In order for Western Capitalism to remain competitive and relevant they need access to cheap Chinese labour, which increases overall profit, while simultaneously preventing that same cheap Chinese labour from selling directly to The West. Western governments are lobbied for favourable protectionist legislation by using the "they're spying on us" bogeyman, while simultaneously hand waving away any criticism of how The West is doing the same to China in return.

In the end it all boils down to money but, more importantly, who makes it.

If you think about it the "agreement" is basically a bribe from Google to keep Apple from competing with them and entering the search business: "You can spend billions trying to catch up to us or we can pay you billions to use our tech instead."

Not sure where you can request films to be screened at the local "art house" cinema (Apollo Cinema) and if enough people show interest, and the licensing costs aren't prohibitive ('cause they gotta make a profit too), they'll add it to the rotation. I've seen tonnes of old stuff I'd never seen on the big screen first run, and stuff that I'd only seen on the big screen as a kid and wanted to share with my nieces / nephew.

If you have a local art house cinema check in with them, there's a good chance they'll put some "old classics" on semi-regular rotation because it's usually a big draw and often makes enough bank to cover all the bougie artsy fartsy stuff they like to show the rest of the time.

True, refreshments are expensive and when you actually look into it you'll understand why.

The studios will take nearly all of the admission ticket prices for "first run" films, one guy I talked to at my local art house cinema was that it was north of 80% to 90% depending on the film and the amount of weeks they wanted you to run it for. So if the theatre charges $10, they'd have maybe $0.80 to $0.90 in "profit". It costs quite a lot to run a theatre, especially if you have a multiplex, which means they have to make up the difference in operating costs through concessions. I 100% agree it sucks to pay $25/$30 per person to get a popcorn / drink / candy combo when the combined value is under $5, but then I also like watching movies on a large screen with surround sound that beats anything I can get from the "home theatre" receiver from the local Best Buy.

Then there's the fact that a lot of those workers tend to be College / University students working part time, which I have no problem supporting because the more education a population is the more it tends to attract local investment and growth opportunities, contributing toward continued employment stability in the region.

So instead of chincing out on snacks, buy a ticket for the early show and get the mega bucket of popcorn then sneak into the late show - the theatre is gonna gonna lose less than a $1.00 but your mega bucket more than makes up for it.

Read the synopsis on Google, looks a bit like Minority Report - I'll have to check that out, thanks for the suggestion.

...because someone needs to mention it whenever AI is brought up, so might as well be me this time.

Go read Mana by Marshall Brain to give you an idea of the hellscape AI under the control of modern capitalism will bring us.

Considering how many congressmen appear to behave in a "do what I say, not what I do" fashion, it wouldn't surprise me in the least if they started getting advertisements to purchase only fans while simultaneously telling their constituents to diversify their local economies and just stop purchasing only fans.

True, but even a coal fired electricity plant will be far more efficient and, assuming adequate pollution controls are in place, produce far less pollutants per unit of electric travel than would otherwise be created when driving an conventional car or flying on an airplane.

The same people who always foot the bill, suckers the Venture Capital and Startups manage to con into buying in on the scheme. Pump up the price and then move the assets around to more "stable investments" so when the company eventually crashes the "investors" are left holding the bag while the VC firm and startup's CEO walk away with millions / billions in untouchable assets.

"Can you tell me why 'bombing the infidels' is important to you?"
"Why does 'the American capitalist nightmare' make you feel that way?"
"Care to elucidate your thoughts?"

Perhaps, but look at what they did to Diane Feinstein. They were so intent on holding on to that seat they basically pulled a "Weekend at Bernie's" with her for several years, deflecting the very valid concerns about her failing mental and physical health as "misogyny". I can imagine them doing much the same with Trump by deflecting any valid concerns about his failing mental and physical health as "Trump Derangement Syndrome".

The guy has been having troubles stringing coherent sentences together for years and his base eats it up, so adding dementia into the mix won't really change things that much as long as he can be adequately controlled by his handlers and somewhat stay on script.

"Free to play" is never really about better though, it's about hooking impatient people with addictive / hoarder personalities and an obsession with the IP into buying the endless amounts of in-game currency required to get all the game's exclusive items. For people like this the quality of the game isn't really important, once they've latched on to collecting the stuff for their specific IP obsession they'll spend whatever it takes to get it.

I got into that when I was young with the Star Trek collectors plates. I got the 25th Anniversary one because it was limited and a one time deal. Then I started getting offers for "limited runs" of other plates for the crew, then the ships, then different shows, then different movies, then ancillary but "well loved" characters. Teenage me tonne of paper route and early part time job money to collect a monster box of the things in my garage somewhere and, other than perhaps a small handful, the plates ain't worth what I paid for them.

It took me a while to realize that, to the plate company, I was what they call a "whale". Now WBD is going whale hunting with their IP hoping to snag a few suckers like I was in the past.

This one is important to me because I'm a diabetic. When I'm local I typically only carry my insulin pen in my pocket and a Freestyle Libre 2 sensor on my phone, but when I travel I wear a small fanny pack containing my diabetic supplies because I can't just rush home in an emergency to get what I need. I could put it into one of my two carry ons but airlines tend to get snarky when you start rifling through your carry on during the flight, so if they count it as a carry on I'm kinda screwed.

I can see the person with the monster fanny pack that might as well be a small backpack, but I'd be curious to know what their size limits are for things like this so I could better plan trips.

Knowing Apple they'll probably embed some specific piece of hardware that only goes in phones shipped to the EU and will use geolocation data, along with the presence of an EU SIM card, to validate whether or not the phone is being used within that region. If both conditions are true you get the third-party app stores, if only the EU SIM is true you'll still get it because travel but I'm betting after a while you'll start getting nagged to swap out to a non-EU SIM for "security" reasons after which they'll take away your access to third-party app stores.

Doing this would make it "easier" for them to differentiate the original sale location for the device, denying people in other regions who want access to the third party stores from buying their phones in the EU for use in their non-EU location.

You're absolutely 100% correct, life is a dirty messy affair - that's why you have a societal obligation to clean up after yourself.

Unfortunately some people just want to make a mess without cleaning it up later, so the rest of us throw tantrums and block streets in an effort to force them to. Just because life is a dirty messy affair, it doesn't absolve you of your responsibility to clean up after yourself.