I wonder how the Trump fanboys are going to spin this advantagous decision as if the government is out to get him.

That’s what they did in my country when a bunch of the big banks almost keeled over in 2008/2009. They were temporarily (partly) owned by the state and eventually bought back their rights to operate as a separate business when things were going better again.

Alright I’ll bite, give me some examples of good shows with multiple layers of storytelling, interesting characters and engaging story telling that were made in the last five years. And as I’ve said in another comment, I know there’s still some good ones out there (The Boys, Gen V, Blue eye samurai, Better call Saul, After life), my point is that it feels like there’s less of these while the total amount of shows has only increased over time.

There are still some good shows left but it definitely feels like more of a challenge to find them then before. I haven’t watched regular TV shows in ages because most of it is crap nowadays. The last one I can vividly remember watching whenever it came out was Castle and I even quit watching that after 1 or 2 seasons.

There’s almost no original story telling in shows anymore, it all just feels the same. The only standout shows I can remember watching last year were Blue eye samurai and the Boys. Everything else is just a bit of a blur.

I love House, most jokes in that show are very funny and a bit scathing but at least they make fun of everyone and everything. Much better than nowadays, where most comedy is very plain and safe.

I agree, I watched one about the Netherlands a while back and it was pretty trash. They’re fun videos for entertainment purposes but definitely not correct.

I know right? Executives just never seem to get that you actually need to provide value to have people want to sign up for it. Saying that though, there’s a lot of dumb consumers out there that just pay for it if needed.

There’s already been 2 terrorist attacks in Europe and based on the evacuations of public spaces in France it seems like it’s only the start. I’m not sure if it’s all because of the war (the attack in Brussels seems to be more related to ISIS according to the news) but it sure seems like it’s gotten a lot more frequent since it really kicked off last week.

Except most governments. They also fund humanitarian aid for the Palestinians on the down-low but publically they’re supporting Israel. Just look at the US.

This whole conflict has just always felt like a massive grey area as an outsider. Both sides have done horrible things over the years, with the retaliation often being even worse. Most governments (including mine) are actually supporting both sides, for example through humanitarian aid. That’s just kind of weird when you think about it, in a way they’re enabling both sides to keep going. And I just don’t know if there’s any way out of this besides one side completely destroying the other. Peace talks have been had so many times and it just doesn’t lead anywhere. It just feels inevitable.

The family plan sadly isn’t an option for me, I don’t have anyone in my family that uses YouTube as much as I do so they wouldn’t be interested in it.

I wouldn’t mind paying a little bit of money every month to get YouTube ad free. However, it costs €12 a month. That’s a lot of money if you only care about getting rid of ads. I personally don’t need the other features (downloading videos, background play and YouTube music). If they added a 5 to 7 euro a month tier through which you could get rid of ads then that would be much more interesting to me. Now I just feel like I should keep looking for ways around their pop up shenanigans.

Wow that car looks petty neat. I always thought the Leaf was a pretty decent EV (and one of the first more well known ones) and it felt like they never really innovated on it too much. Perhaps this is finally the point where they start doing that again.

Nope, it feels like most people are too far gone for that and they’ll never accept it. All thanks to these dumb politicians that took bribes to cover it up for years and years. Thanks for making our futures so much worse…

This is my main problem with hydrogen cars. I think it’s a very cool concept that might eventually overtake pure electric cars but there’s almost no places to get hydrogen yet.

I usually just end up recording them if I really want to watch them so I can fast forward through the commercials when I watch it later.

I had a look and the current subscriber numbers for Disney+ are at 146 million, they haven’t been at 164 million since Q4 2022. So they’ve actually dropped 18 million subscribers in less than a year, which is more than 10% of their subs.

I do agree that CEOs earn way too much money, they could get by earning much less and it would be nice if this money went to the other employees instead. However, I don’t fully agree with the statement that writers can’t afford a roof over their heads. I did some googling and the average salary for a writer in Hollywood is almost $70,000 a year. Digging a bit deeper, I found this:

Variety also reports that for a WGA member in 2023, writer-producers earn a minimum of “$41,773 for each 60-minute script, or $28,403 for each 30-minute script.” However, staff writers are the lowest-level writers and are paid differently. In 2023, “[t]he median staff writer on a network show works 29 weeks for a wage of $131,834, while the median staff writer on a streaming show works 20 weeks for $90,920.” (source)

So if these numbers are correct, a writer for a streaming show makes on average $90,920 for a 20 week show. If they have 2 of those shows a year, that’s a yearly salary of more than $180,000 + 12 weeks of vacation at a minimum (don’t know if they need the full 20 weeks to write the show). I know they live in an expensive part of the country but come on, you can’t say that that’s a low wage, regardless of whether you think they deserve more or not. If you look at the average salary in the entire USA (~ $60,000) they make about triple that. Hell, they make even more than double the average salary in California ($73,000) (source)

Thanks for the explanation and additional context, that helps put things into perspective a bit more. I understand that they want a different kind of monetary reward from streaming, hopefully they can get their deal eventually.

I suppose, except happy hour gives it a bit more of a positive spin. People like getting discount way more than having to pay more. They could’ve definitely handled this one better.

Also, having people pay more at peak hours is potentially going to shift when people start drinking. Day drinkers will most likely become more common that way.

Fair enough, I guess time will tell then. I’m just wondering if the Hollywood accounting that gets mentioned below also gets applied to their revenue, meaning that it’s in fact much lower than what they’re saying. But I guess that’s corporate accounting in a nutshell.