That explains why the decor is so 70s.

1870s.

If the customer base skews wealthier, you’re going to have more people shopping there that are pulling in $500k+ annually, and probably a handful that are pulling in over $1M. If you only have one bottle in that price range, but you have 100 members at a given location that have enough income where that seems like a reasonable purchase, then you’re probably going to be able to sell it.

There’s a bar in Chicago, Lady Gregory’s, that has a whiskey bible. They will sell you 40yo Scottish single-malt whiskey–they have multiple choices, including from distilleries that have been out of business longer than I’ve been alive–by the dram, at up to about $250 per dram (as of the last time I was there, in 2016). Assuming that they’re using the American standard dram measurement of 4ml/dram, that works out to up to $46,000 for an entire bottle.

People that shop at Costco skew far wealthier than the average American. Given that only a few Costcos, in very wealthy areas, are going to have even a single bottle of $28,000 whiskey, it’s entirely reasonable to expect that they’re going to be able to sell it.

Off the top of my head, the only one that I’ve watched in recent memory was Fallout.

That’s okay, I’ll ramp up my piracy of Amazon-exclusive shows in 2025 too.

And this is covered by freedom of the press.

Their freedom of the press isn’t what’s in question. Their ownership is. They are welcome to continue operating as long as they are not owned by a Chinese company based in China and subject to Chinese national security laws.

But, even if it’s really, truly, a 1A issue, no rights are absolute. You can not, for instance, publish classified information, and then claim that it’s a free speech issue. National security interests can, and do, outweigh individual and especially corporate rights to free speech.

especially when the justification seems to be about the speech on that app

But that’s not the justification. The justification is first, access to data, and second, manipulation of that data. The gov’t is arguing that TT is hoovering up massive amounts of data on users, and then is manipulating the content that is shown to them in order to unjustly influence international policy, and all done with no transparency at all. It’s on-par with Russian election interference, although perhaps a little longer lasting and more subtly done.

…That does not, in fact, make it any better.

That makes it even more terrorism.

Not a war crime; terrorism. Hezbollah is a political organization.

After all its not hard to make a corporation in the US

…A US corporation is subject to US laws.

ByteDance is subject to Chinese laws.

If TikTok wants to do everything that it’s currently doing, but under US law and under US scrutiny, they’re more than welcome to do so. But they’re currently evading any serious scrutiny. Hence the reason to shut them down if they refuse gov’t oversight.

National security interests are the interests of the people though.

The fundamental issue is that, assuming I’m not leaking national security information, I can say nearly anything I want on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (as long as I’m not in violation of their terms of service). The US largely does not censor people using the power of the gov’t. If I am an authoritarian communist, I’m more than welcome to spread these views on any American social network that I choose without gov’t interference. I can spread anti-vax and Q nonsense if I wish, and the worst-case scenario is that my neighbors will stop talking to me. I can attack the very foundation of the country if I want, as long as I’m not spreading military secrets.

This is not the case in China. Spreading pro-capitalism and pro-democracy messages can quickly get you arrested. Trying to share accurate information about what really happened in Tianamen Square in 1989 can result in you disappearing. Words and phrases are actively censored by the gov’t on social media. The Chinese gov’t takes a direct role in shaping social media by what it promotes, and what it forbids. Anything that’s perceived as an attack on the political system of the country, the party, or any of the leaders (remember the internationally famous tennis player that abruptly disappeared when she accused a local party leader of sexual assault?) will put you at risk.

This isn’t a case of, “oh, both sides are the same”.

The Constitution doesn’t only protect American citizens, it protects everyone

Uh, no. It doesn’t protect everyone, not by a long shot. The US constitution doesn’t guarantee Chinese citizens, living in China, the right to freedom of the press.

…And this isn’t about which speech they’re allowing. This is about who controls the platform, and how they respond to gov’t inquiries. If TikTok is divested from ByteDance, so that they’re no longer based in China and subject to China’s laws and interference, then there’s no problem. There are two fundamental issues; first, TikTok appears to be a tool of the Chinese gov’t (this is the best guess, considering that large parts of the intelligence about it are highly classified), and may be currently being used to amplify Chinese-state propaganda as well as increase political division, and second, what ByteDance is doing with the enormous amounts of data it’s collection, esp. from people that may be in sensitive or classified locations.

As I stated, if TikTok is sold off so that they’re no longer connected to China, then they’re more than welcome to continue to operate. ByteDance is refusing to do that.

Calculators also say that dividing by 0 is an error, but logic says that the answer is infinite. (If i recall, it’s more correctly ‘undefined’, but I’m years out of math classes now.)

