firing from the hip. He’s saying what the party wants to hear to try and get more attention on him. I wonder if he’s trying to be Trump’s VP candidate.

I’m not saying I agree with any of his shit, just saying this is calculated on his part. I also don’t really agree with Pence with much of anything, but certifying the election results and being against the Jan 6th insurrection is something I appreciate.

commercial real estate values are one rationale but I don’t really buy that unless you own the property. Lots of companies that don’t own their property are doing it.

One big rationale behind forcing return to office is that it causes soft layoffs from all of the people who do not want to return to in person working. It’s a great way to downsize without announcing layoffs and taking a share price hit.

no no no he has it all wrong. It’s the party of the WORKING class. E.g. they are going to put you all TO WORK.

Keeping the wealth with the wealthy means you get to work for them. They’re in charge don’t you see? We’re just their worker bees. There’s enough of us that we don’t need healthcare. Education is a luxury for the children of the wealthy elite, NOT the workers. The dumber and more ignorant the worker the less they need to offer them in compensation. If you don’t know better, you don’t ask for more!

It’s all about being the smartest in the room. Why do good things for people when you can just fuck them over and have them sing your praises? This is why they want to teach that slavery taught valuable skills. They want to enslave us, and they are slowly doing that generation after generation with income disparities. Pretty soon we’ll work our whole lives just to subsist and owning a home will be only afforded to the wealthy elite. The rest of us will work for them in the form of rent and they will be our land LORDS.

It’s definitely the party of workers. More workers! Work for your owners!

if there are to many taxis everyone can’t make a living wage

Why aren’t there similar restrictions to the amount of workers in various sectors? Doesn’t having too many people doing IT support dilute IT support worker wages? Apply this logic to ANY individual contributor role.

The actual end result of limited taxi licenses is that the licenses get monopolized by bigger businesses who do not provide “living” wages to their employees rather than protecting individual taxi drivers. The owner makes a TON of money and the taxi drivers just do ok.

Try and find some salary data for say NYC medallion taxi drivers and compare that to the surrounding area cost of living. Taxi drivers who work 40 hours usually make below what i’d consider living wage for the area.

Does anyone not think Microsoft is going to use all their cloud data for training language models?

“We promise not to” doesn’t seem realistic to me. Proving they used it is impossible.

Fertility rate is just one piece of the equation.

Infant mortality rate is off the charts in Africa compared to the majority of the world.

Average life expectancy is also much lower in most African nations compared to the places with low total fertility rate.

There’s a lot more nuance than even just these two other pieces. Generalizing at a continent level is really poor. A typical metropolitan couple/family is going to have less kids than a rural family in the US where cost of living is lower and pressures from religion and family are higher.

When your neighbors, friends and family are holding off from kids to pursue higher socioeconomic standards there’s pressure to live up to them or surpass them. When your neighbors, family and friends are having kids left and right you feel pressured to join them too. Just food for thought.

You don’t just vote for a president. It’s not presidential election day, it’s voting day. The presidential vote is worthless but the rest isn’t.

The primaries are where most of the magic happens too.

Most people ignore state and local positions but those greatly influence real world consequences. Federal law changes at a glacial pace due to all the bullshit. State stuff happens and takes effect usually within a couple of years here without a flip flop every 8 years. So yes, i’ll be voting.

Red America is blatantly bigoted to LGBTQ+ to the point of passing laws allowing government control over their bodies when the bigots deem appropriate. The goalposts are not all the same from one part of red america to the rest.

Red America hates immigrants openly unless they have the right skin color.

Blue America hates immigrants behind closed doors and develops programs that covertly support the upper middle class while handing out some scraps to others.

Example: Did you know your parents can be billionaires and you can get a 2bedroom luxury apartment in downtown Boston for ~250k so long as you have less than 75k in assets and less than ~80k in income? For poor people saving that much up is tough… for children of the rich though? Trivial! Get an easy cushy job that pays just below the limit and buy the 2BR apartment in downtown Boston for cheap then once the house closes have mommy and daddy get you a big paying job at one of their friends’ businesses and start buying more and more housing to rent out, living in el-cheapo 250k-worth-1.5-million-apartment. You can’t sell it for ~80 years, but there’s nothing saying your girlfriend or mistress can’t move in before then. You don’t owe more than the original 250k even if you suddenly start making millions or billions of dollars. That’s what I call a first time home ownership opportunity.

My wife grew up in a 3rd world country so I know a bit about how things have changed in the past 30-40 years or so even abroad. QOL has risen around the world. Immigrants from poorer countries will ALWAYS be last place when coming here and competing to climb the ladder if they come with few skills - but they’ll also be better off than the overwhelming majority of people in their former country.

Many things are to consider: it’s far harder to find a job now, and it’s far, far more expensive to have a home.

I disagree that it’s harder to find a job. It’s harder to find a job that pays well that isn’t blue collar without a college degree and fluency in English. In Massachusetts it’s trivial to find a job for $15/hr (minimum wage). You can’t afford an apartment on your own though… you’re going to be renting a room at best and hopefully if you’re lucky living with family who already have a home.

