That’s great. I hope he’s basically able to pick and choose his roles these days, and not work if there’s nothing he’s interested in.

If he was smart about investing it, he probably earned enough to retire and live at a middle-class level for the rest of his life. But, he’s probably not loaded. He wasn’t ever one of the main stars of a show, he was always a side character. Plus, lifestyle inflation is a big problem for actors. Say he was making $400k per year on Hawaii Five-O, he probably wasn’t living a modest $80k/year lifestyle and putting away 80% of his earnings.

I would bet he’s still out looking for work so he can live in a house in LA with a pool up in the hills, not in a 1 bedroom apartment in the city.

The Real World

A 29 year old is barely an adult. They’ve never really faced any hardships. They still turn to mom and dad for advice on any major decision. They diet is mostly products that advertise during kids’ cartoons. They haven’t saved a cent towards retirement, have no investments, and half their furniture is stuff they grabbed from the side of the road while they were in college / university.

The Sports World

The 21 year old rookie asks for advice from the wisest person they know, their 29 year old teammate.

It’s not a right-wing takeover, and it’s not a takeover by the ultra wealthy. It’s more complicated than that.

The NY Times is still the crown jewel of news, and it isn’t owned by a right-winger or an oligarch. It’s a publicly traded company traded on the NYSE. The CEO is a multi-millionaire, but definitely no oligarch. USA Today is also publicly traded. Same with Comcast which owns NBC universal which owns NBC which runs NBC news.

Most of these publicly owned companies have a few rich shareholders, but they have so few shares they can’t exert much control. For example, the CEO of Comcast, Brian L. Roberts does own more than $1b worth of Comcast stock, but Comcast has a market cap of more than $100b, so Roberts owns less than 1% of the company. If you actually look at who owns most of these big public companies it’s always going to be Vanguard, Blackrock, State Street, etc. who all own it on behalf of their investors. Those companies are basically hands off with their ownership, because they basically own it as part of an index fund, so it’s not really them who owns it. But, they do want their investments to keep making money.

Then there’s The Associated Press, which is a not-for-profit cooperative owned by its member newspapers and broadcasters. Reuters is officially a British news agency, owned by a Canadian publicly traded company Thomson Reuters. It’s one of the unusual ones because although it’s publicly traded, the majority of its shares belong to The Woodbridge Company which is owned by the Canadian/British Thomson family. And there’s NPR, PRI, APM, PBS, etc. which are publicly owned, but relatively small. And then there are the international news orgs that have penetration in the US: BBC, the Guardian, etc.

The real problem is that news in the US has always been owned by for-profit companies. This is unlike most of the world where there are for-profit companies, but one of the major players in news is a state-owned company: ABC in Australia, BBC in Britain, CBC in Canada, DW in Deutschland, ERR in Estonia, France Télévisions in France, etc.

When the world went online, and online advertising was captured by the Google / Facebook duopoly and classifieds were captured by Craigslist, it became really hard for news organizations to make money. The ones that suffered most were the ones that used to be newspapers. TV networks had to adjust but not as much. The ones that were owned by oligarchs didn’t have to change because their goal was never about making a profit for the oligarch. But, the ones that were in it as businesses had to scramble because the way they made money had to change.

IMO, where we are now is that we have oligarch-owned media which is mostly right-wing – but “pro-business right wing” not “evangelical right-wing”. Then there’s the for-profit media which is mostly sensationalist news, panel discussions, and other stuff that can be done cheaply. The days when reporters could do month-long investigations are mostly gone. Same with sending a reporter to the city’s meetings. There are a few remaining dedicated news orgs that can afford to fund in-depth reporting, funded by people playing Wordle or similar wierdness.

The dial on the “yellowness” of the news has been turned up, and oligarchs have more influence than they used to. But, it’s not as simple to say that it’s all right wing, or all oligarch owned. It’s more that journalism as a profession has taken a major hit and everything that used to compete with reliable, honest journalism has grown.

The dark spot is only an issue if you’re using a laptop or something. Pen and a pad of paper is fine outside. Loose stacks of paper is obviously not ideal.

Unfortunately, most of us need to work using screens these days. I have hope for the future with these smart AR glasses. With the screen on the glasses, it shouldn’t be a problem to use them in bright light. And, feeling the sun on your skin is one of the best parts about being outside when the weather is good.

