JAH thinks that the % of people who don't trust the USG is because "The USG refused to take my theories seriously when I edged my way into the deep end of the pool". That says more than enough about how seriously anyone not wearing a tin foil hat should be taking anything he says. Note to JAH: It's not always about you.

YouTube certainly proves there is a market for content produced on a shoestring budget, but that's not going to work for every possible story someone could want to tell. For example, I couldn't get through Star Wreck because the whole thing was just so amateurish.

A quick Googling reveals that the closest thing they have to a public-facing web page is... an Instagram group. Seems a bit hypocritical unless the entire thing is just satire. It's hard to tell these days.

Also, you can probably take them into theme parks and film things that they don't want you filming. But since there's always at least a few people who already had the same idea and uploaded it to YouTube, there's no point unless recording it yourself is just something on your bucket list.

It's probably not your grandfather's acetate. Of course, the disingenuous thing about calling it acetate is that by the time they're done doing all of the modern chemistry on the cellulose base material, the end product essentially is plastic.

There's this NileRed video on YouTube where he makes "plastic glove soda". Same idea, basically.

This was also partially the plot of that Hoppers film, but with beavers instead of birds.

Mostly because people expect modern laptops to be these dainty little things with barely enough watt-hours in the battery to run a single strand of Christmas lights. If a bit of chonk was tolerated in the physical design, it'd be absolutely no problem to nail that "all day battery life" even with an x86 CPU.

Of course, I also kinda have to wonder where the hell are people working that they can't just plug in somewhere for a bit and top back up,

A loot box is the digital equivalent of buying a pack of Pokemon cards. You might get some truly shitty ones, or you might luck out and get some of the more desirable ones, but at the end of the day you know you're trading money for a pack of Pokemon cards. Since everything needs a car analogy, it's like buying a used vehicle without a mechanical inspection. Maybe you'll luck out and the car will be fine, or maybe it will be a lemon - either way, you're ending up with something that technically still is a car.

Gambling, on the other hand, involves wagering money, with the returns (assuming you win) also being in the form of money.

The world isn't such a black-and-white place. Some people live in towns where the job market absolutely sucks. If your choice was watching your own children starve or taking a job at ICE, what would you do?

Yes, there are some truly awful people who work for ICE, but there are also some people who took the job out of desperation and need the paycheck to put food on the table. Let's also not lose sight of the fact that the problem isn't ICE itself, but the administration that has ordered ICE to behave like a Gestapo.

If you can't follow the rules of a moderated forum you'll be shown the door. Ultimately, a ban from Reddit is meaningless. You can just ignore it and go on living the rest of your life like nothing happened. Try doing the same when you're being targeted by the government for potential legal prosecution.

Actually, the part that's kind of frightening is that chimps share about 98.8% of their DNA with humans and they didn't even need a 24/7 rage bait news cycle to be convinced that their neighbors are their enemies.

I think this comment would also apply in the previous story about the declining birthrates.

An economic system that can't function without continuous population growth was never sustainable in the first place.

If I was raising a kid, I'd be worried how they're going to earn a living that affords them the ability to do things like purchase a house, what with the advent of AI and how late-stagey capitalism has become, with private equity buying up everything that's not nailed down. But yeah, I'm sure if you manage to keep them away from everyone who is trying to confuse them about their gender, all of aspects of their lives that are actually critical to becoming a successful adult will just magically work themselves out.

Due in no small part to the fact that anytime someone proposes even the most milquetoast of gun control proposals, the right-wing shoots it down with screams of "But that'll infringe mah 2A rights!"

Thing is, if you're living like it's 1885, what else is there to do besides pop out kids? Heck, the rug rats will eventually be old enough to help with the farming and chores, so it's probably a net benefit to have 'em if you're living in poverty.

However, when you're in a modern first world country, the DINK lifestyle has its perks. There's a lot of cool toys you can buy and things you can go do when you're not spending most of your income on raising (a) kid(s). The people saying that child rearing is expensive are essentially saying that they don't want to make the sacrifice in their budget.