But the fear isn’t so rational. It’s like a fear that the cocktail in your example will replace the original vodka whether they want the cocktail or not, or that the vodka will be so diluted by seltzer that it will functionally cease to exist.

It’s like a fear of gentrification of the country as a whole.

It’s also important to remember that the US is a huge exception in this regard as well. Most other countries are like 90%+ native population, and immigrant populations tend to be sort of isolated from the wider national culture due to things like language barriers, and they often set up little “bastions” of their native culture locally wherever they live. We even see plenty of that in the US as well. While there are many distinctly US cultures across the country that are derived from a variety of backgrounds, there are tons of “enclaves” of European culture that make it blatantly clear where immigrants from certain countries settled. In Boston, the culture of Chinatown is distinctly unique and separate from the wider culture of the city, which largely has ties back to Ireland (and is very proud of it). And both of those are distinctly different from where the Italian immigrants settled, who effectively have their own districts of cultures descended from Italy regardless of where they immigrated to.

Because of the American Puritannical values, which dictate what the credit companies and advertisers are willing to do business with and the cultural zeitgeist along with it.

The Puritans were some of the earliest British colonists in the US, and were either thrown out of England for attempting a coup to replace the king with a puppet to force their more extremist form of Christianity on the country, or left by their own choice because they felt that the Church of England was too liberal. They were basically a bunch of prudes who believed that the human body and sex were shameful and disgusting.

This has led to the dichotomy where advertisers want nothing to do with sex/nudity, except when it comes to implied sex in advertisements. Because sex is bad, but it also sells, which is good.

PG-13 and rated T for teen, respectively

Don’t forget that it’s also effectively a pay cut due to the added expenses and time lost in commuting. They should ask if the company is going to at least pay for the maintenance of the car if they aren’t going to pay for the time spent commuting.

Didn’t it also have something to do with a brand deal? Like the suit got extra funding for the movie by making a deal with Duracell to have their batteries in the movie or something.

Coal is often radioactive when it comes out of the ground, and thanks to poor regulations, is often radioactive when it goes into the powerplant, leading to radioactive particles coming out of the smokestacks and landing anywhere downwind of the plants.

More people have died from radiation poisoning from coal than from all of the nuclear accidents combined. But, as you said, 200 years vs. 70 years. But, also, nuclear is much more heavily regulated than coal in this regard due to the severity of those accidents. The risk of a dangerous nuclear power plant is nowhere near as large as commonly believed. It doesn’t take long to find longlasting environmental disasters due to fossil fuels, from oil spills to powerplant disasters. They’re used so heavily that it’s just so much more likely to occur and occur more often.

All this to say that fossil fuels suck all around and we should be looking at all forms of replacement for them, nuclear being just one option we should be pursuing alongside all the others.

One thing to remember about the mining issue is that coal mining is just as bad, and coal is often radioactive as well. More people have died from radiation poisoning due to coal power/mining than have died from radiation poisoning due to nuclear power, even when you include disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

Of course, we’ve also been mining and using coal a lot longer, but the radioactive coal dust and possibly radioactive particles in the smoke from coal plants is something that many people are unaware of.

But, like you said, the big thing is to move away from fossil fuels entirely, and nuclear power has its own issues. It doesn’t so much matter what we go with so long as we do actually go with something, and renewables are getting better and better all the time.

Just wait until you learn about Alan Turing, the guy who made the Turing Machine (considered the first computer).

He committed suicide by eating an apple laced with cyanide because the US government chemically castrated gay men like him - forced them to take drugs so that they couldn’t “get it up” to prevent them from committing “deviant behavior”.

And that wasn’t outside the norm 100 years ago for governments to do.

We don’t even need to build new cities. We just need to let our cities increase density like all cities did for hundreds of years before the 50s. More multifamily buildings, midrise apartments, and mixed use buildings would go a long way towards helping everybody.

Besides, much of that land is either already owned by somebody or empty for a reason. It would be a logistical nightmare for sure. You could send them to all the dying towns in the US, but I don’t think that would help either - apart from the locals being rightfully angry about large groups of new people coming in and eroding their local culture, those towns are dying for a reason that runs much deeper than just people moving away.

Considering that Nixon’s cabinet has openly talked about how they made it a federal offense so that they had justification to arrest the leaders of the war protesters (and the same thing with cocaine and the black community), I’d say it’s of a similar level but a different kind of evil.

I didn’t know they added swords to CS2

I bet the grind just never stops for you, huh?

No horse ahead

Welcome to the hypocritical world of Puritan culture.

Some of the earliest British settlers in the US were so extremist that the Church of England kicked them out after they tried to assassinate the king and replace him with a puppet of their own to force their beliefs on the rest of the country.

It was partly these crazies that started the whole sex and bodies=bad and shameful thing in the US that advertisers still believe in today. And swearing is yet another of those weird things. But sex sells, so it’s okay to imply it as long as it’s selling a product and no other time.

We call these people “snowbirds” where I’m from.

You also missed the part where they vote to prevent any additional funding for education and other services in the communities where their summer houses are because it would increase their taxes.

I don’t know about Wal-Mart, but every other site you listed is famous for being filled with Chinese companies that make cheap knockoff garbage. Yes, even Amazon. It’s like the perfect blend of enshitification and consumerism.

I don’t know about the tech companies, but with clothing companies you’ll see the exact same companies with names like asdfghjkl on both Amazon and Temu, selling the exact same product with the exact same pictures as 3 other similarly named companies. And what you buy will only last slightly longer than the 6 months the company is around for before it disappears and the owners open back up under a new name.

For tech, you gotta do research and see what the experts are saying and find out the reputation of the brands that you’re looking at. Unfortunately, it isn’t as easy as just going on the website and checking the reviews.

As for your original question, I think the answer will be FOSS projects. No company is going to willingly drop the potential ad revenue of AR ads. “This dream brought to you by Underwear brand briefs!”

From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the blessed Machine.

Your kind cling to your flesh, as if it will not decay and fail you. One day, the crude biomass that you call a temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you.

But I am already saved. For the Machine is immortal.

I think they should name an airline company after him instead. Or maybe a steak company.

Those definitely won’t go bankrupt, surely. No way a businessman of his caliber would let that happen.

Except it’s even worse than that. Because these companies hired psychologists to tell them exactly how to tweak the levers in people’s brains to get them to pay.

So you have the stupid people, but also the people whose brains are naturally wired to be played like a fiddle by these companies, and then on top of that, you have the new generation of gamers who have simply never known a world where you didn’t pay for skins.

But it’s okay, “because it’s just cosmetics.”

Probably exactly where they got the idea from.