Right. The John Sturges that was born in 1910 was directing films in 1890, twenty years before his birth, and also pioneered color and sound films several decades prior to their patents. Cool.

You’re not a very effective or amusing troll.

The Magnificent Seven was released on October 12, 1960.

The Seven Samurai was released in 1954, six years prior.

A number of Kurosawa films have been remade for American audiences. Take The Hidden Fortress; it was remade as Star Wars. Meanwhile, Kurosawa did take inspiration from western playwrights, such as Shakespeare’s MacBeth (Throne of Blood) and King Lear (Ran).

And, BTW, I happen to absolutely love chanbara, especially and including the schlock garbage like Sleepy Eyes of Death, Zatoichi, Lady Snowblood, Lone Wolf and Cub, and especially Hanzo the Razor. Samurai film share a lot of similarities with western films, and many of the low-budget sword-fighting films were modeled after the western genre films (only with a funk and jazz soundtrack).

Kurosawa Akira’s The Seven Samurai was released in 1954. John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven was released in 1960.

So, uh, first, The Magnificent Seven was the remake, not the other way around, and second, it comes only 6 years after the inspiration, rather than close to a century. If The Magnificent Seven had been made 80 years prior to The Seven Samurai, it would have been made in 1874. …Which would have been before some of the firearms used in the film were even invented, and only 10 years after the US Civil War.

One of my favorites that I don’t often see mentioned is Upgrade. It’s very nearly perfect as a near-future cyberpunk dystopia.

…80 or 90 years? You sure 'bout that?

Four hours after I had a laminectomy, discectomy, and foraminotomy on the L4-S1 vertebrae and discs, the nurse was telling me that I had to get out of bed and walk up and down the hall. That was pain that morphine didn’t seem to touch, and was easily my worst experience moving.

It depends on whether you believe that people should be allowed to use narcotics or not. I tend to believe that people should be able to make that choice for themselves–as it’s their own body–and ordering narcotics online decreases violence in the drug trade since there’s no longer obvious fights over territories, etc.

The same interagency cooperation that makes it easier to track down one groups of people and punish them also makes it easier to track down other groups of people that you might agree with.

Depending on what you’re doing, that probably wouldn’t be a significant hinderance to law enforcement. Child sexual abuse, drug trafficking, etc., all tends to get lots of interagency cooperation, regardless of political issues.

I’ve tried to use it, but have not managed to get it to work. Which is a bummer.

I should probably try again now that I have a new computer. My old computer was so old that a lot of stuff wasn’t working correctly.

ISPs definitely keep records. At least some VPNs claim that they don’t, and that their networks are set up in such a way that they can’t. Some organizations claim to validate the claims of the VPNs, but it’s unclear if they’re trustworthy.

So your choice is to use something that definitely keeps logs, or to use a company that at least says that they don’t/can’t.

…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.

You get “compensated for you time” not paid

That’s what they say, but that’s not what actually happens. If the phlebotomist fucks up the draw, and your flow rate is so poor that they can’t get what they need, you don’t get paid. (Ask me how i know this.)

And yeah, IIRC most of the plasma goes to create clotting agents for people with hemophilia.

Blatantly false. “MSM [men who have sex with men] accounted for 67% (21,400) of the 31,800 estimated new HIV infections in 2022 and 87% of estimated infections among all males.”

When you consider that gay and bisexual men make up a small percentage of the overall population–under 5%–the fact that gay and bisexual men account for 87% of all HIV infections in men tells you just how alarming this is.

EDIT: For the people downvoting this - do you have statistics that you consider to be better, or more up-to-date? Do you want to refute them? Then post something and prove the CDC wrong. Downvoting because you don’t like things that are factually correct isn’t doing anything except making you look like a petulant child.

PS - wear a goddamn condom if you and your partner aren’t 100% monogamous. Yeah, no one likes them, I get it. But that’s a lot better than getting infected with HIV and needing to pay for expensive anti-retrovirals for the rest of your life.

In the past, I’ve had my local hospital call me asking for a blood donation, for example, because of an upcoming surgery of a hospitalised kid that shares my blood group. I got money for that too.

In the US, AFAIK you can’t get paid for whole blood. If you did, you would have to be paid significantly more than they pay for plasma, given that you can only do whole blood every two months.

To the question, it’s not a “scam” by any conventional definition. You are getting real money in return for the plasma.

The problem with the whole system is that if there was no payment for plasma, there wouldn’t be nearly enough people donating plasma for the need that there is. (You’re typically looking at 1+ hour per session, 2x/week.) That doesn’t include whatever travel time is involved. That’s a pretty steep time commitment every week for something that’s a very nebulous public good.

I think a better question is, is the amount that you’re being compensated fair and reasonable? Give the profit margins that are involved in products made from blood plasma, my inclination is that it is not a fair and reasonable amount. Plasma centers in my area vary in how much they pay, but it’s typically in the neighborhood of $50-$75 (USD); in other parts it’s lower, and in some areas it’s significantly higher. It’s clear that they can pay more, but choose not to because it increases their profit margin. That is something I have a problem with.

More like going to a cheap motel and not expecting bedbugs.

Nuke the world.

That’s not murder; it’s a war crime.

Fucks sake. You intentionally misunderstand that.

Quick thing - you aren’t obligated to throw out Neil Gaiman books you already have, but you probably should pirate media from him in the future so that there’s no profit for him.

As far as shaving your head, it should be pretty easy to do with a decent pair of clippers, and a nice safety razor.

because my leaving will not change anything.

Well, telling him that you won’t support someone that doesn’t believe other people exist may not change his mind, but it might convince him to keep his bullshit to himself so that he doesn’t alienate people that are his source of income.

The greatest benefit for the greatest numbers. The least harm for the fewest number of people. These are cost/benefit analyses.

Or to put it another way, the needs of the many outweighs the needs of the few.