Actress Lauren Hutton had a one-on-one show in the mid-90's called "Lauren Hutton And...", and it was very good. It was more like a casual conversation without contrived softball questions, similar maybe to "Fresh Air" by Terry Gross. Unfortunately, I was one of only a few who liked it so it only lasted one season.
Agreed, but wow. As others have pointed out, Mr. Trump does not appear to be a good judge of character. Or perhaps his team of advisers are not. Either way, this administration seems unable to keep its (White) house in order. Is this how they conduct all of their affairs? This should be simple as this is a process where they control all/most of the factors. What happens when this administration is dealing with another country, or sensitive situation, where they do not control many/most of the factors?
At every turn, all I see is people looking to get their name tied to national politics, and a leader looking to hand out personal favors, seemingly without the understanding that real consequences and real harm can be done. And don't get me wrong, I think most people who go into politics on both sides of the aisle do it because they are power-hungry assholes. But most of them seem to realize what's at stake.
This lot seems to think of all of this as a popularity contest and resume-builder, like they've been elected to student council.
The point of my statements went over your head at an altitude of Neptune, and you attributed all kinds of intentions to my statements that could not be farther from the truth.
Let's start with my subject: Selection Bias. In this case it means the outcome of the study is not surprising given that the people in the study had already stopped smoking traditional cigarettes. It's like proclaiming that people who have already stopped smoking cigarettes are more likely to stop smoking cigarettes.
It's not cigarettes or vaping that I'm criticizing, it's the study in the article.
I would never shame someone who failed to quit smoking. Cigarettes are custom designed to make it nearly impossible. I would shame someone who just started smoking though, at least initially, in an effort to get them to stop. I would also never downplay the role of anything that could help someone stop smoking, be it cold-turkey, vaping, increased masturbation, whatever it takes to get people to quit, I'm all for it.
But I doubt big tobacco is running scared. True their profits have dropped precipitously, but they are poised to dominate the vaping market, particularly with the FDA Deeming regulations in place causing even popular manufacturers of vaping products to file for bankruptcy. But big tobacco has the money to weather it and pick up the pieces.
It's difficult to find numbers on what the large-scale manufacturing cost of vape juice is, but I'm going to guess it's either less than what the large-scale manufacturing cost for cigarettes is or it's getting close...if you can even compare the two. Without the need to worry about crop yields due to weather or insects, and increasingly hostile tobacco regulations, big tobacco is probably ready to go all in on vaping.
It's also difficult to get reliable numbers on retail costs per consumer for cigarettes vs. vaping. One study said vaping is 40% cheaper, another said 80%. I read a comment from a user that said when you factor in the cost of replacing the equipment, it's no cheaper.
But my gut-instinct, for whatever that's worth, is that cigarette sales will continue to decline, vaping sales will continue to rise, big tobacco will continue to slowly overtake vaping distribution because they have the money and muscle to do it, and their overall profits will continue to expand as they drive the manufacturing cost down to less than the $0.06/cigarette of tobacco for a comparable experience with vaping.
I can't help but wonder what it's like to have that kind of wealth. Money in general, and maybe the concept of value must nearly be meaningless for most expenditures, at least until the amounts reach some ridiculous level like 10's or 100's of millions. Maybe all that's left is not about how much you have as much as it is how much you kept from someone else getting...just for bragging rights.
$90+ Billion at only 53 is pretty astonishing. Then I thought, "Wait, what's Mark Zuckerberg's age and net worth?" Zuck is 33 and worth about $69 Billion. Then I wondered how today's billionaires compare to the dynastic US families of old.
John Rockefeller had an estimated net worth of $336 in 2010 dollars Andrew Carnegie - $310 Billion Henry Ford - $190 Billion
It seems to me that people who are using e-cigarettes are already unhappy with some aspect of smoking already. Be it cost, health, convenience, or something else, something drove them away from traditional cigarettes to e-cigs. If they were committed enough to make that change and stick with e-cigs, they may have been more likely to have had success quitting smoking in a world that e-cigs did not exist.
