Movie theater popcorn can often have over a 1000% markup compared to how much it actually costs the theater to buy and produce. While that might sound excessive, bottled water is often marked up over 4,000%
In an effort to help people come back to theaters, Cinemark ran a promotion in which they would fill any popcorn container you wanted to bring for $5. People responded!
Before survival horror became a thing, at the same time as Alone in the Dark, Doctor Hauzer existed on the 3DO. A fully 3D horror game published in 1994.
Daniel Perdomo started a project to re-create the classic Atari’s arcade PONG game – but in physical form. It uses mechanical paddles and a magnetic floating bit.
I recently got to play with one of the ones created via their successful kickstarter and it was awesome fun. I would love to own one, but it’s unclear if they’re still making them. They were also a cool few thousand dollars when they were selling them.
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Fascinating story of the real life kidnapping and ransom of the Heineken CEO.
I like how Hoog used old-school 90’s era graphics to tell the story. He seems to have a number of other videos that use this same style. Awesome
SkyArt has a collection of unique and interesting avionics controls, dials, and readouts that you can buy and use as a cool desktop curios. They even have furniture and large art pieces that you can buy.
Dr. Doot does a speedrun of Elden Ring. That’s interesting in itself, but he is doing it using a Roland Aerophone as his controller.
Also musically inclined, there was a Crazy Taxi run that featured a real band covering all the songs:
The United States has lost more than one million people to overdoses since 2000 — more than the number of Americans lost in all wars in the past 150 years put together, including both World Wars.
This New York Times article recounts the real story of Drew – an actual addict in Oregon that’s somehow survived the last few years of open legal drug use. In the end, he turned himself into police to be rescued from his addiction. His lawyers knew they could even get him off – but he, and the author, admit that open legalization is killing many more lives than ever before.
The data backs it up. Portlanders will hate this, but incarceration kept more addicts alive than legalization. Our death rates have doubled every year – an exponential growing rate – every year since legalization. Portland literally has around 1800 people dying a year in the streets vs just at 500 for years before legalization. That’s 4 dead bodies a day in the relatively small city of Portland’s 600,000 people.
What I’ve seen is that the fundamental leniency in recent years on the West Coast — toward drugs, toward shoplifting and toward homelessness — didn’t actually improve the well-being of those in desperate need. Our liberal compassion backfired: Instead of helping Drew, it endangered him.
I think the author sums the situation. These are people in deep need of assistance, but are often unable or unwilling to do it themselves. Despite a free treatment, free call center, and countless free resources – only a single digit number of people have gotten help. It doesn’t work voluntarily. The sad reality is that many people never hit ‘rock bottom’ and turn around. The majority of them die. Often die from the elements or an overdose laying in a tent beside an interstate, outside a building, or in a bus stop.
It’s more than time to admit these policies, predictably, are actually killing thousands of people each year in just Portland alone. That’s blood on the hands of those who refuse to realize that compassion alone creates a life of living horrors like Drew was living. If you were to design a policy to kill the most number of people in the most inhumane ways – I think we have achieved it.
Compassion must be tempered with wisdom of addiction behavior and understanding of the true value and dignity of the human person. It is not compassion to allow our brothers and sisters to sleep beside a busy interstate wallowing in the elements, ignorance, crime, poverty, and addiction until they die. The solutions are there – treatment is available. What is missing is the will to act on it. That action, however, may not look all that great. In European countries with legalization; they also throw addicts into prison if they refuse treatment – and they don’t hold punches. You are either getting treatment or jail. If for no other reason that you’re not going to be allowed to die in the streets.
It makes me wonder how many more thousands we will have to kill in the name of progressive policies before we come to the conclusions the data has already said loud and clear.
A surprising amount of things and locations of Jesus’ last days and hours in Jerusalem are known. This is worth a watch to follow along those last hours.
Expert musicians often experience a “ceiling effect,” in which their skill level plateaus after extensive training. Worse, practicing too much can lead to injury. So how can someone break through this issue?
Shinichi Furuya told New Scientist. “I was suffering from this dilemma, between overpracticing and the prevention of the injury, so then I thought, I have to think about some way to improve my skills without practicing.” Recalling that his former teachers used to place their hands over his to show him how to play more advanced pieces, he wondered if he could achieve the same effect with a robotic hand.
Passive training using a robotic exoskeleton hand could help pianists overcome that ceiling effect, according to a paper published in the journal Science Robotics.
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Interesting analysis of Intel vs AMD server offerings: https://www.nextplatform.com/2024/10/10/amd-turns-the-screws-with-turin-server-cpus/amp/