wjrii
@wjrii@lemmy.world
- Comment on CBS Sets Record With 17th Straight Season Victory in Total Viewers 1 week ago:
Yeah, the dropoff in linear TV viewing is staggering. CBS does the best because their broadcast lineup skews old, not because it’s particularly good. It also makes you understand why the suits sell their souls for live sports (especially gridiron football).
It’s not a super new phenomenon either. The BBT was CBS’s huge comedy hit of the 2010s, but it never had raw numbers that matched “The Single Guy,” a two-season nothingburger that got canceled for not adequately holding onto its Friends lead-in audience.
- Comment on 'Andor' creator explains recasting major 'Star Wars' character with Benjamin Bratt 1 week ago:
I guess technically this is a spoiler, so…
spoiler
The article goes into it a little. It’s a cameo for now. His appearance in this arc is literally 20 seconds of small talk. Gilroy wanted to drop the casting bomb now so people would be over it by the time he has something important to do in the 7-8-9 arc.
- Comment on Please Let the Simpsons Die: An Open Letter to Matt Groening 1 week ago:
An Open Letter to Matt Groening
I may be misremembering, but I could have sworn Groening created the Simpsons for the Tracey Ullman Show specifically because he knew he wouldn’t own them and he didn’t want sign over his Life in Hell characters. They’re sort of just doing what they were created to do. I doubt he could stop the zombie husk of the show if he tried.
- Comment on The crossbow 😭 1 week ago:
Looks to be a late-15th century prayer book, likely illuminated by Robinet Testard and owned by the Count of Angoulême.
- Comment on You can only use one for the rest of your life, which you choosing? 1 week ago:
Everybody is on the right track that Torx or Robertson are by far the best driver heads, but y’all are not even looking at the threads and shanks. Lots to unpack here. If you are allowed an angle grinder or die grinder, then going longer might be better. Hardwoods don’t like fine-pitched threads at all, and while sheet metal screws can work in a lot of wood products it’s not ideal. Then, can you countersink, or are you going to be stuck the rest of your life with screw heads standing proud of the workpiece?
This is some serious shit, you guys, and should not be reduced “Robertson 4 LYF!” We need a couple of committees and some use-case analyses and some brainstorming on workarounds with our inevitable compromise pick. It’s gonna be exhausting!!!
- Comment on Why is the NFL draft day so "special"? 1 week ago:
There’s constant running commentary and speculation, and biographical segments, and sometimes a little drama when surprising things happen, or expected things don’t, and a large group of people simply care enough that they want to know as soon as a pick happens, though how organic that the growth of that group has been is certainly open for debate.
- Comment on Why is the NFL draft day so "special"? 1 week ago:
So it’s basically a combination of everything that everyone else has said.
- NFL is by far the most popular sport in the country, but it also only has 17 regular season games (versus 82ish for NHL and NBA, 40ish for MLS, and 162 for MLB), and the entire season is spread over only 6-7 months of the calendar year, versus 8-10 for the others. There is an appetite for any content at all that materially affects the most watched sport.
- College Football itself is probably the fourth most popular sports “league” in the country, though its organization and economics are WAY different (for now) than the normal pro leagues’. There’s huge overlap in general of course, but the Draft brings all of the fans together as CFB fans see where the top players will move.
- Going back to number 1, the NFL and media companies, being what they are, noticed the gap in the sporting calendar (after March Madness, before NBA and NHL playoffs, very early in the MLB season, MLS well… (LOL, I love MLS and it’s a miracle it’s stable but it’s still not an important “TV sport” in this country). They also noticed that a certain segment of die-hards have been watching the draft for 30 years, and they saw an opportunity to tap that dormant interest for months of “segments” and a big day of ratings and revenue, so of course they did.
- More recently, seeing that their hype efforts were working, they’ve moved it out of an auditorium near League HQ and made it a travelling road show, goosing local attention and furthering the image that it’s an event.
As to why all that worked, I like the posts that talk about the optimism and renewal that the draft represents. The NFL is unique in how it handles player development, in that it mostly doesn’t because it has an independently-popular lower league that will do it for free. Since that lower league is effectively the sole source of players, and since the NFL is an American-style sporting cartel, the Draft becomes the single biggest infusion of talent that a team will see in a given year, some of it ready to contribute on the field right away, and the teams that need the talent the most usually have the best picks and therefore a real chance to improve quickly, though the same bad management that gets teams in a bad place will often squander the hope of improvement.
