It’s still practically the same now as it was then, just without the porn. Still no algorithm, and the majority of the userbase is people who have decade old accounts.

It’s leagues better than Twitter, at least.

I think you were being downvoted because while you may be technically correct, that means little to the daily life of your average person.

The last time I saw data on wages (pre COVID, so sometime between 2015 and 2019), when adjusted for inflation, wages for the average worker had actually dropped about 5% since then. Add to that that prices have increased faster than inflation across the board, even before COVID, and people are losing money simply keeping afloat. The price of a taco at Taco Bell is now twice what it cost in the 90s when adjusted for inflation. College tuition is up something like 1,500% since the 70s (thanks, Reagan). Something like 60% of houses are considered unaffordable to the average American today, compared to 30% roughly 20 years ago.

All this means that purchasing power has dropped, but “purchasing power” and “earnings” means absolutely nothing to people. The number in their bank account dropping instead of going up matters. The fact that people can’t get a mortgage for a house even though the rent they currently pay is more expensive matters. The fact that people have to take on debt to afford essentials is what matters. To the average person, any of that is a clear sign that they’re losing money.

Interesting way of saying “my human rights aren’t up for debate every 4 years.”

Main character syndrome, aka “Don’t you know who I am?!”

10-hour shifts are very common in the US. Working 50 hours a week is fairly common, though sometimes people work four 10-hour days instead of the usual five 8-hour days that people know as a “9 to 5 job.”

I was recently looking at a job listing where they were hiring for 2 shifts of the same role. The first was 50 hours a week working 10-hour days from 7am to 5pm, and the second shift worked 42 hour weeks with four 9-hour days where you worked from 3pm to midnight and then a shortened 6 hour day on Fridays. These kinds of schedules are the norm in manufacturing and logistics jobs, and in my experience, the higher your salary and the more senior your role, the fewer hours you’re expected to work. And you might even get benefits like vacation time and sick days/pay!

And local colloquialisms as well. I can tell you the secret to a Boston accent is to replace the r after a vowel with an h, and that’ll help you pahk the cah at Hahvahd yahd, but won’t do a damn thing when somebody tells you the food at a restaurant is wicked pissah, but warns you that it’s rainin’ feckin’ hahd out deyah so yeh better off takin’ the T to Southie.

But the fear isn’t so rational. It’s like a fear that the cocktail in your example will replace the original vodka whether they want the cocktail or not, or that the vodka will be so diluted by seltzer that it will functionally cease to exist.

It’s like a fear of gentrification of the country as a whole.

It’s also important to remember that the US is a huge exception in this regard as well. Most other countries are like 90%+ native population, and immigrant populations tend to be sort of isolated from the wider national culture due to things like language barriers, and they often set up little “bastions” of their native culture locally wherever they live. We even see plenty of that in the US as well. While there are many distinctly US cultures across the country that are derived from a variety of backgrounds, there are tons of “enclaves” of European culture that make it blatantly clear where immigrants from certain countries settled. In Boston, the culture of Chinatown is distinctly unique and separate from the wider culture of the city, which largely has ties back to Ireland (and is very proud of it). And both of those are distinctly different from where the Italian immigrants settled, who effectively have their own districts of cultures descended from Italy regardless of where they immigrated to.

Because of the American Puritannical values, which dictate what the credit companies and advertisers are willing to do business with and the cultural zeitgeist along with it.

The Puritans were some of the earliest British colonists in the US, and were either thrown out of England for attempting a coup to replace the king with a puppet to force their more extremist form of Christianity on the country, or left by their own choice because they felt that the Church of England was too liberal. They were basically a bunch of prudes who believed that the human body and sex were shameful and disgusting.

This has led to the dichotomy where advertisers want nothing to do with sex/nudity, except when it comes to implied sex in advertisements. Because sex is bad, but it also sells, which is good.

PG-13 and rated T for teen, respectively

Once again, I am tapping the sign for people to go watch the two hour video by Shaun on the subject.