So instead of a headline like "E-Cigarettes Linked to Helping People Quit Smoking", perhaps a more accurate headline would be "Committed Cigarette Quitters More Likely to Try E-Cigarettes As a Stepping Stone"
I think the point of this exercise is to create a mode of travel for people that the saying "time is money" applies to the most, but have the average Joe pay for the R&D through taxes. That's how seems on the surface anyway.
"Your taxes paying for something you will not be able to afford to use! Aren't you glad you gave us the purse strings? Thanks!"
Only doing what's cheap and easy is for unethical lazy cowards.
The $1.5T is no small amount, but what do you compare it to? Depending on where Google takes you, the US spends between $300-600B on energy infrastructure. We also spend $100-150B on costs associated with air pollution. That's just two cost vectors accounting for nearly 1/3 to 1/2 of your guesstimate of Mr. Musk's plan, and that's almost certainly not all of the costs associated with our current infrastructure. And those are ANNUAL costs. I bet we get close to spending 50-75% of that $1.5T every. single year.
So $1.5T probably isn't so bad to get cleaner air.
As an interesting(?) comparison, if you were to build enough nuclear reactors to cover the needs of the US, it would cost between $2-4T, again depending on where Google takes you.
I still think MS probably should have purchased RIM and re-introduced the Blackberry and BES. Blackberry was the enterprise phone for a long time, and it seemed like a natural fit back when Microsoft was courting Nokia in 2013. BB was on life support back then, but still had its fans.
We're going to fight the terrorist agenda of disrupting our way of life in order to make their voices heard, by disrupting our way of life thus making their voices heard.
Can't imagine why people continue to use terrorist tactics./s
My guess is they left the phrase "net neutrality" off of the survey, and instead asked people if they were in favor or opposed to the various tenets of NN. Without the label that's painted with misinformation, of course everyone would be in favor of it.
If they sent out another survey that asked if people were in favor or opposed to net neutrality, I wouldn't be surprised to see the results would be different on the more right-leaning side of the political spectrum.
I'm curious to see if they use the Super Draco thrusters to land the Dragon capsule on land or one of the barges. That is, if this particular capsule is even outfitted with the thrusters.
Tickets: retail $40 - theater keeps about $9, the rest goes to the studio. Depending on the movie, this can be $0 for the first few weeks. Concessions: According to Business Insider, the average spending for AMC customers in 2014 was $4.46, putting the real amount spent around $20 today I'm guessing. The actual materials cost is small - maybe a couple of bucks mostly for the containers. But then there's the cost of the candy-monkey to serve it to you and operate the register, the equipment, the electricity, the building rent, all other costs associated. It effectively becomes a restaurant, which have notoriously thin margins. Even at the crazy prices and inexpensive foods like popcorn and soda, they are probably still only netting $1-3 per visitor on concession sales of $5. So let's say $3/person for a total of $12 net, plus the $9 from the ticket sales for a total of $21.
If it were only about the money and I could make $20 without lifting a finger vs. $21 earned through everything involved in running a theater? Yeah, I'd jump at the Screening Room offer.
I think it has more to do with control than anything.
I believe this service is aimed at people who have so much money, that it has little value to them below a certain amount. Not unlike how you and I might view a nickle. I can see a very select clientele for whom paying $50 for a movie is nothing, enjoy movies, and perhaps have some celebrity status thus making going to a public theater difficult.
Does LeBron James go to his local AMC to watch the latest Star Wars release? I doubt it. But he's probably willing to spend $50 to watch it in the comfort of his home with his family, so he can talk about it with his friends without fear of spoilers.
I noticed that the PDF did not list that travelling sucks as a reason. It could be that reason did not crack the top 5 or 10, but it's up there for me. The airlines and TSA have made travel an absolute nightmare. It used to be fun to hop on a plane. Now it's excruciating as I watch a TSA agent pat down my teenage daughter because she had a pudding cup in her backpack.
I actively avoid flying at all costs now. Screw that. Screw them. I haven't been on a cruise ship, but I hear mixed stories ranging from "amazing" to "nightmare". Like everything else in this world, if you want people to do something (like travel), then make it as easy as possible. Right now, the cost isn't worth the hassle.
