• 70 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • There is a legal, regulated, mostly safe method to buy cigarettes. It is inaccessible if you are under a certain age, but only the seller/provider is punished for violating regulations. It’s okay to have restrictions on what children can consume.

    While current laws on illegal drugs do not work, arguing against any regulation whatsoever is similarly silly, the laws obviously work. Smoking rates have dramatically declined since those laws and public education campaigns began.





















  • You have to just accept the kind of campy look to the show, as well as some of the more questionable acting and dialogue choices. Once you just accept that this will be the presentation, you can focus on the story, which is very insightful and complex. At its heart it’s a political drama about American intervention in the Arab-Israeli conflict (never explicitly stated, but it’s pretty evident almost immediately), with a shadowy outside threat, presented through a sci-fi lens. Then it adds way more mysticism and fantasy elements as the series progresses. It’s a fantastic exploration of human nature, I strongly recommend it.

    It left HBO before I could finish the last season. I just got a Tubi account so I can close it out.














  • Well, why would they ditch for piracy? Netflix was smart about the whole thing: adding an authorized household (not user, entire household) is cheaper than creating a new subscription. The people subscribing to Netflix aren’t fundamentally opposed to paying for streaming, they were opposed to an unfair change in the business model. Netflix countered with a seemingly fair change in the business model that now eliminates the hassles that come with password sharing and could make the marginal increase in cost per household fairly small. It was overall a pretty smart business decision.

    There are many many problems with Netflix, including their growth-based business model, the lack of insight into their finances, and the way they’re slowly enshittifying the film industry. They’re a major reason for the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. However, this change wasn’t stupid and people weren’t stupid for going along with it. I don’t see how it would lead to an overall increase in piracy, that’s being driven by the many new streaming services forcing costs on consumers. But consumers won’t blame Netflix for that because, frankly, that’s not Netflix’s fault.