FOMO and idiots overwhelm what I would say was a reasonable prediction of how informed consumers would behave. The error here was in assuming consumers were faintly aware of their own self-interest and still retained some ability to defer gratification.

The fact is, despite people bitching constantly about not having enough money, too high of rent, and having miserable lives never able to make ends meet, they still cheerfully drop $20/mo to six different subscription services to watch movies on their $1200 phone and buy a $8 latte every morning with a credit card that is nearly maxed out.

Don't blame /.'s "unrelenting upmoderrated pessimism" for getting it wrong; in fact, I'd argue that /. posters weren't cynical enough. /. to recognize that common sense is truly dead and that the sheeple who formerly skated for free on Netflix would cheerfully and instantly buy their own account, guaranteeing that every other service is now going to implement draconian sharing-policies because it's clearly the route to big profits.

Humanity created plenty of beautiful, wonderful things before governments got into the business of protecting the rights of authors and creators.

Creators will still create stuff, I have no doubt.

What I read (between the lines, since the actual lines don't fucking explain):

- they were getting divorced anyway (both the husband and wife have different teams of lawyers)
- someone at the wife's law firm clicked basically "ok let's call this marriage done" in some online portal
- the husbands lawyers didn't see anything wrong with that
- the judge said "okey dokey, you're divorced"
- the wife's lawyers said "wait! No! We want to undo that"
- the judge said basically that the court had followed the procedures it was supposed to, and if the wife was angry, she should file against her law firm

My inference is: very wealthy couple getting a divorce, arguing over how much she should get. Her law firm accidentally said "ok we're satisfied close this case" and his lawyers instantly agree.

So yeah, her law firm is upset because now not only are they not getting a fat % of the overly optimistic alimony they probably claimed they could get for her, they absolutely are legally exposed to get sued for that full amount themselves.

The hilarious result would be if his law firm helps her sue them. Even funnier if he pays for it.

Could we finally have stumbled on something that both political sides of this country can agree on?

Fair point on orders vs species, my sloppy use of language.

So yes, some coral species are going to fail; that's the nature of specialization.
As long as the ecosystem is stable, specialization is an evolutionary advantage meaning specialists can outcompete generalists. Once things get shaken up, specialists die off, generalists survive until the next stable span as specialists start to evolve into the new niches.

That's how it's worked for a *billion* years. Evolution requires death.

Assuming humans are somehow responsible to fix climate into the Holocene optimal forever with sea levels NEVER AGAIN CHANGING and ecosystems NEVER AGAIN CHANGING is absurdist fantasy.

Acidification: So you're saying that the Archaean ocean ph of 6.5-7.0 - you know, when life more or less evolved - is now awful?
https://www.science.org/doi/10...

Dead Zones: https://www.sciencealert.com/d...
"...In a new study, researchers discovered that dead zones have actually been a recurring feature of the Pacific Ocean for longer than anybody ever realized â" at least around 1.2 million years, in fact.

Analyzing a core of ancient sediment drilled from the Bering Sea seabed in the North Pacific, scientists identified 27 separate instances of dead zones â" officially termed oxygen minimum zones (OMZs) â" in the last 1.2 million years, suggesting repeat bouts of hypoxia were a relatively regular feature of the Pacific throughout the Pleistocene...."

Panic more, snowflake.

Ah, the expected cadre of ecomarxists downvoting to hell. Love open debate with you guys.

One of the oldest, most durable archaeolifeforms on this planet is threatened by it getting warmer by a couple of degrees?

More likely, some opportunist corals which had highly specialized over the last 20k years or so are unable to adapt to an ever changing climate and are struggling. That's how life works.
What will happen is they will be replaced by more heat tolerant variants while other stretches of ocean too chilly for corals generally will now become habitable.

Corals as a species have survived numerous extinction events. And it's not "speed of the change" as some events - like the Chicxulub impact - had a vastly larger effect than a few degrees and it happened in a geological instant, not centuries. And corals likely struggled but survived just fine.

...maybe we actually start treating China as an actual enemy?

I mean, HP's predatory ink bullshit is long since proved, nobody doing the faintest amount of research wouldn't find it.

This isn't exonerating HPs nonsense, I'd love to see them get their comeuppance.