If you start off as a blue collar apprentice doing carpentry, hvac, plumbing - you name it, you’re going to start off above minimum wage, you’re going to get regular raises and each certification you pass will greatly increase your income, and it’ll all be paid for by the employer. Blue collar jobs in construction will always be in demand and are always hiring. Amazon may lay off tens of thousands of highly compensated employees but aint nobody laying off a plumber. If you’ve ever looked at getting work done on a family home you’d know there’s a lengthy waiting period.

Basic cell phones are fairly cheap. Internet is fairly cheap for low income households.

Basically, inflation rised faster than income, new expenses were created. I’m pretty sure we have less public services now than 50 years ago too.

If you think we had things better 50 years ago i’d try watching a documentary about life in the 60s or 70s. We take a LOT for granted today. Life is practically nothing like it was back then. MRIs didn’t even exist until 1977. CT Scans weren’t invented until literally 50 years ago. This is just two examples of medical technology but the list goes on and on. The cost of everything is much higher but the quality and safety standards today are higher than ever in most industries. Labor cost here is also higher than ever.

Higher housing costs are almost entirely a function of higher incomes and higher demand. US population has grown from ~212 million to ~331 million.

When I was a kid you were still paying per minute for phone calls. Air conditioners were still a luxury (I never had one growing up.)

In my extended family i’ve seen two people who are immigrants pass a programming boot camp and get jobs in this economy (past 12 months.) Zero connections, references etc… they applied and got jobs. What’s stopping someone from learning how to program? or if ADHD- learning how to do blue collar work as an apprentice?

I’d never vote for Trump, but i’m not really thrilled to vote for Biden either. I think both options suck.

Since there is no other option we’ll end up with Biden again probably, just depends how much power hate and fear has nowadays.

I’m in Massachusetts so voting blue doesn’t mean anything in the presidential race. With the divide between conservative and liberal getting worse and worse I wonder how the battleground states will swing this time around.

I’m having trouble understanding what you’re trying to say. You think we have a lower standard of living today than in the past?

50 years ago what was so great that we have lost? 25 years?

From where i’ve sitting my QOL is only higher than when I was a kid growing up without hot water or air conditioning. Poorest family in a middle class town. That’s just anecdotal but most seem to take for granted the things everyone has today. Magical handheld computers didn’t exist when I was a kid and now almost everyone has one in the US.

The only thing out of reach is home ownership. Landlords are the new slaveowners. Not that you can really compare slavery to modern day working class jobs.

The era of a strong economy was brought on by factors from WW2 and the weakening was brought on by 2-3x growth in world population.

More people fitting into the same cities means less space and more demand.

More people means more workers for jobs that pay even less because the competition is fiercer than ever.

More people means more percentage of resources going to surviving and less on luxuries.

We can give a small % of global population luxury. US QOL isn’t sustainable on a global scale with the resources available in the world.

Attrition goes up and companies had a harder time filling the newly vacated roles compared to companies that didn’t force a back to the office.

Work from home as an option is a HUGE boon to the employee so of course offering it weighs heavily upon an employee’s decision to take an offer. I’d give up 10-20% of my salary for 100% wfh, i’d expect more salary for 0% wfh or some other huge benefit like the office being very close to home.

I already turn down jobs because they are located inconveniently in relation to where I live.

Wow, what a clickbait headline which misconstrues what the sales pitch document actually says totally and completely.

80% of executives say they would have approached their company’s return-to-office strategy differently if they had access to workplace data to inform their decision-making.

Sure, this means some executives may have chosen different strategies - but this does not mean they regret their decisions. They probably would have opted for 5 days in office or just told select groups to come back to the office or something else. Very different than “we wish we didn’t have in person staff!” or “We regret asking people to return to the office!”

I was expected to post 3 tweets, 2 Instagram posts, and 2 TikToks minimum per day.

I was also expected to plan, film, edit, and post 2 Floatplane exclusives per week.

Instagram/Twitter: image/text posts are not hard since the quality expectation is very low. Looking at their instagram their newest post is just a photo of Linus’ head in an oven and the comment “just tryna bake some of dat cake.” The exact same image and text is posted on twitter. It’s just garbage bullshit.

The two TikToks are per week based on their tiktok page not per day. I clicked few a few, one was a 12 second video of someone taking a battery bank and an xbox outside and playing it briefly with the text headline mentioning touching grass sometimes.

2 Floatplane seems weird to me because 100% of what is on floatlabs is 1:1 with youtube (same thumbnails even) with different titles, at least from what I can see without signing up or paying anything.

I get that making bullshit content all week can be stressful and I don’t doubt it would be impossible in a hostile work environment. It’s a damn shame that the sexual assault allegation doesn’t seem to have any details or any naming and shaming involved because that would seem like a metoo opportunity to get rid of a literal sexual assaulter.

Hopefully they get a good job without any of the problems they faced at LTT.

The reason why modern aircraft carriers have a totally open top surface aside from the tower is if a pilot misses an arrestor cable they can throttle up and make another pass.

Unless all the craft that land on this are VTOL it’s a pretty terrible design by function, no matter how pretty it is.