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US sues to block merger of grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, saying it could push prices higher
  • Sounds good on paper but in the 80s/90s the US people were told 401ks are better than pensions. Now in order to retire we all have to cheer on non-stop expansion of corporations or we can never retire.

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    What food or drink do you dislike that a lot of people like?
  • Cucumbers and celery. Really the only produce I actively dislike

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    Bike-friendly Paris votes on triple parking fees for SUVs
  • planet-killing microdickmobiles.

    Saw a Ford F-250 recently... Why do people with micro dick energy feel they need these awful vehicles?

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    Trump set to meet with Teamsters as he targets Biden support
  • If any union makes a deal with Republicans or that lunatic rapist they are out of their minds.

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    How do we feel about federating with Threads?
  • How would you block threads? There are still many things about kbin that confuse me, so asking in earnest.

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    Why The Last Jedi is a Great Sequel to The Force Awakens
  • There are a lot of things I really love about TLJ and overall it gets a lot of unnecessary hate, and usually a lot of the arguments are not well constructed beyond "I didn't like it". The main three gripes I hear about it are: a) Finn's side story was unnecessary (which, sure - maybe. I could see both sides of that argument so won't fight about it) b) Luke was nerfed from his Legends persona (arguably, was a fantastic decision) c) the immediate death of some characters.

    Legends Luke's power is stupid and god-like. At one point he walks on the surface of a black hole, which is absolute trash fan fiction. Legends makes a very poorly/quickly trained Jedi into a Master and the absolute strongest being in the universe, who is so powerful that he basically isn't human anymore. It makes for a very boring character, similar to Superman. TLJ makes Luke into a believable character, considering his background and what's happened to him since we last saw him. 30 years is a long time and he's seen some shit - all without a lot of the proper Jedi training that other Jedi received since they were children.

    As for the deaths of Phasma and Snoke: who cares? The main reason for them to be around was to be monoliths for Finn and Kylo Ren to overcome. They weren't interesting characters otherwise and we find out why Snoke wasn't developed further in the next movie. Also, Kylo Ren should be the focus of a movie in the Skywalker saga, not the newbie Snoke. Removing him was a good choice. Finn's monolith being removed gives him an opportunity to move to a new phase in the next movie, which was then not utilized by JJ. Furthermore, Phasma was supposed to be the next Boba Fett: just a marketable character who was pretty boring in the original trilogy but looked cool so his action figure sold well. TLJ does a very sensible thing overall: It takes unnecessary characters and writes them out of an already overcrowded character list.

    TLJ also examined what went wrong with The Force Awakens and fixes it: namely that TFA is so safe that it leans into a boring rehash of ANH. TLJ at least had the guts to do something different and take the franchise in another direction, one SW sorely still needs thanks to JJ and Disney's refusal to do something different. So much of SW in the last 2 decades has been incredibly safe - except TLJ. It really goes to show how little originality and small vision JJ Abrams and Disney have as creatives that they couldn't figure out how to handle TRoS, which is arguably the absolute worst SW film - and outperforming AotC in that regard is truly impressive.

    Last point, the last 20 or so minutes of TLJ really understands the origin of SW: Japanese samurai/ronin sword duels. It's also visually beautiful.

    TLDR: SW fans go brr, hate everything anyway.

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    Joe Biden on Benjamin Netanyahu's Gaza war: ‘Israel starting to lose support’
  • lol Didn't some of the released hostages say Israel killed some of them due to their indiscriminate bombing of civilians?

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    If you could permanently change ONE thing about the world right now what would it be and why?
  • I'd crank all human empathy levels by 15/100 points to see what happens

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    Sonic Superstars' Sales Were 'Slightly Weaker' Than Sega Had Anticipated
  • Kind of seems silly to buy any game developed by Sonic Team these days. They are either half-baked ideas (Sonic with a sword? Sonic as a werewolf?) or glitchy messes with repetitive, cheap gameplay (Frontiers, Lost World). They seem to rarely learn from previous mistakes or grow as a development team, similar to Gamefreak. Both studios are sustained by name recognition.

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    YouTube Says New 5-Second Video Load Delay Is Supposed to Punish Ad Blockers, Not Firefox Users
  • Watching 4 ads in a video under 6 minutes is bad design.

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    The future of Fitbit doesn't look good | Digital Trends
  • It's the worst when you already own a product and then Google buys it, e.g. Nest.

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    Israel sends thousands of cross-border Palestinian workers back to Gaza
  • Concentration camp turned graveyard

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    ‘Captain Marvel’ Tracking Lower Than ‘The Flash’ — World of Reel
  • we’re all bored with the same product over and over again.