But seriously: STOP BUYING HP SHIT. Not just printers, ALL OF IT.
Until *consumers* punish them for their choices, why should they change? Do you think a huge corporation feels guilt?

âoeAll Boys Arenâ(TM)t Blueâ is a young-adult nonfiction book that details the life of George Johnson growing up as a queer Black man. This is a book with explicit passages about fisting, butt plugs, anal, the spit-or-swallow decision and rape as well as 10yr olds performing sodomy, underage incest, strap-on dildo, and blow jobs.

"Gender Queer" has illustrations of fellating a dildo, as well as the MC getting aroused by illustrations of an adult man touching the penis of a young boy.

"Beyond Magenta" has reference to a six year old boy blowing older boys.

"Flamer" has a bunch of tweens talking about the last person to jizz in a bottle has to drink it all,

"This Book is Gay" gives step by step instructions on how to give a handjob.

Is this OK for kids? Those are graphic sex? This book is gay is, afaik LITERALLY MEANT AS A GRAPHIC GUIDE TO GAY SEX, no?

If parents are forcibly removed from School Board meetings on grounds of indecency, for reading text from books their kids brought home from the school library, that's pretty wrong.

If you say that's ok, you're a kook and/or a pedo.

Would I rather live in a regressive petro state with a medieval patriarchy enforced by law where women are little more than chattel slavery and legally regarded as less than a toddler boy? No. I like women as people equal to me in every respect, thanks. That said, I'm also not really fond of 'corrective' sexism where women are a 'favored victim class' long past the point of equality; it's been pretty solid for years that more girls go to college than boys - have the preferential admissions ceased? No? Why?

That said, I think it's delusional to not recognize that men and women approach things differently. Not better or worse, generally, just differently. In 2024, we've all been deeply programmed to never question some things, so it's anathemic if not outright heretical to point out that women:
- tend to care about the rights and feelings of others as well as their own
- tend to be accomodative
- tend to seek group consensus and approval
- tend to be risk avoiding and stability seeking, ....and the inculcation of these approaches as priorities are not necessarily completely positive for larger issues in our democracy nor (especially) in geopolitics.

It's 2024, I expect that if you've read this far (and depending on your age) you'll be reacting in shock and no small anger to these generalizations but they ARE largely proved.
https://www.andrews.edu/~tidwe...
As a VERY broad assertion, I'd state that those feminine qualities undercut democracy by trading things I value like liberty and choice, for things are are less important like comfort and stability.

Hell, I saw a recent study that testosterone actually leads to positive feelings when rejecting authority.

I think women are generally more easily emotionally manipulated. "Look at all the sad little families just trying to cross the border. Look at all the poor children in Gaza."
(Men were too, for sure, but the effeminization of the electorate has led to the deprecation of patriotism generally, so ironically this has left men LESS easily manipulated by that historically very-strong lever on them. Skinny-jeans wearing soyboys aren't going to take to the streets if someone waves a US flag. Well, maybe to protest against it, lol.)

In the same generalization, men can also be TOO uncaring, TOO disruptive, TOO independent of necessary consensus, of course. I just think we've swung way past any sort of rational center today.

Yes, stifling intellectual expression is in principle a bad thing.

Otoh, to suggest that all printed matter is sacrosanct is stupid.

What the screeching here fails to note is that a vast array of the books banned are things like graphic sex manuals being pushed into elementary school libraries for, let's be honest, political or sexual goals, neither of which are admirable.

  No reasonable person believes a kindergartener should learn to read by reading the captions to "a guide to Asian anal hardcore" or "how best to suck a co co".

To be clear, I do NOT believe such things should be banned. I personally think they're valueless, but that's irrelevant.

To suggest however that children should be provided unfettered access to them is ridiculous and if you believe that, you're a kook or a pedo.

That's worked out so well for the west.

Waves of people invade shops, take things freely, and if anyone interferes, THEY get arrested.
Otherwise, nobody gets arrested, and if they are, they're let go immediately without bail and if they fail to show up for their hearing, well, nobody cares.

Yes, of course, knowing their *faces* is the solution.

Anyway, we all know that this will be discontinued anyway when the pictures turn out to be disproportionally "racist".