I'm an on-again off-again smoker, currently (the past 4-5 months) on-again. Been meaning to requit, but it's been much harder for me this time.

Here's the crux. Two of my roommates just tested positive (for Covid). Not guaranteed, but it's a good bet that, within another 2-3 days, all 5 of us will be symptomatic.

Am I better off quitting right now, or will that just put added stress on my lungs during the coming illness, and I should wait until after I recover (always assuming I survive it, of course)?

ETA: Y'all are shooting holes in my, apparently, flimsy justifications to keep smoking. Just switched to vaping now.

Thanks everyone.

I received my Steam Deck on June 6th and have used it literally every day since then. Here are some assorted thoughts that might be of value to people either waiting on theirs or on the fence about ordering:

The Good

• I had no idea until I got it that there's an official Deck test game: Aperture Desk Job. It's essentially a cute test/tutorial for the Deck's controls, set in the Portal universe. Takes about half an hour, but it's a fun onboarding for the device.
• On the past two Saturdays, I have woken up and played Vampire Survivors with one hand while I held my morning coffee in the other. This is the way.
• The control remapping options are absolutely incredible. It is a very robust system. Even simple fixes (like putting A on a back paddle so I can play Vampire Survivors one-handed) can make a world of difference.
• I haven't run many heavy games on it, but I started up Bugsnax, and it was keeping a solid 60 FPS and looked great.
• Emulation on the device is a dream. I haven't done anything past OG PlayStation games yet, but the power of the device, the robust control customization, and the ease of installing emulators (adding Flatpaks in desktop mode) make this absolutely ideal for revisiting older consoles. I've spent probably 80% of my time on the device in PSOne games.
• Battery life is fine, but I don't really use it. I bought a long power cord and spend most of the time with it plugged in on my couch since it has passthrough. I thought the cord sticking out the top of the device would bother me, but it hasn't really been an issue.
• Game selection is increasing steadily (1700+ verified games currently). If you're buying it to play specific games you might be disappointed, as there's still a lot that doesn't work. If you're buying it for games in general though, there is plenty to keep you occupied.
• The grips are MUCH more comfortable for bigger hands than standard Switch joycons. Those would always cramp my hands, but the Deck feels natural and comfortable.
• The middle of the device gets warm to the touch during gameplay, especially on more demanding stuff, but the grips remain cool and you won't feel the heat at all unless you specifically move your hands to the back middle of the device.

The Bad

• The paddles on the back are a little awkward, and I accidentally click them more than I like. In most games they're not mapped to anything so it's fine, but in emulators I use them for save states. I had to set them to respond to long presses only so my accidental clicks didn't mess things up.
• The software is... still getting there. I get navigation issues on store and profile pages frequently, along with frequent UI lag. It's a bit unpolished at the moment.
• Don't know if it's specific to my hardware or a software bug, but sometimes it won't log me in to my Friends list and the only fix is a reboot.
• I wish the control sticks had deeper indents for your thumbs. They're pretty flat, and my thumbs tend to slip off on stick-focused games (most noticeable on my right (aiming) thumb during 20 Minutes Till Dawn).
• Bluetooth headphones have to be manually reconnected in the Settings menu each time. No idea why this is, but it's a bit of an inconvenience.
• Mid-game suspending is still clunky. I don't really do it, as I don't trust that it'll save like it should. It also still counts playtime while suspended but seems to have a rollback feature? I put the device to sleep with a game open that I'd played for 20 minutes and came back to it saying I'd played it for 3 hours. The playtime ended up dropping back down to 20 minutes, but only after I restarted the device.

The Ugly

• There isn't any ugly. I absolutely love this device. Despite my nitpicks above, I think it's nothing short of splendid. I'm more excited about this than I've been about anything in videogaming in a long time.

If anyone has any questions, ask away! Also if any other people here have their Steam Decks and want to chime in with their experiences (@Autoxidation), go for it!

With Top Gun: Maverick opening up to over 150 million for the four day weekend. I thought it would be nice to revisit the sudden shut-down of theaters and their road to recovery.

2020 movie theaters everywhere shut down. The only major Hollywood film to get a theatrical exclusive run was Tenet. Tenet ended up grossing 362 million dollars. What was seen as a disappointing gross at the time ended up being aspirational as theaters started to open up.

The only films that opened throughout 2020 were small genre and art-house films that would end up on PVOD sooner rather than later. Things like The War With Grandpa, Unhinged, and Freaky. December we got the release of a couple of awards films like Promising Young Woman and News of the World. Their grosses were small and largely insignificant. Mostly coming from a few states were theaters were opened at reduced capacity and Drive-Ins that stayed open throughout the winter to try to give people something to do before the roll-out of the vaccine.

While Disney sent Soul to Disney+, Warner Bros decided that they would release Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day simultaneously in theaters and on HBOMax. Wonder Woman grossed a respectable 166 million world wide. That’s all we could expect at the time, especially for a film that wasn’t well received by either critics or audiences. Although it still grossed less than Tenet and The Croods 2 domestically.

