There are two factors necessary for a truly free market that prevent any capitalist system from actually being a free market. They are:

1. Consumers need to have perfect information about the products and the companies that make and/or sell them - in other words, companies must not be able to hide their sins.

2. There needs to be zero friction for new entrants into the marketplace, whether that is from costs to start up a business, or anti-competitive behavior from other companies with money to throw around.

It is impossible to achieve either of these in the real world.

Instapots will seal completely once they’re making enough steam, and are built incredibly robust. This one blowing up was entirely because the lid was not on correctly (steam escaping out the sides shouldn’t be possible).

Somehow I don’t think the people who were performing mayoral duties on behalf of the dog were hidden behind the scenes. Especially since it’s a tiny little town; everyone knows everyone else.

Ugh. Well, sounds like I made a good choice dropping it…

Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence.

Mostly I just wondered why the movie was made in the first place. Sure, examining the tragedy of creating an intelligent being that cannot mature and cannot let go of emotional attachments by design is interesting… but the meandering, pointless story had like three places it could have ended and just … didn’t, finally topping it off with a ‘bittersweet’ ending that seemingly had no purpose besides to give some catharsis to the audience despite being so out of left field that it had no relation to the rest of the story. It could have been an art book showing off the scenery instead of bothering to throw an aimlessly wandering robot child into it.

Kpop Demon Hunters initially looks like a girlie movie that was shoehorned into being an action flick.

It’s a drama, interspersed with enough comedy and action to make you forget that it’s a drama. The story isn’t anything special, but it has well-done emotional beats backed by a soundtrack that elevates it. It is absolutely worth watching. (And the animation is fantastic.)

Don’t go into it expecting a cinematic masterpiece; it’s made for kids. It is also, however, a kid’s movie that is intended to entertain the adults who take their kids to see it.

The Sword of Truth series.

I read the first book as a teenager. I was rather skeezed out by the roughly one-third of the book that was a poorly-disguised authorial kink fantasy.

Then the second book had a lovingly detailed description of a witch gaining demonic power by getting railed by a demon.

Whoever wrote those books, didn’t have much consideration for the reader.

Sizable chunks of the Old Testament were documentation, rather than formatted with the intent of being engaging. It’s like how a family bible often has genealogy hand-written inside it, except it’s the contents of the book itself.

For the longest time, Sanderson was utterly terrible at writing romance, and it was very obvious. A lot of it was probably due to a lack of personal experience. He’s gotten better, but a lot of the ‘lack’ you’re feeling in his writing probably stems from the same place. Despite writing about dark topics - apocalyptic events, oppressed populations, the failures of heroes, etc. - he is missing the edge that you get from other authors who write similar stories. Personally I don’t mind, and I really enjoy his books - but I can understand why others would find them bland.

Okay, that’s actually kinda great.

It has no meaning. It’s a meme purely for the sake of being a meme.

The word that always comes to mind is ‘literally’ which has come to mean ‘figuratively, but with emphasis’ and it drives me nuts - because it removes the word we have to say ‘this is a thing that you might assume is figurative, but it’s not, it actually happened’.

If you own it on GoG you don’t need a pirate copy - just save the offline installer.

I’m pretty sure their point is that millennials are unable to accrue enough wealth to become conservative.

A sizable portion of Lemmy’s userbase is in a country that aggrandizes free-market capitalism, and we’re getting to the point with it where its flaws are becoming impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, most of us grew up well after the peak of anti-socialist sentiment.

Personally, I wouldn’t include Proton in the costs of the Steam Machine. The Deck already is benefiting from it immensely, and I would consider it to be a cost of expanding into Linux gaming in general - especially with the Lenovo handheld and other devices starting to jump on the bandwagon as Microsoft continues to take repeated dumps on their userbase. Its R&D costs are being won back by the market % Steam takes on any games bought and played in Linux, which means that it can benefit from that continued revenue stream rather than the one-off hardware sale.

The hardware has to break even. The software already has.

Don’t forget aggressive rent-seeking behavior.

Agreed. The distinction is between ‘millionaires’ and ‘multi-millionaires’ imo.

They’re buying the parts directly from the manufacturers though, so cutting out the retailer middle-man could offset the R&D costs.

What? You need to expand your knowledge of apple types. I’ve had a similar variety; a bit floral, but not bad.