HamsterHookah

This is embarrassing. I pay $21.31/month for Dropbox. I have up to 3 TB of which I am using 18.7 GB's. Further I have 100 GB of storage through Google One, of which I am using 16.82 GBs and pay $1.99/month. I splurged for the 256 GB iPhone 14 recently because the 128 GB wasn't enough. I used 103.3 GB on this new phone after deleting old messages and videos that I didn't need.

It's PwC. "Now get it right or pay the price, Budnik."

Bill Hader has just been a wonderfully pleasant surprise with his turn and dramatic chops. He was always likeable and hilarious, but his embodiment of Barry and the range of emotional and psychological trauma is so believably authentic and good. And I maintain that intermixing the dramatic and tense with the comedic and absurd is difficult and rewarding when pulled off, and it lands most often for me. I know that Barry is this weird animal and doesn't quite check a box, but it is right in HBO's pre-merger/max wheelhouse, and while it will probably never get the commercial eyeballs and success and critical acclaim that I think it deservers, I can't see how this doesn't springboard Bill Hader into being able to write his own ticket for whatever he wants to do moving forward. I wouldn't be surprised if we are talking about him being nominated for an Oscar one day.

Yep. But as he said, after 8 years his chaper has come to an end. lol

Shooting someone for using your driveway is insanity. Whatever happened to visibly scowling and letting the person who is using your driveway know you don't much appreciate it, but will allow it if they are quick and don't get on the grass and don't do it again? What's next, shooting the construction workers who park their truck outside my house for the guy building a pool two doors down?

Ehhhh. Not sure I agree with your police work Lou. But that’s a convo for another day.

We’ve lost the sense of community and a shared understanding that helped to heuristically give us a short hand of threats. With the rise of mental illness and mass shootings and the impersonal nature of most modern neighborhoods, you just don’t have the quick assurance of green and red flags when you hear gunshots and see bloody people. People defaulting to “my great grandpappy woulda kindly helped his Christian neighbor after being shot by those savage Comanches so what’s wrong with us today in society!!” are being unfair, IMO.

Geez, you people snapping on dahobbs’ honest introspection as he tries to empathetically game out what he would do and take a full inventory of the entire situation. It just reeks of the same emotional knee jerk response that happens when the insane “good guys with a gun” Monday-morning QB a violent situation halfway across the country from them with the vain certainty that they would have done the needful so easily. We all would want to be the Good Samaritan and it’s easy to say you will be. I think countless studies and research have shown it’s typically harder in practice. All I’m saying is give some grace and assume positive intent from strangers, until otherwise. I mean, following instruction from someone acting in an official police capacity isn’t the most morally reprehensible thing in the world, especially if you are scared and confused and naive to these situations. Especially if they don’t have the lived experience of growing up with homeless and shot gang bangers or drug addicts coming up to them needing help or whatever Zepol was reminiscing about.

I don’t necessarily agree with this, but I think you are ultimately right that it won’t make a bit of difference. I read somewhere and I’ll try and find and post it later, about how via advanced technology, we are in a post-truth society where “truth” and what is “true” is multifaceted. It’s post-modernism on crack.

The thread title sucks and isn’t informative of what you are trying to discuss, so if anyone else is like me, they haven’t clicked on it until today because it’s a slow news day this AM on the ole cloak.

https://www.vulture.com/article/succession-connor-marchia-logan-63-million-townhouse-991-fifth.html?campaign_id=4&emc=edit_dk_20230418&instance_id=90468&nl=dealbook&regi_id=165268850&segment_id=130720&te=1&user_id=f4ecd405aea12402a7903eeb4a4fd7fb

A strike could be coming!! Hollywood writers authorize a strike. Unions representing thousands of movie and television writers overwhelmingly supported a walkoutwhen their contract with major studios expires on May 1. If a strike happens, it would be the first in 15 years; the unions and studios are at an impasse on economic issues, including the use of so-called minirooms to produce shows.

Milquetoast*

I thought more prescient and pithy was Kendall's, "I like you Tom. Good luck."