And then, the big news happened. Warner Bros said that they would be releasing all of their 2021 films day-and-date with HBOMAX. While a big reason for this was due to the pandemic, the likelier reason this decision was made was in order to build up HBOMax. The launch of HBOMAX, which happened at the start of the pandemic, was an utter disaster. Confusion with HBOGo’s subscription, along with a variety of other factors, led to MAX not getting enough subscribers. So the day-and-date strategy was put into effect to boost subscription numbers (this plan indeed worked, although they were met with immediate backlash from filmmakers).

I won’t go over every film that released in 2021. More or less just the important ones.

January and February 2021: Wasteland

The only major movies that released in these months were awards contenders The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, Nomadland and children’s film Tom and Jerry. The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Tom and Jerry were all Warner Bros. films which means they also released on HBOMAX (which is how I watched all of them). This was an interesting period where theaters were actually grateful for the day-and-date release of these films. Vaccine rollouts were still low and restrictions were still in place. Warner Bros. releasing these films in this way meant that theaters were at least getting something that they could play. The films made some money, the highest grossing being Tom and Jerry, but nothing anywhere near we could consider normal.

March and April 2021: Uptick

In March Disney released Raya and the Last Dragon in theaters and on “Disney Premiere Access.” Unlike with WB you would both need a subscription to Disney+ and also pay an additional thirty dollars to watch the film at home. The film made a decent amount of money. In April, Mortal Kombat released, also making a decent amount at the box office.

But the true star of both of these months was Godzilla vs Kong.

At 32 milion, Godzilla vs Kong became the largest opening weekend of the pandemic era, beating Tenet’s 20 million. It beat all expectations. Despite being available to anyone with an HBOMAX subscription, people decided that this was the type of film you need to see in a theater. They wanted to see a big gorilla and a big lizard fight each other on the big screen. And while it wasn’t the first movie of the pandemic to gross 100 million at the domestic box office, it crawled its way to the finish line.

May 2021: A Quiet Place Part II

Exactly a year ago, A Quiet Place Part II opened. What was originally meant to premiere March 2020 ended up premiering Memorial Day weekend 2021. As a theatrical exclusive the sequel toppled Godzilla vs Kong’s opening weekend record to open at 47 million. Releasing in far better conditions than any movie had opened prior (this is actually the first time theaters in my state re-opened), it became the first film of the pandemic to cross 100 million domestic. Although it ended up grossing less than it’s predecessor (in normal times it would have out-grossed it), this became a watershed moment for the box office. Godzilla vs Kong gave them hope, but A Quiet Place proved that theaters were on their way to recovery.

Cruella also released on this weekend, having a Premiere Access release just like Raya, it ended up opening to 21 million and grossed 89 million. With how warmly received it was by audiences it’s fair to say it would have had a shot at making Maleficent numbers (700M WW).

Everything was on the rise at this point.

June - August 2021: Rocky Road

In The Heights. Poised Oscar contender, great critical acclaim, and seemingly great audience scores. It was supposed to be a star-making blockbuster. And it could have been, had the pandemic not happened. But the box office tells another story. Initial projections had In The Heights opening at over 20 million. Fantastic for a non-franchise film with no stars, and for a day-and-date film. But as the weekend went on those projections lowered... and lowered... and lowered. Until it opened at 11 million. The musical ended up grossing 29 million domestic. The disappointment of In The Heights told a story here, one of older audiences refusal to return to the theaters. But because it was the first, all people saw was a box-office bomb.

F9. Theatrical exclusive, opened to 70 millon. Again, breaking the opening weekend record for the pandemic. While its domestic reception was lackluster, it’s international reception was wildly better. It ended up grossing 721 million dollars World Wide. At the time, it was seen as a little bit of a disappointment. There was a chance that this could be the first 100 million opening weekend since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It did not meet that, and it’s legs (that being how it performed week after week) were weak domestically. However, this can’t be seen as anything other than success thanks to grosses in Latin America.

Black Widow. Here we go. The first MCU to be released since Spider-Man: Far From Home. It was originally supposed to be the start of the summer season of 2020 but ended up getting pushed back several times. Disney decided to release Black Widow with Premiere Access. This would lead to Scarlett Johansson suing Disney but that’s a whole other thing. Black Widow, like F9, had a lot of hope of being the first 100 million opener of the pandemic. This seemed plausible all the way up to Friday. Its estimates lowered from 100 to 90, and then it kept lowering until the film opened to 80 million.

What was to blame? Audience reception? Perhaps, with an A- Cinemascore it didn’t have the greatest reception in the world (MCU films usually get an A Cinemascore). There’s a couple things we can blame it on actually. Black Widow released just as the Delta variant was making the rounds. More importantly, in my opinion, it was Premiere Access. Take that away Black Widow would have been the first 100 million opener of the pandemic. This also affected it’s legs. Premiere Access cut down on repeat viewings from fans, and audiences that would have waited to watch the film in later weeks decided to just watch the film at home. Still Black Widow grossed a respectable amount for the circumstances it was released in.

Jungle Cruise. Also a Premiere Access release. The 200 million dollar film opened to a decent 35 million but, somehow, was able to leg its way to 100 million. A rounding success for “original” movies. (The press would refer to Jungle Cruise as an original movie despite being based on a ride. Does that make it IP or Original? It’s been debated.)

