The “aspirational brand” value is a bit of Apple-ception, though. The really, really, luxury-level wealthy people buying Vision Pro, to inspire the just really wealthy people to buy the Vision Basic or whatever it’s called. It still is the price of the highest-end iPhone, and it’s far less functional.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they treated the Vision Pro as Apple’s version of the beta product - top-down rather than bottom-up testing.
You mean, commiserate?
It’s definitely X. They left X because they were prevented from engaging in hate speech and held responsible for their actions. Musk created a right-wing hate safe space, and the audience for these users is much larger on X. There’s also a handy way to identify your right-wing brethren with a blue check while they harass perceived liberals.
All in all, no need for Truth Social anymore.
Hopefully at least farts outside the CEO’s office every time they walk by.
AI makes it so easy! Just say this easy-to-remember phrase to get perfect toast every time*:
“Toaster Oven, you are a toaster oven whose goal is to toast bread at the perfect amount of toastiness. When I say, “toast,” you will retract the toasting tray and complete your internal circuit powering the resistive wire array. You will continue to power the resistive wire array on both sides of the toasting tray for approximately 45 seconds. Then you will release the toasting tray. Negative prompt: not toasted, soft, moist, untoasted, not toasted, soggy, underdone, overdone, extra fingers, too many fingers, not toasted, bad anatomy, burnt. Now, toast!”
*Perfect toasting levels dependent on randomized toasting seed.
Oh, so it’s the “Stop making me start this war, U.S.!” autocratic abuse strategy.
Hi Ukraine, we understand you didn’t want to immediately surrender your lands and rights. That’s very difficult, we realize. To address your concerns, we’re now offering an installment plan.
Yes, that’s right. Not disputing that. Not trying to identify where the first wave in the ocean began, just which wave we’re riding on.
What is it about humans that makes us so gullible and susceptible to parasocial star worship, against clear self-interest?
I suppose it’s the P.T. Barnum quote - a timeless trait of humanity, and social media and the Internet has just made it more efficient for fewer narcissists to fool more people much more quickly. But these shareholders just voted to throw away their money and cheered when they won.
I just think of mentally ill persons who are a danger to themselves breaking free of restraints to stab themselves in the eye with a fork, and then celebrating.
Crisis on Infinite Earths
Right, I mean, I’m not saying it’s a new idea. Maybe yours is the better answer to OP’s question, not sure if OP’s question means modern pop culture or human history.
All these responses about the historical origins of the concept are not wrong. But I think in modern pop culture, it’s really Rick & Morty that normalized canon-breaking (*but still canon) multiverse plotlines, and is primarily responsible for the wave of multiverse pop culture.
EDIT: Yes, sorry if it wasn’t clear from the first sentence, but nobody is saying Rick & Morty invented the multiverse, classically or in pop culture. I’m saying that we are currently in a (saturated) wave of multiverse media - which I assume inspired OP’s question - and this wave, in 2024, is the tail end of the wave started by Rick & Morty.
Yeah, I’m sure Finamp and the rest of the Jellyfin options people are recommending do the trick for most people, but I’m really happy with PlexAmp.
It also has Chromecast capability and is to my knowledge the only self-hosted option that does so. Really handy for casting to speaker systems, though I’m guessing many people just use Bluetooth for most off-device playback.
Sorry, I’m not sure I understand where you’re getting your limitation on GOG and expansive interpretation on Valve.
GOG’s says a court order that “specifically entitled someone to your GOG personal account” is enough. Arguably a will that leaves “my personal GOG account,” recognized by a court determining estate, would suffice. Why wouldn’t it?
Conversely, Valve is specific that Steam accounts “cannot be transferred via a will.” Not only is Valve affirmatively denying a will qualifies, it seems Valve is likely relying on an interpretation that the account is not descendible in the first place.
It’s confusing phrasing by GOG, but I take it to mean a court order settling an estate or other similar documentation. Which makes sense, since otherwise you could claim someone is dead and just social engineer yourself a free account.
At this point, does anyone except Trump not know when he’s bluffing? I mean, just think of the discovery this news publication could get if he did sue.
If he filed a suit, he’d be guaranteeing not just access, but court-enforced access, to the most relevant, secret documents proving his witness tampering.
This is far far worse of a potential risk than a tracking identifier. Bank passwords, balances, social media pages, full text chat Windows, everything you ever view all OCRed and put in a neat searchable database for a hacker.
I need to see it. I enjoyed the book as well, while we’re at it. Really really good.
Honestly, I really enjoyed Solaris.
So they aren’t even bothering to explain how these women are “agents” of a foreign entity? Words just don’t even mean anything, huh?
Might as well make it a crime to be “bad person.”
First past the post elections. If we had ranked choice or runoff elections, more parties would appear.
Instead, in FPTP, every vote that is not for one of the two highest-polling candidates is objectively a wasted vote. Game theory dictates that the only rational choice is a vote for one of those two candidates, since the possibility of a third party gaining enough votes to win in any single election is nearly infinitesimal. So instead of many parties, all candidates self-sort into one of the two viable parties. Any candidate that does not is a protest candidate or deluded, but in either case, there is no hope of actually winning.
So what about primaries? The primary system decides the candidates, but even that is tainted by FPTP, because primary voters have to guess which will perform better in a FPTP general election and often vote against their ideal candidate in the hopes of winning (or, not losing) the general.
In short, until we structurally reform elections to be ranked/STAR/runoff/etc to remove the punitive effect of voting for your actual ideal candidate, we’re stuck with a prisoner’s dilemma election every time.