brucoe

If they want to tackle this, one of two things has to happen: 1. Increase overall costs to compensate a rise in wages (and then actually raise salaries) 2. Lower executive compensation and carve a piece out of stockholder profits (and again, raise salaries) Honestly, I don't perceive them taking either approach. But either way, both of those approaches require something similar, although for some reason I just can't seem to figure out what that one something might be. I wonder if it has something to do with the items in brackets.

So far, from what I'm seeing, this looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. I especially loved the frustration Doctor Strange had during the spell casting as Peter kept trying to adjust the spell, and Strange is trying to concentrate on taking it seriously.

It's amazing what happens after everyone decides to jump ship after you make a stupid, horrible decision. This is a lot like that one time I told my billionaire, bikini supermodel astrophysicist girlfriend we should probably see other people. Didn't go the way I planned.

Just because I don't care for the concept doesn't mean I don't have an opinion on the subject. I don't remember ever reading a rule that says you have to be pro something in order to have an opinion on something. I'm EXTREMELY interested in superheroes and Marvel in particular. Therefore, that might constitute a reason why I might actually chime in on the current content they are putting out as official material.

There are two reasons I don't care about this series: 1. "What If" makes it appear that the episodes of are no importance whatsoever. I prefer Marvel for its continuity and how it builds its universe. Having a show that's dedicated to stuff that doesn't happen seems a waste of time to me. 2. I hate cartoon content. I know a lot of people don't, but it's the reason I ignore tons of content that comes out from Star Wars. It's mostly for children and written that way which turns me off completely. It's why I have such a hard time taking cartoon content seriously. I think the only real cartoon content I've seen that engaged me was the old movie Wizards, and that's mainly because it took itself seriously. Again, I know a lot of people feel otherwise, and I'm fine with that. That just means such content is for you. Not for me.

Well, finished Mass Effect 2 today and then immediately started in on Mass Effect 3. Was a little thrown off by the inventory management for 3 as I couldn't understand what they were doing with it or how to make it work. Once I figured it out, I found myself on the fence as to whether or not it was a good design decision. I'm only a few missions into it, but still undecided on whether or not the story is working for me. The graphics are great, of course, but weapon management seems a bit of a step back from 2. I'm under the impression the developers really love Garrus because he almost always seems to show up at the beginning of the game and lodges himself into the adventure. The "AI becomes human" trope they went with felt very much like stolen right out of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda.

I love the writing of the trailer. Instead of just another Fallout rehash, it creates a sense of how this world would actually interpret it from the British perspective, so we're not just looking at a specific land mass, but a feeling of how that world actually is.

I'm about 2/3rds of the way through Mass Effect 2 on the legendary edition, maybe even 3/4ths. I can definitely feel the end game is coming around the corner as I finally recruited all of my side characters, and other than a few loyalty missions with a few of them left, I can see that Winter is definitely coming. Looking forward to 3 after this, but just playing through the first two has been kind of exhausting (but fun).

I've been following the discussion of such content creators (I used to develop web sites for that "industry" back in the day so the contacts are all still there), and what's interesting is that the direction seems to be heading towards queries of what future platform sex workers will gravitate towards once they lose their cash cow. Some are in complete panic mode, while others who have been established much longer seem to be taking a "keep your eyes open and don't blow a gasket yet" approach.

Just curious, and this is seriously a question, if your loans were forgiven, and they charged a forgiveness income tax you cannot afford to pay, are you allowed to declare bankruptcy as a response? I ask this because this is the one problem most people with astronomical student loans can't take because congress screwed over American students at the behest of banks, but I kind of wonder if this opens up a future loophole to be able to be used. I'm legitimately asking because I don't actually know the answer.

There are celebrities that post content on OnlyFans, and they do gain a lot of traction. The only problem with relying on them for site growth and sustainability is that they bring their own audience with them, and those audiences are really only interested in their specific content updates. And part of the reason why celebrities started using OnlyFans was because of the huge market drive that already occurs there because of the existence of adult entertainers who basically make their livings now on the platform. If OnlyFans chases those content creators away, it leaves ONLY the celebrities who will jump ship because the platform will continue to be weakened by its lack of usage. People use Tumblr as an example of the problem, but it's really the market collapse of Myspace they should be focused on because once another platform emerges (and it will), the whole kaboodle jumps ship with it.

I find the whole concept of this thread surreal as I stopped drinking nearly 20 years ago. I mean, I'll have a beer every month or so, but it just doesn't do anything for me any more. I think the Army really cured me of ever wanting to be shit-faced drunk ever again. I honestly don't remember the whole third year of service because I was drunk the entire time, but I did good things because they gave me medals and promotions. Maybe I just drank really well....

This is sort of who we are now. We're no longer satisfied disagreeing with each other. We now need to threaten to blow up everyone who disagrees with us. A few months from now, they won't even be threats any more. We'll just randomly blow up people we don't like and then watch the news about how no one saw it coming.

"We're all to blame" is the same stupid justification that assholes use when you go out to dinner with them, order a water because you're poor while they eat the most expensive thing on the menu, and then they say "we should probably split the check." The majority of the population had nothing to do with the war in Afghanistan, while "enlightened" elitists had everything to do with it, not to mention the war profiteers who practically raped that country in the last couple of decades because they could. And then they'll try to cast off any blame whatsoever by saying "well, we're all responsible so we all should be to blame". And they'll use weak arguments like "well, you continued to vote that guy in" as if a choice between two people who were going to end up doing the same thing is somehow our fault for not magically coming up with an alternative option. This is why I have spent my life time 100 percent against the concept of those who pursue power because almost always the echelons of power are consumed by the greediest, most self-centered individuals who have had a life of privilege which gives them the impression that they were somehow bred to be someone deserving of more and more power. It's partly why I'm still very much an advocate of leadership by lottery as was the Greek model before Adams reinterpreted it for democracy by turning lottery into a popularity contest.