The Suicide Squad. Bomb bomb bomb. My lord did this bomb. Not much to say on this. The general consensus is that this would have bombed regardless of the pandemic. Rated R, low audience reception, it just wouldn’t have been financially successful. Which is a shame because it’s such a good movie.

Free Guy. A through and through original movie. Free Guy opened modestly at 28 million, but because it was so well liked by audiences it managed to leg out to 121 million dollars domestically. The Ryan Reynolds comedy then got greenlit for a sequel. While Jungle Cruise didn't make a profit theatrically, Free Guy at least broke even. In normal times both of these grosses wouldn't have warranted sequels, but these weren't normal times. Crossing 100 million during the pandemic was the equivalent of grossing 200 million in pre-pandemic times. As a non-franchise, non-IP film, Free Guy was an important sign of movie theaters health.

Candyman. If there was one genre that was doing well under the pandemic it was horror. Due to low budgets the films were able to gross enough to not be box office failures. During the summer, Candyman ended up grossing the most. It was the 10th highest grossing movie of the summer domestically. At 61 million, it outgrossed The Suicide Squad. Ending the summer on a positive note.

September - November 2021: The calm before the storm

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Another MCU film. This time it was a theatrical exclusive. Disney actually used this as a test. It was to determine whether or not they would release the rest of their films as theatrical exclusives or keep doing the Premiere Access thing they did with Black Widow and Jungle Crusie. Lucky for us, Shang-Chi managed to beat expectations. Managing to open at 75 million and legging it out to 224 million domestically and 432 million World Wide. Again, in normal times this gross would be disappointing at the very best, and a bomb at the very worst. But 200 million was the equivalent of grossing 400 million in normal times. Shang-Chi became the first film of the pandemic to meet this threshold.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The second movie of the pandemic to reach 200 million domestic. The film managed to beat expectations on opening weekend. Becoming the highest opening weekend of the pandemic with 90 million. It took a big second weekend drop but it ended up stabilizing and ended up having pretty good legs. A pattern that would become common throughout the pandemic, and that continues to this day.

No Time To Die. While the latest Bond film could be considered a disappointment domestically, the film was aiming to open at 100 million for the weekend and ended up opening to half that with 55 million. What No Time To Die did was jump-start the box office in Europe. It broke records in the UK and ended up grossing 760 million world wide. Beating F9 as the highest grossing Hollywood movie of 2021 (at the time).

Dune. Since before the pandemic, Dune was always touted as a future box office bomb. It was too heady, too nerd oriented, in order to be a box office hit. And now it was releasing simultaneously on HBOMAX. There was no way it could do well. The film went on to open to 41 million. And went on to gross 100 million domestic and nearly 400 million world wide. People decided, like they did with Godzilla vs Kong, that this was the type of film that needed to be experiences in cinemas.

The Last Duel and Last Night in Soho. The Last Duel opened to a measly 4 million and grossed only 10 million domestically and 30 million world wide. Last Night in Soho had a similar performance but grossed less world wide with 22 million. This is around the time that the narrative became clear. Older audiences (those being over the age of 25) were not coming back to the theaters. The only things that were making money were movies aimed at younger audiences or (in the case of NTTD and Dune) big budget blockbusters aimed at older audiences. Adult dramas were struggling. This put the performance of In The Heights in an entirely different perspective.

Eternals and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. These are being grouped together because they were the biggest films released in November. Eternals, once again, was thought to be a possible 100 million opener. However, word of mouth came around and it was bad. The film ended up grossing 71 million on opening weekend and a total of 164 million domestically. International reception was a little better and it ended up out-grossing Dune with 402 million world wide. Ghostbusters: Afterlife opened at 44 million and with general positive audience reaction it grossed 129 million domestic and 204 million world wide. It actually out-grossed the 2016 Ghostbuster domestically, and because this one had a smaller budget (Ghostbusters 2016 had a 144 million dollar budget and Afterlife had a 75 million dollar budget) it was far more profitable for Sony. Considering Afterlife outgrossed 2016 which was released pre-pandemic and was a summer movie, it's fair to say had this opened in the summer of 2020 like it was supposed to it would have made a killing at the box office.

House of Gucci. Adult dramas, as I've said, were struggling. In comes Gucci. With Lady Gaga's star power and a Thanksgiving release, it beat all expectations and opened to 15 million for the three day weekend but 21.8 million for the five day weekend. Thank god for Gaga. Adults finally came back to at least one drama. Gucci ended up grossing 53 million domestically and 148 million world wide. While this gross would be considered a disaster for its 75 million dollar budget. Considering the state of adult oriented films at the time, this can't be seen as anything other than a success.

Encanto. On the other side of things. Encanto managed to score the best opening weekend for an animated film during the pandemic. Disney had sent their animated films either straight to Disney+ or Premiere Access. Encanto was the first animated film from Disney to be a theatrical exclusive. With a shortened window of 35 days before being put on Disney+, Encanto managed to gross 96 million domestically and 230 million world wide. The highest for an animated film during the pandemic. Had Disney given the film a longer theatrical window, there would be no question it would have hit 100 million domestically.

December 2021: Release the Spider

Before we get to the big one. Let's discuss some of the smaller releases.

