I can confirm. I have the family plan and got ads when I was listening earlier today. Contacted support. Got no where. Canceled my subscription.

Could be either, depending how you write it.

Lean into the creepy factor and ramp up the anxiety by adding recent events found in the tape and a feeling of en-ease as they’re discovered. Deja vu can solidify it further, causing chills down the spine. Add an event that is then found on the tape before it happens, proving it’s a prediction. As the tape is repaired, more is discovered. Your indication of progress is how much tape is left to repair, providing a mystery, and anxiety, of what will be found next.

Lean into the sad factor by showing the world now and reminiscing on the lost. Ramp it up with something the character loved, maybe shown in the tape, and then showing the last of it going away. Add in the nice old man, the character’s savior, dying; not from age, but because of the destruction. Could show malnourished children, though that can be triggering. Showing malnourished animals would give a strong visceral reaction without having the same trigger. Be careful going too far in this direction as it can quickly become depression porn. You’d need to have a ray of hope or something the character is fighting for. The tape could help if it’s shown to have accurate predictions. It could show a happy, green field, blue sky, kids playing type thing at the end. This could give the character hope.

Another layer of sadness would then be an oscillation between believing in the happy prediction or not. To ramp that up, show one tape prediction as false, or presumed to be false to the character though actually true. (Think Shrek 2 when he thinks the potion is a dud until the next morning, though the audience sees it worked after he turned away). It’d be up to you to determine if the final hope is true or not, letting you end on a high note, or a low one. Either way could be impactful.

Overall, it’s a fun premise which you can take in many directions.

I might be an outlier, but I enjoy working. I like what I do. I also like having money.

Most days, when I get home, I do whatever housework is needed and still have time to spend with my family, work on home projects, or relax and play a game or whatnot.

Take care of yourself by exercising and eating right, find a job you enjoy, and you won’t be dead tired after work. Granted, there are occasional days when I’m exhausted, but they’re the exception, not the norm.

I’m middle age, and as much as you are not looking forward to working, that’s how I feel about retirement. I don’t know if I will ever retire, not because of money, but because I think I’d get bored.

Taylor Swift, “You Belong With Me”?

It’s like we’re in a strange, speed run, crossover episode of the fall of Rome meets WW2 Germany. Once the AI and housing bubbles pop, elements of the great depression will be mixed in. That will be the final tipping point. People are protesting now, but many more are held back by needing to keep a job and a place to live. If a large percentage of the population - as in great depression level percentages - don’t have those anymore… it’s a terrifying prospect.

Lowering interest rates let’s the bubbles continue, and worsen, while also cutting the safety net for when they do pop. This is the time to keep or slowly raise rates to deflate the bubble. Prop up single family home ownership, redduce landlords and rent gouging. Prevent company cross investment. Split large companies to soften the fall. Invest in energy infrastructure to ensure it doesn’t fail next.

Economic policy is going to be what either saves or breaks us. Unfortunately, the current administration is running in the opposite direction of sensible solutions.

I’ve had a few Samsung appliances. They are, by far, the worst appliances I’ve owned. I will not be buying another from them. If they want to make life more convenient, they need to make better devices, not shove screens, wifi, and AI into their crappy products.

Source?

Former Navy nuke here… though I’ve been out for a while now and don’t know if I’d still be considered an expert. Regardless, no, no it can’t.

I’m with you. Professional sports have gone downhill. I used to be a diehard Denver Broncos fan. I had DirectTV specifically so I could get every NFL game. During football season, I’d watch every game I could. If I were to do that now, I’d need a number of different streaming services. Apart from that, I began watching less and less a few years ago when every other commercial, and every commentation, became about betting. Draft Kings, Fan Dual, MGM, and whatever else there was. It stopped being about watching the game and became more about gambling.

With baseball, they’re digitally putting ads on the pitcher’s mound. A couple years ago, they added advertising patches to the damn uniforms. It’s disgusting. People don’t play for a team anymore, they play for a brand.

Yet, even with all the additional ad revenue, ticket and concession prices have skyrocketed. It used to be that you could take a family of four to a game and not break the bank. Now, a single game is the cost of a full vacation. With four tickets, concession, and parking, you’re paying at least $500. And that’s without any sort of souvenirs. To make it worse, every team is wanting a new stadium and they are forcing the cities and states to pay for it through taxes. It’s greed on top of greed on top of greed.

I can’t stand watching professional sports anymore. On the plus side, I now have a lot more time to do other things that are a more fun and give a better sense of accomplishment than, “Hey, my team won.”

Better title: Pathetic man sees is power slipping away and lashes out.

That’s how they’ve always woked; it’s up to the individual. What would be great, and hear me out, what if there was a group of experts, scientists and doctors, who meet and discuss the scientific and medical merits of a vaccine based on the latest peer reviewed research, then make a recommendation to the general public on whether they should get it, based on risk factors such as age and lifestyle in order to help the general public make as informed of a decision as possible. Oh, wait…

Soon you won’t need to use their spyware app at all and will be able to just flag down one of the drivers on the street. Maybe they’ll even have a special color vehicle to indicate which ones; like a bright yellow so it will stand out.

Attacking someone who is widly regarded as one of the nicest people on the planet. That will surely be enough to distract everyone from the Epstein files and make them all forget that the president is a sexual predator.

I’m sure the CEO saying this has absolutely nothing to do with the administration’s attempt to force the drug manufacturers to justify the validity of the vaccine. There is no way he would say something like that, just to create headlines tying the president to the success of vaccine. The president is way too smart and well adjusted to be manipulated by someone implying that if the president questions the vaccine, he is saying he didn’t deserve the Nobel. It must be a complete coincidence.

/s… in case I was somehow more subtle than the Pfizer CEO.

And that somehow makes it better?

Yup, like the bean.

Hey, you said it right. So many people pronounce it Lee-ma, like Lima, Puru. But it’s really pronounced Lie-ma.

I get you probably meant it as a joke, but still… And of course, a joke someone might learn something from, well, that joke just became 10% better. Or was ruined completely. It can go either way… But it is Lima (Lie-ma), Ohio.

“Without sacraficing university values,” implies the university values never included integrity, morality, or common fucking sense. Brown keeps their academic independence… as long as they do what they are told.

And this is how rights are stripped away. One at a time. This time, it’s about archaic definitions of “male” and “female.” What’s next? Sexuality, right? No gays allowed, or you’ll lose funding. Followed by people of color? Then women? It will be one concession after another. And Brown just said, they are not only fine with it, they’ll pay $50m for the privilege.

Doesn’t sound like a school that has their students in mind.

In summary: Pay no attention to the Epstein stuff. Look over here… Obama, Hillary, and Biden were mean to Trump a decade ago. They used evidence when making arguments. Can you imagine such treasonous activity? A president shouldn’t do such things. If we start relying on evidence, it would show Trump is a ped… uh… pedestrian, yeah, pedestrian, that’s it. It’s obviously treasonous to look at facts.

They are a middleman and do take a slight overhead, 1.1% last I saw, though it might have changed since then. The benefit is one of simplicity. Many people want to give to charity and aren’t sure which one. UW let’s them donate one place and it get distributed to many. They also have criteria that charities must meet to qualify. Also, like you mentioned, they do the paycheck deduction. All of what they do is about making it easier and hassle free as possible to donate, making it more likely that people will.