My condolences.

People don’t normally purchase toilets to stay on top of technology.

The current state of the art for toilets are that they have a decent metric modeling shit and they have improved a lot in that metric. However, few people buy new toilets.

An Epstein guy.

Even by the 90’s, it was already accepted that being good with computers could be a great career path to make money. When I went to university in early 00’s, people who were on an engineering track commonly went into computers because the salaries were better than other engineering fields.

There were some people who loved the tech, but a lot of them made the choice due to financial reasons.

Compared to other public spaces, no.

Well, he’s elected by priests…

And if India officially changes its name to Bharat internationally, Pakistan will totally change its name to India.

Only because Lemmy is small enough to not need it.

A combination of two things. First, after losing a previous bid to Qatar, the USA started arresting FIFA members for corruption. Second, FIFA recently expanded the tournament to need more stadiums and the USA is one of few countries that can host at a low cost.

It isn’t the worst, but I would evaluate why you need to retake two classes and how it might your life going forward.

K

Not really. The creation of a lot of early monarchies were based on the military taking control of an area, then distributing portions of the area to key military members as a way to buy loyalty.

In contrast, fascism usually requires a corruption of a democracy and has different reasons for forming.

The “Big Mac” Index is only used for purchasing power parity.

It is a combination of that and the cost of maintaining the grid typically gets paid by power usage, which falls apart when people self produce most of their power.

What happens if the power goes out now? We’re already going to be in a very degraded living situation with battery backups providing a minimum amount of connectivity.

Meta is paying to make its bots, Reddit gets it for free!

The reason I’ve seen is that Lucas’s flaws were on display in the prequels since he had the kind of power to make decisions with little pushback, while production of the original trilogy shows that Lucas worked best with people around him to help refiine his vision.

Outside of Ian McDiarmid and Ewan McGregor, the acting is bland and sterile. Hayden Christensen had a far better idea that would lead to the fall of Skywalker without changing much of the films. Major sequences are far busier than anything which came before, making the sequences pretty but less resonant and hard to follow. The four separate storylines in the climax of I was too much, especially as most people were there for the best lightsaber duel ever. The camera work for talking scenes is shockingly basic for someone as talented as Lucas was with film.

I like the prequels well enough, but I can see why some don’t like them.

The prequels are bad because it highlights Lucas’s failures as a director and dialogue writer.

The prequels are memorable because they highlight Lucas’s talents as a producer and whatever equivalent to show runner that movie franchises have.

They would be if they were good.

Disney should have known to create an overall writer/producer for the sequels; they had done it Marvel and the thing that set Star Wars above other sci-fi was Lucas creating a deep universe for the stories to exist in.

Abrams was a shitty choice to control writing of VII; he basically made a Star Wars fan film and reset a lot of VI to keep the same kind of conflict as the original series. Johnson had some interesting ideas, but he broke a lot of previous world building for VIII, like the Resistance militia leaders keeping their plan a secret and the kamekaze ship. Then, somehow, Abrams returned.

It says something that, while the prequels aren’t seen as good as the original series, they still resonate in a way that the sequels haven’t. A lot of that can be attributed to why Lucas was a great producer.

The problem is that Rockstar is trying to make a new engine with modern graphics, when the industry has been moving away from the cutting edge because of costs.