One can only hope this is the case.

Instead of being the Great Unifier, Social Media ended up being The Big Chisel: Finely crafted of the hardest vitriol, finely honed to a razor's edge by greed. A tool to split and divide.

Sometimes I get all misty-eyed for the days of One Common Dialog, which was put out by The Big Three (ABC / CBS / NBC)

Then I remember all of them lie like rugs, and Pulitzer and Hearst were the biggest liars before TV.

So yes. I hope this piece of shit is on the decline, and people think more.

Walks in parks are good. Pick up disc golfing, go for a round, that's two hours, a couple of joints, some Beethoven, and for those two hours, all is good. Until you shank one into the lake.

All valid points, but blaming the tool is stupid. Ultimately it is the user who rules.. or should.

Too many notifications? Reduce them or turn 'em off.

Addicted to TikTok? Seek help.

Not reading for fun? That's on you. My phone carries all of Harry Potter, a bunch of different, complete mangas, several tomes on hypervigilance, stress, etc, and they weigh.. nothing. I have a whole library at my fingertips on my phone, or pad.

Personal Responsibility stopped being a thing along with literacy. Everyone expects Big Uncle Government to help them out and make everything alright.

That's not how Life works.

Bullshit. What happened was a disgusting display by the people celebrating the dead person's death, praising the shooter, and then you have the retard on TV say "Oh the shooter's maga" when it turns out he'd been radicalized into his actions by trans and trans-supporting loons. Shooter has a trans lover.

But before any of that was known, that idiot had to go on TV and throw the blame at one group, when it was the exact opposite group that radicalized him.

I feel for his parents. I grieve for the nation. I feel nothing but contempt, loathing and scorn for the people who radicalized the shooter.

You people want to start a war. So far, you've had no takers.

Stop. Trying. Before you light a powderkeg you can't put out.

Yet, the story right beneath this one says 4000 Lufthansa layoffs coming because of Ai,

Pick a narrative and stick with it... or is /. posting stories from any whackadoo with cash?

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FCjOhBC1.jp...

I just hit on a thought: Boeing has kinda overlooked the short-haul market. I mean yeah, they had the 727, and the OG 737 was for that too, but all of that used the same fuselage and flight deck as a 707.

Meanwhile, Douglas used the original concept for the DC8 (5 abreast) and made it into the DC9. The DC8 got expanded to 6 abreast to get a deal from Juan Trippe of Pan Am (25 sold.) At the same time, in the same Christmas party, Trippe cajoled Boeing into expanding the then 5-abreast into 6, and bought 20.

Both deals happened in the same Christmas party. Some party!!

Point is.. Douglas built a 5-abreast meant for rough, short fields, and Boeing made a half-hearted attempt with the 727. It was already Too Big for that market.

DC9 had it right. Tail stair, APU, don't need any ground support. Fly in and out of anywhere, and it' still a real airliner, not a bizjet kitbashed into being an airliner.

I think Boeing was emotionally stunted by all the money Trippe cost them early on with the 247 and such, and because of that, they never pursued the small jetliner with the same verve as Douglas.

The OG of this kind of jet is the Caravelle. But it was the DC9 that really Got It Right. Shame that no one has built a new one. Right now it's either 6 abreast, or straight into a regional, no middle ground. DC9 was that middle ground.

No 95s, but plenty of 80s (MD80, 83, 88) on American.

All you said is true, except this plane wasn't Douglas' demise, it was the DC10 that did them in.

And while it's short (floor-to-ceiling) and narrow, it's still leagues above your typical CRJ or Embraer glorified business jet cum airliner.

The DC9 / MD Whatever / Boeing 717 had more headroom and legroom than any of these alleged "regional" jets.

You clearly never have flown in a Fokker 100 or a CRJ-Anything or an ATR or anything like that.

New-gen little twin is great news for them..

But, they've wasted two opportunities:

1. They got the DC9 Super 95 (or MD-95) when they bought Douglas. They sold it for a bit as the 717. This is a five-abreast plane, smaller than a 737. This would have been *ideal* for small fields like Charlotte and for short hops, like it was designed for. But nooooo, to "save" the 737 they canned this one. That let Bombardier eat that market alive.

2. When they were designing the 787 they shoud've done the same trick they did with the 757 / 767 - one central section, one flight deck, same engines on both. Fly one, you can fly the other. This would've avoided the pains of growing old the 737 is showing.

But, since morons run Boeing, they did everything wrong.

18 months from paper to flying prototype for the 747. Almost 20 years for the 787. Something's very wrong.