The moral of Harry Potter is that the status quo is correct and should never be questioned, and nobody should ever try to change anything.

Harry doesn’t defeat Voldemort or change any of the issues inherent in the bumbling bureaucracy of the wizard world. Voldemort kills himself on a magic technicality, Harry becomes a magic cop and helps to ensure that magic is never used to help the undesirables of society (Muggles), and Hermione is ridiculed for being a girl with blue hair and pronouns who tried to end the chattel slavery system before she “grew up” and became a much more sensible person who realized that the slaves actually want to be oppressed, and it’s for their own good.

You can see Rowling’s morality change practically in real-time as the books go on, from criticizing the system to defending it as she began to benefit from it as her wealth grew. And underneath it all, you can see her discriminatory opinions of people. That was always there. When she wants you to hate a woman, she makes them fat or gives them masculine features. If I have to read the phrase “mannish hands” one more time, I might vomit.

Don’t forget that it’s also effectively a pay cut due to the added expenses and time lost in commuting. They should ask if the company is going to at least pay for the maintenance of the car if they aren’t going to pay for the time spent commuting.

Didn’t it also have something to do with a brand deal? Like the suit got extra funding for the movie by making a deal with Duracell to have their batteries in the movie or something.

Just wait until you learn about Alan Turing, the guy who made the Turing Machine (considered the first computer).

He committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide because the US government chemically castrated gay men like him - forced them to take drugs so that they couldn’t “get it up” to prevent them from committing “deviant behavior”.

And that wasn’t outside the norm 100 years ago for governments to do.

We don’t even need to build new cities. We just need to let our cities increase density like all cities did for hundreds of years before the 50s. More multifamily buildings, midrise apartments, and mixed use buildings would go a long way towards helping everybody.

Besides, much of that land is either already owned by somebody or empty for a reason. It would be a logistical nightmare for sure. You could send them to all the dying towns in the US, but I don’t think that would help either - apart from the locals being rightfully angry about large groups of new people coming in and eroding their local culture, those towns are dying for a reason that runs much deeper than just people moving away.

Considering that Nixon’s cabinet has openly talked about how they made it a federal offense so that they had justification to arrest the leaders of the war protesters (and the same thing with cocaine and the black community), I’d say it’s of a similar level but a different kind of evil.

No horse ahead

Welcome to the hypocritical world of Puritan culture.

Some of the earliest British settlers in the US were so extremist that the Church of England kicked them out after they tried to assassinate the king and replace him with a puppet of their own to force their beliefs on the rest of the country.

It was partly these crazies that started the whole sex and bodies=bad and shameful thing in the US that advertisers still believe in today. And swearing is yet another of those weird things. But sex sells, so it’s okay to imply it as long as it’s selling a product and no other time.

We call these people “snowbirds” where I’m from.

You also missed the part where they vote to prevent any additional funding for education and other services in the communities where their summer houses are because it would increase their taxes.

I don’t know about Wal-Mart, but every other site you listed is famous for being filled with Chinese companies that make cheap knockoff garbage. Yes, even Amazon. It’s like the perfect blend of enshitification and consumerism.

I don’t know about the tech companies, but with clothing companies you’ll see the exact same companies with names like asdfghjkl on both Amazon and Temu, selling the exact same product with the exact same pictures as 3 other similarly named companies. And what you buy will only last slightly longer than the 6 months the company is around for before it disappears and the owners open back up under a new name.

For tech, you gotta do research and see what the experts are saying and find out the reputation of the brands that you’re looking at. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as just going on the website and checking the reviews.

As for your original question, I think the answer will be FOSS projects. No company is going to willingly drop the potential ad revenue of AR ads. “This dream brought to you by Underwear brand briefs!”

I think they should name an airline company after him instead. Or maybe a steak company.

Those definitely won’t go bankrupt, surely. No way a businessman of his caliber would let that happen.