Looks like a tub of Peter Pan Peanut Butter costs $5.69 at Target and yields 7600 calories. If you wanted to die young, you could live off of $1.50 a day!
There seems to be something slightly ironical about the prospect of dying young from overdosing on Peter Pan .
Time is definitely a factor. I'm simply not patient enough to spend time cooking (I don't enjoy the process; I have other things I can do with that time), so a lot of my food choices involve what is simplest to prepare. I already have a fairly healthy diet, but even I could make it healthier if I took the time to cook.
Healthy diets can be cheaper if you invest time in them, but even then, I think the absolute cheapest diet--the diet that simply fulfilled your calorie needs and kept you alive, if not healthy--would probably involve relying on sugar-heavy products or rice. A big bag of rice can feed you for days and only cost a few bucks (I don't know about the fuel cost in cooking it); a bulk bag of cereal can do the same. If we go strictly by calories, you can get LOTS of calories from peanut butter at a fairly low price. The calorie-to-cost ratio can be very high for certain foods.
Looks like a tub of Peter Pan Peanut Butter costs $5.69 at Target and yields 7600 calories. If you wanted to die young, you could live off of $1.50 a day!
I don't think that would "keep you alive" in the sense that you would live as long as on a normal diet. You'd die to scurvy or something. I think the absolute cheapest diet that would keep you alive would be loads of cheap vegetables like beetroot and carrots, they have lower calorie content but relatively high nutrition value.
You do need a certain minimum number of calories to survive. Carrots are 186 calories per pound, so you'd need to eat more than 10 pounds, or 5 kilograms, of carrots to get your daily value of calories. A kilogram of beetroot would get 370 calories, so you'd need about 5 kilograms of beetroot per day to survive as well. The sheer volume of food you'd need to eat seems like it would impose a heavy burden on your digestive tract.
I would guess that the best low-cost, moderately nutrient-rich diet would probably involve a great deal of egg-fried rice. Eggs and rice are both incredibly cheap, and while even brown rice is mostly just carbs, the eggs would fill in a lot of nutrients, and a bit of milk could fill in the rest.
Or just eat a bunch of peanut butter and then take a multivitamin and a fiber supplement. Although once you hit a certain point, a diet starts looking less like a source of nutrition and more of a dystopian life support system.
You do need a certain minimum number of calories to survive. Carrots are 186 calories per pound, so you'd need to eat more than 10 pounds, or 5 kilograms, of carrots to get your daily value of calories. A kilogram of beetroot would get 370 calories, so you'd need about 5 kilograms of beetroot per day to survive as well. The sheer volume of food you'd need to eat seems like it would impose a heavy burden on your digestive tract.
I would guess that the best low-cost, moderately nutrient-rich diet would probably involve a great deal of egg-fried rice. Eggs and rice are both incredibly cheap, and while even brown rice is mostly just carbs, the eggs would fill in a lot of nutrients, and a bit of milk could fill in the rest.
Or just eat a bunch of peanut butter and then take a multivitamin and a fiber supplement. Although once you hit a certain point, a diet starts looking less like a source of nutrition and more of a dystopian life support system.
I would probably favour carrots, beetroot, eggs and a little carbs as required. Potatoes or sweet potatoes for example. Veggies for life!
Yeah, it's not just the cost of eating healthy. If someone is working 2 or 3 jobs to try and survive (as some people certainly do) they may not have the time to cook healthy. I know a lot of people who barely have the time and energy to throw a sandwich together to eat. To them, slopping some peanut butter on two slices of bread is all they have the time and energy to do and snacking on some cheap chocolate from the dollar store is all they have time for.
Even when I cook, it's from canned stuff. Or I make "Tuna Noodle Casserole" with macaroni Noodles, canned Tuna and Early peas. I can also do chicken pot pie with canned Mixed Veggies, a can of cream of chicken soup, cooked chicken, some bisquick, milk and an egg. Or "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie"- Ground beef, Canned Mixed Vegetables, Canned cheese soup, milk, Bisquick, water and Shredded sharp cheddar cheese.
And my mom used to make what she called 2/2/2- 2 cans Tomato Soup, 2 cups Cooked Macaroni and 2 lbs of cooked ground beef all mixed together and baked in the oven.
I understand why ppl who work three jobs don't have energy to cook, but for everyone else, buying pre-cooked food or canned vegetables instead of just regular vegetables is just mind-boggling. If you have a pair of hands, a knife and something to slice on, why not just buy vegetables and cut them, cook them and eat them?
I see many, many people of "working class", working regular 8 hour work days who eat McD all the time. Then I see educated ppl working 60 hour work week who still eat healthy food they cook themselves or buy from places that serve actually good food. It's.. interesting, from a cultural perspective that buying just potatoes and vegetables, which is cheaper, can be seen in statistics (from what I've read) as being less common in groups with less money, who would then have a lot to gain from it. You also see the same group having a higher percentage of ie smokers etc.
I'm not really making an argument here about working class ppl being lazy, stupid or anything, it's just interesting. I also won't prove my "point" by digging up the statistics, since I am not really proving a point.
What's your thinking here, can you see the same behaviour within your local communities?
Personally, I don't cook because I find it boring. I see the value in it, but it's not for me. Same thing with exercise, really.
If I had any health problems, of course, that would be a different story. But basically the only times I ever get sick are when I lapse on my diet and eat too much sugar, which generally just means after the holidays, when there's cookies everywhere. I don't know how many years it's been since I was sick enough to throw up--and that was over in a couple minutes. When I was a kid and had a worse diet, I got sick rather often.
I see my primary care doctor tomorrow, actually, since I've been having chronic eye pains. That's my one health issue, and it's nothing a couple Ibuprofen can't fix (in fact, it's mild enough that I can actually ignore it and keep operating just fine). It's probably just due to sinus pressure, but it's safer to check to make sure it's not something more serious.