For years, even before Tata bought Jaguar, Jag's been in death spiral. Each new car less enticing than the former.

The F-Type could've been such a great thing but they saddled it with with everything except what a Jag of that lineage needs: A twincam straight six, to go back to their XK roots. (XK the engine, not the car). There was an anemic four, an overpowered eight, and a tapioca v-6. No straight-six.

Then, they announced they were going to stop building all cars, and come back with.. something. When they showed the "something," along with a "new look".. well.. disaster

I think they tanked so hard they've feigned this hack thing. If I were the UK cops, I'd be looking at that scenario. Sure, it's plausible they were indeed ransom'd by a stranger, but it's just too good. Too convenient.

For me it started during the film-to-digita transition of the late 90's. Once '99 or '00 rolled around, presentation quality tanked, and badly.

By 2005 I had made my own home theater, which I still have. The presentation is cinematic in picture and sound and proportion. The only thing missing is crowd reaction, overpriced concessions and all that.

I still went to the movies 'til maybe.. 2013? Whenever Rush came out. That was my last.

One of the last film movies I saw was Brave the year before, at a local dollar place. When I was leaving, I saw a very young booth monkey moving a complete platter from one room to another, with no clamps. You understand, a platter is the entire feature + policy bumpers, trailers, etc all spliced together. 7+ reels. Heavy. No core. no support. No clamps. This is like a film Slinky just waiting to unravel. It's a mess of celluloid about five feet in diameter with a big hole in the midddle. He had it slung over his shoulder like Chewbacca's bandolier.

He was dragging the end of the film on the floor. No fucks to give. This is why your film had pops and scratches and lines in the late 90's.

Wasn't always like that. Here I go with the 'old man' routine: When I was a kid, like for Star Wars, around that era, top-shelf movie houses had uniformed ushers. Curtains. No ads before the show. Yes, there were ads during the show, like before the newsreel. But in between shows, the curtains were drawn, th screen hidden from view. It was a magical atmosphere.

Projection was crisp, the film clean and usually devoid of defects.

Now.. now it's "whatever, man. I just get paid to babysit the machine."

And on the film-maker's side.. well. That's another reason to stay home. A lot of bad film being made now, more than before, I think.

Now.. why should I patronize shoddy moviehouses and consume bad content, when I have better at home? And now with added internet I can get any film pretty much that I want, when I want it, legit or seven seas.

Hollyweird is dead, but no one's told the corpse yet.

Meanwhile, the older workers are frankly very concerned about what wishy-washy easy-to-impressed Upper Management will use AI for. What insane, implausible, improbable, impractical-to-implement nutcase ideas will they come to us with next?

With all the hallucinations and such, I can't expect much sanity from the C*O offices for the next decade or so.

Cry me a river.

Lemme translate: "We're concerned self-driving cars are going to do to us what we did to the taxicab industry."

He's not worried about "his" drivers, he's worried about his money.

Don't buy a new fridge. Find something nice made anywhere from the 90's to the early 2000's.

Bulletproof, easy to fix, parts everywhere, doesn't know what wifi or bluetooth is, but does have the basic conveniences like ice maker and water dispenser.

"new" is quickly losing its shine to me, the 'new shiny' is more like the "new.. ew... why?"

Enshittification in meatspace.

Little Ginny Weasley did it, poured her heart into this weird blank diary that would write back to her.

Fantasy then, reality now. And instead of a murderous megalomaniac with ambitions of eternal life, now we have Tom's Diary powered by automated avarice giving hurt, vulnerable people life advise.

It is folly to look for answers too deeply in this thing called The Internet. Most, if not all, are trying to lead you astray for their own reasons.

Must everything "change the world?"

What happened to making a thing, and making it really well, better than anyone?

Is there no more merit in that? Is it all a race to the quarterly earnings call?

I have a more cynical view.

The medical and pharmaceutical industries are the most heavily invested at making money on from the day you are born, to the day you draw your last tortured, well-past-best-by-date, please-kill-me-10-years-ago breath.

I saw it with my grandma, my aunt, and others. People are kept alive just so the docs and pharmas can milk them for 20 years more than they normally would've. For 100% selfish reasons. Not for the patient -- it's "for the family." "Oh how wonderful that you had your grandma 'til so late". Yea buddy, at the end she was trippin' balls, talking about the farm she hadn't seen since the 50's. Her last 10 years were horrible, but of course her daughters were thrilled even tho they were the ones caring for her.

Disgusting. We're like cattle to them.

Yeah, those in power want power forever, but the medical and pharma bros are far worse in how they seek to extend life solely to cash in on that extension.