For those follow European football (soccer, not the niche gridiron leagues over there), imagine a single day that combines the anxiety of a promotion playoff final (though with deferred results) with the excitement of the summer transfer window (let’s consider NFL free agency the equivalent of the winter window).
- Comment on EBay binding arbitration 2 weeks ago:
Oh, you can still be mad. It was clearly a tactical retreat so they could continue to fuck over anyone with a complaint event tangentially related to the media itself. They’re evil, but usually not stupid.
- Comment on EBay binding arbitration 2 weeks ago:
They gave that up within a week, mostly because pushing it that insanely hard would have ended up setting a precedent that would have been used against them in the thousands of closer cases they probably deal with every year.
- Comment on Weekly Episode Releases Are an Outdated, Frustrating Way to Watch TV 2 weeks ago:
while avoiding spoilers for the latter two.
This is much worse for weekly people trying to pace themselves on a binge-dumped show.
Personally, I think it absolutely depends on the show itself and how the creators want it viewed. Some do well with a week to ruminate and build excitement. Some do better as just this “thing” you need to see as quickly as possible. I think there’s room for both.
- Comment on 'Madame Web' Outstreamed 'Deadpool & Wolverine' in First Weeks (Despite Flopping in Theaters) 2 weeks ago:
This also likely explains the Kraven the Hunter thing happening on Netflix, with the added bonus that apparently KtH is merely underwhelming and not a literal shitshow. Can’t say personally, though , as I haven’t watched any of the Sonyverse Spiderman accessory movies.
- Comment on Call now, and we will give you a second can F R E E! 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on Hollywood Execs Fear Ryan Coogler’s Sinners Deal ‘Could End the Studio System’ 2 weeks ago:
Also, an auteur (or the estate of an auteur) that owns a bunch of their own IP is effectively just a small studio. they have leverage to raise money for new projects, revenue streams from licensing the old ones, and the potential to enter into contracts surrounding them in all kinds of ways. Shit, a Megalopolis or two, and the auteurs will be selling their rights back to the legacy studios anyway.
- Comment on What programs do you wish a good FOSS alternative existed, but doesn't or most of the FOSS alternatives simply aren't good? 2 weeks ago:
FreeCAD still crashes for me a lot, across versions and distros and different PCs. I just don’t know what the deal is; maybe bad luck.
Then, its kernel, being the only truly viable open source one, is understandable but also has some limitations commercial tools don’t, and I’m just talking about super basic stuff like giving up on a fillet or chamfer as soon as two vertices touch.
The workflow is much improved, but I still get frustrated trying to use it for my stupid keyboard and other 3D printing projects. I have Alibre Design on my Windows partition, and with the improvements in gaming (seriously OP, it’s WAY better), CAD is the main reason I even bothered to keep my old SSD on Win.
There are probably things I do at work in MS Office that Libre would have a hard time with, but frankly I just don’t care. :-)
- Comment on Apple TV+ Comedy 'Mythic Quest' Canceled 3 weeks ago:
This is where I landed on it. Better than Big Bang Theory, worse than Silicon Valley. I found it to be a pretty watchable workplace comedy, and if it didn’t capture game dev well, it did capture a certain funhouse reflection of what people think game dev might be, and that’s what it needed to set the characters into motion, letting the actors cook. I know people giving it shit for its two best episodes not starring anyone from the main cast, and while true, they were two really good episodes and the floor of the main show is adequately high.
Now, in fairness, I’m not in love with IASIP and sort of checked out a long time ago, after they “died” on the cruise ship, so Rob and David Hornsby acting “similar but different” was no problem for me. I do think we were just about at the point where ending MQ makes sense, though. The show didn’t really have the bones for the characters to withstand a lot of growth, and the comedic situations for them as-is had sort of played themselves out. Obviously, for a sitcom, that’s the time to bow out. Going forward, I would love to see Charlotte Nicdao in something produced by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock.
- Comment on Do you use your blinker in a car? 3 weeks ago:
I mean, we don’t really notice the BMW drivers who are acting sensibly, and it’s probably the vast majority. But that being said, outside Germany they attract a certain enthusiast demographic that will include a statistically relevant minority who think every trip outside the neighborhood is Gran Turismo.