I could see more of the world, meet great people, be forced to apologize to them for the shit-show we've become lately, and spend a hell of a lot of money to do that. Or, as a tabletop gamer, I could just drive to Origins, Gen Con, BGG, PAX, or similar convention and have a great time playing games at minimal cost and downtime at work.
there has never been a time in history when the CIA or FBI were particularly competent
Sure they're competent. They stop and catch terrorists from burning this country to the ground every single day! It's barbarians at the gates out there! They won't prove that to you and there's no evidence of it beyond the use of the phrase "credible threat", but as long as we keep shoveling tax dollars (and our rights and freedoms) in their direction, they'll stay vigilant keeping us safe. Why, this very post is being cataloged and assessed as you read it! And they would never, ever misuse the unbelievable power they have for personal gain. That whole, "absolute power corrupts..." thing? Doesn't apply to them.
I'm not aware of these surveys. Is this the only way Google has of tracking my offline purchases? My first thought was how Google would have access to that information? I just now read that credit card companies sell anonymised data to advertising companies. I'm going to bet that Google is able to attribute my data to me personally with a high degree of accuracy rendering the "anonymous" part useless.
I'm wondering if in the face of such algorithms, that perhaps it should no longer be legal to sell this data, anonymous or otherwise?
Collectively, ISPs already wield an alarming amount of power in DC. An individual ISP in a single state though probably has even more influence, given the number of local people they employ, the grip on infrastructure they hold, and how much easier it is to grease the palms of local politicians (though they don't seem to have a problem buying congress-critters). And precisely because I may live in one state that protects my privacy, but a company I'm doing business with is headquartered in a state that does not, this actually is an interstate commerce issue.
Unless you are proposing that state laws mandate a company that collects personal data must abide by the state privacy laws of all users' state of origin?
I've worked on personal projects on company time. There are times when it's feast or famine in the workplace. During down times (meaning any or most other busy work has been done), I have used some of that time to work on personal projects. As an example, one of those personal projects was to make a web app to create and hold my gaming group's D&D characters. During that time, I taught myself AngularJS, Firebase, Bootstrap, and jsPDF. Since that time, I've built 2-3 other web apps for my company using what I learned then, and was able to offer those solutions because of how I used that down time. I learn better by having a project than by reading a book.
Whether what I did was an appropriate use of my time or defensible, is probably separately debatable. But you never know what you are going to learn, or how it might apply to what you do for a living when working on little projects that you are passionate about. As long as you never, ever, let it get in the way of your work or output. The job always comes first.
That said, I've never worked on anything that I thought would make me a millionaire or give me reason to leave my job. I love what I do, who I work with, and who I work for. I'm very loyal. Part of that loyalty was earned by allowing me to pursue little things over the years that interested me. It could be argued that perhaps there was no concerted effort to afford me that freedom, but no one looks over my shoulder, runs through my browser logs, or demands an accounting of my time; because like I said, my work is always done.
Unfamiliar with "decentralized lateralism", I set off on Google to find out what this "ism" is all about but don't think I found information relevant to the phrase in this context. Got a link?
I'd like to suggest a different approach as to how you view your hard-earned wealth. View it not as a treasure trove to place behind you and defend with sword and shield against the hordes clashing at your gates. Instead, think of it as a wellspring that affords you the privilege of helping others in times of drought.
It's easy to stand where you stand and call people on welfare "lazy". But you couldn't be counted among the top 1% if there was no 99% below you. You are fortunate to live in a world where the education you gained, the knowledge and skills you acquired, and the choices you made, led to doing something that people were willing to pay enough for to put in you in that bracket. There are nearly as many reasons for a particular person to be impoverished as there are impoverished people. To label them all as lazy, is well...that's kind of lazy, and simplistic thinking.
You worked your ass off so you could live a life that wasn't focused on survival. The ability to help others not focus as much on survival is a gift. It's a gift of a society built upon, for good or ill, inequality; the same society that placed a high enough value on your chosen profession to remunerate you in the way it did.
But your money isn't the reward for your hard work. The reward is the ability to help others.
Slashdot Mirror
Letterman is not. A talk show on Netflix is.
Actress Lauren Hutton had a one-on-one show in the mid-90's called "Lauren Hutton And...", and it was very good. It was more like a casual conversation without contrived softball questions, similar maybe to "Fresh Air" by Terry Gross. Unfortunately, I was one of only a few who liked it so it only lasted one season.
