"Recruit your friends, grab your 15 year old camcorder, edit in Sony/Magix Vegas, do the CGI stuff in whatever you can find"!

A home user these days has a LOT of resources/tools that will allow some great content to be made.

There are tools that only a few years ago were ONLY in the reaches of the $$$ corporations.

You can buy quality cameras for $2K or so range...you have tools like Davinci Resolve that actually has a FREE version that will do 99% of what a young filmmaker would need to do with reference to editing, VFX, Sound and color correction/grading.

RODE and DJI and others make perfectly usable mic systems the average user can use to capture good sound.

And with the AI tools coming on board....you can do some really special stuff, not full CGI, but I've seen transitions clips done with AI that had my jaw drop....

And no this will not put you in the poor house....yes you have to invest ''some" into equipment, but the main resource you need these days....is sweat equity, imagination and determination to learn how to use the tools at your disposal.

Nobody expects you to put out Raiders of the Lost Ark on your first attempt....but hey, good story writing and presentation go a LONG way, hell, just look back a couple decades ago and longer to see that that is actually what carried movies since the inception of the art form.

Yeah. Whose sense of morality or spirituality will the software be tuned to? Mine, or yours or those of the Roman church? There's millions of people who find it immoral to eat onions

Ok, any religion that says God says you cannot eat this or that food...is immediately disqualified....

I cannot believe God made pork....some of the world's BEST food (bacon, smoked BBQ, etc)...and then said "You can't eat this".

Sorry I don't buy it.

Onion? Seriously...?

Please, what religions says you can't eat onions? If they were right I'd be dead and in hell by end of breakfast most days.

Or am I seeing some danger in what the AI might learn from Christian history?

Still...better than the Islamic/Muslim religion's history....convert of die.

Thank goodness the Christians were here for the crusades or the Muslims would cover most of the world by now....

Hell, they're still trying, and somewhat succeeding in parts of Europe.

At least with Christianity the concepts of empathy and forgiveness came about..no such thing with the brutality of Islam....if you don't believe it, go live in some Muslim countries and see how long you last?

Tell me about it. I live in PA and the laws are ridiculous. The state finally relaxed the laws enough that convenience and grocery stores can sell beer and wine. In order for this to happen the store must also serve prepared food and having a seating area. So most places just add a few cheap cafe tables that nobody ever sits at. The stores are also restricted on times they can sell and quantity. In fact it wasn't until the early 2000s that PA allowed alcohol sales on Sunday. So you couldn't even get a bottle of wine for a cooking a Sunday roast

Ah...so glad I live in Louisiana .....home of the "to go" cup where you can take your drink out of the bar in a plastic cup.....drive thru daquiri stores...and alcohol sales 7 days a week.

A true "liquor store " is kinda rare here....as that in most places you just get your beer, wine and hard liquor from the grocery store...of the Quicke Mart....or the gas stations....just about anywhere really.

Be aware of unexpected correlations. Maybe DUI will go up because people now have to drive to another state to get their fix.

Yep...we have drive thru Daquiri shops here in Louisiana....and alcohol is sold just about everywhere....gas stations, 7-11 type stores...grocery stores sell beer, wine and hard liquor.....hell you rarely see a "liquor store" that is just dedicated to booze....

Hell, if you come into the NOLA area, not a lot of ID checks either....just have to know where to go.

While I can't drop $2K here and there throughout the year without thinking.....I don't consider $2K a bank breaker. I'm not rich, but I do like to save up and drop some coin 1-2 times a year on something nice.

Maybe cameras or new lenses (lenses can be $$)....or the odd cell from time to time.

I think last time I dropped about $1100 or so for my iPhone 12 Pro Max.....and I did pay it off 12 mos interest free with Apple Pay....

But that's just me using their money...in truth I almost NEVER buy anything I don't have cash in hand for.

But if they let me finance interest free I'll do that and keep the cash in an interest bearing account of some kind.

Again I'm far from wealthy, but I have no real debts.....but I know a lot of people and $2K is pocket change for them....and these aren't few and far between types of people, I see these types all the time all over the place.

It's not rare by any stretch of the imagination.

That's 10 times more than I'm willing to spend on a phone.

That's fair.

But do remember, there are a LOT of people out there with a LOT of disposable income.....

I don't trade phones often I currently have a 12 Max Pro....and it's looking a bit long in the tooth. Not holding a charge long enough, and the lightening connector isn't dependable for charging, so I've been using nothing but magnetic charging past year or so.

While I'm quite interested in hearing about and seeing the "fold" Apple phone.....from my early understanding, it will NOT have the camera specs they 18 Pro Max (or whatever they call it) phone will have.

I'm MUCH more interested in camera than folding...

At Walmart, extremely low quality everything is available year-round.

It's been ages since I was last in a Walmart.....when I looked at the extreme poor quality of meat and even most veggies/fruit I could not believe how bad it was, and not significantly cheaper than one of the "real" grocery stores around the area.

I just can't believe people regularly shop at Walmart....at least for food....???

Why do they disable the GPU core....?

Sure, maybe nice to live in... how about a job so you can afford to live there? Pretty sure Mayberry (that sort of town) doesn't have many $100k+ jobs around.

See that's your problem....there aren't 2 choices....NYC or Mayberry.

That's been dead for a 100 years.

I've never lived as an adult in a major metropolitan area, but in what I term "normal city"....mostly in the SE of the US.

I've worked in IT for most all of it...various things, lead DBA, some sys admin Linux....etc.

I've made well into the 6 figures area and lived in areas where there was plenty to do, cost of living was more than reasonable....and great folks to live with a next door to....

Nothing remotely resembling "Mayberry" nor anything remotely rural....but nothing urban either.

And around here, making $133K+ can buy you a nice house and a pretty sweet life.

End-stage capitalism is real, and we're in it. We will course correct, or we will collapse. Commentary like yours makes me think we're too stupid to course correct, and collapse is the only tool Darwin has to wash you out of the decision making process.

So, what does "course correction look like to you?

Socialism? Communism?

If not those....then what?

Clarence Thomas is another great example, George Bush was angry he was going to have to nominate a black man because he was as you might imagine kind of racist so he picked the most incompetent and corrupt black man he could find and rammed him through the Senate.

I think Judge C has had some of the most brilliant legal reasonings in the past century...thank God for him on the court.

I rate him second only to Scalia....

They do point out that it varies by location, but really their number range is terrible. "classified a family of three earning $133,000 to $400,000 in 2024 dollars as upper middle class." From the HUD Section 8 income limits [huduser.gov], expensive places the lower end of that is considered low income, like San Jose 143,600 qualifies for Section 8, versus cities like Akron where 72,250 is low enough to qualify. Location, location, location.

You know, there is a TON of land and cities between the coasts,,,,,with tech jobs and reasonable costs of living....

You do not need to live in NYC or Silicon Valley or anywhere in CA for that matter to earn 6 figures and have. A VERY comfortable life and work in pretty much any industry you can name.

Aside from a very few outliers, like NYC or the like with ridiculous costs of living...across the vast majority of the USA, $133K - $300K+. Annual income is VERY easy to live off of.....

There are plenty jobs of all types with good pay in areas with reasonable costs of living....

Remember the US is a very large country....there's opportunity everywhere...and living outside of NYC doesn't mean the alternate is rural and on a farm...lots of smaller cities out there that are much nicer to live in, not only fiscally, but healthier and calmer too.