Also in El Paso, Beto O'Roarke held an "Anti-Wall" rally, which got a larger turnout, which must have galled Trump to no end.Trump lied and said he had a crowd of "35,000", but the facility at which Trump spoke only holds 11,000, and Beto's crowd is estimated at 10,000-15,000. That he lied is not unusual. (Daily Kos: Trump claimed he had a crowd of 35,000, and said O’Rourke had a couple hundred. But the El Paso Coliseum where Trump held his rally reportedly only holds 11,000. Bloomberg News reported that O'Rourke drew a crowd of 10,000 to 15,000.) Here are pictures from the Counter-Rally: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/11/1833991/--FatNixon-in-El-Paso-live-updates-including-counter-rally?detail=emaildkre
And, of course, Sean Hannity is against any sort of deal, calling it "a garbage compromise". :P
Trump also seems to be heading for another Shutdown, and is once again trying to blame Democrats, when in reality, of course, it's His refusing to have anything less than a wall which is to blame.
Meanwhile, the government is stuffing teens into a Florida Detention Center like Sardines in a can (70 to 250 kids PER ROOM), giving them cold rooms, substandard food and schooling (all of which ticks me off as a human being, if not an American) and they are being held there for up to 6 months at a time. Originally, these teens were being housed 12 to one room, which is bad enough, but one of the larger buildings have been retrofitted to make these new, larger areas, in which you can barely walk by the chain-link walls sideways without brushing a wall on one side and a bunk bed on the other. It sounds like a holocaust-era camp! I find this completely disgusting.
The Homestead complex, which was opened by the Obama administration in 2016 for a 10-month period, is on federal land beside Homestead Air Reserve Base in Miami-Dade County. The campus, made up of buildings and tents, is surrounded by chain-link fences with guards at every entrance. Children are not allowed to leave the facility, despite regulations in the Flores settlement specifying that children’s shelters must be non-secure, and they must wear wristbands that track their movements.
The shelter is “very militaristic” and “highly regimented.” The children wake up at 6:30 a.m., spend most of the day in school, save for roughly an hour of outdoor time, and go to bed at around 10 p.m. They walk in single-file lines and eat at the cafeteria three times a day. They can only call their parents twice a week for 10 minutes. Teens. Who have done nothing but come here with their parents. ::Shaking my head.:: It's not that these kids are gang members or anything, but these kids are being essentially imprisoned by the Trump Administration for long periods of time to torture them and their parents.
It's gotten so bad that more than 100 companies are calling for permanent protections for undocumented young people.Mainly for DACA kids, but others as well.
Ouch. This Green New Deal might turn out to be a major boon for the Republicans. The timing couldn't be better for Trump after he took a black eye over the shutdown. It looks like McConnel is going to procede with a vote on it to get every Senator on-record as to approving or opposing it. Occasio-Cortez might have made her first rookie mistake...
"Wait, there aren't enough rich people to pay for all this so I might have to pay higher taxes for it? That's not what was promised! Screw that!!!"
Happened in France, would happen here too. Don't throw these pie in the sky wishful thinking promises out there. Let's have a real discussion about how much it's going to cost ME not some mythical 'evil rich dudes'...
What do women's rights, LGBT rights, gun control and Wall Street regulation have to do with higher taxes?? Half of the things on that list have nothing to do with spending money at all.
I throw out the baby with the bathwater. Why should I vote for a party that is going to rob me just because they're supposedly 'better human beings'? What exactly have they really accomplished with all their platitudes? It's talk to get people to think they're great human beings while they lift your wallet. I used to think the Republicans were more fiscally conservative but I've lost any faith I had in them as well. That doesn't mean I think the Democratic Party is any better. Talk, talk, talk - get people riled up - talk some more - have a rally or a protest - talk again - blah, blah, blah... Net change = 0. Exactly what they want, your vote, no results. Sounds like both parties to me...
The Democratic Party hasn't controlled Congress since 2010, where its primary reform was the ACA. The GOP controlled both houses up until the 2018 midterms, resulting in gridlock until Trump took over, where the government's primary reforms were a tax cut and family separations at the border. Even now, the Democratic party only controls the House; the Senate remains under GOP control.
The reason we have "Net change = 0" is because the Democratic party hasn't controlled the legislature in nearly 10 years. To this day, we have a GOP-controlled government, and this is what a GOP-controlled government does.
If a given Democratic policy doesn't pass, I'm going to blame that on the people who voted against it.
What do women's rights, LGBT rights, gun control and Wall Street regulation have to do with higher taxes?? Half of the things on that list have nothing to do with spending money at all.
And half of what's left mean spending less money. Justice reform = stop paying middlemen to cage people who shouldn't be in jail in the first place. Immigration justice means cutting the border guards, since there would presumably be an easy to get seasonal workers' visa. Medicare for all means not having to buy health insurance and goodbye to the $35 Tylenol capsule.
Ouch. This Green New Deal might turn out to be a major boon for the Republicans. The timing couldn't be better for Trump after he took a black eye over the shutdown. It looks like McConnel is going to procede with a vote on it to get every Senator on-record as to approving or opposing it. Occasio-Cortez might have made her first rookie mistake...
Mitch McConnell last month:
“The last thing we need to do right now is to trade pointless show votes across the aisle” McConnell
So he's a hypocrite. Whatever.
This is the same piece of trash who got burned doing this same thing before and ended up filibustering his own bill.
Dems have options: they can say screw him, approve it call his bluff. Or any Dems can vote no based on the bill not actually being complete. Republicans can screw themselves by denying climate change but a lot of their states have recently been devastated snowy hellstates they are setting themselves up to lines of attack in their own states just as much. But whatever regardless of this vote, something still has to be done to save the planet.
Worldwide consensus of everyone in the world outside the Republican party is that climate change is a dire problem.
Republicans have shown they certainly aren't capable of handling the crisis - look how badly they messed up healthcare.
It's really sad that Republicans feel like they have to focus all their energy on find anything that could be used against AOC. They are that scared of her. ROFL.
@Balrog99 it sounds to me like you're saying you don't like career politicians who just talk with no expectation of changing anything - does that really sound like Ocasio-Cortez?
