Because the movies I remember watching were complete and utter departures from Tolkien's writing.
Everything is relative in this world.
They were terrible just as you say. But there were a couple of nuggets (e.g., a few seconds of Beorn showing up to the battle of 5 armies, riddles in the dark with Bilbo & Gollum). And perhaps GP just saw Rings of Power (I have not watched it, but I have seen reviews on YouTube).
He won because the Democrats care about whether their candidate stumbles across words and speaks incoherently, so Biden was pressured to step down
Have you time traveled from before the Biden vs Trump debate, good sir?
I do not wish to pick on one of your points because I am generally agreeing with you. But I must because you presumably neither seen nor heard about the Biden vs Trump debate that caused Biden to be forced out.
I am not even going to assess Biden's compos mentis. Maybe it was some medication or some benign reason, it doesn't matter. But what I can say is that his performance during the debate caused many of the die hard democrats to declare him incompetent and made it acceptable for media and pundits to turn on him (which they never did before).
To say that Biden was forced out because "he stumbled across words and spoke incoherently" is just blatantly false. Neither Democrats nor Republicans care if their candidate speaks coherently. Both Biden and Trump have spoken incoherently often enough and it has generally not affected their political career in any way.
He won because the Democrats weren't clueful enough to get Biden to fully step down and make Harris the next President immediately, which would have given the public months of seeing her actually lead the country.
100%. I want to reiterate that I agree with most of your points.
"If it doesn't affect me personally then I don't give a flying fuck."
I am really struggling to understand where this attitude is coming from (in anyone).
Politicians would not starve but it will absolutely affect everyone, including Trump supporters and Trump himself. If even a fraction of dire predictions comes to pass, there will be impeachment(s) galore.
if it meant the product was 5% less expensive
Well, good news!
Companies are not going to do that. The goal is to reduce costs (especially salary cost). It isn't to reduce prices.
My understanding is that video game industry is experiencing pushback from customers because AI is being shoved in without any impact on the prices (or microtransactions).
The problem with it, is that the goal isn't to "secure the vote". It's to disenfranchise people who have difficulty getting ID.
The problem is apparent on both sides. Yes, Republicans are doing that.
But then instead of coming up with a timeline on introducing IDs into the voting process (e.g., passing a legislation requiring offering a free-of-charge state ID to people below poverty line which I would happily support), the Democrat answer is "NO".
disenfranchising literal actual millions of Americans who have a right to vote
Really? I mean are there really millions of Americans who will be prevented from voting by requiring an ID?
Am I that disconnected from the people that a significant number of them do not have any ID? You need an ID for everything! They started hard-requiring an ID to buy a bus ticket (e.g., Concord Trailways) years ago, even if you come to the counter and pay cash.
...this kind of scheme would work
You think the goal of the scheme to keep kids safe? Ah, sweet summer child...
The goal is to 1) collect data and 2) generally de-anonymize people on the internet. This scheme will achieve both goals (with remaining Discord users, anyway).
There are so many workarounds for those who refuse to comply
Most people will not bother. Children will probably use their parent's info as bypass -- which will not prevent children from going on Discord, but it will de-anonymize these children.
There are so many potential bugs and failure modes for those who try to follow the procedure and get rejected
Right. So these people will also be de-anonymized because they tried following the procedure and provided their id.
They'll probably get access to Discord eventually through customer support, but that's secondary.
I work at a US research university, and I know that we have several units on campus providing this kind of support, encouraging best practices at data organization and preservation.
I work at a big US-based university (R2 but I am guessing that you may be at R1?).
I can confirm that there is absolutely no such thing in my university. IT is mostly concerned about blocking off external access (sans VPN) and adding 2FA to absolutely everything. I had to argue for them to allow port 80 on one of my NAS devices in a lab
If there is a single group or person who would help with data organization and preservation, I am yet to meet them (in my 14 years).
a global restructuring effort aimed at strengthening its sales and marketing operations.
How could a workforce cut ever result in strengthening sales or marketing operations?
Best case scenario -- it saves money and doesn't tank the remaining sales too badly.
Meanwhile, Biden, who had the same cancer, just got a cancer-free diagnosis because he trusted the doctors and medical science.
Wow.
Even if all of the things you assert are true... Are you really trying to imply that he and Biden had the same access to medical care? So the only thing that differentiated them was the choices on whether or not to trust medical science?
Indeed, I am sure every cartoonist has the same access to medical care & science as the President of the United States. Sure.
One of the problems with advertising is little to no feedback on bad ads.
Can you think of a good ad?
I certainly clicked on Google ads but I don't know that I have seen a tolerable video ad on the Internet. You'd think that statistically a few of them would be tolerable or amusing. But the only ads I remember is when I'd rather pay a little extra to a competitor than give money to a company whose obnoxious ad I saw.
Finally employers are looking at what students can do instead of looking at the silly paper that mom and dad bought for them.
If that were the case, the article title would be "Employers choose to hire community college graduates instead of Stanford"
You think they are hiring more non-Ivy-league students instead?
Even though early experiments often fail, it's good to see experiments
You know, when I want to do an anonymous (no names are preserved) survey of security professionals, I have to go through multi-week or even multi-month IRB (Institutional Review Board) approval, explaining how I protect the data I collected and the subjects, etc. IRB members often have opinions on my survey questions and also on whether I am sufficiently clear about how and where the data is stored in the survey header.
And that's when I don't keep the names of my subjects nor do I collect anything personal about them. Personally, I don't know about all the extra paperwork for the underage subjects because my research doesn't touch that. So... did they fill out a big IRB form and got releases from all parents to perform a giant experiment? Did they properly explain and disclose all of the risks to the students if the experiment fails?
legitimate asylum seekers coming to this vile racist country out of sheer desperation. I certainly wouldnt come here out of choice.
Maybe there is some pushback for people with such attitude?
I mean no offense -- shouldn't asylum seekers who feel this way go to another country which they don't consider vile and racist?
Was it the Chinese censors - panty-twisting apparatchiks
Yes, I believe this is where it's coming from, regardless of who actually did it.
My understanding is that this generally accounts for the diversity/representation gap between movies and TV shows. In movies, representation is either absent or very contained (like a throw away sentence that can be easily cut out in international release). Movies have to cater to many countries, including China. TV shows have nothing but representation because they are mostly targeting USA or maybe Europe and don't have to deal with all countries.
I've looked at the listing, and it's right! -- Joel Halpern
