The important thing is that all of the solar power remains in control of the same people who currently control our energy supply.

That's really what this is about. Power. Not electric power the power to tell you what to do by controlling whether you have electricity or not. Whether you can drive into work.

The cause is that we are in a deep deep recession that is being masked by ridiculous amounts of AI spending and a news media that is dedicated to propping up this administration at least through the midterms.

There isn't a single serious economist who will tell you that we aren't in a recession if you take out AI spending and AI spending doesn't create jobs. The work is almost entirely automated except for a handful of highly specialized construction jobs that don't last very long and the typically are done by people brought in from out of state because they require specific skills that your average electrician or Carpenter doesn't have. Companies could of course train but fuck that give me give me give me that cheap labor.

You have not been able to get ahead in a company by schmoozing in a very long time. The way you get ahead and the way you have gotten ahead for the last two decades is you go to another company that pays you more than you come back to your old company with a higher salary and you keep bouncing from company to company. That's because companies stopped promoting from within and stopped training ages ago. They will only train you and give you new skills for a brief period of time during your new hire period so to move up that's what you need to do. That's exactly what my kid had to do in order to move up and it's why their income kept going up.

Networking doesn't work when companies randomly bring the ax down or hell the motherfucking chainsaw every few years when there's a blip in the stock price. You don't know who did not work with because you never know who is going to survive the next round of layoffs.

A fresh graduate, no work history, and no experience is going to a an extremely risky hire.

I've been working around new hires for decades. Some hit the ground running, some fail miserably, abut almost all need a lot of peer group interaction before they become proficient employees.

I like the idea of supporting creators to whatever extent I can. As an anime nerd I know that Blu-ray sales are the main metric whether a show gets another season or not. That and merchandise sales but I don't really have space to set up merch and I don't like buying it just to put it in a corner of a closet. Plus buying blu-rays gets me high quality video on a pressed disc that will more than likely outlive me.

I have no illusions though about how the people who make anime get treated. I know only a tiny fraction of the money I spend ever makes it into their pockets and more often than not they are run out of business repeatedly by rapacious corporations. So at the same time I don't really begrudge anyone who doesn't want to buy into that literally.

I think the correct solution is to buy the official release to support the creators but also change how you vote so that workers stop getting exploited. Worker exploitation is a political problem after all not an economic one.

Of course I have to live in the world the way it is now not the way I wanted to be so again if you're not buying blu-rays I don't be grudge you in the slightest. Although it's an anime fan like I said without the blue ray sales and the merch sales you're not going to get more of that show you like... And it really is the Blu-ray sales the drive the next season even more so than the merch a lot of times.

All caps yelling and name calling tells me all I need to know about you.

Dell can't match Apple because Win 11 wants 16 GB RAM to boot to desktop and 32 to be useable.

MicroSlop designed the os before the AI boom. They can't fix that without giving up their spyware and they're not gonna do that.

Mind you Apple really need 16 GB but that's still half Windows

It might be a wonderful film. But relating to what I said, I'm not going to see it.

The critic/fans I follow. were liking Mandalorian 1 Didn't like the book of Boba Fett, and were mixed on Ahsoka, a number said it was walking, walking, walking, and thought Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka was okay except that the fight scenes seemed too choreographed and slow. I know a lot of Fans were looking forward to Ahsoka were looking forward to that adaptation, since there wouldn't be sex or race swapping, Which when a person knows the story, it would be admittedly annoying to have, say Stephen Colbert cast as Ahsoka.

If fans ruin any thing that is actually good, perhaps the SW and Trek universes should go away. And don't forget Tolkien's army of fans, some who have dedicated their academic lives to the study of his writings. Some people say the Tolkien scholar who quit on the Amazon LOTR prequel, saying that they were not respecting the material was toxic.

Andor seems to be an exception, but Acolyte was actually a decent idea, and Last Jedi was probably the only hope the franchise had of moving forward.

I've noted in here that I could have written a good SW version of "The Acolyte" using the premise of lesbian space witches. What was provided was pretty dull stuff.

I will note that you apparently believe that fans of SW and ST want to have something they loved torn down and destroyed. I think that is odd.

