Hacker News Reader

seanicuson Internet outages in Cuba following widespread anti-government protests

Cuba has been in shambles since, at the very least, Batista came to power in a CIA-backed coup with monetary help from organized crime. After his government was overthrown all of that money dried up and the sanctions imposed (with no attempt at diplomacy) have choked the country out until this day. Yes, what little money comes in is siphoned off by the crooked Castro government, but there's a lot more to the history of Cuba and Latin America than "communism bad."

seanicuson Internet outages in Cuba following widespread anti-government protests

Yes, well known journalist Conan O'Brien is who I seek when I am forming my opinions on geopolitics

Also I'm guessing the purpose of the Conan piece was to 1) rebuke Trump for calling it a shithole - rude, unproductive, and should be below the station of the POTUS - and also help drive tourism, which I'm assuming is the nation's main source of income, by showing a fancy resort, as opposed to what's usually shown on news; a destitute country leveled by natural disasters seemingly yearly. Not on Conan to show the other side of the resort.

seanicuson Internet outages in Cuba following widespread anti-government protests

No sarcasm: can you point me to a mainstream news outlet referred to Cuba as prosperous? Both things can be true; Cuba successfully developed it's own vaccine, which is impressive for a country is said to be economically far worse off than most of the Caribbean. It's not on journalists to bring up the plight of Cubans in an article where the subject matter is totally unrelated to the issues of food shortages. You'll be hard pressed to find any mention of cutting of social welfare programs, food deserts, lack of jobs, or a failing school system in an article about weekend shooting numbers in Chicago's South Side because that's not germane to the stats.

Certainly things are and have been bad in Cuba for a very long time. Much of the country is destitute and it's notable that the people demonstrate against the gov't over (amongst other things) food shortages, which had been endemic to life in Cuba since Castro came into power. A well-known joke in Cuba goes like this: "What were the first 3 sacrifices to the revolution? Breakfast, lunch, & dinner."

seanicuson NYC Election Board re-counting votes after 130k are discovered from a test run

Is that like the Arizona audit which couldn't find any issues and has now been sent off for impartial review by a floridaman who's into conspiracies?

seanicuson Police Arrest Three for Posting 10 Minute Movie Summaries on YouTube

I do this but with scary movies

seanicuson Where Did the Coronavirus Come From? What We Already Know Is Troubling

A broken, racist, nationalist clock is right twice a day. And as for the "new info" that has come to light, I find it amazing that Americans will continue to believe every 'smoking gun' offered to them by their intelligence agencies, as long as it's laundered through the right news outlets.

seanicuson California will pay off all past due rent

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2008-jan-13-op-scher...

"people... would rather make twice as much as others even if that meant earning half as much as they could otherwise have. How irrational is that?"

Loss Aversion in action - people who were generally gainfully employed and able to make rent despise people who generally were not reliably employed and unable to make rent.

My last two industries (corporate events and travel respectively) got demolished by the pandemic. I'm much happier being consistently employed, staying off the dole, and being able to make rent but I should be thinking the poors can shove it, I guess.

seanicuson FaceTime is coming to Android and Windows via the web

It is immoral and illegal that McDonalds won't serve me a Chik-Fil-A sandwich.

This is such a great rubric!

seanicuson The end of the pandemic is near

One of the biggest upsides of self-driving car tech developing further is that it will make life safer for pedestrians and cyclists. (But it definitely isn't there yet).

seanicuson Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

They're not joking; this acquisition cost more than it cost Disney to buy Marvel and Lucasfilm COMBINED. They're definitely taking the entertainment end of their business very seriously.

seanicuson Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

Worth mentioning that the studios have been screwing theaters more an more for a long time. Theaters used to be run on ticket sales, now your popcorn costs $18 because Disney is taking 60% of all ticket sales. It really seems like at some point in the future the only way you're seeing a new Marvel movie is by going to a Disney theater.

seanicuson Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

Exactly. When the movie star system died, it took a lot of material made for adults with it. Even Robert Downey Jr. can't carry a movie that's not a popular IP. Now everything is a $200M sequel to something else or a $1M movie that's financed by 18 different companies. The TV golden age was serving adults for a while but seems to be dying off now.

seanicuson Amazon acquires MGM for $8.5B

Squeezing all the juice out of a genre or subgenre is what Hollywood is best at. If you didn't like cowboy movies you were avoiding like 60% of all movies and tv shows made from the birth of cinema until the 70's. I think we're seeing the same thing w comic book movies. In other words they'll peter out, but probably after all of us are dead.

seanicuson Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

The Thing is probably my favorite movie and the practical creature effects are still largely considered the gold standard of the craft. But in 2K the artificiality is getting a lot more noticeable and while I will certainly be getting it in 4K I'm starting to realize that maybe 720p is the best way to view it for the sake of full immersion. YMMV.

seanicuson John le Carré's crucial, covert collaborator

These accounts about Marcia are deserved but downplay the contributions of Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew. The three of them absolutely saved Star Wars in the editing room.

The lack of Lawrence Kasdan is the reason that every piece of dialogue in the prequels is incredibly awkward (but apparently extremely meme-able).

An accounting of changes made in the edit of Star Wars: https://youtu.be/GFMyMxMYDNk

seanicuson GameStop Short-Sellers Reload Bets After $6B Loss

Lol. I always assumed it was Hold On for Dear Life.

seanicuson Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

Pretty sure the economic impact of doubling the workforce as well as decades of frozen wages has had a significant effect on social acceptance of 2-worker households, but blame whatever boogeyman/woman you'd like to.

seanicuson Child-safety laws may reduce the birth rate

Hard to get velocity behind improving something half the voting population would rather be rid of, even if it's against the very same voting population's best interest. So it goes in the US.

seanicuson To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

I'm right there with ya. Kiddo is very young and I can't justify shelling out even 3 extra nanny hours per week for fitness. I try to incorporate/papoose him for as much as I can but there's a lot of stuff I can't do with him attached. Couple that with winters increasing level of difficulty in getting walks in (still trying to figure out how long he can be exposed to the elements before it qualifies as child abuse).

I don't have any advice here; just commiserating. Keep on trucking.

seanicuson To Lose Weight with Exercise, Aim for 300 Minutes a Week

Reminds me of the proverb "build muscles in the gym but reveal abs in the kitchen."