I see others are making similar points, but here's my quick view of the financial implications of the things she wants to change:
Likely to save money
[*] Medicare for all
[*] Criminal justice reform, end private prisons
[*] Immigration justice / abolish ICE
[*] Clean campaign finance
[*] Curb Wall Street gambling: restore Glass Steagal
No clear view on cost
[*] Gun control / assault weapons ban
[*] Solidarity with Puerto Rico
[*] Mobilizing against climate change
[*] Women's rights
[*] Support LGBTQIA+
[*] Support seniors
Likely to cost money
[*] Housing as a human right
[*] A federal jobs guarantee
[*] Higher education for all
As a whole I just don't see how you can characterize this program as something designed to 'pick your pocket'. Of course the Green New Deal is at this stage just an agenda setting exercise. The devil will be in the detail if it ever moves on to generate legislation and there will be cost implications to certain proposals (in particular climate change - though for that we're now at the stage where things are going to cost more, either more now or a lot more later). However, I don't understand why in the US, when there's such an obsession about doing many things as cheaply as possible, there's not more pressure to reduce costs on things like health care and imprisonment (which are extremely expensive without delivering any improvements in outcomes over international norms).
Talking about obsession to do things as cheaply as possible, here's an article about 'mountaintop removal' mining in the US. A bit like climate change, even if you ascribe no value at all to the environmental consequences, it seems to me that such activity only appears cheap because you're transferring costs from private corporations to the public sector and individuals. If you believe in individual freedoms, then shouldn't you also believe in individual responsibilities - which would include a 'polluter pays' principle?
Speaking of AOC, someone on Twitter has spread a lie about her having a 430 Credit Score, 2 Sherriff evictions and 2 checking accounts closed- with no evidence of the same. It's gotten so bad that Snopes had to create a page about it on their website because it is so widely being spread about her by trolls from the Internet. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-credit/
Can we officially say this is completely BEYOND ridiculous now?
What do women's rights, LGBT rights, gun control and Wall Street regulation have to do with higher taxes?? Half of the things on that list have nothing to do with spending money at all.
And half of what's left mean spending less money. Justice reform = stop paying middlemen to cage people who shouldn't be in jail in the first place. Immigration justice means cutting the border guards, since there would presumably be an easy to get seasonal workers' visa. Medicare for all means not having to buy health insurance and goodbye to the $35 Tylenol capsule.
I'd also say stop paying Private Prisons to incarcerate people. Stop signing agreements to keep these prisons 90+% full or pay millions of dollars in penalties to the Prisons. How do these prisons get away with this crap? Courts of states feel like they have to incarcerate people or cost their states $$$$. That's inherently exploitative and creates a "need" to put more people in prison to avoid paying money to these Corporations. If they go out of business, that might very well be a good thing.
Struck by the news today in regards to Activision/Blizzard laying off nearly 8% of their workforce despite literally making RECORD profits in 2018. Their explanation being that despite this fact, they didn't hit their "goals". Which translates to "we made obscene amounts of money, but we didn't make ALL the money, so heads have to roll". You will notice the people responsible for not hitting whatever these metrics are are never the executives in charge who make 10s of millions of dollars, but rank and file employees. American capitalism is rapidly becoming a diseased philosophy beyond redemption.
Struck by the news today in regards to Activision/Blizzard laying off nearly 8% of their workforce despite literally making RECORD profits in 2018. Their explanation being that despite this fact, they didn't hit their "goals". Which translates to "we made obscene amounts of money, but we didn't make ALL the money, so heads have to roll". You will notice the people responsible for not hitting whatever these metrics are are never the executives in charge who make 10s of millions of dollars, but rank and file employees. American capitalism is rapidly becoming a diseased philosophy beyond redemption.
I saw this same thing, and had the same thought. Their CEO literally said they made more money than they ever have before, and it still wasnt enough to stop layoffs.
Look - I dont mind efficient business models, but let's not create artificial requirements for solvency that have no basis in reality, and use them as excuses to hurt employees.
Struck by the news today in regards to Activision/Blizzard laying off nearly 8% of their workforce despite literally making RECORD profits in 2018. Their explanation being that despite this fact, they didn't hit their "goals". Which translates to "we made obscene amounts of money, but we didn't make ALL the money, so heads have to roll". You will notice the people responsible for not hitting whatever these metrics are are never the executives in charge who make 10s of millions of dollars, but rank and file employees. American capitalism is rapidly becoming a diseased philosophy beyond redemption.
Reminds me of this story from a well known Japanese game maker - Nintendo.
Wii U Sales Down 36%, Nintendo Executives Taking Pay Cut Forbes Jan 2014
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said he'll be taking a 50% pay cut for the next five months, with other executives slicing their salaries by 20-30%.
While the actual cost savings is a mere drop in the bucket, and the execs will likely be just fine because of their stock options, but it's more of a symbolic gesture, admitting their own wrongdoing.
They rebounded pretty well with the Nintendo Switch and didn't stick it to the workers.
There's class warfare going on in the US. And the workers have been shafted for way too long. They've been on the bottom for so long they don't even know they are being taken advantage of.
I always assumed gaming companies were like ad agencies and hired by project. If a project gets finished with no other project in the pipeline, or if a project gets cancelled, people will be shown the door. Having people sitting around waiting for work isn’t cost effective.
Edit: I’ll also say, if you google Blizaard Lay-off and then look at the twitter announcements, it’s pretty much a crap load of other gaming companies headhunting. I think a majority of these workers will be fine.
I always assumed gaming companies were like ad agencies and hired by project. If a project gets finished with no other project in the pipeline, or if a project gets cancelled, people will be shown the door. Having people sitting around waiting for work isn’t cost effective.
Edit: I’ll also say, if you google Blizaard Lay-off and then look at the twitter announcements, it’s pretty much a crap load of other gaming companies headhunting. I think a majority of these workers will be fine.
No, what happened is their CEO and new CFO (who they JUST hired) together make over $40 million dollars annually. Which, coincidentally, is more than those 800 employees would be making COMBINED if they all had $50,000 salaries. So, I ask again, if the metrics for what "success" are aren't being met, why isn't Bobby Kotick the first one to fall on his sword?? After all, if he's in charge, how is it not his fault?? And the answer is, no one at the top every pays for or accepts responsibility for anything. Ever. Not in this sick culture anyway. Blizzard used to spend alot of money AND make alot of money. You don't have to have EVERYTHING. This doesn't have to be "he who dies with the most toys wins" in every aspect of business. It's now abundantly clear why Mike Morhaime walked away late last year. One of the great game companies of all time has been completely swallowed and consumed by a soulless corporate juggernaut.