West Side Story and Nightmare Alley. Two big award films releasing wide in December. West Side Story fared better than most adult oriented films. Opening to 10 million but out-grossing In the Heights to a 38 million domestic gross and a 75 million gross world wide. A bomb, technically speaking, compared to its 100 million dollar budget. But as we've learned, these grosses took on a different connotation during the pandemic. Nightmare Alley did not fare so well. A failed attempt at counter-programming opening the same weekend as Spider-Man. The Guillermo del Toro film opened to a shockingly low 2.8 million for the weekend. Grossing only 11 million domestically and 37 million world wide. Even in the context of the pandemic, this was nothing else but an utter disaster for the 60 million dollar film, the most expensive film from Searchlight. All of this signaled that older-audiences were still reluctant to come back.

The King's Man, The Matrix: Resurrections, and Sing 2. The long delayed The King's Man (originally slated for 2019 before being pushed to early 2020, then pushed again to late 2020, and then pushed a few more times due to the pandemic). Opened weak with 5.9 million for the three day weekend and but managed to stay around grossing a total of 37 million domestically and 121 million world wide. A commendable run for a film that wasn't well received and which lost audience interest due to the numerous delays. The Matrix: Resurrections grossed about as much as The King's Man. Difference was that it opened to twice as much. Word of mouth from audiences was toxic. The film fared a bit better internationally grossing 156 million world wide. It would be the last day-and-date release form Warner Bros. Sing 2 surprised everyone. Opening to 22 million, higher than The Matrix and having an incredible run. Due to being the only family film in the market for months. It grossed 162 million domestically and 402 million world wide. The highest grossing non-Spider-Man film that released in December.

Spider-Man: No Way Home. Here's the big one. People were expecting it to be big. But most people did not expect it to be this big. Despite an Omicron resurgence, Spider-Man opened to 260 million for the weekend. Beating the previous December record holder Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Spider-Man would go on to play week after week. Grossing 800 million domestically and a billion internationally for a total of 1.8 billion world wide. Had the film opened in China, it very much would have grossed 2 billion.

Spider-Man was the film that brought audiences back to the cinemas.

As much as I deride trickle-down economics, there might actually be some truth to that theory in terms of this specific example here. There's almost a clear difference between box office grosses before Spider-Man and after Spider-Man. As Paul Thomas Anderson said, "You know what’s going to get [audiences] back in movie theaters? 'Spider-Man.' So let’s be happy about that".

So let's see what the Spider-Man effect brought us.

January - February 2022: Not much

Scream. The only major release of January. The legacy sequel beat Candyman by opening to 30 million and grossing 81 million domestically, 138 million worldwide. Horror movies, especially R-rated horror film, rarely make 100 million domestic, and this getting close was a great sign. Both Scream and Candyman were well received horror films that were part of a franchise. Both films being so similar, shows us the direct difference between audiences pre-Spider-Man and after-Spider-Man.

Jackass Forever, Death on the Nile, and Dog. Jackass opened to 23 million, finished with 57 million domestically and 74 million worldwide. Despite sporting the best reviews for the franchise it did not outgross Jackass 3D. Which brings us to the fact that the Omicron spike started happening quickly around this time. While states had relaxed restrictions, cases were spiking. Depressing turnout for theaters. Death on the Nile grossed less than half of what its predecessor Murder on the Orient Express did, despite a similar reception from both critics and audiences. Another blow to adult dramas. In comes Dog, a PG-13 drama that is still debatable whether it was aimed at families or adults. Dog managed to beat the opening weekend gross of House of Gucci and legged out better domestically. Grossing 61 million, though had less international appeal, grossing only 74 million world wide. Still, this pointed towards a better direction for dramas.

Uncharted. Hot off the success of Spider-Man, Tom Holland drew in audiences for the video game adaptation. Opening to 44 million, getting positive reception from audiences, it legged out to 147 million domestically and 400 million world wide. Although those weren't Spider-Man numbers, it was the numbers that MCU movies were making pre-Spider-Man. This gross is more impressive when looking at other video game adaptations. Uncharted managed to beat Detective Pikachu at the domestic box office in order to become the second highest grossing video game adaptation. It beat Sonic the Hedgehog's world wide gross of 319 million. And is currently more than Sonic the Hedgehog 2's 385 world wide gross. Video game adaptations were never big money makers, but Uncharted manage to outgross several of them while cases were still on the rise. Had the COVID situation been better, there's a chance Uncharted would have unseated World of Warcraft as the highest grossing video game movie ever.

March 2022: He's here. Who? The Batman

The Batman. The DC film became only the second film of the pandemic to have an opening weekend above 100. At 134 million the film went on to gross 369 million domestically. Internationally the film was a disappointment, no doubt due to the situation in Eastern Europe and also the COVID situation in China. Early predictions had the film grossing between 800 and 900 million, but the film grossed 770 million instead. Still it beat No Time To Die, even as a disappointment. Not bad for the first installment in a Batman reboot that was also nearly three hours long.

The Lost City. The Sandra Bullock starring romantic comedy originally titled "The Lost City of D" was set as a test to see if adults, and specifically women, were still hesitant to return to theaters. It didn't disappoint. The film opened to 30 million and became only the second original film (or third if you count Jungle Cruise) to cross 100 million at the domestic box office. Signaling that both adults in general and adult women in specific were in fact coming back to the theaters.

