We live in Idiocracy.

I really like star trek as a whole (besides discovery and picard (mostly)). I think JJ Abrams Star Trek is absolutely great. It’s a cometely different take and it’ great entertainment around some great themes.

I mostly agree with you, but his Star Trek film from 2009 is absolutely great. I say that as a big trekkie who gets offended by a lot of these new shit, because of action-over-plot-or-consistency and bad writing and all. “Star Trek” additionally has all the stuff I normally hate with a passion - L E N S E F L A R E S, constant camera movement, a lot of quick cuts. But in this movie everything came together and made it absolutely great. It feels like if the original Star Trek series is an ancient tale od Kirk and his merry crew of brave scientists that boldly go… And so on. Just a new interpretation of it. The movie in spite of being just a cool scifi sction flick also gets me really hard emoionally. A lot of the scenes - the way they are edited and combined is really hitting hard. The scene when kirks mother is in labor whole his father is in the process of sacrificing his life - oh boy - I prefer watching that movie alone in order to not embarass myself 😅 Or captain pike’s speech to kirk after the bar fight. A lot of the themes are about virtues that are just so well done.

I guess it’s because of a well written script that abrams could work with. But his style just perfectly fits there. His other stuff is just forgettable. Maybe he’s just a bad writer? He wouldn’t be the only one.

I didn’t know it was part of a series. Now I’ll have to buy a few more books :-)

well Einstein was swiss. If it’s still a german invention then it depends how german the swiss are.

Fooobar2000

Still have so many flac files from that.

Thank you! Nicely put. The problem isn’t people like your aunt, its massive shareholder-controlled investemet machines that own thousands or even millions of homes. Your aunt probably knows eafh renter by name - there can exist a personal relationship. There’s two things limiting your aunt becoming a money-hungry antisocial ghoul:

1. raising the rent is a relatively large amount of work for relatively small of a reward. If she raises rent she has to write these 4-5 renters a letter explaining why she has to increase it. Those renters might disagree, have objections, ask for reasons and proofs (like the central heating bill or maintanance costs etc). If she raises the rent by lets say 2% it’s 2% of not that much money (with her single digit number if houses).
2. she is raising the rent on people she knows. She is taking money away from people she even may like - have a personal relationship with.

So increasing rent is a lot of hassle and her renters might like her less after that - which might be a factor.

Now lets think of the hugr real estate company. They have thousands of renters and maybe hundreds of employees. They have lawyers employed. If they raise rent by 2% they have to send thousands of letters. But these letters are sent by people whose job it is to do so. Tyey can calculate in advance that from their renters X% will just accept the nrew rent, Y% will require some manouvering, Z% might move out and so on. They can estimate the cost of raising rent pretty well based on experience and compare to the profits they make. And with thousands of apartmants 2% is a lot of profit. The employees have no relationship to the thousands of renters. Renters are just numbers anyway. Everything is much more efficient. Also: Shareholders. They demand profits and dont’t care how. They care even less aboht the renters. They demand more profit and will just say “make it happen”. If thr ceo doesn’t raise profits - with whatever means necessary - the shareholders will replace the ceo.

The soltion IMHO would be some progressive tax That makes it basically unprofitable to have more than 10 apartments. And to prevent legal entities owning other legal entities owning apartments in order to circumvent this. If there exists (and can reasonable exist) a personal relationship between landlord and renter everything is alright in my opinion. People usually are not animals to eaxh other if they know eaxh other personal.

They were designed to be repairable! The manuel shows you how to open everything up. I two very similar ones. (465 with a digital memory and a 475 and checked some manuals online. They’re pretty extensive.

The result of the “Golden Age of Television”

Seems like you clearly didn’t follow the instructions to turn off your brain.

I have an old iPod that I got from eBay. I’m running Rockbox on it which allows me to put music on it with almost any format. Ive used it for about 4 or more years now and it’s working fine.

I can connect it easily to other old “dumb” tech. It just works.

Edit: it’s an old iPod classic of the last generation. There’s a bunch of mods/upgrades you can get online like HDD replacements with microsd-cards. You can increase the capacity that way. The battery even lasts longer then. Or you can get a bigger battery with a bigger metal case to fit.

Nicely done!

I’m Markt scheitern, aber bei den Boni abräumen

Were these plastic cups already standard back then?

Same. But someone colorized it somehow. The colors look weird and I had it in black and white.

The Pianist

“Meteor” by Dan Brown (could be a different name in the original language). It was the first time I read something that was bad. Up until then book were cool and fun and interesting. It was a puzzling experience.

Edit: it’s called “Deception Point” in the original.

I really would like to see some studies on that topic “does cognitive decline skew your position to the right”. If it does it’s usually slowly over many years. But fetterman had a huge decline suddenly and basically in love with genocide now. (I still believe he didn’t think like that before).

Would make sense in a way - stripping away all nuance from the world by means of deteriorating perception makes people only see good and bad or my team / their team.

Moon !

There was a forgettable remake though.