Temple Square

Other way around:

Sites that COMPLY with laws and exit the state leave behind sites that do not comply.

The sites you CAN reach in Texas are more likely to have trafficking victims and underage participants – because those sites clearly don’t give a hoot about laws.

Texas drove away the wrong sites!

Yes. They want “small government” when the law affects them, but “law and order” when it punishes someone else who annoys them.

It’s childishness we’ve come to be accustomed to, thanks to lead-brained 70-year-olds who are falling into legit cognitive decline… but still have the numbers to be a formidable opponent at the polls on election day.

Also, their dicks don’t work anymore without a blue pill, so they may as well take away the consensual naked fun of Gen X, Millennial, and Gen Z (18+) people right?

What’s worse: Reputable sites that comply with U.S. laws (such as participants being 18+ and filming of their own free will) are effectively forced out, while questionable site carry on.

The likelyhood of seeing abuse victims or underage in Texas goes up, not down.

If they truly cared about protecting minors, they’d see the flaw in their law and rectify it. Of course, we all know (not through cynicism but cold repeated behavior) that political conservatives do not care about minors and care far more about punishing consenting adults.

This law is a step toward the latter.

Wait until they see “Smoke Hub” in Bakersfield, CA.

It’s literally the porn hub logo.

Yep. Disney+ (for now).

Netflix, HBO, and Hulu gradually cancelled over the last few years.

What’s stupid of them is that if they’d stayed around $8-10/mo each (ad-free), I probably would have stayed subscribed forever. Now they each get nothing.

I don’t mind Spotify increasing.

Inflation is real. And nobody wants to see the service turn into a Little Caesars “$5 Hot N Ready” pizza that erodes in quality, rather than gradually price increase with inflation.

The advantage we have with music streamers is that nearly ALL the content is on ALL the services. So, if one service goes bananas with pricing, we can jump ship to a cheaper one.

But TV is siloed into mini monopolies. The only source of capitalism competition they face is use choosing to do without. And frankly, if I’m gonna be forced-fed ads, I choose to do it on YouTube which costs me $0 and not $7.99 a month.

Netflix is gone. And as someone who leaves The Simpsons running 24/7 on Disney+, I’m frankly getting thiiiiiiiiiis close to dumping their asses, too!

How does a lockdown HELP the economy exactly?

Work still has to be accomplished. Otherwise it’s money chasing NO product. Which is what we’re still recovering from.

Sometimes doing the right thing (lockdown) has COSTS. Serious economic costs. A “have our cake and eat it” mindset is, sadly, a fallacy.

In fairness, it was either or:

• Take COVID seriously

• Not destroy the economy

Early lockdowns probably saved a million lives. But the supply chain issues we’ve faced since are the ripple effect from those two/three months. Countries like China that took the pandemic more seriously faced worse economic fallout.

Additionally, the previous administration signed off on Congress sending each us of unemployment, PPP, and thousand dollar checks. All of that helped enormously.

I hate the previous president personally, and feel he’s the most unqualified man to ever hold the office, and feel he’s the closest we’ve ever had to a fascist coup. But that does not mean every decision of that administration was automatically wrong.

Or, as a market-based solution: TurboTax raised the price for small business returns to about the same as hiring and accountant. So, now I just hire an accountant.

GIF was ancient in the YTMND.com days. And nowadays, YTMND is like two decades old. Back when my life had hope.

I’d complain, except it hasn’t gone up in a decade.

Prices needs to go up a little bit every year to reflect CPI and inflation.

I agree. There should be some sort of a la carte service where you can pay a couple of bucks and use it for like a day.

The guy is straight up insane. He’s obsessed with the letter X.

But I don’t care. X is the symbol of death eyes on a smiley. Guess the bird is dead.

I know this is a piracy community, but honestly I don’t mind paying for newspapers.com. I use it a lot just to read up on old articles and stuff and they seem to be doing a pretty good job adding new newspapers to the archive all the time.

For me piracy is great when the product is just outright overpriced because some corporate tools in New York or Los Gatos are trying to make their VC people happy.

But…

A more expensive product becomes a more price-sensitive product. Now one customer represents income from 3-4 customers.

Recession hits. People are more likely to cancel something that is $25/mo than $8/mo. And each cancellation is like three cancellations.

Going “premium” is a valid strategy. But since we haven’t had a serious recession in 15 years, I believe it’s a shortsighted one.

Long run, they are corporate morons.

T-Mobile was “paying” for a rarely-used account on my family plan. Parents used it in another state. I occasionally used it. My brother logged in once in awhile. On any given week, it might see like 4 hours of collective viewership.

Turns out TMobile’s contribution only covered the first $8. I have been paying another $10/mo. out of my own pocket and wasn’t batting an eye.

Netflix was getting $18 a month for doing almost nothing! And that could have continued for many more years without my even questioning it.

BUT… One day I couldn’t sign onto my own Netflix account that I pay for. Evidently, I’m not in my own household? That led to my discovery of the gargantuan amount I was paying for a service I barely use anymore.

So now, thanks to their greed, Netflix gets $0 from me. And not a single family member has phoned to ask why Netflix no longer works.

Some executives in Los Gatos may soon learn Econ 101’s supply-and-demand curve.

TIL you can cross between the border of Oklahoma and Colorado, technically…

That music video from the rooftop!

I guess you could say at least The World Trade Center went out with a bang!

^(I’ll show myself out now)^

A fool and his money are soon parted. From the same class of vehicles that tried to lock heated seats behind a monthly subscription.

You know what’s nice? Those cars can F right off. I won’t buy one new. And never will buy one used.

Always will be “budget” cars (Corolla, Civic, Versa, etc.) that won’t screw around with this crap because the buyers can’t afford to screw around with it.

TRY to paywall a heated seat in a Civic. I dare Honda. It won’t be more than 10 minutes before someone has it badly wired up like an aftermarket subwoofer.

No kidding.

I’m feeling eerily nostalgic for the (objectively terrible) Bush-era doctrine: “You’re either with us, or we’ll declare your nation a state-sponsor of terrorism”