Do you mean from a historical standpoint? It depends on the culture, but it’s pretty recent in its current iteration — in the west, it followed the rise of Christianity. For much of western history at least, it was considered OK to pitch, within reason (manly!) but not to catch (effeminate!). Warring states China was pretty similar. I’m less familiar with India but in any case that would have been suppressed by the Mughals.

That is brilliantly simple. Certainly better than using collector limpets.

That’s true, but what you describe is pretty much the end state of big-box retail. Amazon is essentially the same, if we exclude AWS. It’s all a race to the bottom. The solution, as always, is to buy direct from smaller producers if possible.

I dislike that you’ve put me in the position of defending Walmart, but don’t you find it rather misleading to imply that they made 163 billion dollars in profit when the real number is less than 10% of that?

Yes, but there are many more expenses associated with running their business beyond simply COGS. Their net income last year was 11B, which is pretty average for a company that size.

Not really — it’s because nearly everything they sell is highly fungible, and they compete on price. Nobody is willing to pay a premium to shop at Walmart. Twenty years ago you’d have been correct, but they’ve pretty much saturated the market at this point. They’re trying to find profitability in automation rather than adding tons of new stores.

Slim profit margins my ass. Walmarts gross profit for the twelve months ending July 31, 2024 was $163.786B,

Not to sound flippant, but do you know what gross profit means? They aren’t pocketing all of that. Walmart’s net profit margin is 2.66%, which is minuscule. They make up for that by having enormous volume.

Just a thought, but several of your anecdotes could describe 19th-century Europe, England in particular. Obviously India today is far more advanced than Victorian England, but still, is it possible that these are just normal growing pains for a country?

What if I take a screenshot and make an NFT out of it?

Came here to say this. The implications for food security would be massive, but it would also have an enormous impact on climate change, cutting GHG emissions by one-third.

I skim the Wikipedia page on whatever topic is being discussed and pretend to be an expert.

This happened to me years ago (the .com of my full name). I kept checking in at expiry date for 3 years and they eventually let it expire, so I bought it back for normal price.

I expect any porn model trained on a sufficient diversity of adult actors could be used to make convincing CP even without having it in the training data.

I know I’m wading into the danger zone here, but let’s also remember we’re talking about teenagers. A (for example) 15 year old’s body type will be closer to an 18 year old’s than a 5 year old’s, so the perfectly legal porn model would work just fine for that, uh, purpose.

I don’t think the models are trained on CP. They’re likely trained on widely-available porn.

There’s a simple answer:

Yeah, but it’s still surprising. Most Trump diehards are pro-Russian. I almost have to respect Luckey for being driven by money above all else; at least this makes him a known quantity.

As for your other comment, I can’t even begin to imagine how that stands up logically. Russia could steamroll whoever they want if we weren’t armed.

I’m actually surprised he’s pro-Ukraine, given how much of a right-wing scumbag he is (Trump supporter and all)

Also, the whinging about weapons is unhelpful. Ukrainians can’t defend their country against Russian aggression with hopes and dreams.

Define “today”? My first pick would be Yesterday, but that’s about 60 years old already.

XcQ, link stays blue

Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe comes to mind:

If you need more than one domain there’s also a business plan that gives you 3 for less money than the top-tier individual plan.