Everything Everywhere All At Once. If there was something that was struggling more than adult dramas at the box office, it was the indie market. Licorice Pizza has done banger numbers while in limited release, but was ultimately a box office disappointment. Grossing less than 20 million domestic. In comes EEAAO. While not specifically targeted at adults, generally speaking it was targeted at young men between the ages of 18 and 25, it still suggests a return of the indie market. The film is still playing today, having small drops week after week. Beating Uncut Gems to become A24s highest grossing film domestically.

April 2022: Flop City

Before we get to the flops, let's talk about the successes from this month.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and The Bad Guys. Sonic 2 beat it's predecessors opening gross of 58 million by opening to 72 million. It has outgrossed the first both domestically and world wide (though the first film's theatrical run was cut short due to the pandemic). Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is currently the only film that opened in April that grossed over 100 million domestic. The Bad Guys opened at number 1 with 23 million. The Dreamworks film was warmly received by both critics and audiences. It's been holding well week after week, currently at 81 million domestically and 197 million world wide. While it likely won't hit 100 million domestic, it should get close.

Ambulance, The Northman, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. All three films had at least somewhat positive reception from critics. Audience reception was good for Ambulance and was decent for The Northman and Massive Talent. All three are considered flops. Ambulance opened to 8 million for the weekend. While this is better than other adult films like The Last Duel, it still signaled that adults weren't coming out. A well received Michael Bay action-thriller would have been a hit a couple of years ago, but today people decided to stay home. The film grossed 22 million domestic and 51 million world wide. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent didn't fare much better. Opening to 7 million grossing 20 million domestically and 25 million world wide. The Northman was the most successful of all three films. Slightly beating expectations, it opened to 12 million. Grossed a total of 33 million domestically and 66 million world wide. Although with a budget of between 70 and 90 million it is considered a flop. Though all three films flopped at the box office, I think what they did was get at least some people, specifically some older audiences, back in the mojo of going to the movies. As James Gray puts it, these films were an investment to try to maintain broad base interest. Which is a big reason why something like Top Gun: Maverick was able to open so big.

Morbius and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbeldore. Here we have big franchise films. A Marvel film and a Harry Potter film. Both of them flopped at the box office, but their performances cannot be blamed on COVID. At the very least COVID is only a small reason as to why these films flopped. They are IP movies aimed at younger audiences, at the very least that's the case in Morbius, though Fantastic Beasts audience is slightly older. Morbius opened to 39 million. Originally it was looking to open at 60 million. But, word of mouth was incredibly toxic, so the film dropped dramatically. Had the movie been good it would have crossed 100 million easily. But the film was so bad it didn't even double it's opening weekend grossing a total of only 73 million domestically and 162 million world wide. Fantastic Beasts is a dying franchise. Crimes of Grindelwald, the previous installment, was poorly received by both audiences and critics. It grossed 600 million world wide, dropping 200 million from the first installment. The Secrets of Dumbeldore opened to an okay 42 million, but reception was so tepid it still hasn't crossed 100 million domestic and will not be crossing 100 million domestic. International reception was slightly better, but not by much in places that should have liked it more like the UK. Germany is liking the movie a lot though, so Fantastic Beast will be reaching 400 million worldwide. Though with a 200 million dollar budget, it will not be breaking even. Both of these films would have bombed regardless of COVID. They were bad movies, and they were always destined to flop.

May 2022: Back to normal?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Benefiting from being the next installment in the MCU. The film opened to 187 million. Disney's first 100 million opener since The Rise of Skywalker (Spider-Man is distributed by Sony). Despite the film's large grosses, it was still seen as a disappointment. It was looking to open above 200 million but word of mouth was pretty bad so the opening weekend fell day after day. The film looked to be making a billion dollars (making it only the second film to hit that mark during the pandemic) but will now be looking to make around 900 million world wide. It's a disappointment through and through. But here's the thing, 1) it had no China or Russia or several Middle East countries, and 2) it's still going to be making 900 million dollars. 900 million dollars world wide being considered a disappointment is fantastic. In pre-pandemic times, it was almost normal to consider movies making this much a money a disappointment. Notable Pirates of the Caribbean 5 made nearly 800 million world wide but was still considered a disappointment. It shows us how far we've come when last year were happy when a movie barely made 100 million, that now a film that will gross 400 million domestic is a disappointment.

Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun has re-energized older audiences. Being now the fourth film to open over 100 million in pandemic times. It's looking to gross over 400 million domestic (in fact it could outgross Doctor Strange). It is the highest opener for a Tom Cruise, beating War of the Worlds. And is a film that audiences have embraced both domestically and internationally.

Downton Abbey: A New Era also opened in May. The adult-oriented film took a big dive from the first. Opening to half of what that film opened to in 2019 and suffered a big second weekend drop (no doubt due to Maverick's success with older audiences). So older audiences are returning, but just to specific films. Will Maverick lead to older audiences coming back to other films made for them such as Elvis? Maybe. Hopefully.

Things are looking up from here on out. Grosses seem to be hitting pre-pandemic times. And while there's less movies being released in 2022 than there were pre-pandemic (due to the production problems caused by COVD). It's nice to see how much things have bounced back in the past year.