And, not for nothing, but if I was taking home $25 million dollars a year and then decided to upend the lives of nearly 1000 people without shaving a single dollar off my salary, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the f*****g mirror in the morning. I'd sooner throw myself off a bridge. But, then again, I'm not a predatory capitalistic sociopath like the people who run this company. This wealth concentration is going to get to the point where it is unsustainable. NOTHING is enough for these people. No amount of profit or amount of extra zeros on the end of their bank accounts will satiate their greed. They want ALL of it. These type of executives are the poster children for why we should have a 70+% top marginal tax rate. Not to take in money, but to actively discourage less than 1% of the population from hoarding practically every last dime that is in circulation.
I've always had a scenario for what I would do if I won a $200 million dollar lottery. I would immediately give HALF of it away to children's cancer charities. I would buy two nice, modest houses, a nice car, and furnish the residences. And then with what would undoubtedly be the the $40 million I'd have left in the bank, I'd find some way to spend $30 million more of it on something other than myself. Because how in the name of Christ I am ever going to spend $10 million dollars more on myself over the course of 40-50 years when I have two homes paid for?? I could live off the interest alone. Having nice things is fine. Greed is not.
A) these layoffs were known to becoming game development was not affected. It is mostly publishing and Esports.
C) they have lower expectations for 2019
D) they are taking the funds from these layoffs and putting them back into game development
E) buy out packages include continued health benefits, and job coaching.
It is exactly part of what I said:
“Currently staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate. This means we need to scale down some areas of our organization. I’m sorry to share that we will be parting ways with some of our colleagues in the U.S. today. In our regional offices, we anticipate similar evaluations, subject to local requirements.”
It’s like Beamdog having 6 people doing Bengoshi’s job. They don’t need 6 Bengoshis. They terminate 4 of them with buyout packages and use that salary to hire 2 artists. Yes there are now less employees at the company, but the end product will be better, or created faster with the two new artists over the 4 community managers.
Yes it sucks that you have to terminate employees. Why do you think it took as long as it did? They make 40 million BECAUSE they can make those hard choices. Sears would probably still be around if they made those hard choices 10-15 years ago and closed half their stores and fired half their work force. Yes losing half of your work force sucks, but losing them all sucks more.
Obviously Blizaard/Activision isn’t there yet, but if Fallout 76 taught us anything, in the gaming industry, it can happen quick. Better get ahead than to let the company bloat and really have to slash staff once a failure hits.
They were hired to make money for shareholders. As much as humanly possible. And if you think anyone deserves $25 million dollars a year to make "hard choices", then that mentality is part of the problem.
Moreover, if one is even remotely familiar with the state of Blizzard's games at the moment, they need MORE community outreach and non-development roles, not less. WoW is in by far the most precarious state it has ever been in, with even players (like myself) who have stuck around for over a decade completely abandoning ship. I would be shocked at this point if FFXIV and ESO weren't neck and neck in subscribers at this point, which would have been unthinkable even 2 years ago. But we don't know because they stopped releasing their sub data two expansions ago. Their Diablo Immortal announcement was so utterly tone-deaf it caused company stock to tank (and all it took to get it to rise again was firing 800 people). They abandoned their MOBA to maintenance mode.
On the purely Activision side, Destiny 2 has done so poorly in regards to expectations that they actually handed the license back to Bungie. Call of Duty is Call of Duty. Despite disasters in nearly every area of the company, they still managed to turn a massive profit because every single game is monetized by microtransactions, aside from Diablo, which is why they are now going to turn that series into something akin to Candy Crush. It's not hard to run virtual casinos. Focusing on game development?? What game development?? The only things they have in the pipeline are remasters and some vague promise of Diablo 4 sometime this decade. They are surviving on the wallets of whales, but everyone else is abandoning ship, including this person who has been an avid supporter since 1994 when I was 12 years old. I'm just plain DONE with them, and if I wasn't before, this is certainly the nail in the coffin. Not that my money means anything, but they are going to find out that bad PR can cost money too. Lower expectations for 2019.....yeah, no kidding. And the people responsible for that are also the ones at the top of the food chain. Their announcement of that is nothing more than preemptive blame shifting and moving of the goalposts. Self-inoculation for the people actually responsible for that happening. And it has nothing to do with excessive non-developmental staff.
It's impossible to separate the predatory trends on the consumer side of the current video game industry equation from the predatory people who made these layoffs a reality. It's all part of the same bullshit. They are going to to suck money through a funnel like a frat member using a beer bong, and it's all flowing to one place, which is the top. Executives and shareholders are literally the ONLY things that matter in corporate America. Workers are given as little consideration as we humans might give an ant on the sidewalk.
Speaking of AOC, someone on Twitter has spread a lie about her having a 430 Credit Score, 2 Sherriff evictions and 2 checking accounts closed- with no evidence of the same. It's gotten so bad that Snopes had to create a page about it on their website because it is so widely being spread about her by trolls from the Internet. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-credit/
Can we officially say this is completely BEYOND ridiculous now?
It's gone from ridiculous to cognitive dissonance. Snopes points out in several of their articles debunking attacks on AOC, Republicans can't decide whether she's so poor that no-one should pay attention to her, or secretly rich and lying about her past. Apparently, they've decided to believe both claims at the same time. Many of the sites running this low credit meme are also running one that claims (without evidence, of course) that the outfit she wore to the SOTU cost $7600.
What do women's rights, LGBT rights, gun control and Wall Street regulation have to do with higher taxes?? Half of the things on that list have nothing to do with spending money at all.
And half of what's left mean spending less money. Justice reform = stop paying middlemen to cage people who shouldn't be in jail in the first place. Immigration justice means cutting the border guards, since there would presumably be an easy to get seasonal workers' visa. Medicare for all means not having to buy health insurance and goodbye to the $35 Tylenol capsule.
I'd also say stop paying Private Prisons to incarcerate people. Stop signing agreements to keep these prisons 90+% full or pay millions of dollars in penalties to the Prisons. How do these prisons get away with this crap? Courts of states feel like they have to incarcerate people or cost their states $$$$. That's inherently exploitative and creates a "need" to put more people in prison to avoid paying money to these Corporations. If they go out of business, that might very well be a good thing.
They were hired to make money for shareholders. As much as humanly possible. And if you think anyone deserves $25 million dollars a year to make "hard choices", then that mentality is part of the problem.
