15 karma · joined March 1, 2023
1. People browsing their smartphones in the middle of the movie.
2. People talking loudly during the movie.
3. People kicking the back of the seat.
4. Sticky and dirty floors, seats, etc.
Never had issues with bad projection, but I haven't been to the theaters in a few years.
They lure you in with "25% off first 5 orders" or "March Madness special" but offset that with ridiculous service charges. Years ago when delivery services were in their infancy and trying to grow, their discounts were awesome. Now that they are established, most of their discounts aren't discounts at all. Pity.
Pranksters? No, the danger is the people with power meddling with information. They start wars, not pranksters. But there's nothing that can be done about that so it's pointless talking about it.
> The scientific-historical record of accumulating human knowledge has grown steadily for ten thousand years. Yes some information gets lost, some gets proven wrong, some is disputed, and some gets hidden when winners spin the facts to flatter themselves.
"Scientific-historical"? Almost all historical information ( written record ) is lost. Less than 1% of all written text from ancient greece and rome survived. Also it's not a matter of the winners hiding facts that's the issue, it's the winners pushing particular "facts". Take the civil war. It was a war where one side had slave states and the other side was the confederacy. Yet we are told that it was a war to end slavery. Have fun squaring that circle.
> But despite the system’s flaws, until now it’s worked fairly well to maintain our shared understanding about what’s real and what’s true.
Our understanding of what's real and true is solely a function of who is in power. Same as it always has been and always will be.
It doesn't matter whether the tool is spoken language, written language, printing press, radio, tv, social media or AI. Knowledge "pollution" is what societies and nations breath to survive. The only struggle is the fight over who gets to pollute.
When india banned tiktok, it was tiktok that actively enforced the ban. Tiktok bans all indian based IPs. I'm sure they'll do the same if the US bans tiktok.
As for censorship, we already have a censorship regime. It's as total, centralized and oppressive as anything we pretend exists in china.
> Unlike authoritarian states such as China, the US has a free, uncensored Internet.
That's because we invented the Internet and we controlled the commanding heights. We could use the internet and social media to brainwash, foster division and destabilize foreign nations. It's amazing how when another nation gets similar capabilities, we suddenly have a change of heart. Just like when we had a monopoly over nuclear weapons, we had no qualms about using it on innocent civilians. Only when someone else got them, we demanded treaties on nuclear technology, weapons, etc to limit the use of nukes.
> Or, at the least, authoritarian government powers like India’s, which could force Internet service providers to censor Internet traffic.
India is authoritarian for protecting its national interests? Is the EU authoritarian for completing banning russian news? Are we authoritarian for banning iranian social media accounts? The only thing suspect about india is why they haven't banned facebook, youtube, etc along with tiktok.
When india does our bidding, we praise them as the largest democracy in the world. When they don't, they are authoritarian. Hopefully, india gets more and more "authoritarian" and improves the lives of their people.
"Thus, the f4 statistics indicate a signal of gene flow from India to Australia and, furthermore, that the source population is more closely related to present-day Dravidian-speaking Indian groups than to Onge."
It's less about "getting back at intel" and more about having so much money that they need somewhere to invest it or increase the dividend and send that profit to the shareholders. The past decade, investors have constantly demanded Apple to turn over more/all of their cash to shareholders. A defense against activist investors is to show shareholders you are investing for the future. Bringing more production in-house is a great way to do it since it would eliminate future expenditures and increase profits in the future. Of course it all depends on execution. If Apple keeps minting money and their in-house hardware stack proves a success, I wouldn't be surprised if they start creating an in-house app stack.
Western economists have understood the concept of fiat currency for a very long time. The chinese have used fiat money since the 11th century - "Government-issued fiat money banknotes were used first during the 11th century in China".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_money
And fiat money has been the dominant form of currency since the 1970s. "Since President Richard Nixon's decision to suspend US dollar convertibility to gold in 1971, a system of national fiat currencies has been used globally."
Why you think western economists don't understand something so basic as fiat currency is beyond me. Especially since it was the western economists who created the modern global economic order.
> I suppose they can't come out and say it because it would lead to very uncomfortable questions about why China can simply print money, but we have to get it from the banking cartel.
What uncomfortable question? Everyone knows about fiat currency and we are taught why we have a "banking cartel" in every econ 101 class. Put "china" next to any mundane topic and people get unhinged. The modern chinese economy was created primarily with the help of western economists. Nothing about the chinese economy is a mystery. Especially to western economists.