It would be a bit of a pay cut, but he's got the resume. Oh, it's more about biological contamination? Then obviously Dustin Hoffman.
Agreed, but wow. As others have pointed out, Mr. Trump does not appear to be a good judge of character. Or perhaps his team of advisers are not. Either way, this administration seems unable to keep its (White) house in order. Is this how they conduct all of their affairs? This should be simple as this is a process where they control all/most of the factors. What happens when this administration is dealing with another country, or sensitive situation, where they do not control many/most of the factors?
At every turn, all I see is people looking to get their name tied to national politics, and a leader looking to hand out personal favors, seemingly without the understanding that real consequences and real harm can be done. And don't get me wrong, I think most people who go into politics on both sides of the aisle do it because they are power-hungry assholes. But most of them seem to realize what's at stake.
This lot seems to think of all of this as a popularity contest and resume-builder, like they've been elected to student council.
Just...wow. I mean, wow!
The point of my statements went over your head at an altitude of Neptune, and you attributed all kinds of intentions to my statements that could not be farther from the truth.
Let's start with my subject: Selection Bias. In this case it means the outcome of the study is not surprising given that the people in the study had already stopped smoking traditional cigarettes. It's like proclaiming that people who have already stopped smoking cigarettes are more likely to stop smoking cigarettes.
It's not cigarettes or vaping that I'm criticizing, it's the study in the article.
I would never shame someone who failed to quit smoking. Cigarettes are custom designed to make it nearly impossible. I would shame someone who just started smoking though, at least initially, in an effort to get them to stop. I would also never downplay the role of anything that could help someone stop smoking, be it cold-turkey, vaping, increased masturbation, whatever it takes to get people to quit, I'm all for it.
But I doubt big tobacco is running scared. True their profits have dropped precipitously, but they are poised to dominate the vaping market, particularly with the FDA Deeming regulations in place causing even popular manufacturers of vaping products to file for bankruptcy. But big tobacco has the money to weather it and pick up the pieces.
It's difficult to find numbers on what the large-scale manufacturing cost of vape juice is, but I'm going to guess it's either less than what the large-scale manufacturing cost for cigarettes is or it's getting close...if you can even compare the two. Without the need to worry about crop yields due to weather or insects, and increasingly hostile tobacco regulations, big tobacco is probably ready to go all in on vaping.
It's also difficult to get reliable numbers on retail costs per consumer for cigarettes vs. vaping. One study said vaping is 40% cheaper, another said 80%. I read a comment from a user that said when you factor in the cost of replacing the equipment, it's no cheaper.
But my gut-instinct, for whatever that's worth, is that cigarette sales will continue to decline, vaping sales will continue to rise, big tobacco will continue to slowly overtake vaping distribution because they have the money and muscle to do it, and their overall profits will continue to expand as they drive the manufacturing cost down to less than the $0.06/cigarette of tobacco for a comparable experience with vaping.
And big tobacco will be happier for it.
I can't help but wonder what it's like to have that kind of wealth. Money in general, and maybe the concept of value must nearly be meaningless for most expenditures, at least until the amounts reach some ridiculous level like 10's or 100's of millions. Maybe all that's left is not about how much you have as much as it is how much you kept from someone else getting...just for bragging rights.
$90+ Billion at only 53 is pretty astonishing. Then I thought, "Wait, what's Mark Zuckerberg's age and net worth?" Zuck is 33 and worth about $69 Billion. Then I wondered how today's billionaires compare to the dynastic US families of old.
John Rockefeller had an estimated net worth of $336 in 2010 dollars
Andrew Carnegie - $310 Billion
Henry Ford - $190 Billion
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
It seems to me that people who are using e-cigarettes are already unhappy with some aspect of smoking already. Be it cost, health, convenience, or something else, something drove them away from traditional cigarettes to e-cigs. If they were committed enough to make that change and stick with e-cigs, they may have been more likely to have had success quitting smoking in a world that e-cigs did not exist.
