Because none of that stuff ever existed in Hollywood before conservatives starting crying about woke stuff, right?

Not to the extreme extent we're seeing these days...no.

Have you considered what you call "left" is more a reflection upon your biases and environment and limitations

I speak of "the left" as how the general political divide is in the US, since that is where I live and am a citizen of....

I'm sure the problems have nothing to do with ruining beloved characters...race and gender swapping, and more interested in promotion of "the message" rather than true to the cannon story telling.

The massive tax cut going through the US Senate right now

What tax cut?

They are merely making permanent the current tax levels we have NOW...otherwise eveyrone's taxes are going to jump way up....

As for the rest of your rant...wow, you sounds like a nervous nelly, how are you able to sleep at night being so frighten the sky is falling and that climate change will send us to the Stone Age in the next year or so....

I'm still always confused at your worry about the US and how we conduct our business here, since you are not living here and not an American.....?

What makes you say that? How much PBS News Hour have you watched recently?

I tend to flip through all the news shows/channels I can on almost a daily basis....

I"ll admit tt's likely been a month or so, last time I tuned into the news programs on PBS, but I find they like NPR are usually quite leftist slanted much of the time.

Candidate A: hardworking successful and respected prosecutor, Senator, and Vice President. Exemplary record of promoting health care, voting rights, and reducing gun violence and crime. Full understanding and adherence to the rule of law. Well educated. Articulate as a court officer should be.

LOL...good one,always start out with a joke.

Oh man...especially good is that "articulate" part at the end there..hehehe.

Thanks for the morning laugh my friend....

PBS News Hour is pretty solid

Pretty solid left leaning for sure...

Yup. And as the brain reduces receptors to compensate for the increased dopamine levels you get an increased craving for more drug hits. So just like opiates, nicotine, amphetamines, and cocaine, people just keeping coming back again and again for their next Fox hit. It is essentially a drug addiction, just with a different delivery mechanism.

I guess no different than those fans of MSNBC and to some extent CNN, eh?

The trustworthy news media train derailed when Walter Cronkite left.

Uncle "Walt" had a good bit of bias back in his day too.....

They are elected TO DO WHAT IS RIGHT.

Ok...to do what is RIGHT....with definition of "right" being the will of the voter.

The politicians are not there to be the arbiters of right or wrong...they are there to represent the will of the people, whatever that may be.

Not everyone in the US wants to live in a densely packed urban city....

We're a free country over there and are not going to force a lifestyle on everyone here.

We do have some dense urban areas and hey, great for them that want to live like that.

A very significant portion of us here in the US do NOT want that type life....thankfully it is a BIG country with very diverse climates, habits, cultures where anyone can find where they want to live, how they want to live and how they want their state and local governments run.

One size does not fit all.....and trying to make it so will not fit well with the US.

We may be in an era when people unashamedly only vote for their own immediate interests.

Err what do you expect people to do?

This is just human nature....since the dawn of time...are you expecting sudden changes to this somehow?

I'm not the original poster, BUT...I would agree and I would NOT like to live in any densely packed "urban jungle".

I do not want to share walls with neighbors first and foremost.

That's something I did as a college student and early professional when I couldn't afford more than an apartment.

I don't want to hear my neighbors next door, nor do I want to bother them...I bought a really nice AV system and I like to exercise the decibel range on it from time to time.

I also relish having a back yard....fenced in for my dog....

I like having room in the back for my firewood stack that I use to run my large offset wood burning smoker, I'm a big BBQ fan....

I also have grills I like to run...lump charcoal on those....I like live fire cooking, I also like having room out back for having friends over to hang, cook and eat, crawfish boil parties, etc. (I live in Louisiana)...

I also like having room on my property to set up and run a nice sized veggie garden in growing season.

I have great neighbors, we talk, interacts and have a great life together....not sharing walls.

I like having a place to park my car and motorcycle off the street in a covered area.

I'm pretty close to everything I need...going back to office, commute is maybe 10-15 min.....multiple grocery stores minutes away, even a Costco.

When I shop I do it once a week....and usually way more than I'd care to try to carry on pubic transport, even if we had it here in a meaningful manner.

It would be too much to carry....and with summer just starting here...way too fucking hot and humid to be trying to haul so much stuff around.

Why is no government doing this ? Because the populist shits ( of left and right ) are doing what people want them to do, not what people need them to do TO SAVE THE FUCKING PLANET.

Err....in free countries, the politicians, elected BY THE PEOPLE are there to do the will of the PEOPLE.....that is their purpose.

They are not elected to tell people how to live. The elected officials are answerable to the people....not the other way around.

Back in the day, electronics as an example came with schematics, with the assumption that the user may want to service or have his items serviced. Spare parts for prior purchased items were also typically available for a number of years (for those manufacturers still in business of of course). So what changed? A couple of things come to mind:

  - more manufacturing has been moved to low cost, offshore entities
  - products have become cheaper while onshore labor has become more expensive -- making repair less realistic
  - more companies have been lured into the "subscription" model, even where it really makes no sense (i.e. why does my stove need to be connected to the internet?)
  - the product release cycle has been shortened considerably (for hardware, but particularly software) (back in the 80's, one bought a word processor on floppy and used it unchanged for years, learning to live with many flaws -- now, it might be updated weekly/monthly)

All of that being stated, physical items which are purchased, are purchased and the new owner should be able to modify or repair as necessary, and physical parts should be available for a period of time. There are a number of gotchas in this regard, such as timing, costs and lately, the desire to only provide replacements as "subsystems" as opposed to individual parts, unnecessarily increasing repair costs.

Regardless, some of these repair requirements will likely increase purchase costs. The days where only the rich could afford a color TV or take a airline flight are not coming back, so arriving at a balance of increasing purchase costs for some of the products in order to get longer life and easier repairability.