Moreover, if one is even remotely familiar with the state of Blizzard's games at the moment, they need MORE community outreach and non-development roles, not less. WoW is in by far the most precarious state it has ever been in, with even players (like myself) who have stuck around for over a decade completely abandoning ship. I would be shocked at this point if FFXIV and ESO weren't neck and neck in subscribers at this point, which would have been unthinkable even 2 years ago. But we don't know because they stopped releasing their sub data two expansions ago. Their Diablo Immortal announcement was so utterly tone-deaf it caused company stock to tank (and all it took to get it to rise again was firing 800 people). They abandoned their MOBA to maintenance mode.
On the purely Activision side, Destiny 2 has done so poorly in regards to expectations that they actually handed the license back to Bungie. Call of Duty is Call of Duty. Despite disasters in nearly every area of the company, they still managed to turn a massive profit because every single game is monetized by microtransactions, aside from Diablo, which is why they are now going to turn that series into something akin to Candy Crush. It's not hard to run virtual casinos. Focusing on game development?? What game development?? The only things they have in the pipeline are remasters and some vague promise of Diablo 4 sometime this decade. They are surviving on the wallets of whales, but everyone else is abandoning ship, including this person who has been an avid supporter since 1994 when I was 12 years old. I'm just plain DONE with them, and if I wasn't before, this is certainly the nail in the coffin. Not that my money means anything, but they are going to find out that bad PR can cost money too. Lower expectations for 2019.....yeah, no kidding. And the people responsible for that are also the ones at the top of the food chain. Their announcement of that is nothing more than preemptive blame shifting and moving of the goalposts. Self-inoculation for the people actually responsible for that happening. And it has nothing to do with excessive non-developmental staff.
It's impossible to separate the predatory trends on the consumer side of the current video game industry equation from the predatory people who made these layoffs a reality. It's all part of the same bullshit. They are going to to suck money through a funnel like a frat member using a beer bong, and it's all flowing to one place, which is the top. Executives and shareholders are literally the ONLY things that matter in corporate America. Workers are given as little consideration as we humans might give an ant on the sidewalk.
If you know everyone else is abandoning ship, do you not think the company knows that as well?
As I said, these layoffs are attempting to get ahead of a problem that they see coming. The backlash to micro transactions has probably made them readjust thier long term goals knowing it will not sustain the company.
That said, releasing triple A games is also no longer an efficient way to make money. They are in my opinion high risk/low reward scenerios and it takes one failure for the gaming community now to turn on you. once again, look at Fallout 76 for an example of this.
Their MOBA was a failure. They tried to squeeze into a saturated market and suffered for it. It’s why it had been abandoned the player base is strong enough to keep in on life support but nothing else.
So where does a company go from there? nostalgia has been proven to be a success so the company is banking off of that like you’ve mentioned. I can see them taking Starcraft to mobile platforms after Diablo as well. What I do know is that they’re not going to churn out 2-3 triple A or even double A games a year like they were in the early naughts.
And that is how triple A companies are going to start operating (or even have been operating for the last 5 or so years). They are going to rely on their yearly cash cows (EA Sports, Call of Duty, Assasin Creeds), they are going to invest more into mobile for P2W revenue and they’ll release one triple A title every 2 years to get a high reward payout and hopefully get a hit on a new IP (or go out and buy a smaller studio to get their IP and release that) they can bank on.
That’s the video game market today with indie companies filling in the blanks and it is not going to change.
We had discussions some time ago about the Catalan desire for independence. That's been an ongoing story in Spain and has been hotting up again this week.
- first that's because the trial has started of 12 Catalan leaders on charges of sedition and rebellion (the former President Puigdemont is not one of them - he's still in exile. The leaders face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
- the government has just lost its annual budget vote as a result of the Catalan parties voting against it in protest at the refusal to hold talks about independence. That's likely to lead to a third general election in the last 5 years.
The government's refusal to hold substantive talks about the possibility of independence for Catalonia probably reflects a slight majority opinion in Spain as a whole. This issue cuts across standard political boundaries with the socialists, conservatives and far-right parties joining forces against independence. In fact the government has been criticized for being willing to talk to Catalan leaders at all with recent public protests being organized to try and stop any talks.
So, the guy who shoved the BBC Cameraman at the Trump rally has not been charged yet. And remember when Trump said he was going to lower the Deficit? It just hit $22 Trillion. Yep, that's Trillion with a "T". And they are considering confining these migrant kids on Old AirForce Bases contaminated with all sorts of toxic things, like Lead, Arsenic, VOC's (Volatile Organic Compounds) and others. Essentially, these old bases are Superfund Sites. And they want to hold young kids there. Kids, who, because of their small bodies are even more vulnerable to that stuff.
Trump, at his rally called out President Obama for owning dog in the White House, and claimed "it felt phony" to have a dog in the White House. Anybody here remember Obama got the dogs (he had 2, Bo and Sunny) for his daughters? However, Trump's first wife, Ivanka, says that Trump just hates dogs. And on top of it, Trump doesn't want to pay back pay for Government Contractors during the shutdown. Sounds just like when he was in business... He says he won't sign any bill that pays back Government Contractors. I guess that means they won't work during shutdowns in the future.
Good news:A Mexican Scientists has found the Cure for HPV (Human PapillomaVirus)! Her name is Eva Ramón Gallegos, and she and her colleagues at the Mexico National Polytechnic Institute made the breakthrough.
Careful about claiming a 'cure' for HPV. Curing a viral infection is pretty difficult. That's why vaccines are the most effective way to combat them normally. The treatment you mentioned looks very promising but it's far from a cure...
Comments
There seems to be something slightly ironical about the prospect of dying young from overdosing on Peter Pan
I don't think that would "keep you alive" in the sense that you would live as long as on a normal diet. You'd die to scurvy or something. I think the absolute cheapest diet that would keep you alive would be loads of cheap vegetables like beetroot and carrots, they have lower calorie content but relatively high nutrition value.
I would guess that the best low-cost, moderately nutrient-rich diet would probably involve a great deal of egg-fried rice. Eggs and rice are both incredibly cheap, and while even brown rice is mostly just carbs, the eggs would fill in a lot of nutrients, and a bit of milk could fill in the rest.