Things like Jurassic World: Dominion, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Avatar: The Way of Water, look to be making 500 domestically. In the case of Jurassic and Avatar we could be looking at 600 million+ domestic grosses and a potential 2 billion world wide grosser in Avatar. It is incredible the journey the box office has had.

Hey folks,

I want to prototype a tool to help groups of people make decisions using a new decision making mechanism.

We have two systems of democratic decision making that have major downsides:

1. Direct democracy - everyone votes on every issue. Downside: not everyone has the time and the necessary expertise to vote on every issue.
2. Representative democracy - everyone votes who will represent them and the representatives vote on every issue. The downside is the corruption - the representatives may not represent the best interest of those who entrusted them.

The idea I want to explore is a hybrid of the two systems:

• Like in a direct democracy you can vote on every issue.
• If you do not vote on a given issue, then your vote is automatically delegated to people who voted like you in the past.

To test this out I want to build a website [1] where anyone can create a group and invite others to the group. The group members can create proposals and vote on them to make a decision.

For the idea to be tested the group needs to make many decisions over time (ie, not one-off polls like strawpoll.*). Only then can it take advantage of the delegation based on “voted like you in the past”.

The details of the design will depend on the use-case:

• How should the group roles work? Would it be enough to have owner & member roles?
• How to invite to the group - by sending email or a link.
• Should every member be able to propose options or just the creator or the vote?
• Should the voting be closed automatically after some time or by hand?
• Do you delegate implicitly or explicitly - ie, have a vote option to delegate.
• Do you vote for a single option or can you rank options in the order of your preferences?
• Open ballot vs secret ballot?

Some ideas for use-cases:

• Choose the next “team-building” activity at work.
• Make content moderation decisions.
• Which book to read next in a book club. Maybe transfer the list of books and the votes from the previous vote to the next.
• Make and record company decisions by shareholders. In this case you would want to weigh the votes based on share ownership.

I think starting with a specific use-case in mind is a better strategy than trying to build a generic tool.

What do you think? What would you use such a tool for?

[1] - I will likely make it part of my existing project https://linklonk.com/ unless I find an available good-sounding domain name.

Hey there people. Long time lurker here. I decided to start writing because it's late at night, my mind is running wild and I'm trying to piece together the situation myself here. This will probably turn out to be a wall of text. Apologies to anyone who might see it as spam or bothersome - my bad.

Context:
in the second half of my 20s. Working in Germany. Healthy and slim. Working as a field technician for a company installing machines for industrial kitchens. Since this whole pandemic started I have always worked (and traveled around the city). I had offered myself for AZ when people were refusing it, got my second as Pfizer and 3rd with Moderna after 6 months from my second shot. Always followed guidelines regarding masks, vaccines and the whole shabang.

These past 6 months the whole 'global pandemic thing' kinda started becoming 'old news' so-to-say for me. Yes, some people I know got it recently, yet most had little to no symptoms and all recovered without a problem. In my mind I have been thinking 'come on, in 2 years working in closed environments with no ventilation and all sorts of people I have never caught it - I am surely one of those fully immune or asymptomatic ones, right?'.

On top of that I have started to indulge actually going out: drinking with friends, dining with people, casual socialising... I still believe that there is no way going forward without it. I know I cannot stomach another Christmas, Easter, birthday or whatever by myself. And still here I am freaking out after actually getting COVID.

Being brutally honest I was actually quite chill up until about an hour ago. I had been watching the last episodes of a certain very lighthearted anime comedy series that's coming out while lightly coughing, cleaning my nose pretty often and drinking as much water as I could. At some point I came to realise that something was not right. Initially I couldn't put my finger on it, I was just feeling uncomfortable.

Then it hit me: I couldn't smell anything. Not the laundry I did today, not the soap I had used to shower myself with, nothing. Up until this point it had been nothing more than some cough, sore throat and phlegm. Now it felt real - or rather unreal, it still feels like a nightmare.

Thinking logically it doesn't even make sense to me - I mean, come on, it's just smell right? - still losing the sense of smell is the first thing that has truly scared me since testing positive 2 days ago.
I have been going around the apartment for 20 minutes trying (to no avail) to smell stuff:

• old spice deodorant stick
• mouthwash
• toothpaste
• perfume
• isopropyl alcohol
• chlorine (super concentrated mildew killer spray)
  I just feel like i have ice up my nose. It's a very weird and unpleasant sensation (or lack thereof).

I have now just decided for no particular reason to do a mouthwash, and since then I can faintly distinguish smells. What the fuck.
I am now in between putting paper imbued with mouthwash in my nose and drinking a glass of the heaviest edible alcohol I have in my apartment. This is just insane.

Noone I know has lost smell or taste since the original variant, 2 years ago. I am worried and scared. Be brutally honest with me people, should I be or am I just being unreasonable and overly emotional?

I notice this primarily with the YouTube videos. I've started to notice that the videos I see posted in here I have already had recommended to me by YouTube. And I realize it must be because when I watch a video here, the YouTube algorithm decides I'm interested in that kind of thing. So, functionally, by posting and interacting with content in Tildes we are tuning the various algorithmic recommendation feeds that we interact with to view us all similarly.

