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Cake day: June 10th, 2025

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  • https://archive.ph/LHtUQ

    According to Datos Insights, in 1992 there were 88,000 households worth $20 million or more in 2022 dollars; by 2022, there were 644,000. Those who could pay almost anything for a vacation were becoming their own mass market.

    Paired with:

    In 2012 the My Disney Experience app gave guests an easy way to check wait times, show times, restaurant bookings and more. In return, Disney gained a trove of information on exactly where guests went, what they purchased and how much they spent in its complex.

    So now that we’ve got a system where you get perks for spending cash.

    Fourteen hours later, Ms. Cressel has experienced nine of the park’s attractions, three in the Tier 1 category, plus a parade and the fireworks show. She and her companions leave, exhausted, at 11 p.m., when the park closes.

    Note that part of that time was messing with a mobility scooter, but regardless it was less than 1 attraction per hour.

    In all, Mr. Conahan and his daughter are able to visit 16 attractions, including all five of the park’s Tier 1 rides plus its two most coveted attractions — Seven Dwarfs and Tron — that charge separately for passes. They do all that, plus the lunch stop and a Dole Whip snack break, in just seven hours.

    More than 2 attractions per hour at more than twice the price to get that access. The article implies that big spenders get other rewards, but it doesn’t specify any except mentioning an invite-only club – but we don’t know if that invite is solely monetary or if it has frequent visits from, say, make-a-wish kids and other celebrities.







  • Per that definition:

    Vacuum tubes (thermionic valves) were the first active electronic components… and by the 1920s, commercial radio broadcasting and telecommunications were becoming widespread and electronic amplifiers were being used in such diverse applications as long-distance telephony and the music recording industry.

    So tubes are in! Old lamps are OUT!





  • I am not confident I or most other Americans can always tell what is misinformation. A recent bout of AI generated ‘Am I the A-hole?’ post on reddit recently got a bunch of people angry (Meta would say, ‘highly engaged’) because enough of them though the stories might be true.

    When the Fukishima power plant got hit by a tidal wave, I foolishly believed an ‘expert’ on TV that day who said the plant was designed so that lead shielding hoods would automatically cover the rods in the event of power loss. Well THAT didn’t happen. I no longer remember who the ‘expert’ was, so he could fool me again. Maybe he has.


  • I, too, know the trend of criminal U.S. administrations to tell the other side to tone it down and just go with the President. The current administration makes me more outraged than post-9/11 when we knew the hijackers were Saudis, we knew bin Laden was around Afghanistan/Pakistan, and we had a team of Nuclear inspectors WITHIN Iraq saying they’d found no evidence of such weapons, yet a few days before their official report was finished, Bush declares war on Iraq? With no exit strategy? When Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11?

    Rather than suggesting we all calm down, or that true patriots back the President, I’m simply seeing the article’s point in asking people to stop following the top, say, 2% most divisive voices. It is a sad truth that the worst liars will get their followers to disbelieve Dr. Fauci such that he becomes divisive through no fault of his own, but he won’t hit the critical ‘worst’ list because he’s not spouting vitriol of his own.

    As far as Bernie goes, there were a good number of Bernie backers at Trump rallies, so I honestly doubt that anyone but moneyed think tanks have much bad to say about him.


  • I agree that as categories, the are different things, just as ‘tools’ are not the same as ‘weapons’, but ignoring the perncious overlap borders on criminal. If you follow actual news sites and reporters but omit the likes of Musk, you will still see Musk quoted, but it is more likely to be properly discredited where needed. At no point does the article suggest you avoid all partisan content, it simply says the most divisive is likely to hurt us all. You know the platforms profit from engagement, so they’ll promote the worst offenders’ content upward, but we don’t have to take that bait.

    The accounts with the MOST divisive political content are unlikely to be your best source of information. You might hate Rachel Maddow or Charlie Kirk, but you’'ll be better off getting news from a generic MSNBC or FOX feed than either personality. Better still, pick BBC, Reuters, and AlJazeera to see a variety of views.

    A reverse example of context: Project 2025 never explicitly says anything about IVF, but it repeatedly talks about human life “from conception to natural death”, which would mean IVF would be problematic. If you try quoting just the last sentence in this chunk, ‘day one’ might be interpreted as birth, but in context, ‘day one’ is obviously conception:

    From the moment of conception, every human being possesses inherent dignity and worth, and our humanity does not depend on our age, stage of development, race, or abilities. The Secretary must ensure that all HHS programs and activities are rooted in a deep respect for innocent human life from day one until natural death: Abortion and euthanasia are not health care.

    P.S. Do we agree that Bernie Sanders is NOT divisive? That the majority of actual people agree with most of what Bernie says, and it is only a few rich interests that object?


  • No, not in context. They are talking about disimformation like, “using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including Covid-19” from Musk. They say:

    A mere 0.1% of users share 80% of fake news. Twelve accounts – known as the “disinformation dozen” – created most of the vaccine misinformation on Facebook during the pandemic. These few hyperactive users produced enough content to create the false perceptions that many people were vaccine hesitant.

    So if you cut out the the most divisive political accounts, you will not miss ANY actual news, but are likely to miss a huge pile of disinformation.