    Obviously with the success of the franchise I am in the minority with this belief, but from a critical standpoint 80% of the MCU films are "okay" and just popcorn flicks. There's nothing wrong with that, but now that has caught up with the viewers and Disney.

    Infinity War was special because the good guys actually lost and that alone shook things up for once. Endgame was special because it was the culmination of 10 years of filmmaking and a downright spectacle. Once you drill in beyond those, there are only a few standouts: Winter Soldier, Civil War, Iron Man 1 and Age of Ultron are all standouts in my opinion due to their themes: "what really defines the good guys?"

    There are a few others I enjoyed but they had problems: In Homecoming, Feige really screwed up a lot about what makes Peter Parker likeable. Ragnarok was fun but in retrospect it is dragged down in quality by the major screw ups of its successor and its refusal to take much seriously. The misfits of GotG were fun too but ultimately its success really messed up the tone of the entire franchise. None of those 3 really jump out as memorable long-term, either - just fun. The rest are forgettable and almost cookie cutter copies of each other.

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    The Beatles’ ‘last’ song ‘Now and Then’ is released
  • but seriously, why?

    It's a pretty cool and special release in my opinion, no need to be a hater. Literally all of the Beatles were included on the track as each of them touched it in some way over the last 30 years: John's now isolated vocals from his demo tape was the starting point, George's recorded guitar parts from before he died and obviously Ringo and Paul's work too. Given Paul and Ringo's ages it's a beautiful send-off to some of the most famous and influential musicians to have ever lived.

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    The Beatles’ ‘last’ song ‘Now and Then’ is released
  • You can hear Paul and or Ringo in some parts and I think the reason the vocals aren't louder is because they've lost a significant amount of their vocal range.

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    The Beatles’ ‘last’ song ‘Now and Then’ is released
  • Peter Jackson and his team are the MVPs

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    Isreal unlikely to listen to West’s growing unease, scholar says --- [Opinion]
  • Sounds like Israel doesn't need any more military lunch money.

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    Sakurai Is Sceptical That Future Smash Bros. Titles Can Match Ultimate's Scope
  • I've said this on smash forums before and had the toxic side of the fanbase lose their shit over it, but the next Smash Bros iteration should be a complete reset on the roster and that roster's movesets. e.g. Samus Aran should be reworked to incorporate skills from Samus Returns, Fusion, the Prime series and Dread. Right now her moveset is stuck on her Super Metroid form. Link should be reworked to be more based on BotW/TotK. Mario should be reworked to incorporate Odyssey, Galaxy and Wonder.

    I LOVE the Smash franchise and have devoted thousands of hours of my life to the series - but that doesn't change many characters growing stale and being trapped in their pasts. Right now Smash celebrates gaming legacies, but it should be changed to celebrate more than just the distant legacies. The last 10 years of most characters are completely ignored by the current roster. It should celebrate those characters' futures too.

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    Graphic pro-Israel ads make their way into children’s video games
  • The Israeli government is heading towards a totalitarian state. Netanyahu was already trying to alter the courts before all this went down.

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  • I bring this up because it seems to once again be gaining traction in the zeitgeist: I cannot comprehend why UFO hunters put so much time and effort into trying to force governments to "reveal the truth about extraterrestrial contact", but I also cannot fathom how they think aliens even have a chance of successfully contacting us in-person in the first place.

    a) Why does anyone believe extraterrestrials would be able to track us down at all? Space is BIG. b) If aliens knew we existed in the first place, please explain the math of how they'd get here. Even taking Star Trek logic into account and considering warp drive as a possibility, when considering relativity, Newton's third law and the mathematics of achieving the right conditions of either for deep space travel, warp drive still seems implausible. c) In the mathematically improbable situation where intelligent life did manage to get here, why would they be tiptoeing around in the background for seemingly 80 or so years when they are clearly technologically superior to us and nothing humanity has available to itself could remotely stop them? It seems silly to imagine these incredible lifeforms getting here and then having an "oops we crash landed" event. d) Lastly, governments successfully covering up such an event(s) for decades is a fairy tale. Governments playing around with flight and stealth technology for the last 100 years? Yeah that seems likely.

    Do I think intelligent life exists? Absolutely. Is there a chance those beings have contacted or reached us? 99.9999999% no. Is it fun to speculate about the possibilities and portray those possibilities in stories? Of course. Should people be spending time and money forming organizations to "force the government to tell the truth", thereby wasting everyone else's time and resources and ultimately being drains on society? Absolutely not. I don't get it.

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