It's just an interesting side effect I noticed and some food for thought about the effectiveness of a link aggregator or discussion forum at surfacing novel, interesting content we might not find otherwise. In part, this could just be an effect of Tildes being kind of small and having lots of self-selection biases for its user population. Perhaps if it was more diverse we'd be exposed to more things that break the mold and recommendation algorithms won't be able to pin it all down as easily. In fact, we may be able to use this effect as a way to test the breadth and diversity of content and types of people a site is attracting.

They ask for years of experience, skills that no Jr would know since, well, it is a Jr and the process to apply for jobs are surreal. Thousands of tests, interviews that goes nowhere and lots of ghosting. And the pay is not that good. No wonder after 2 or 3 years of experience a lot of develpers starts working for companies outside of Brazil.

Last one to contact me sent me a test to do it in 1 week. I went above and beyond and learned a lot of things. Before this, i had some small projects in Go and Python. Now i needed to learn Docker, tests, github actions, Postgresql and other things. Not everything was mandatory, but i did my best and did it all. I finished in 5 days since i have a day job.

Here is the result: https://github.com/crdpa/conservice

Showing the data in the browser was not necessary, but i think it was a nice touch and well made. If this does not land me a job as a junior developer i don't know what else could.

I'm glad i already have a job in another area, but me and my SO are separated by a 4 hour drive and i'm tired. I want to work from home to be near her and our dog. Paying rent in two places is becoming a burden.

I would be happy if you guys could test the application i made. It only needs docker.

And do you guys have any tips from now on?

Like the title says, over the past couple of years, I think I slowly forgot how to have fun. I'm looking for any advice anyone might have (whether you've gone through the same process or not) on how to have a bit more fun.

The past 4 years have been transformational and formative for me. At 21 I decided to switch majors and move out from my parents' house to a more urban city. I mentally (depression) and financially struggled for the first 3 years, going broke in my second year of my second chance at undergrad at one point, eating bowls of rice. I identified my shortcomings (lack of achievements and disposable income) and worked on them. In the 3rd year I worked part-time while also taking a TA position with a full engineering course load. Last summer I completed an internship while also working as an independent contractor for a startup and kept the contractor position while being a full-time student up until this year. I signed a full-time offer at a big company this January and have one course left to fully graduate. I'm also correcting exams and tests on a part time basis for a professor. All this to say, I suddenly had a significant boost in income the last couple of months, and even more free time, whereas I was living on ~20k/year previously, with no free time.

This doesn't mean I don't enjoy or appreciate any fun activity I partake in. When I do go out with my friends I'm having a lot of fun and I'm breathing in every moment. I'm not depressed (not anymore), but I find myself having a more neutral mood outside of hangouts. What I'm struggling with is initiative with regards to fun. What can I do to have fun? I live in a cramped-up studio which I plan on moving out of in spring, but for now I don't have space for a TV let's say. I don't have a gaming pc, because up until now I couldn't afford one. I have a ps4 with a couple of old games, though sometimes I struggle to play them because of a lingering feeling of guilt from using it as a medium of procrastination in my teens. People mention lifestyle creep that follows an income boost, but I think my financial situation in the past has some lingering effect on me that's inhibiting even a small healthy dose of that. It's hard for me to justify upgrading some of my stuff, because they still work. Or buying some items I've wanted, because I'm doing fine without them. The isolation in a studio and the now gone uncertainty that was during the pandemic before I signed a full-time offer also played a role here I think.

So, having read through all that, I welcome any ideas or suggestions on how to spice my weekly life a bit more. I want to shake off the fight-or-flight phase that I was in. What are some things that you do that you think I could adopt to have a bit more fun by myself?

The following is an observation that may be obvious to some, but which I didn't fully realize the extent of until recently.

Everything has a lifetime. If you grok this, you are able to reason about everything a lot more efficiently. At work, in life, everywhere. I initially started thinking about this in the realm of software engineering, but this is a universally-applicable observation.

In code, it's useful to think about operational lifetimes: How long will each operation take? How long should it take? When should it time out? We often call these "TTL" or "time to live". If you request some data from https://example.com/data.json, and it does not answer within the designated TTL (of your choice), you proceed to a failsafe.

Not employing TTLs is often the root cause of issues in fault-sensitive designs. Connections piling up, stuck UIs on spotty connections, etc.

Then there is the concept of "data lifetime". That is often controlled not by time but by size, for example how many items can be present in a bucket, or how large overall the bucket can be, or both. You may have seen this in your various trash folders on desktop, email clients etc: "Delete items after x days", "Limit bin size to 1 GiB".
Once again, not putting a lifetime in place is the root cause of many issues such as memory leaks, UIs becoming less and less responsive over time, unusable software that doesn't test for edge cases ("what do you mean you have 1200 tabs open in Chrome?"), and so on.

Setting the lifetime on something is a type of contract. By determining an "edge", you are now able to test "edge cases". By saying "You can have up to 1 million items in this folder", you're also saying you have (or at least should have) tested the edge cases of 1 million items, and what happens when you hit the limit.

You see this in the physical world as well, you may recognize the concept as a tolerance, or a limit. "This elevator has been certified for up to 10 people, or 1000kg". It doesn't mean it won't work beyond that, but there is a contract of undefined behaviour when you exceed the limits.