So instead of a headline like "E-Cigarettes Linked to Helping People Quit Smoking", perhaps a more accurate headline would be "Committed Cigarette Quitters More Likely to Try E-Cigarettes As a Stepping Stone"
I think the point of this exercise is to create a mode of travel for people that the saying "time is money" applies to the most, but have the average Joe pay for the R&D through taxes. That's how seems on the surface anyway.
"Your taxes paying for something you will not be able to afford to use! Aren't you glad you gave us the purse strings? Thanks!"
Only doing what's cheap and easy is for unethical lazy cowards.
The $1.5T is no small amount, but what do you compare it to? Depending on where Google takes you, the US spends between $300-600B on energy infrastructure. We also spend $100-150B on costs associated with air pollution. That's just two cost vectors accounting for nearly 1/3 to 1/2 of your guesstimate of Mr. Musk's plan, and that's almost certainly not all of the costs associated with our current infrastructure. And those are ANNUAL costs. I bet we get close to spending 50-75% of that $1.5T every. single year.
So $1.5T probably isn't so bad to get cleaner air.
As an interesting(?) comparison, if you were to build enough nuclear reactors to cover the needs of the US, it would cost between $2-4T, again depending on where Google takes you.
I still think MS probably should have purchased RIM and re-introduced the Blackberry and BES. Blackberry was the enterprise phone for a long time, and it seemed like a natural fit back when Microsoft was courting Nokia in 2013. BB was on life support back then, but still had its fans.
It might have worked.
Probably not.
The screen on my cell phone...at 06:00 am is easily the brightest object in the universe.
That is a seriously trippy video. What was in that doughnut I ate this morning?
We're going to fight the terrorist agenda of disrupting our way of life in order to make their voices heard, by disrupting our way of life thus making their voices heard.
Can't imagine why people continue to use terrorist tactics. /s
My guess is they left the phrase "net neutrality" off of the survey, and instead asked people if they were in favor or opposed to the various tenets of NN. Without the label that's painted with misinformation, of course everyone would be in favor of it.
If they sent out another survey that asked if people were in favor or opposed to net neutrality, I wouldn't be surprised to see the results would be different on the more right-leaning side of the political spectrum.
It looks like the NSA's fall-guy random name generator had a bit of a misfire.
I'm curious to see if they use the Super Draco thrusters to land the Dragon capsule on land or one of the barges. That is, if this particular capsule is even outfitted with the thrusters.
In your family of four scenario:
Tickets: retail $40 - theater keeps about $9, the rest goes to the studio. Depending on the movie, this can be $0 for the first few weeks.
Concessions: According to Business Insider, the average spending for AMC customers in 2014 was $4.46, putting the real amount spent around $20 today I'm guessing. The actual materials cost is small - maybe a couple of bucks mostly for the containers. But then there's the cost of the candy-monkey to serve it to you and operate the register, the equipment, the electricity, the building rent, all other costs associated. It effectively becomes a restaurant, which have notoriously thin margins. Even at the crazy prices and inexpensive foods like popcorn and soda, they are probably still only netting $1-3 per visitor on concession sales of $5. So let's say $3/person for a total of $12 net, plus the $9 from the ticket sales for a total of $21.
If it were only about the money and I could make $20 without lifting a finger vs. $21 earned through everything involved in running a theater? Yeah, I'd jump at the Screening Room offer.
I think it has more to do with control than anything.
I believe this service is aimed at people who have so much money, that it has little value to them below a certain amount. Not unlike how you and I might view a nickle. I can see a very select clientele for whom paying $50 for a movie is nothing, enjoy movies, and perhaps have some celebrity status thus making going to a public theater difficult.
Does LeBron James go to his local AMC to watch the latest Star Wars release? I doubt it. But he's probably willing to spend $50 to watch it in the comfort of his home with his family, so he can talk about it with his friends without fear of spoilers.
I noticed that the PDF did not list that travelling sucks as a reason. It could be that reason did not crack the top 5 or 10, but it's up there for me. The airlines and TSA have made travel an absolute nightmare. It used to be fun to hop on a plane. Now it's excruciating as I watch a TSA agent pat down my teenage daughter because she had a pudding cup in her backpack.
I actively avoid flying at all costs now. Screw that. Screw them. I haven't been on a cruise ship, but I hear mixed stories ranging from "amazing" to "nightmare". Like everything else in this world, if you want people to do something (like travel), then make it as easy as possible. Right now, the cost isn't worth the hassle.
