A post for this exists.

I checked, I searched for it first thing and skimmed through the comments. So this should be the end of it. I know you shouldn't make a duplicate post, lest make any kind of post in a different group.

(if you don't know what I'm talking about, click the link at the top, open the article in incognito mode, read.)

As young folk say, idc. I feel this is beyond the scope of the original post as industry talk deserves serious, dedicated discourse. ~talk seems to be the place for this, anything here barely gets the same engagement like ~talk posts; they garner lots and lots... I mean, LOTS of comments. Plus, the WGA writer's strike is still goin on — they been doin this shit for 2 months with tedious media coverage, and have made their presence known. If they can do that, I think I can take a page from their book and post here.

This is not a retread on the Vulture article, not necessarily about your opinions on the work culture Phil Lord creates, etc. If you feel like this post is a duplicate: Don't vote, don't comment! Ignore this post! Revive the original post — you can do it as long as it's on-topic and thoughtful.

This post is about the ripple effects of what that article says, and how it may reflect industry-wide treatment of animators, and even adjacent subcultures and sectors. Take VFX, for instance: Lots of ppl seem to criticise Marvel Studios for their overuse of CGI in their productions, blissfully unaware that Marvel Studios is a bad client to work with.

In other words; this post is meant to discuss Phil Lords in the industry that cause over 100 animators to quit (which I think is too much to ignore). This post is a launching pad for industry awareness, and should hopefully give you the idea to protest in your own way. Don't believe skipping movies will work? It doooooeeeeeeessss~~

So.... what do we REALLY think about the Spider-Verse article on Vulture? What does this truly reveal about the broader treatment of animation in Hollywood? Does Sony raise good points? What are some other instances where a producer or executive caused such upset during the production of an animated movie? What are other reasons or work culture tidbits outside people or moviegoers don't know about? What's it like being an animator working in Hollywood?? What are some labour unions or orgs to look into? What are some novel solutions or fixes that should be pushed by everyone as much as possible?

I was gonna post this on ~talk, but decided last minute not to. If you have read this far (and think this is not a duplicate post), I implore you to vote a/o comment! If this gets to at least like... 40 or 50 comments, that would be so amazing. If not, oh well. But I think it would be a disservice since no matter how small or insignificant this post is, it will help. It may inspire someone here to do something out there, and I think that's more than enough reason.

Okay, this is a pretty simple question, but is Wembanyama actually going to be all that he's hyped up to be? I just feel like I've been burned before by this talk around a once in a generation talent (cough cough Ben Simmons, cough cough Zion Williamson). I really do like where he landed in San Antonio given their track record with developing big men in the past but I just don't know. I've seen his games in Europe and he looks great, but I worry about his durability. What do you all think?

I've started to notice this narrative in my news feeds. The argument is high wage growth is contributing to stubborn inflation. So cooling wage growth is seen as positive. It'll help central banks pause the hike cycle sooner.

My knee jerk reaction is if wage growth is contributing to inflation it's minuscule; just enough to print the headline. I can't help but feel this narrative is a way to distract from the earlier price gouging narrative and to help employers scapegoat out of raises.

But I'll admit, I haven't looked into this topic deeply. So I'm happy to be schooled.

If everything had worked perfectly, it still would have been a bum airplane." - Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, the United States attempted to design nuclear powered aircraft. This was part of a larger "nuclear craze" in the era where everything and anything was proposed to have nuclear technology applied to it. This led to all kinds of things like the Chrysler TV-8 and "peaceful" earthmoving construction projects. The only place where nuclear power or propulsion really took off was for large ocean going ships both for military navies as well as civilian tankers, cargo ships and icebreakers. Spacecraft technology was the only other "success story."

Nuclear powered aircraft, while more realistic than say nuclear cars, never quite caught on except for a few experimental engines and just one actual working aircraft. The most extensive efforts towards this during the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion (ANP) program were the HTRE-2 and HTRE-3 experimental nuclear reactors with heat transfer assemblies designed for nuclear powered aircraft at the Idaho National Laboratory. Rather than burning fuel, the jet turbine would use the heat from the nuclear reaction to heat air sent through a compressor which would then be expelled as exhaust for thrust.

