No officer, this is not a pirated movie. It’s generated by an AI model I created and trained with data from the internet and the fact that it’s 99% identical to an existing movie is irrelevant.

Oh, it’s now tied into Xbox Live so you need an Xbox account, get achievements, collectibles, challenges and making it ad free requires a subscription of €1.99 per month. Not shitting you.

And unskippable ads in solitaire

It reminds me more of “The Road Not Taken”, by Harry Turtledove: https://youtu.be/aXhCX7lr2tM

repurposed for censorship of anything a totalitarian leaning government doesn’t like

It’s basically guaranteed they use it against critical journalists, political opponents and activists right out of the gate. It’s what always happens when they get the ability to spy on citizens. And the real criminals move to unofficial encrypted platforms mostly out of reach of law enforcement.

Oh yes they tried. The damn thing scared me when that ad started playing. I haven’t been back at that station again. Some other stations do have ads playing but those are silent, so I guess they do learn customers don’t like the loud ads.

The forces at play didn’t go away. There’ll still be the greed of the rich, the disconnect of a large part of the population and the tendency for a theocracy. They’ll indeed manifest themselves again.

King Donald I. They use first names for kings

There’s always more money but the more you make the less worth it becomes what gives other major issues. There are enough countries that tried this and failed.

But yeah, the defence industry is a self serving industry and slashing budget hurts hardware providers which are also wealthy campaign donation contributors so nothing happens.

The military is not for protecting themselves but for protecting trade and markets. That was also the deal with Europe: USA protect you and you buy our stuff with our currency. It’s what you see with the Houthis in Yemen. Nobody cares they kill some people, but they’re disturbing trade routes so action must be taken.

EU did that and saved on military spending. Now they have a Russia infestation. Just fully cutting the military budget is impossible.

Also the use of military force is tied to the economic system. You can’t change one without the other.

lower the cost to childcare. Help single mothers. Make real maternity and paternity leave a thing. Lower the cost of healthcare

After the tax cuts for the rich there’s no money left for this. And who did those cuts? The previous president.

Their original product was called SEQUEL. Structured English Query Language. They got sued by a company called sequel so changed it to SQL, but everybody still calls it sequel.

Sometimes, the store brand is exactly the same stuff from the same factory. They literally stop production from a famous brand, change packaging to a store brand and resume producing the same stuff in a different package. The price difference is mostly marketing and that can be a huge part of the budget.

For some other store brands, they do use cheaper ingredients. However, after the inflation we had, many fancy brands also started doing this to keep profits up so a famous brand is no guarantee for a great product.

And some brands just sell the same stuff but add some additional perfumes and whatnot to justify the cost. They give me a rash so I’d rather get the cheap ones.