elektronika

> alcohol hasn't just permeated the fabric of society, but is the fabric in many situations

First, congratulations on three years clean. I respect anyone who can cut things out that they find problematic for them. However, the framing of alcohol as a social necessity isn't really true anymore. Alcohol consumption is in a widely publicized decline and alcohol companies (similar to mobile games in this regard) are aware the majority of their revenue comes from anti-social heavy drinkers. Just about the only circles I'm aware of that still run on booze are college greek life.

> programmer with political views

It's dishonest to downplay what his "political views" entail. He compared the removal of minorities to pest extermination.

> When wolves get out of control, you shoot them. When gypsies take over public spaces, you deport them.

The USA has dozens of schools on military bases that house families of our soldiers. Is the intention that they be struck for propaganda? No. It's to educate their children just like in Iran.

This isn't going to stop until police officers who abuse their authority face real consequences. They won't because their victims are never anyone with real wealth and influence.Prosecutors aren't willing to touch this sort of case. There should be a national registry of officers fired for misconduct that makes them ineligible for rehire in all jurisdictions, but police unions and the politicians they back would never let it happen.

> Every game engine has a sort of "grain" to it where it tends to produce games with a certain look and feel

There's a degree of toupee fallacy to this. It's hard to tell what engine something is on just from gameplay if the team invested in custom rendering and gamefeel.

Do you really think we'll have optimization in an era of metrics encouraging developers to approach shipping a million lines of code a month?

Right, it's dystopian if they do it, but utopian if we do. If anything I'd trust Chinese surveillance more. It's accountable to the government not the whims of profit motive and private individuals.

We all know how much local PDs like collecting traffic fines, but I wish they would enforce the laws around yielding to pedestrians with the same enthusiasm as speed limits. I walk a lot and pretty much every day someone blows by in front of me while I'm in the crosswalk or takes a right on red into me because they're not looking. It'd be trivial to set up a sting for this sort of driving, just have one plain clothes officer cross back and forth with another cop parked on a side street ready to flash their lights.

CPI functions to obscure disproportionate price increases in essentials by lumping them in with cheapening commodities (e.g. electronics) that have a high demand elasticity. It's as much a choice to to use CPI to come to the conclusion things are fine, as it would be picking "arbitrary items" such as the essentials: food, shelter, medical care, and transportation that would paint a picture distinctly less fine.

I hear this all the time as a rationalization for why people don't go out anymore, but I don't buy it. You're afraid people on the internet might see you having fun? I've had people shove a phone in my face and take video while I was out dancing. It's rude, but it's not a big deal. The reason people don't go out is because Live Nation/Ticketmaster made live music outrageously expensive and strangled small venues.

It's very blatant and below that range. They got many orders for the exact same model that's around $50k.

Watches are the commodity of choice for corruption in some circles. I know people in jewelry and a significant portion of their transactions are watches to Chinese businessmen, formerly through Hong Kong, now through Singapore. They're high value items with razor thin margins.

Americans like to downplay the impact of the situation of their birth in their successes and others' failures.

> AI and automation makes things so cheap that today's underclass lives better than kings ever did

I suggest you go share this opinion with the people living on the street because they can't afford housing.