I don’t even like Hawaiian shirts. What’s the point of that collar? Why is western wear so obsessed with putting that style of collar on absolutely everything.

The same thing would work with e-ink. It works fine in super bright sunlight. Unfortunately since it physically spins little balls with electromagnets the refresh rate is very slow compared to conventional screens.

If Jesus was truly the son of god / some aspect of a god and hell exists, that’s where Chuck Norris is.

Hiragana and Katakana aren’t too hard, but Kanji is another matter, and Kanji is used a lot in the names of mass transit stations, for example.

What’s funny that if you’re a French Canadian, you spend most of your life resentful that English is everywhere. Quebec has laws doing everything possible to try to prevent English from becoming a major language in Quebec. But, as soon as someone from Quebec goes travelling, they’re probably grateful that they know English because it’s the common language of the world these days.

I grew up primarily speaking English. But, I don’t think I’m too arrogant about expecting everyone else to speak it. I’m always pleasantly surprised when there are signs in English in places where there can’t be that many tourists.

What I did kind-of take for granted wasn’t necessarily English, but it was the Roman character set. When I went travelling in East Asia, I came across Thai script, Korean, Japanese and Chinese. Previously when I’d travelled in other places, if I didn’t know the language, I at least knew the letters. So, I might not have known how to pronounce the name of a place, but I could still read it and match it to the place I was looking for. But, when I was in Japan, I had to try to remember that the stop I wanted was the one where the first symbol sort of looked like a box with some scribbles inside and a lid on top, then the next one looked like a T but with two bars at the top instead of one.

There was the loss in WWII, but there was also the loss of all their colonies after WWII. Some of them they fought for and lost like Vietnam and Algeria. The reputation of the French for losing wasn’t accurate, but it also wasn’t based on nothing.

“Rue” is just french for “street”, so, I don’t know what this is supposed to be saying.

Yep. Makes a living doing snarky posts about US politics. I’ve never seen any indication of thoughtful analysis or research. It’s just jumping on news as soon as it comes out with some “attitude”.

The other one’s a brand too.

The question is whether “brand” is “JoJoFromJerz” or “Polymarket”, or both.

No, you see it’s an ad for that gambling site that was boosted by a twitter influencer who added value by saying “Let’s fucking go!!! 🔥” And, after that, someone screenshotted this influencer’s post that boosted the gambling site and posted it here. Then people upvoted it.

Was that influencer paid to promote the gambling site? Probably. Was OP paid? Probably not, just a useful idiot.

Tried multiple times, failed every time. That’s more than just propaganda.

Add I understand it, the real meaning of that line is not exactly what it sounds like

As someone who was around at the time, I think people meant it exactly as said. Partially it was an observation that most online spaces were really male-dominated. Partially it was a “no girlz allowd” sign. A lot of places were extremely hostile to women. The best that someone who admitted to being a girl or woman could hope for is a flood of messages from horny boys. That also made it a self-fulfilling prophecy. Girls would either stay away, or they’d pretend to be male just to avoid the drama.

Baking bread has gone from an everyday job employing a significant fraction of the workforce to more of an artistic job that only a few people do. Bakers don’t really compete with mass produced bimbos, instead they offer a premium product for people who are willing to pay more.

I think it’s always like that when technologies get replaced. There are still people offering horse-drawn carriage rides, but it’s a specialty service now instead of a common job. Same with many of the things you find on Etsy.

Jobs being replaced by automation wouldn’t be a bad thing if the benefits were shared with the whole population and there were a social safety net for people whose jobs were eliminated. Unfortunately, the benefits always go to the people at the top. Some theorists have proposed economic systems where there are no people at the top, or where things are shared much more fairly. It’s a sad fact that those systems seem incompatible with human nature as it stands. Country-sized experimentation with anarchism or communism still leads to people at the top who take a lot more than they give. Those systems seem to work fine in small communities where everyone knows each-other. But, not when they are implemented in countries containing millions of people.

The most effective systems right now seem to be mixed socialist / capitalist systems where unions are strong and willing to call major strikes and shut the country down. You still get “haves” and “have nots”, but the “have nots” still get a voice and aren’t completely trampled by the rich.

It’s not necessarily envy. It just could be that they get caught up in the idea that everyone looks better bald.