My Uber reductionist explanation.

I get you scared. You vote for the cure to what I’m scaring you on.

Most people, except the very scared, don’t vote.

Republicans say “hell is coming unless you vote for me”, which gets people scared and thus voting

Democrats, “well try our hardest to build helpful systems that make the middle class grow again” … People stop listening and don’t vote…

That’s how

Fuck. 2020 got more people voting than any other presidential election in recent history and it STILL didn’t break 50% of legal voters.

Today, just completed a task that required coordinating with a few different teams and was a known blocker for a very big project coming up fast. Got it done ahead of time.

My boss positively called me out in front of their boss and other high ranking members of the org for it with a thank you.

I’ve been at this team for< 2 months. from a team where the boss would take credit for everything and then ask you to explain it to him several times so he could just parrot it back to his boss even after “leading” the team for over a year.

This felt like a joy.

This is one of the conspiracy theories I believe in.

Most tech workers buy lunch in their local area. If they wfh, they’ll make lunch and not spend money. Meaning less commerce in the city… Makes city look bad.

Also, if you’re coming to said city, if you can choose to live 2 hours north, suddenly that choice looks terrible from a quality of life pov. You’ll likely rent/buy a place in said city. Keeping real estate values higher. (This is another value that benefits both govt and company since they so big they own the majority of buildings they use)

Source: am tech worker at a big river company

Insurance companies can’t match real estate prices of the office buildings they own AND the tax incentives large cities are giving them to force their ppl back

The non musical family guy episodes.

It’s the only comedy show where there’s no laugh track, loud noises, and they explain every scene as it’s happening.

It’s the same as it’s always been. We gravitate towards what we feel.

The internet has just allowed certain groups who wmight be ashamed to announce their true feelings to say the quiet part out loud anonymously. This gets the next generation to not see a problem with it and go from there.

As an example. Take an impressionable young boy (14-18), he has trouble getting dates, doesn’t have a great home life. Little bit of a loner. Before the internet, hed have to figure out a purpose. Maybe he’d start going to a gym or hitting the books harder to be smarter or something… With the Internet he’s able to find “friends”, he finds a community, that community may lead him down dark paths… Where some in better living situations may say “this is too much” and walk away, he doesn’t have anything to walk to… So he gets more and more indoctrinated into the cause.

This has happened a lot to me. Or I just be a fan in silence.

There’s a great line from the band Sloan about this that comes up whenever I hear this.

“It’s not the band I hate, it’s their fans”

Ah, ok. The [Show](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(TV_series) does the first two books. Not the third.

Because I remember them going to the restaurant and then meeting the hairdressers and telephone sanitizers and the mess they get the main characters into, but forgot about the Krikket/wikket people.

The BBC series does up to them being on >!prehistoric hairdresser and middle management earth!< Iirc

Which I’m pretty sure is the third book. But I haven’t read it in a loooooong time.

I used to very frequently. (For about 3-4 months, 5-7x a week)

Don’t anymore. Wish I did

As others have pointed out, the rules of competition don’t apply since there’s exclusive content at play.

As a metaphor, It’s not like one restaurant serving a popular type of food vs multiple restaurants doing so. It’s having one Italian, one Thai, one Chinese and one American restaurant being the only ones in 100 miles. Look! There’s competition, 4 restaurants! Unless you only want some pad Thai.

So now instead of fixing cables issue of $60-100/month, they made it more complicated by paying $60-100/month to 3-5 different companies instead of one.

As a real life example. If you have kids, or are a big Star wars/marvel fan, 9/10 you need Disney+. It may as well be a Monopoly now so they can raise their prices as much as they want. Parents and nerds will pay through the nose for it.

Source: am a parent and a nerd (but I pirate all my stuff anyway)