- Comment on Do you use your blinker in a car? 3 weeks ago:
I don’t drive a BMW, so yes, I do use my blinker.
- Comment on It's about that time 4 weeks ago:
Ahh, the rare and prized Ancho Banana.
- Submitted 5 weeks ago to [deleted] | 4 comments
- Comment on What is a TV show that was one of your favourites, but just went on for far too long? 5 weeks ago:
Imagine if they’d let it end when Agrestic burned? It would be remembered as an unblemished gem.
- Comment on What is a TV show that was one of your favourites, but just went on for far too long? 5 weeks ago:
The Office (US) could have ended when Jim proposed in the rain. It maybe should have ended at the wedding in Niagara. Dear god it definitely should have ended when Michael left. The rest was just a shambling husk with nothing to say and tired gags.
Parks and Recreation also flanderized everybody (on a show that didn’t have much room to spare with how delightfully silly everyone already was as of season 3) and brought on new blood that didn’t work. I still haven’t seen most of the final season.
- Comment on Had enough of my boring job. Now free lancing doing sculptures 1 month ago:
From Springfield.
- Comment on I can't believe they did this 1 month ago:
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
Because I think it’s pretty much self-explanatory that separation on purely ethnicity/looks is not constructive where people are artificially treated as if they were different even though they’re not. I think the damage clearly outweighs here.
Justifying racism by saying ‘this is what we always did and it worked like that’ is not the right way forward imo as we can’t be stuck in the past and make the same mistakes that could be successfully improved.
What I’m trying to get at is that while appearance is not any kind of enlightened reason for distinct communities to have arisen, through accidents of history and genetics they did, and they are still relevant and appreciated by the people who are part of them. The color terminology is shorthand that acknowledges history. It’s not “justifying racism” to accept that in many places your ethnic background, especially if visible, means that certain experiences will have been more or less common for you. You can engage in this, even light heartedly, in good faith and as a way to understand your neighbors better, and indeed to think of them as your friends and neighbors instead of “Other.” People who are trying to do right by their fellow Americans are not using it to “separate,” but acknowledging that separation gave rise to proud, distinct communities and there’s no value in snuffing that out. The dialogue can be a way to unite us.
I believe we can agree that using visible “racial” markers to treat someone as less valuable than someone else is disturbing and evil, and still sadly common. I’m just saying that it’s not the mere use of the terms, or creating media that acknowledges them that results in the continuation of racism. Hell, in some ways, refusing to acknowledge differences gives a person with bad intent the license to settle on a single definition of what it means to be a “proper” American and to decide that anyone who doesn’t act the right way is less valuable: “I didn’t refuse to hire him because he’s black, but because he dresses and speaks differently. All he has to do is be exactly like me and I’d be more than happy to hire him!” (coughJDVancecoughcough)
- Comment on This garbage 1 month ago:
!fountainpens@lemmy.world
Pretty slow, but there are some of us here.
- Comment on [deleted] 1 month ago:
So, good for you, but the particular dynamics of being a colonial country that had a massive portion of its economy based on race-based slavery has resulted in an approach to diversity that has much deeper roots and has been wrestling with hard issues for much longer than Germany has, and Germany’s own record with dealing with identifiable minorities in the last hundred years has, shall we say, not always been great.
Many European countries are only now hitting levels of diversity America had fifty years ago, and America has been dealing with statistically significant communities with distinctive origins for hundreds of years, and this in a colonizing country where there is no historically continuous monoculture. Historically, people tend to become dicks to the “Other” among them when faced with hardship, and much of American history reflects that sort of thing, but also its aftermath and attempts to heal.
Diverse and defiantly distinctive communities formed and persisted because that was how people got by and found support and could make their way, admittedly often because opportunities to assimilate were intentionally blocked. Yet even if the reasons for them are shameful, they are real and important, and the American dialogue on race simply cannot be color-blind even when well-meaning. Instead, it has to be a dance, where people of goodwill celebrate both differences and similarities and do not set groups above one another but also do not pretend they don’t exist.
I wish more Americans would understand that our approach rarely translates well, and for fuck’s sake I wish we had fewer people who were stuck in the bad old days where reconciliation and healing were very much not priorities. That said, I also wish that people from countries with a very different cultural and historical experience would not assume that their countries have shit figured out, when a lot of it simply boils down to “we don’t have many people with darker skin shades here.”
