dang-the-bird

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The current political divide

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I've heard that Biden (though not nearly as progressive as Bernie) still has a more progressive platform than Obama had (in 2008) I was pretty young then and don't remember much besides Shut down Guantanamo and Obamacare I know Biden wants to expand Obamacare, but i can't really compare on any other issues since I remember so little But how true is it that his platform is better? And how likely do you think it is that he'd actually try to do the more progressive parts of it?

Let’s remember that it has been 12 years since Obama’s campaign. We should expect more from Democrats every single year.

That Biden’s (shitty) platform is more “progressive” than Obama’s is not saying much. Just as Obama ended up selling out to the elite, so too will Biden fall back on his conservative record in the face of corporate lobbyist. In other words, Biden will not fight for progressive legislation.

Biden’s weakness (strength?) is his flexibility on issues, so this does give progressives some room to push him to the left. Of course this also makes room for the right to do the same thing

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AMC, the largest theater chain in the world, reached a deal with investors to save the ship from sinking. I find this investment to be a complete waste and an idiotic attempt to revive this company that seems to consistently practices bad business.

If you can’t read the Wall Street Journal article linked at the top here’s the TLDR:

AMC investors pumped $300 million into the company despite being owed $1.6 billion. That massive debt was swapped for a discount (about “73 cents on the dollar,” so to my understanding that cuts out about 500 million on the debt? unsure how this debt discount thing works on this scale) and more added debt after this recent investment.

Obviously COVID-19 was a huge financial hit for the company, forcing AMC to shut down about 1,000 theaters and lay off about 600 employees, but the pandemic extenuated problems that already existed. The chain has been struggling to hold on to an industry that’s dying on a big corporate scale. Smaller chains with more of an emphasis on having a high quality experience (like Alamo Drafthouse... I love them) with events, good food, a real bar service and etc should be able to compete in their respective areas instead of being eclipsed by these larger chains. “Free market” and all that, ya know? AMC focuses more on getting as many people in the theater as possible with gross sticky floors, overly-expensive garbage food, bad quality audio and visual presentations, etc. General audiences can get a better movie watching experience in their own homes now, and AMC knows it.

Remember that Trolls movie drama? AMC boycotted Universal Pictures films for they decided to release their movies on streaming services before theaters. When Universal released Trolls, they made a LOT of money. Record-breaking cash moolah we’re talking. This of course pissed off AMC, but banning Universal was an unbelievably stupid decision. It wasn’t even that long ago that Jurassic World was a record-breaking hit, so that’s a massive money maker that they got rid of in a business “strategy” that shows pettiness more than anything imo. I guess it was a way of threatening other studios, saying “don’t push your stuff online or you’ll lose out on this big, profitable theater market!!” which is hilarious since Trolls did so well, and it’s f**king TROLLS. If Disney decided to release Avengers: Endgame on streaming services first, I imagine it would have been an even bigger financial hit than it already was. Overall, bad idea, dying service getting owned by the at-home factor.

And then the mask stuff. AMC initially wasn’t going to require customers to wear masks as they reopen, stating they don’t want to be the center of a “political controversy.” Nice job there, team. AMC is pushing reopening so they can save their own asses and it doesn’t seem like they’re interested in taking the proper precautions to do so. They’re requiring masks now after the pressure since they literally cannot take any more beatings, but they have not yet made any announcements as to how they’ll manage habitual cleanings. Social distancing will reportedly be enforced by signs. What particularly concerns me here is that staying in a room with several others for 1-2 hours with recycled air doesn’t seem like it’ll be appealing to customers fearing of the virus at all (which Should be everybody, but y’know... americans).

To make an overly-long ramble story short, why did these dumbass investors pump hundreds of millions of dollars into a massive dying company monopolizing a dying industry? Let it die. C’mon.

[dang-the-bird]

At least one highly dedicated Wikipedia user has been scrubbing controversial aspects of Harris’s “tough-on-crime” record from her Wikipedia page, her decision not to prosecute Steve Mnuchin for mortgage fraud-related crimes, her strong support of prosecutors in Orange County who engaged in rampant misconduct, and other tidbits — such as her previous assertion that “it is not progressive to be soft on crime” — that could prove unflattering to Harris as the public first gets to know her on the national stage. The edits, according to the page history, have elicited strong pushback from Wikipedia’s volunteer editor brigade, and have drawn the page into controversy, though it’s a fight the pro-Harris editor is currently winning.  

In 2016, The Atlantic published an article about Wikipedia edits and how a burst of activity could foreshadow Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential pick, noting that Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine’s page had seen significantly more edits than any other candidate’s in the weeks leading up to the announcement. The article also cited a 2008 Washington Post report about Sarah Palin’s Wikipedia page seeing more than 65 edits in the hours leading up to John McCain’s announcement.

Last month, a Reddit user remembered this Atlantic piece and wrote a Jupyter script to see which 2020 vice presidential contender had the most edits in a span of three weeks: Harris had 408, Stacey Abrams had 66, Sen. Elizabeth Warren had 22, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar had four. Another Redditor pointed out that a majority of Harris’s edits were coming from a single person.