Wrath of Kahn has some things that a lot of modern movies don't have. A good story line, the main characters are aging, but that process is incorporated into the story line, not put there to "subvert expectations". By the time WoK came out, a lot of the 60's fans were going through a bit go aging on their own. It had a conflict, a historical one to boot, as the aging enemies fought one another, Kahn with his incredible intelligence, Kirk with his experience.

And here is something most people overlook. Lighting and sound. Even back in the original ST, they understood lighting. In some of the new stuff, they appear to be stuck in dramatic mode.

Audio - this is a problem with movies in general today. Sound effects way too intense. Foley artists appear to rule the studio. And the dynamic range thing, they are intent at having a conversation almost at the threshold of hearing, followed by an incredibly loud sound. I cannot watch movies with sound in the evening after my wife has gone to bed. I have to put on closed captioning.

I'm impressed that you figured out something is wrong but you don't know what to do about it do you?

Honestly I can practically smell the fear on you.

Anyway if you look at the elections and supposed red States there are still one by microscopic margins well within the margin of error. Meanwhile we all damn well know what voter suppression is because we all got taught about the civil Rights movement. Not so sure about kids these days but us old farts could not escape it and it's one of the reasons the racists are so upset. They know that at any moment the center and the left could just do something about voter suppression and they become irrelevant again.

And we're not talking about businesses owned by rich people we're talking about businesses owned by billionaires. I don't think you quite understand what it means to be a billionaire. They aren't Rich anymore they are powerful beyond belief. They are God Kings. That's what happens when you let people hoard that much wealth. It stops being wealth and becomes power. And if you were paying attention last election, and I can tell you right now that you weren't, you would have noticed that they fully exercise that power for the first time in a long time.

Remember it's a big club and you ain't in it.

Why exactly would someone "report" Drinkypoo?

He annoys some people. So do I. So does Armored Dragon, and ahem, you post ain't sunshine and puppy dogs. No one is doing anything that would get them kicked or even a stern talking to.

Relax a little, maybe enjoy an adult beverage or herb of your liking. Thoughts and prayers!

Sonavabeotch, you owe me a new keyboard, man! My soda went all over it when I read that.

+5 for making me snort! 8^)

I think that the core problem is that Disney is a terrible fit for Star Wars in any form.

Star Wars was Space Cowboy Epic,

Disney excels at making Disney Princesses.

Both are legitimate, but it is really difficult to make a space cowboy movie when your talent is princesses.

You are correct, Youtube doesn't have teh present day constraints Disney does.

As for allowing a Youtuber get involved, maybe. After all they put Harvey Weinstein's secretary with no experience direct "The Acolyte" flop, so if a Youtuber with the proper political beliefs who is willing to take on the fans surfaces, they might just hire them.

Yup, you summed up the problem. The movies Disney put out in recent years were not good movies, and the fan base became alienated. They wrote off the movies and didn't watch or pay attention

So Disney can put out a decent Star Wars movie or show, and many just won't watch it.

In this case, my analysis is that trying to have a mute puppet who seems to mostly reach for things carry the movie couldn't get enough traction. So people willing to take a look on the first weekend saw it, went "Okay", and that was it.

Once upon a time, the fans would go see individual movies many times, and purchase all the swag. One critic I don't watch often has his walls filled with earlier action figures, models and other paraphernalia. All of that added to the bottom line, and Disney intentionally threw it away with it's new arc.

Yeah, but there is good art and bad art. Unions - well, we must remember that once you have a union, you have two bosses, the Work boss and the union boss. So your concerns about the art of making games is well founded. And Unions are as much about lining their own pockets as enforcing fairness. That's the funny thing about those who claim that Unions are some sort of commie or socialist outfits - they are every bit as money hungry as the rest of us. They are not saviors of the downtrodden workers.

My point in all this is this is not a good time for programmers to organize. AI can and will take some jobs, even if the final sprucing up is handled by a few really good programmers. And if programmers refuse to return to the workplace, they better be the best in the world, people who hold the company by the short hairs, who can leave quickly and go to another place willing to pay money that is appropriate for their best in the world abilities.