Old Man

Apple orders TV series based on Neuromancer by William Gibson

Meanwhile, people are finally starting to report on possible methods of overthrowing this fall's elections. One method goes like this: Speaker Johnson refuses to swear in some number of Democratic winners of House elections on 3 Jan 2025, citing 'election irregularities' Republicans therefore maintain control of the House On 6 Jan 2025, the skewed House refuses to certify some number of electoral votes, citing 'election irregularities' As a result neither candidate reaches 270 electoral votes and the Presidency defaults to a vote in... the House of Representatives Trump wins. Logically, therefore, we can expect some 'election irregularities' on Nov 6. This could be anything--complicit state SoSes making stuff up, Fox News making stuff up, actual attempts to sabotage or corrupt an election, or plain old terrorism with guns and bombs. Other coup methods are also outlined, such as the House Speaker taking over as "acting president" in the event of a contested election outcome, or any number of Constitutional legal challenges that would go straight to the SCOTUS. The article does mention a handful of potential solutions, but ultimately Americans are going to have to be ready. At minimum people need to get the word out so we all know what to watch for. Should the worst occur, it might take a general strike to get the usurpers to step down. Winning is the only way Trump stays out of jail. He will cheat. Again.

My favorite part of that entire s___show is that the original suit was brought by IVF customers whose embryos were destroyed by some trespasser. They wanted to throw the book at the parties responsible so they used all the personhood language to try and equate the crime to murder. Now they have effectively murdered IVF in the state of Alabama; people can't even get their embryos shipped to another state because no one will take the risk of transporting such a fragile "person".

It was inevitable that the executives would self-insert at some point.

Given his record we'd have been better off if he'd been vegetative for the duration of his administration.

That, I might watch. To be fair though, the current crews are such that if Romo or Olsen aren't calling the game, I'd rather watch it on Nickelodeon.

Belichick strikes me as the antithesis of what you would want in a commentator. Maybe if you dosed him with sodium pentothal before each game?

Indiana Jones John McClane John Rambo John Connor John Matrix John Wick John Constantine Jonathan Harker Johnny Utah Johnny Mnemonic Johnny Silverhand

LL doesn't drop much loot everyone, don't bother killing him.

I think there are estate-disposition services that can help with that. Bit of a glorified garage sale but often there is just too much stuff to expect a single person or family to be able to clean up, inventory, assess, and sell/trash.

Same. That's why I posted it.

"Excuse me, sir? You dropped this"

Xi Gua Lao (a kind of watermelon jello)

Upside down cake

Because labor is only a fraction of total costs. A pretty small fraction, I might add. It's not as though the 2-year employees got a pay cut. I personally don't resent my coworkers for getting raises, I'm not competing with them in a zero sum game.

This is just typical ensh*ttification, it has nothing to do with any minimum wage increases. I get that it seems like this all would happen, but in practice, it doesn't. Having paid taxes for decades I do understand progressive tax brackets, but I appreciate the refresher. So tripling my income increases my effective tax rate by 10%, and that's... bad? My take home pay only actually increases from $27K to $81.6K so I should... give it back, or something? Historically, minimum wage increases don't cause inflation. I get why people might think they do, but they just... don't. Almost tripling the minimum wage in one go might, I suppose, as I don't think anyone's ever tried it.

Interestingly, the Tom Holland Spider-Man movies and the Spider-Verse animated movies are also Sony movies, and are all pretty good--most of them are really good. That raises Sony's average quite a bit. Even the first Venom was okay. At this point it looks like the issue is the writers for Morbius and Mme. Web, not Sony's overall handling of the license.

No, I don't think there was any SA in TSWLM at all. I'll tell you what, though, the constant callbacks to prior Bond films make it really hard to keep them straight in your head. Seems like every single one of these films has a train, a boat, a tropical resort full of scantily clad women, an underwater sequence, a shark, and a helicopter chase.

I have no doubt that each McDonald's is micromanaged down to tracking individual burgers, but I also have no doubt that McDonald's is much more than a bunch of individual restaurants. How much of the price of a Big Mac is labor? How much of that is the guy who actually microwaves the Big Mac, and how much of the 'labor' is executives who eat at Whole Foods? How much of the price of a Big Mac is marketing? How much is rent? How much is the CEO's yacht? Even if the guy who actually makes the Big Mac is getting a 15% cut of the sale price, which is obviously wrong, then a theoretical $30/hour raise for him means a price increase of $4.50 spread out over every Big Mac and other item the guy produces in an hour. I understand that a McDonald's employee is expected to be able to make a burger every thirty seconds, but even if I lowball the hell out of the total and say the guy only produces 20 food items in an hour, that would result in a price increase of twenty two and a half cents per Big Mac. To triple that guy's pay. Honestly, just by having worked in one, you are in a much better position to know how fast food economics work than I do. But I've always been confused by this "self-evident" axiom that raising the minimum wage would increase prices, because to me it isn't self-evident at all. There are way more factors in play than just labor costs.

NPR: Why Sony Pictures is stuck rebooting Marvel's Spider-Man ... Read the whole transcript, there's even a kind of food fight.

Revenge.

What percentage of the price of the food is actually derived from labor costs? How many Big Macs does a given worker produce in a shift? This is just CEO-speak BS, honestly. After the pure profiteering of the last couple of years I simply don't put any stock in anything that comes out of an executive's mouth.

It absolutely needs a cite. Fast food is not significantly more expensive in places with high minimum wages.