On of the more fascinating tests were the test flights of the NB-36H which while conventionally powered, flew while carrying a working nuclear reactor to test the protective shielding of the crew. It carried an air-cooled 1 megawatt reactor. The engineers and crew worked within a specially shielded nose cabin with 12-inch-thick lead-glass windows.

The project was canceled by the Kennedy administration a few months after taking office in 1961 citing high costs, poor management, and little progress towards a flight ready reactor saying:

At the time of termination, the Aircraft Nuclear Propulsion Program was still in the research and development stage, with primary emphasis on high performance reactors. Although a number of research and development achievements can be credited to this program, at the time of termination an airplane had never been flown on nuclear power nor had a prototype airplane been built. - Joseph Campbell, Comptroller General

and

Nearly 15 years and about $1 billion have been devoted to the attempted development of a nuclear-powered aircraft; but the possibility of achieving a militarily useful aircraft in the foreseeable future is still very remote. - John F. Kennedy, POTUS

Footnote: This post is a rework of a reddit post I made here a couple years back. It's not really meant to be a coherent or lengthy article but has some links and thoughts which I found interesting.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Initial SCOTUS rulings on affirmative action were before my time. I agree with the concept. Do you? Has it affected you positively? Negatively? Now that affirmative action has “ended” and we’ve totally “solved racism”, what is the path forward? There’s a lot of opinions out there but I want to know what real people think about the consequences in all our lives, U.S. or otherwise. Let’s talk.

Child labor is making a comeback with a vengeance. A striking number of lawmakers are undertaking concerted efforts to weaken or repeal statutes that have long prevented (or at least seriously inhibited) the possibility of exploiting children.

Take a breath and consider this: the number of kids at work in the U.S. increased by 37% between 2015 and 2022. During the last two years, 14 states have either introduced or enacted legislation rolling back regulations that governed the number of hours children can be employed, lowered the restrictions on dangerous work, and legalized subminimum wages for youths.

Iowa now allows those as young as 14 to work in industrial laundries. At age 16, they can take jobs in roofing, construction, excavation, and demolition and can operate power-driven machinery. Fourteen-year-olds can now even work night shifts and once they hit 15 can join assembly lines. All of this was, of course, prohibited not so long ago.

Legislators offer fatuous justifications for such incursions into long-settled practice. Working, they tell us, will get kids off their computers or video games or away from the TV. Or it will strip the government of the power to dictate what children can and can’t do, leaving parents in control — a claim already transformed into fantasy by efforts to strip away protective legislation and permit 14-year-old kids to work without formal parental permission.

In 2014, the Cato Institute, a right-wing think tank, published “A Case Against Child Labor Prohibitions,” arguing that such laws stifled opportunity for poor — and especially Black — children. The Foundation for Government Accountability, a think tank funded by a range of wealthy conservative donors including the DeVos family, has spearheaded efforts to weaken child-labor laws, and Americans for Prosperity, the billionaire Koch brothers’ foundation, has joined in.

https://tomdispatch.com/caution-children-at-work/#:~:text=The%20Covid%2D19%20pandemic%20of,distinct%20sign%20of%20social%20pathology.

Here is a Robert Frost poem related to the subject of the article. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53087/out-out

I'm GenX and I worked as a teen, but my earliest jobs were babysitting, not industrial labor.

As mentioned before my partner is a new paraplegic. He was a chef before becoming disabled a decade ago and the primary cook at home until the more recent injury. He's struggling to make sure he eats in part because making a baloney sandwich is currently an ordeal. We expect that to get easier as he gets OT and more used to being in a chair, but I'm wanting to start with prepared meals and work up to easy meal kits that help him get back into cooking. Difficulty level is things that taste good and have a variety of foods, as well as, for the future, kits that require less manual dexterity.
Recipes also welcome as well as any must have kitchen items. We have an air fryer, microwave, electric kettle and toaster he can use easily. Oven and stove that are a bit more tricky right now.

ETA: in the United States and with a large variety of grocery stores around me.