Or just eat a bunch of peanut butter and then take a multivitamin and a fiber supplement. Although once you hit a certain point, a diet starts looking less like a source of nutrition and more of a dystopian life support system.
I would probably favour carrots, beetroot, eggs and a little carbs as required. Potatoes or sweet potatoes for example. Veggies for life!
Even when I cook, it's from canned stuff. Or I make "Tuna Noodle Casserole" with macaroni Noodles, canned Tuna and Early peas. I can also do chicken pot pie with canned Mixed Veggies, a can of cream of chicken soup, cooked chicken, some bisquick, milk and an egg. Or "Impossible Cheeseburger Pie"- Ground beef, Canned Mixed Vegetables, Canned cheese soup, milk, Bisquick, water and Shredded sharp cheddar cheese.
And my mom used to make what she called 2/2/2- 2 cans Tomato Soup, 2 cups Cooked Macaroni and 2 lbs of cooked ground beef all mixed together and baked in the oven.
I see many, many people of "working class", working regular 8 hour work days who eat McD all the time. Then I see educated ppl working 60 hour work week who still eat healthy food they cook themselves or buy from places that serve actually good food. It's.. interesting, from a cultural perspective that buying just potatoes and vegetables, which is cheaper, can be seen in statistics (from what I've read) as being less common in groups with less money, who would then have a lot to gain from it. You also see the same group having a higher percentage of ie smokers etc.
I'm not really making an argument here about working class ppl being lazy, stupid or anything, it's just interesting. I also won't prove my "point" by digging up the statistics, since I am not really proving a point.
What's your thinking here, can you see the same behaviour within your local communities?
If I had any health problems, of course, that would be a different story. But basically the only times I ever get sick are when I lapse on my diet and eat too much sugar, which generally just means after the holidays, when there's cookies everywhere. I don't know how many years it's been since I was sick enough to throw up--and that was over in a couple minutes. When I was a kid and had a worse diet, I got sick rather often.
I see my primary care doctor tomorrow, actually, since I've been having chronic eye pains. That's my one health issue, and it's nothing a couple Ibuprofen can't fix (in fact, it's mild enough that I can actually ignore it and keep operating just fine). It's probably just due to sinus pressure, but it's safer to check to make sure it's not something more serious.
Meanwhile, Trump was all over the place on numbers, claiming 33,000 Murders in Mexico at one point. The next time he mentioned it, it was 38,000 and a third time "almost 40,000".
Also in El Paso, Beto O'Roarke held an "Anti-Wall" rally, which got a larger turnout, which must have galled Trump to no end.Trump lied and said he had a crowd of "35,000", but the facility at which Trump spoke only holds 11,000, and Beto's crowd is estimated at 10,000-15,000. That he lied is not unusual. (Daily Kos: Trump claimed he had a crowd of 35,000, and said O’Rourke had a couple hundred. But the El Paso Coliseum where Trump held his rally reportedly only holds 11,000. Bloomberg News reported that O'Rourke drew a crowd of 10,000 to 15,000.) Here are pictures from the Counter-Rally: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/2/11/1833991/--FatNixon-in-El-Paso-live-updates-including-counter-rally?detail=emaildkre
And, of course, Sean Hannity is against any sort of deal, calling it "a garbage compromise". :P
Trump also seems to be heading for another Shutdown, and is once again trying to blame Democrats, when in reality, of course, it's His refusing to have anything less than a wall which is to blame.
Meanwhile, the government is stuffing teens into a Florida Detention Center like Sardines in a can (70 to 250 kids PER ROOM), giving them cold rooms, substandard food and schooling (all of which ticks me off as a human being, if not an American) and they are being held there for up to 6 months at a time. Originally, these teens were being housed 12 to one room, which is bad enough, but one of the larger buildings have been retrofitted to make these new, larger areas, in which you can barely walk by the chain-link walls sideways without brushing a wall on one side and a bunk bed on the other. It sounds like a holocaust-era camp! I find this completely disgusting.
The Homestead complex, which was opened by the Obama administration in 2016 for a 10-month period, is on federal land beside Homestead Air Reserve Base in Miami-Dade County. The campus, made up of buildings and tents, is surrounded by chain-link fences with guards at every entrance. Children are not allowed to leave the facility, despite regulations in the Flores settlement specifying that children’s shelters must be non-secure, and they must wear wristbands that track their movements.
The shelter is “very militaristic” and “highly regimented.” The children wake up at 6:30 a.m., spend most of the day in school, save for roughly an hour of outdoor time, and go to bed at around 10 p.m. They walk in single-file lines and eat at the cafeteria three times a day. They can only call their parents twice a week for 10 minutes. Teens. Who have done nothing but come here with their parents. ::Shaking my head.:: It's not that these kids are gang members or anything, but these kids are being essentially imprisoned by the Trump Administration for long periods of time to torture them and their parents.
It's gotten so bad that more than 100 companies are calling for permanent protections for undocumented young people.Mainly for DACA kids, but others as well.
"Wait, there aren't enough rich people to pay for all this so I might have to pay higher taxes for it? That's not what was promised! Screw that!!!"
Happened in France, would happen here too. Don't throw these pie in the sky wishful thinking promises out there. Let's have a real discussion about how much it's going to cost ME not some mythical 'evil rich dudes'...
The reason we have "Net change = 0" is because the Democratic party hasn't controlled the legislature in nearly 10 years. To this day, we have a GOP-controlled government, and this is what a GOP-controlled government does.
If a given Democratic policy doesn't pass, I'm going to blame that on the people who voted against it.
And half of what's left mean spending less money. Justice reform = stop paying middlemen to cage people who shouldn't be in jail in the first place. Immigration justice means cutting the border guards, since there would presumably be an easy to get seasonal workers' visa. Medicare for all means not having to buy health insurance and goodbye to the $35 Tylenol capsule.
Mitch McConnell last month:
“The last thing we need to do right now is to trade pointless show votes across the aisle” McConnell
So he's a hypocrite. Whatever.
This is the same piece of trash who got burned doing this same thing before and ended up filibustering his own bill.
https://theweek.com/articles/469675/mitch-mcconnells-amazing-filibuster-bill
Dems have options: they can say screw him, approve it call his bluff. Or any Dems can vote no based on the bill not actually being complete. Republicans can screw themselves by denying climate change but a lot of their states have recently been devastated snowy hellstates they are setting themselves up to lines of attack in their own states just as much. But whatever regardless of this vote, something still has to be done to save the planet.