That is, as you divide a number by a smaller and smaller number, the product increases. 1/.1=10, 1/.01=100, 1/.001=1000, etc. As the denominator approaches 0, the product approaches infinity. But you can’t quantify infinity per se, which results in an undefined error.

If someone that’s a mathematician wants to explain this correctly, I’m all ears.

But the tree never makes a sound.

That depends on how you define ‘sound’. If it’s only perception and interpretation that creates sound, then sure, a tree falling with nothing to hear or perceive it makes no sound. But if you label sound as the vibration created independent of the perception of the phenomena, then sound happens regardless of whether it’s perceived or not. Since we label some sounds as imperceptible, or outside of human hearing ranges, my interpretation would be that the phenomena is the sound, rather than the perception of it.

Huh?

I loved Fallout 4, and I still play it. I’ve got it installed on this computer, but I don’t have Skyrim installed. I’m not as attached to the London mod for it, TBH.

Can’t say a lot about what Bethesda is going to do with the next Elder Scrolls games, but I’d love to see a return to the more complicated skill trees and level advancement that they used in Morrowind and Daggerfall. I also really loved the limitless number of randomly generate dungeons in Daggerfall, and how it took years (in real-time) to walk across the continent, but that’s probably not what most people want now.

That’s not entirely accurate. Yes, it was more than the GDP of the entire planet at the time, but that’s not the value of the entire planet. Unless they meant the amount of physical currency that existed, in which case the amount was considerably less than the 62T that the article cites, since most money is never physical.

It’s still patently ridiculous though.

You’re just like yeah I know windows and Adobe will profit off of every button I click

First - Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC is not a consumer version. It’s about as locked down as you can get. It doesn’t even have drivers for the ethernet on your mobo out of the box; you better have already downloaded those. (Yes, I’m serious. It’s about Also, it’s pirated, since it’s not available to consumers at all; Microsoft doesn’t want to let consumers have the Enterprise versions of Windows because that’s no longer software-as-service. And the LTSC? That shit’s going to keep getting security updates–but no ‘feature’ updates, at all, ever–for at least 10 years.

Second - I don’t pay for Adobe, but I have to use it in my job. I’ve limited as much of it as I can, and CC doesn’t start up by default, but yeah, if you work in the commercial arts fields, you simply don’t have any serious options that aren’t Adobe, and yeah, they’re going to bleed you dry. But, as i said, i’m not the one paying. My workplace has a license that allows two seats, and I’m literally the only person there that knows how to use any of it–or even has the password to the Adobe account–so I just use the work license to put it on my home PC.

Once I finally got it installed, Win 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC has been fine. The only real hitch was that I had a terrible time getting the graphics card drivers instsalled; kept getting a BSOD. But everything is running quite nicely.

As soon as I remember to get my other hard drives installed, it will be time to put the Adobe Creative Suite and Corel Painter X on it, and see how happy it is with those.

Depends on what you’re doing, and how often you’re going to be doing it.

For mechanical tools, I like both Harbor Freight and Gearwrench. I like Gearwrench a lot more, but I haven’t managed to break any Harbor Freight tools yet that weren’t air or electric. For basic sockets, etc., it will be fine for almost everyone. (Spend more for torque wrenches though; don’t cheap out on those.) HF tools have pretty limited sizes though; they don’t have anything really large, like about around 25mm. Unless you are a professional mechanic, you probably shouldn’t waste your money on Matco or Snap-On.

For most cordless general and woodworking tools I like Makita. For more specialized powered hand tools I love Festool, but do not try to fill a shop with them. Just get the ones that no one else makes an equivalent of, like their Rotex sanders, or the domino joiner.

For woodworking shop tools–things that aren’t portable–buy old Delta or Powermatic, particularly stuff that is in no way shape or form portable. Trying to do any serious cabinetry on a job-site table saw is an exercise in frustration and wasted material. A tabletop jointer won’t give you good results.

And for hand-powered cutting tool, like chisels, pull-saws, planes, etc… Be prepared to start spending a lot of money. Hand planes alone can set you back a few hundred each, like for Lee Valley ‘Veritas’ planes. And that’s not even getting into the water stones that you’re going to need to keep them working in perfect condition.

I haven’t heard anything in particular about Kentucky Ballistics. His content doesn’t interest me, but I haven’t heard of anything objectionable. Demo Ranch (Matt?) is friends with a whoooooooooole lot of very questionable people. It seems to mostly stay out of his videos though.