- Comment on I'm looking to buy something like a reverse wheelbarrow, what do I call that? 1 month ago:
Aerocart from Worx looks a little gimmicky, but might be closer to your needs.
If budget is no object, then maybe a Polymule at USD1000+.
Inbetween, there’s something like a “Foldit Cart”.
Try searches for folding wheelbarrow, folding garden cart, or folding “vermont” cart.
- Comment on Does 'attempted murder' require a viable method? 2 months ago:
Everybody here is kinda right, but there are other factors to consider, and the net result is that it’s usually not a case worth bringing.
The “Impossibility” defense says that in most cases, the “factual” impossibility of committing the crime is not a defense, but taking an action that is not a crime is a defense, and if raised must be proved by the prosecution. Even with “Factual,” the line gets muddy (the article cites a person whose appeal won after they were convicted of poaching after shooting a stuffed deer." Many jurisdictions have a “reasonable person” standard for that as well, where if the act is the sort of thing that might normally be expected to result in a crime (the most infamous case is two US military personnel who thought they were raping a passed out woman, but really she had died from a heart attack) then you get no benefit, but if no reasonable person would believe that their action would do anything, then it’s more likely to succeed. To answer one of your questions, being told the button sets off a bomb would be more problematic for our hypothetical asshole than being told it “just kills” somebody that would be a bigger problem than a Death Note notebook, but it’s not a simple yes/no.
So anyway, this then raises some questions. Was this button setup convincing? Who did the convincing? Why did they do so? Other defenses might arise out of these conditions: e.g. they were told that pushing the button would save a bunch of other people, trolley-problem style, or it was the police egging them on and telling them they needed to for XYZ good reason, and many of them will turn on the defendant’s thoughts, so in any jurisdiction where they are not obligated to testify (e.g. the United States), our very interesting defendant simply doesn’t, and their attorney argues that there’s reasonable doubt they thought the button would actually do anything.
Add on top of this prosecutorial discretion. A prosecutor knows all of this, and knows this is a loser of a case, so apart from truly bonkers hypothetical, they will not bring it.
TL;DR: By the letter of the law, very probably yes, but no one will ever get convicted for it.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I’m a little confused about what states in US are. Are they more like their own countries united in alliance, or are they districts of one country?
They’re closer to districts, but with more constitutionally described rights. Definitely much more independent than French provinces, and even more than German states or UK constituent countries (devolution is at Parliament’s discretion, for instance), but much, much less than EU countries.
- Comment on Why do i see so many americans obsessed with the concept of "this is a thing that [Ethnicity] does" 2 months ago:
That tension continues in the USA between recognizing and celebrating cultural differences, and becoming a melting pot of many cultures becoming one.
This is the crux. It’s a uniquely American take on how you deal with a country that has seen dozens of waves of immigration (starting with the illegal immigration of colonization) from many different places over a fairly short timeframe. American culture is kind of like a fork, with a unified base that has integrated but very distinct tines (bear with me… combining the “melting pot” and “salad bowl” tropes is HARD!). At their best, memes and jokes like that can be an invitation to genuine dialogue. At their worst… well… not that. A lot depends on who is putting them out and with what agenda in mind.
Statistically, most European countries seem to be estimated at somewhere between 80%-90% “white,” likely to mean “of exclusively European extraction beyond any sort of family memory,” and I wager the vast majority of those people are from the core borders or frontiers that might well have shifted in the last few centuries. America hasn’t had that sort of percentage for over 40 years, and even then the white population was more “assorted crackers.” Even back into that era, most areas will have had at least two and likely three to five statistically significant populations that would have been visually and culturally distinct (not that this in ANY way implies that these groups were treated equally by the power structures… OMG far, far, FAR from it). These people don’t have to give up their distinctiveness to remain American, and when considered in good faith, particularly by those who mostly live in the base of the fork, the sorts of things you’re describing can be more celebratory than divisive.
I’m not going to suggest Americans are particularly good at multiculturalism (another understatement), but we’ve been at it a long time and specific practices and trends have grown up around it. The balancing act of racial and ethnic awareness without descending into judgment is probably one of the more complicated aspects of navigating American culture, regardless of whether you were born to it or looking on from the outside. So much so, in fact, that certain small-minded people think we should just snap the tines off the fork and pretend the nub was always a spoon.
