“You are a man of culture”

I was on a discussion board for anime figurines and people started posting screenshots of their order checkouts showing tariffs nearly doubling the cost of their order. That caused a conundrum because people started talking politics and that’s not allowed according to the board rules. But what are people supposed to do? Can they talk about increased prices or is that political? Do they just have to pretend prices have skyrocketed for no reason at all? Can they even mention prices are higher than before?

If you don’t restrict things then you’re allowing discussion of politics. If you do restrict things then you’re preventing normal discussion because of politics. It’s unavoidable.

oh my God, Becky, look at her butt!

Half as Interesting has a video about low flow toilets. When the US passed the 1992 regulation limiting the amount of water a toilet could use, manufacturers rushed to meet the regulation and their designs were terrible. That’s mostly because the quality tests they had to pass were also out of date. Testing standards eventually updated and by 2003 low flow toilets were flushing better than old models with a fraction of the water. More recent models flush even better.

So OP’s complaint about low flow toilets hasn’t been true for 22 years.

You can’t just focus on number of workers. You need to take into account the productivity of the workers as well. A farm that’s entirely sown and reaped by hand could have 100 workers compared to another farm that has 5 workers with machinery, and yet the one with fewer workers could produce more food and value. It’d be wrong to say the farm with 5 workers is in a dire state just because of their low worker count.

Wikipedia has a list of countries by productivity of workers. While it’s not focused on manufacturing specifically, the US has some of the most productive workers in the world and is significantly ahead of Canada. We likely have more workers per capita because each worker is less productive.

Anecdotally, I work at a Canadian manufacturing plant that’s owned by an American company. The machines in our plant are from the early 2000s and there’s a lot of stuff still done by hand. I’ve heard the US plants have the most cutting edge machines and produce 2 to 3 times as much product that we do in a day. Apparently, the only reason why the company has not gotten rid of our machines and turned the plant into a warehouse is because they pay Canadian workers comparatively less than their US workers. While the Canadian factories aren’t producing nearly as much as their American ones, the cost per unit ends up being less due to lower worker wages.

A guy at my work got promoted to manager and celebrated by tattooing the company logo onto his chest. Pretty much everyone had to hold back laughing when he showed it off.

The industry is completely different now. The original was made in the 80s when programmers were hard to find and it took 10 of them 2 years and a million dollars to make. Then physical cartridges needed to be made and distributed that only ran on specialized hardware that also needed to be made and distributed. It selling for the equivalent of $180 could be justified since it was niche technology. There’s a reason Biggie Smalls brags about owning a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis in a rap song. That shit was expensive even in 1994.

Today, someone can make Super Mario Bros 3 in a month after watching some game dev tutorials on YouTube, upload the .exe to Steam, and sell limitless copies to anyone who owns a computer. Selling it for $180 would be ridiculous. There’s no reason tech today should cost the exact same as it did in the 80s.

Kojima putting a game about purgatory into purgatory. Bravo! He’s done it again!

Yup. Trump also removed the requirement limiting the amount of water a toilet can use to flush and no manufacturers cared. They already changed their designs and factories to produce efficient models. Why would they change it all just to make stuff that’s worse?

Honestly, I think they could run literally anybody and they’ll eventually win government. Canadians will only allow the Liberals to win so many times before deciding it’s someone else’s turn.

I don’t think much would change. Prosecutors already weed out sympathetic jurors during selection and a non-sympathetic jury wouldn’t nullify even if they knew they could.

Microsoft not being able to market a video calling app during global lockdowns should be a case study for business students.

and then I sign it “Movie Guy”

is Movie Guy your pseudonym?

no it’s just a name I use instead of my real name

I love Home Movies

Sorry, I should clarify I was making fun of them.

Longest recorded sniper kills

U.S. appears twice in the top 10 at #8 and #9.

tl;dw

The ethics violation is definitely bad, but their results are also concerning. They claim their AI accounts were 6 times more likely to persuade people into changing their minds compared to a real life person. AI has become an overpowered tool in the hands of propagandists.

Love how the youtube comments on the interview are a split between 1 year old comments saying he totally owned the journalist by being a big strongman and comments from a few days ago asking how that worked out for him.

I honestly want to know what the game plan is for the 100 men. Like do you plan on knocking out the 400 pound animal with a spin kick to the head or what?

Also, it’s only cheap because huge companies are losing billions subsidizing it. The reason factories aren’t entirely automated is because few companies can justify spending a billion dollars to fully automate their assembly line. I work at a factory where one machine outputs product single file and the next machine requires the product come in double file. The company pays a worker to stand on the line and split the output from the one machine into two lines.

I figured that would be super easy to automate but one of the engineers explained the company only gives money to do something if they can prove the money will generate a huge return, and automating that part simply doesn’t generate a big enough return to justify the cost. If a machine breaks down 1 hour a day they’ll fix that before replacing a worker. A machine can generate $100,000 an hour, so it being down an hour each day is a loss of $100,000 per day. Replacing a worker saves the company $250 a day. Replacing the worker that splits 1 line into 2 lines isnt a priority. Keeping machines at 100% uptime is what the focus is.