I completely misread that headline by reading "couple" as two people, which strangely enough was not any stranger than the actual Onion headline.

I just read The Power Broker the other day. Excellent book, by the way.

War never changes.

Either KOTOR 1 or Mass Effect. I'm playing Mass Effect Legendary Edition right now (still on Mass Effect 2), and even though it has its annoying features (like the stupid Hammerhead vehicle missions), the entire franchise has been so enjoyable. But that first one was such an epic story, and it showed me that you can have great stories in a computer game environment, which very few games have ever successfully captured since.

A huge part of the problem is that military personnel on the ground are having to make on the spot decisions in a chaotic environment where it's practically impossible to get a view of the bigger picture. Their decisions impact real time outcomes, which can often be ridiculous to second guess, which is exactly what is happening with media pundits comfortable in studios that are safe and located on the other side of the planet. As a former officer who was required to make strategic decisions in a tactical environment, I completely understand how hard it is to ascertain exactly what is going on as events unfold all around you, and while I was lucky to make decisions that succeeded, I am completely aware of how easy it would have been for numbers of those decisions to have turned disastrous if the circumstances turned, as they tend to do in chaotic environments. I've been watching and listening to commentators on the news doing lots of Monday morning armchair quarterbacking as if they're convinced that if they were on the ground in Afghanistan, they would have done "the right thing". Having been on the ground in numerous situations, I can tell you without a doubt that way too many people make stupid, rash decisions because they're thinking in the now rather than taking in the much bigger picture (sometimes because it's not available to them, or the situations make it so that the bigger picture looks a lot different in person than it does on a white board. What's interesting is that almost all of the news commentary keeps making the argument of "no one saw this coming" or "this is something we've never experienced before", but in reality this is exactly the environment we faced when pulling out of Vietnam decades ago, which is why I predicted exactly this happening when we pulled out of Afghanistan. Soldiers still do what soldiers do, and civilians under imminent siege do what civilians under imminent siege do. So many dissertations were written that explored how we could have achieved better outcomes when leaving Vietnam, yet we're back to processes we used in the 1970s because we keep thinking our past has no bearing on the present. So, if we go to the old playbook of the 1970s, we're going to bolster our perimeter of the airport, sneak our way out of Afghanistan, probably carpet bomb a few locations when things turn even further south, and then we'll abandon our few surviving allies who worked with us in Afghanistan. And then we'll watch all sorts of news about how no one saw this coming on one side of the aisle and how it was inevitable on the other because of...reasons. In the end, we won't learn anything, and 40 years from now, we'll be doing the exact same thing in some other country like Sokovia or Wakanda.

I suspect that he's going to use the next 14 days to start a war with New Jersey so he can declare martial law and remain governor for life.

Companies have historically not supported their employees when their employees engage with shoplifters. My understanding is that they don't want to be liable for medical costs incurred by the employee, or for lawsuits filed by the alleged thief. In this day and age, an employee has no incentive to disrupt a thief at the store as the company will often not have his or her back.

Strangely enough, the only character I actually cared about during this film was King Shark, which is amazing because he's treated as somewhat of the throwaway character throughout this whole movie. One of the real problems with this movie was how dark it was filmed. Way too often, I couldn't tell what was going on because some scenes were just too dark for me to see what was actually going on. And the when we got to the end, because of the fact that there is an absurd number of characters we're following throughout this entire movie, there were fight scenes between main characters where I honestly couldn't figure out which character was which one. There was one critical death scene where I literally had no idea who the character was because the characters were so blended together that it was difficult to follow the continuity. Overall, the movie was generally enjoyable, but I'd hardly say it was the best DCEU movie made. Snyder's Justice League and then Man of Steel definitely come in much stronger, in my opinion.

Sounds great as long as the Democrats maintain the White House. I suspect the second they lose the presidency, which if things continue as they are, will be in 2024, the Republicans will make things as crappy for students as they always have.

Over the weekend, I finished Mass Effect 1 and on Sunday started up on Mass Effect 2 (part of the legendary edition). Strangely enough, I'm noticing that I liked the combat in 1 much more than I'm experiencing the combat in 2. I know that historically people have thought the opposite, but I'm suspecting it has a lot to do with the changes they made to combat in the re-release; I think they managed to make the combat better than 2 by focusing so well on it in 1.

I've been playing this every day for the last week or so, and I've re-fallen in love with this franchise. I'm still on the first game, but I've restarted it a bunch of times as I've learned more and more of the game play. First, I started off as a soldier, not even realizing I could start as anything else. Then I read something on vanguards and decided to play that until I got my advanced class. Found I didn't really like up close combat (which the shotgun seems to be the go to weapon for that) so I rerolled one more time as an Infiltrator, and I love that class. I love sniper rifles, although to be honest, I've been using the pistole almost all the way through. It's kind of nice that I have the throw ability (which I think was from reaching the advanced class of vanguard, although I don't know if the infiltrator gets it any way). I've been doing the UNC missions, which a lot of people didn't like, but I do, so there's that. I've only done the rescue Liara mission so far, but this weekend I'll probably blow through the rest of the game before moving onto 2.