Worldwide consensus of everyone in the world outside the Republican party is that climate change is a dire problem.
Republicans have shown they certainly aren't capable of handling the crisis - look how badly they messed up healthcare.
It's really sad that Republicans feel like they have to focus all their energy on find anything that could be used against AOC. They are that scared of her. ROFL.
I see others are making similar points, but here's my quick view of the financial implications of the things she wants to change:
Likely to save money
[*] Medicare for all
[*] Criminal justice reform, end private prisons
[*] Immigration justice / abolish ICE
[*] Clean campaign finance
[*] Curb Wall Street gambling: restore Glass Steagal
No clear view on cost
[*] Gun control / assault weapons ban
[*] Solidarity with Puerto Rico
[*] Mobilizing against climate change
[*] Women's rights
[*] Support LGBTQIA+
[*] Support seniors
Likely to cost money
[*] Housing as a human right
[*] A federal jobs guarantee
[*] Higher education for all
As a whole I just don't see how you can characterize this program as something designed to 'pick your pocket'. Of course the Green New Deal is at this stage just an agenda setting exercise. The devil will be in the detail if it ever moves on to generate legislation and there will be cost implications to certain proposals (in particular climate change - though for that we're now at the stage where things are going to cost more, either more now or a lot more later). However, I don't understand why in the US, when there's such an obsession about doing many things as cheaply as possible, there's not more pressure to reduce costs on things like health care and imprisonment (which are extremely expensive without delivering any improvements in outcomes over international norms).
Talking about obsession to do things as cheaply as possible, here's an article about 'mountaintop removal' mining in the US. A bit like climate change, even if you ascribe no value at all to the environmental consequences, it seems to me that such activity only appears cheap because you're transferring costs from private corporations to the public sector and individuals. If you believe in individual freedoms, then shouldn't you also believe in individual responsibilities - which would include a 'polluter pays' principle?
Can we officially say this is completely BEYOND ridiculous now?
I'd also say stop paying Private Prisons to incarcerate people. Stop signing agreements to keep these prisons 90+% full or pay millions of dollars in penalties to the Prisons. How do these prisons get away with this crap? Courts of states feel like they have to incarcerate people or cost their states $$$$. That's inherently exploitative and creates a "need" to put more people in prison to avoid paying money to these Corporations. If they go out of business, that might very well be a good thing.
I saw this same thing, and had the same thought. Their CEO literally said they made more money than they ever have before, and it still wasnt enough to stop layoffs.
Look - I dont mind efficient business models, but let's not create artificial requirements for solvency that have no basis in reality, and use them as excuses to hurt employees.
Reminds me of this story from a well known Japanese game maker - Nintendo.
Wii U Sales Down 36%, Nintendo Executives Taking Pay Cut Forbes Jan 2014
Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata said he'll be taking a 50% pay cut for the next five months, with other executives slicing their salaries by 20-30%.
While the actual cost savings is a mere drop in the bucket, and the execs will likely be just fine because of their stock options, but it's more of a symbolic gesture, admitting their own wrongdoing.
They rebounded pretty well with the Nintendo Switch and didn't stick it to the workers.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2014/01/29/wii-u-sales-down-36-nintendo-executives-taking-pay-cut/#650069c7cf31
There's class warfare going on in the US. And the workers have been shafted for way too long. They've been on the bottom for so long they don't even know they are being taken advantage of.
I always assumed gaming companies were like ad agencies and hired by project. If a project gets finished with no other project in the pipeline, or if a project gets cancelled, people will be shown the door. Having people sitting around waiting for work isn’t cost effective.
Edit: I’ll also say, if you google Blizaard Lay-off and then look at the twitter announcements, it’s pretty much a crap load of other gaming companies headhunting. I think a majority of these workers will be fine.
No, what happened is their CEO and new CFO (who they JUST hired) together make over $40 million dollars annually. Which, coincidentally, is more than those 800 employees would be making COMBINED if they all had $50,000 salaries. So, I ask again, if the metrics for what "success" are aren't being met, why isn't Bobby Kotick the first one to fall on his sword?? After all, if he's in charge, how is it not his fault?? And the answer is, no one at the top every pays for or accepts responsibility for anything. Ever. Not in this sick culture anyway. Blizzard used to spend alot of money AND make alot of money. You don't have to have EVERYTHING. This doesn't have to be "he who dies with the most toys wins" in every aspect of business. It's now abundantly clear why Mike Morhaime walked away late last year. One of the great game companies of all time has been completely swallowed and consumed by a soulless corporate juggernaut.
And, not for nothing, but if I was taking home $25 million dollars a year and then decided to upend the lives of nearly 1000 people without shaving a single dollar off my salary, I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the f*****g mirror in the morning. I'd sooner throw myself off a bridge. But, then again, I'm not a predatory capitalistic sociopath like the people who run this company. This wealth concentration is going to get to the point where it is unsustainable. NOTHING is enough for these people. No amount of profit or amount of extra zeros on the end of their bank accounts will satiate their greed. They want ALL of it. These type of executives are the poster children for why we should have a 70+% top marginal tax rate. Not to take in money, but to actively discourage less than 1% of the population from hoarding practically every last dime that is in circulation.
I've always had a scenario for what I would do if I won a $200 million dollar lottery. I would immediately give HALF of it away to children's cancer charities. I would buy two nice, modest houses, a nice car, and furnish the residences. And then with what would undoubtedly be the the $40 million I'd have left in the bank, I'd find some way to spend $30 million more of it on something other than myself. Because how in the name of Christ I am ever going to spend $10 million dollars more on myself over the course of 40-50 years when I have two homes paid for?? I could live off the interest alone. Having nice things is fine. Greed is not.
I now read articles pertaining to this:
https://kotaku.com/activision-blizzard-begins-massive-layoffs-1832571288
A) these layoffs were known to becoming
C) they have lower expectations for 2019
D) they are taking the funds from these layoffs and putting them back into game development
E) buy out packages include continued health benefits, and job coaching.