We've had "greedflation" which was never fully accepted by economists and now "excuseflation": You recently identified a phenomenon that you call “excuseflation.” Tell me what it means. I think a lot of people at this point have heard about this idea that companies, you know, maybe they’re taking advantage of the current environment in order to raise prices and really gouging their customers. The thing about excuseflation is it’s sort of grounded in truth. It’s the idea that companies are using these once-in-a-lifetime disruptions. Think about the supply chain hiccups that we’ve had. Think about the Ukraine-Russia war. And they’re using those one-off disruptions as an excuse to raise prices. And that sounds fair enough. You know, companies, they have expenses. If their input costs go up, maybe it makes sense for them to pass some of those on to customers. But where it starts to become insidious is when they’re raising prices so much that they’re seeing their profits go up quite substantially as well. Can you give me an example of something that has been excuseflated? Sure. So one of my favorite examples, because, you know, I love these personally, but chicken wings. Let’s talk about chicken wings and Wingstop. Wingstop is a very large purveyor of very delicious chicken wings. And what they’ve been saying on their earnings calls is that they have been raising their prices for their delicious chicken wings. And the reason they’ve been doing that is because the wholesale cost of your basic chicken wing went up quite a lot during the pandemic. We had a lot of disruptions at various farms, chicken farms with labor shortages and things like that. So it made sense that chicken wing prices went up and the company started passing those on to consumers. The issue now, though, is that we have seen a substantial drop in chicken wing prices. And yet the company isn’t saying that it’s going to start dropping its prices. What it’s discovered, much like a lot of other businesses at the moment, is that actually this strategy of making up what you lose in sales volume with higher prices, so you’re selling fewer products, but you’re selling them at higher prices, [is] a viable strategy in the current environment, and it’s working for a lot of companies because profit margins are up. We spoke to the owner of a bakery over in Chicago. And, you know, I think there’s a tendency when you think about things like greedflation or excuseflation, you think about these big corporations, these really sophisticated corporations that are, you know, formulating their pricing strategies and how to get the most out of customers. But this is a phenomenon that also is endemic in smaller and midsize businesses. And this baker in Chicago kind of laid it out for us. He said: Whether it’s rye flour or bird flu, that impacts eggs when it makes national news just running a business, it’s an opportunity to increase the prices without getting a whole bunch of complaining from the customers. It’s not that we’re out there price gouging, but, you know, timing can be everything. —Ken Jarosch, owner of Jarosch bakery, as heard on Odd Lots Shouldn’t competition push prices down? If I’m a business owner, I’m going to let consumers know that I can get them stuff much cheaper than the other guys who have excuseflated everything. Shouldn’t that be happening? This is really the key thing about excuseflation and where it differs a little bit from greedflation. If a company starts raising its prices just because it can, then in theory, according to the basic rules of capitalism and economics, someone should come in and undercut them and steal all their business away. But the thing about excuseflation is it allows companies to raise prices all at the same time and all together. The article then goes on to logically follow the thread that this is causing a cartel-like economic situation: https://www.vox.com/podcasts/23682466/inflation-prices-us-economy

Good googly moogly. The demographics they are targeting in that ad are beyond me, I wonder if the data and analytics are saying that those demos (cholas and neck tattoos and urban/graffiti afficionados over a narration by a k104 DJ) are what will fuel the growth and revenue of the Rangers and baseball? That said, I agree that the Rangers uniforms have always sucked from a design perspective and I don't like the baby blue or throwback either. I guess give me the Red-and-White from the Kenny Rogers/Rusty Greer/Will Clark/Tom Heinke era.

TEXAS SPIRIT OUR ORIGIN STORY IS ONE OF OPTIMISM, RESILIENCE AND PASSION – THE SAME STEADFAST SPIRIT WE SEE IN OUR FANS AND ON THE FIELD. ONE DATE IN TEXAS HISTORY REFLECTS THIS SPIRIT: APRIL 21. APRIL 21, 1836 THE DAY TEXAS GAINED INDEPENDENCE AND IS COMMEMORATED EVERY YEAR AS SAN JACINTO DAY. APRIL 21, 1868 THE FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP BASEBALL GAME IN TEXAS. APRIL 21, 1972 THE FIRST HOME GAME OF THE TEXAS RANGERS. APRIL 21, 2023 THE ON-FIELD DEBUT OF OUR CITY CONNECT UNIFORMS.

Jokic has always abused Rudy. Look up "brother, i have 47".

Man, a friend was telling me that a 810+ credit score, with $200k down on an average home ($500k) on a 30 year was, at best, in the high 5's interest rate. Brutal out there for those of us wanting to get back in the low 2's. Are those days gone forever?

She seems crazy. And not in the Steve Jobs "Here is to the Crazy Ones..." kind of way.

That Lil Dickey clip is crazy! But like others have said, I can't be bothered to care or put in the time for 10k. The opportunity cost is massive. I won't get out of bed for less than a chance to win a $100k for a premise like this, and if I am risking $100k and not just have the upside of $100k, no way.

I had a Ukranian friend celebrate Easter yesterday. It was news to me.

To be fair; Being anti-junk fees and anti-Ticketmaster is actually one of the very few bipartisan political issues.

But it does. The anti-tech-bro and tech startup guys are incels/weirdos/creeps and now killers faction will love it.

Same. 1000% agree with you when you say “There's some interesting use cases around getting a step ahead of carbon reporting requirements and then surfacing that data back to your customers as a value-add”