I could see more of the world, meet great people, be forced to apologize to them for the shit-show we've become lately, and spend a hell of a lot of money to do that. Or, as a tabletop gamer, I could just drive to Origins, Gen Con, BGG, PAX, or similar convention and have a great time playing games at minimal cost and downtime at work.
there has never been a time in history when the CIA or FBI were particularly competent
Sure they're competent. They stop and catch terrorists from burning this country to the ground every single day! It's barbarians at the gates out there! They won't prove that to you and there's no evidence of it beyond the use of the phrase "credible threat", but as long as we keep shoveling tax dollars (and our rights and freedoms) in their direction, they'll stay vigilant keeping us safe. Why, this very post is being cataloged and assessed as you read it! And they would never, ever misuse the unbelievable power they have for personal gain. That whole, "absolute power corrupts..." thing? Doesn't apply to them.
Trust them.
I'm not aware of these surveys. Is this the only way Google has of tracking my offline purchases? My first thought was how Google would have access to that information? I just now read that credit card companies sell anonymised data to advertising companies. I'm going to bet that Google is able to attribute my data to me personally with a high degree of accuracy rendering the "anonymous" part useless.
I'm wondering if in the face of such algorithms, that perhaps it should no longer be legal to sell this data, anonymous or otherwise?
Collectively, ISPs already wield an alarming amount of power in DC. An individual ISP in a single state though probably has even more influence, given the number of local people they employ, the grip on infrastructure they hold, and how much easier it is to grease the palms of local politicians (though they don't seem to have a problem buying congress-critters). And precisely because I may live in one state that protects my privacy, but a company I'm doing business with is headquartered in a state that does not, this actually is an interstate commerce issue.
Unless you are proposing that state laws mandate a company that collects personal data must abide by the state privacy laws of all users' state of origin?
I've worked on personal projects on company time. There are times when it's feast or famine in the workplace. During down times (meaning any or most other busy work has been done), I have used some of that time to work on personal projects. As an example, one of those personal projects was to make a web app to create and hold my gaming group's D&D characters. During that time, I taught myself AngularJS, Firebase, Bootstrap, and jsPDF. Since that time, I've built 2-3 other web apps for my company using what I learned then, and was able to offer those solutions because of how I used that down time. I learn better by having a project than by reading a book.
Whether what I did was an appropriate use of my time or defensible, is probably separately debatable. But you never know what you are going to learn, or how it might apply to what you do for a living when working on little projects that you are passionate about. As long as you never, ever, let it get in the way of your work or output. The job always comes first.
That said, I've never worked on anything that I thought would make me a millionaire or give me reason to leave my job. I love what I do, who I work with, and who I work for. I'm very loyal. Part of that loyalty was earned by allowing me to pursue little things over the years that interested me. It could be argued that perhaps there was no concerted effort to afford me that freedom, but no one looks over my shoulder, runs through my browser logs, or demands an accounting of my time; because like I said, my work is always done.
Unfamiliar with "decentralized lateralism", I set off on Google to find out what this "ism" is all about but don't think I found information relevant to the phrase in this context. Got a link?
I'd like to suggest a different approach as to how you view your hard-earned wealth. View it not as a treasure trove to place behind you and defend with sword and shield against the hordes clashing at your gates. Instead, think of it as a wellspring that affords you the privilege of helping others in times of drought.
It's easy to stand where you stand and call people on welfare "lazy". But you couldn't be counted among the top 1% if there was no 99% below you. You are fortunate to live in a world where the education you gained, the knowledge and skills you acquired, and the choices you made, led to doing something that people were willing to pay enough for to put in you in that bracket. There are nearly as many reasons for a particular person to be impoverished as there are impoverished people. To label them all as lazy, is well...that's kind of lazy, and simplistic thinking.
You worked your ass off so you could live a life that wasn't focused on survival. The ability to help others not focus as much on survival is a gift. It's a gift of a society built upon, for good or ill, inequality; the same society that placed a high enough value on your chosen profession to remunerate you in the way it did.
But your money isn't the reward for your hard work. The reward is the ability to help others.