It is exactly part of what I said:
“Currently staffing levels on some teams are out of proportion with our current release slate. This means we need to scale down some areas of our organization. I’m sorry to share that we will be parting ways with some of our colleagues in the U.S. today. In our regional offices, we anticipate similar evaluations, subject to local requirements.”
It’s like Beamdog having 6 people doing Bengoshi’s job. They don’t need 6 Bengoshis. They terminate 4 of them with buyout packages and use that salary to hire 2 artists. Yes there are now less employees at the company, but the end product will be better, or created faster with the two new artists over the 4 community managers.
Yes it sucks that you have to terminate employees. Why do you think it took as long as it did? They make 40 million BECAUSE they can make those hard choices. Sears would probably still be around if they made those hard choices 10-15 years ago and closed half their stores and fired half their work force. Yes losing half of your work force sucks, but losing them all sucks more.
Obviously Blizaard/Activision isn’t there yet, but if Fallout 76 taught us anything, in the gaming industry, it can happen quick. Better get ahead than to let the company bloat and really have to slash staff once a failure hits.
Moreover, if one is even remotely familiar with the state of Blizzard's games at the moment, they need MORE community outreach and non-development roles, not less. WoW is in by far the most precarious state it has ever been in, with even players (like myself) who have stuck around for over a decade completely abandoning ship. I would be shocked at this point if FFXIV and ESO weren't neck and neck in subscribers at this point, which would have been unthinkable even 2 years ago. But we don't know because they stopped releasing their sub data two expansions ago. Their Diablo Immortal announcement was so utterly tone-deaf it caused company stock to tank (and all it took to get it to rise again was firing 800 people). They abandoned their MOBA to maintenance mode.
On the purely Activision side, Destiny 2 has done so poorly in regards to expectations that they actually handed the license back to Bungie. Call of Duty is Call of Duty. Despite disasters in nearly every area of the company, they still managed to turn a massive profit because every single game is monetized by microtransactions, aside from Diablo, which is why they are now going to turn that series into something akin to Candy Crush. It's not hard to run virtual casinos. Focusing on game development?? What game development?? The only things they have in the pipeline are remasters and some vague promise of Diablo 4 sometime this decade. They are surviving on the wallets of whales, but everyone else is abandoning ship, including this person who has been an avid supporter since 1994 when I was 12 years old. I'm just plain DONE with them, and if I wasn't before, this is certainly the nail in the coffin. Not that my money means anything, but they are going to find out that bad PR can cost money too. Lower expectations for 2019.....yeah, no kidding. And the people responsible for that are also the ones at the top of the food chain. Their announcement of that is nothing more than preemptive blame shifting and moving of the goalposts. Self-inoculation for the people actually responsible for that happening. And it has nothing to do with excessive non-developmental staff.
It's impossible to separate the predatory trends on the consumer side of the current video game industry equation from the predatory people who made these layoffs a reality. It's all part of the same bullshit. They are going to to suck money through a funnel like a frat member using a beer bong, and it's all flowing to one place, which is the top. Executives and shareholders are literally the ONLY things that matter in corporate America. Workers are given as little consideration as we humans might give an ant on the sidewalk.
It's gone from ridiculous to cognitive dissonance. Snopes points out in several of their articles debunking attacks on AOC, Republicans can't decide whether she's so poor that no-one should pay attention to her, or secretly rich and lying about her past. Apparently, they've decided to believe both claims at the same time. Many of the sites running this low credit meme are also running one that claims (without evidence, of course) that the outfit she wore to the SOTU cost $7600.
That's who I was referring to as "middlemen".
If you know everyone else is abandoning ship, do you not think the company knows that as well?
As I said, these layoffs are attempting to get ahead of a problem that they see coming. The backlash to micro transactions has probably made them readjust thier long term goals knowing it will not sustain the company.
That said, releasing triple A games is also no longer an efficient way to make money. They are in my opinion high risk/low reward scenerios and it takes one failure for the gaming community now to turn on you. once again, look at Fallout 76 for an example of this.
Their MOBA was a failure. They tried to squeeze into a saturated market and suffered for it. It’s why it had been abandoned the player base is strong enough to keep in on life support but nothing else.
So where does a company go from there? nostalgia has been proven to be a success so the company is banking off of that like you’ve mentioned. I can see them taking Starcraft to mobile platforms after Diablo as well. What I do know is that they’re not going to churn out 2-3 triple A or even double A games a year like they were in the early naughts.
And that is how triple A companies are going to start operating (or even have been operating for the last 5 or so years). They are going to rely on their yearly cash cows (EA Sports, Call of Duty, Assasin Creeds), they are going to invest more into mobile for P2W revenue and they’ll release one triple A title every 2 years to get a high reward payout and hopefully get a hit on a new IP (or go out and buy a smaller studio to get their IP and release that) they can bank on.
That’s the video game market today with indie companies filling in the blanks and it is not going to change.
- first that's because the trial has started of 12 Catalan leaders on charges of sedition and rebellion (the former President Puigdemont is not one of them - he's still in exile. The leaders face up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
- the government has just lost its annual budget vote as a result of the Catalan parties voting against it in protest at the refusal to hold talks about independence. That's likely to lead to a third general election in the last 5 years.
The government's refusal to hold substantive talks about the possibility of independence for Catalonia probably reflects a slight majority opinion in Spain as a whole. This issue cuts across standard political boundaries with the socialists, conservatives and far-right parties joining forces against independence. In fact the government has been criticized for being willing to talk to Catalan leaders at all with recent public protests being organized to try and stop any talks.
Trump, at his rally called out President Obama for owning dog in the White House, and claimed "it felt phony" to have a dog in the White House. Anybody here remember Obama got the dogs (he had 2, Bo and Sunny) for his daughters? However, Trump's first wife, Ivanka, says that Trump just hates dogs. And on top of it, Trump doesn't want to pay back pay for Government Contractors during the shutdown. Sounds just like when he was in business... He says he won't sign any bill that pays back Government Contractors. I guess that means they won't work during shutdowns in the future.
Good news:A Mexican Scientists has found the Cure for HPV (Human PapillomaVirus)! Her name is Eva Ramón Gallegos, and she and her colleagues at the Mexico National Polytechnic Institute made the breakthrough.
https://www.cancerhealth.com/article/cure-hpv-fast