Well I just learned from this article that the movie is a musical. And I love musicals, but that’s weird.

Bingo. They should invest in their own company, they have the money. There’s no reason for taxpayers to play any part in this.

As of October 2024 Microsoft has a market cap of $3.109 Trillion. (Source). So uh, fuck that.

As predicted: Biden’s student loan relief is back on hold after day of legal whiplash.

Kathryn Hahn is awesome, and so far the story is compelling. That’s why it has been successful. Marvel shouldn’t over-learn any lessons from Agatha other than to tell good stories with talented actors that people actually want to watch.

I appreciate the clarification on how these laws work. I think you’re right that their popularity doesn’t necessarily imply effectiveness, it probably has more to do with the impulse to join in the virtue-signaling. But their popularity does send a strong message that how people and companies spend their money is important, and I’d argue that means they must be at least a little bit effective.

And the laws are wildly unpopular with the American people, but were still passed in the majority of states, which also tells me they must be doing something:

a majority of Americans oppose anti-BDS laws; 72% opposed laws penalizing people who boycott Israel and 22% supported such laws. Source

To echo some other comments, it seems like this article proves that boycotting is in fact one of the only ways to hold companies accountable. That’s why so many states in the US have passed laws making BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) illegal when it comes to Israel.

Wanting something to be true doesn’t make it so. I played, and I even enjoyed big parts of it (after heavily modding, to be fair). I think it got more hate than it deserved, but in no reality can it be considered a really good game, let alone their best.

That’s awesome. I love Voyager’s bridge.

Excellent LCARS design on that site, too.

Thank you, a great explanation. The whole situation makes me feel like a rag doll being tossed around the courts. Do I start repaying now? No? Tell me when….Now? No? False alarm. Okay, how about now? I want the relief, but at this point I’d take any decision so I can just make a freaking budget that I can stick to.

What’s the process for if the new venue doesn’t issue a stay, but the final outcome is that they strike down the relief? (I’m really asking.) My payments start back up, and then a month later they double or triple based on the outcome of the case? I just assumed the new venue would stay the relief from going into effect before making a ruling, but you’ve made me nervous.

It’s completely misleading, to me. As someone with a laughably high student loan balance, my livelihood depends on the outcome of these disingenuous court cases. When I saw this headline, my heart skipped a beat with excitement. But nope, this will only be resolved when there is a final judicial ruling (probably from the Supreme Court, eventually), and this was not that.

Yeah, no. News organizations (the legitimate ones, at least) don’t pay guests to appear on air. Sure, they pay analysts, but analysts appear on air as representatives of the network, not guests.

I think the rare exception would be to cover long-distance travel if it’s necessary. But you don’t get a “speaker fee” or anything. Melania isn’t special, she gets nothing.

Yeah, I agree about the DLC. It was fun, but had a very different vibe from the main story, and yeah it all felt like overkill. As much as it added to the story, I didn’t need the horse armor backstory and the new horse skill-tree. The horse skills could have been useful in the main game, but it felt wasted in the DLC, I barely got to use them. Loved the new map though, it felt so different from the other regions.

I highly recommend Jon Stewart’s interview with Ta-Nehisi. They had a substantive in depth conversation that was so refreshing to watch. This is how you do an interview.

Link (I’m not sure if that’s the whole uncut interview; but it should be.)

Bret Stephens has been pissing me off since he started writing opinion pieces for the New York Times. He’s one of those conservatives who works incredibly hard to try to sound ‘reasonable,’ but if you pay attention to his language, he’s still just a warmongering piece of shit who pretends Israel can do no wrong. He has always believed that Israel is never the aggressor, despite the tens of thousands of innocent people they have indiscriminately murdered.

He has been on the wrong side of history for sooo many different conflicts and political issues, not just regarding Israel.

Yeah, he’s a never-Trumper, but that doesn’t make him a good person.

You can reliably find him justifying immoral and hateful uses of violence and destructive neoconservative policies. So I guess he fits right in at the New York Times.

I think that’s why the Tsushima map had such an impact on me. It’s one of those games where if you just look around for a few seconds you can quickly tell which part of the world you’re in. It’s all breathtakingly gorgeous, but the details in the vegetation, landscape, and atmosphere are aesthetically varied and blatantly unique. You’re right it’s not particularly realistic, but I think that’s how they managed to make it all feel so big and beautiful. Freaking love that game.

Wow, it’s hard to know just how impactful this will be, but it sounds like they’ve got something here.

its batteries which it said avoid using metals such as lithium, cobalt, graphite and copper, providing a cost reduction of up to 40% compared to lithium-ion batteries.

Altech said its batteries are completely fire and explosion proof, have a life span of more than 15 years and operate in all but the most extreme conditions.

That’s huge, especially the fire and explosion proof part.

I see where you’re coming from, because yeah he’s more of a human being than most politicians. But what makes him a politician is that he hasn’t corrected the record, and telling the story makes him look good, so he keeps telling the story.

But also, he is a politician. (A politician I will happily vote for.)

Oh yeah, it’s how you get entire families who went to Harvard, even the obviously unintelligent ones.

I have some friends who are professors at Ivy League universities, who also teach in American medium-security prisons on their own time, and they have repeatedly told me that the prisoners are better students.

I’m not saying that’s because of legacy admissions, but it’s also not not because of legacy admissions.