What happens when you don't have limits?
Well, this article from the other day is an excellent example. The autobahn famously doesn't have speed limits. What did they expect?

What happens when you don't have lifetimes? Well, remember how Google is shutting down free legacy GSuite? They promised "free for life" accounts and had to back down after realizing the accumulated maintenance burden incurred by not putting a real lifetime on that promise.
Or the slightly famous $250,000 Unlimited Flight Pass.

I'll give you the example that changed the way I see the world: My first company's CEO told me the (unverified) story of how, in 2015, when Verizon was doing due diligence on AOL before acquiring it, the value of AOL was significantly reduced because of its "free minutes trial CDs" with no expiry date on them. Because of the lack of an expiry date on them, all those trial CDs would have to be honored, and thus were "debt". You couldn't wait them out. The acquisition price was thus much lower.

I apply this principle religiously in life, and try to understand the lifetime of everything I deal with. Especially things I purchase. You do it as well, maybe not consciously, but when you buy a phone and think "I want a phone that will last me at least 3 years", "at least 5 years", etc. You are giving the phone a lifetime, which allows you to divide its cost by the number of years you will keep it and think "by having a phone, I have to support a recurring cost of x dollars per year".

The recently-discussed article "Everything must be paid for twice (HN discussion)" touches upon the subject, though not as elegantly as I'd like it to. Indeed, thinking about lifetimes should force you to think about the "end of life" scenario, which touches upon questions of recycling for example. Efficient systems will handle end-of-life scenarios by reusing/recycling as much as possible, which allows for cost reduction. The reason you don't have to constantly purchase new hard drives is because you're allowed to delete things you no longer need, reusing existing space. But the hard drive itself has a lifetime, which is determined both by its usage (it won't last forever) as well as how useful it is (as storage becomes cheaper, storage requirements increase, following Braess's paradox, which means that 1GB hard drive that was once "more than you could ever need" is now utterly useless.

I invite you to think about these concepts everywhere, and see how relevant they are. Are you upset your latest appliance already broke down? Thinking of purchasing extended warranty on the next one? Wondering what you should buy in bulk? Are subscriptions better or worse than versioned software licenses? How long do you want to keep those photos around? Why did the restaurant across the street change ownership three times in the last two years? Do you think the Simpsons have had too many seasons? When are you gonna take down that christmas tree?

I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need off the drive is backed up, but I would at least like a drive to put it back on to!

In short, it became slow after I had to force power-off the system it was connected to (Pop OS installed on another external drive which I unplugged by mistake) and I haven't bothered to try to fix it in the six months since.

I've tested it on Pop and it takes about 10-20 minutes to mount, and 2 minutes to unmount and safely remove. The data itself seems fine but performance is slow, accessing a 20MB image takes several seconds and selecting the drive in GNOME Disks caused it to freeze.

The drive sounded louder than normal, especially after plugging in.

On Windows, the drive was recognised and browsable immediately, but browsing through folders was very slow - opening some folders causes Windows Explorer to freeze for a while. Some of my double-clicks were mis-recognised as click-to-rename, which took several seconds to activate and during which time Task Manager reported the average response time between 5000 and 11000 ms.

Attempting to load an audio file resulted in lots of buffering. Task Manager reports an active time of 100% (even when not loading files or folders) and the activity never exceeded 100 KB/s (and doesn't sustain it for more than a second). Ejecting the drive takes forever - after ejecting it using the tray icon, the tray icon is not removed (even though there are no other drives connected or listed) and the active time is still 100% with the indicator LED blinking non-stop. The system did not enter sleep right away after me asking it to either.

All of that to say, does anyone know what the issue could be, or how I could find and fix it? Thanks!

Edit: fixed and normal functionality restored (at least so I can check the drive a bit easier) using Scan & Repair in Windows (see my comment).

Table of Contents

• Why am I posting this thread?
• What is it?
• Where to watch
• The players
• Time controls
• Format
• Scoreboard
• Schedule

Why am I posting this thread?

Honestly, I'm really excited about this. Isn't that enough? :)

What is it?

The World Chess Championship (WCC) is the topmost competition of the sport, and basically determines the best player in the world. It is disputed between the winner of the Candidates Tournament and the current champion. Since his first title in 2013, Magnus Carlsen successfully defended the title on three different occasions and is the undisputed favorite. The challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi does have a positive score against Magnus, but most don't give that much importance, since most of his victories happened when they were much younger. Chess.com combed through the data and gave Magnus 72% winning odds. In terms of style, Magnus is considered a universal player. Nepomniachtchi is generally more aggressive but adopted a more conservative style in the Candidates Tournament.

Since 2014, the WCC happens once every 2 years, alternating with the Candidates Tournament. The current edition was supposed to take place in 2020, but was postponed due to covid. It will happen in Dubai.

The World Chess Championship starts this Friday, November 26, at 16:30 local time, 12:30 UTC.

Where to watch

• Chess.com
• Chess.com Youtube
• Chess.com Twitch
• Chess24
• Chess24 Youtube
• FIDE Youtube
• FIDE Twitch

In the United States, the NBC over-the-air television channel will broadcast daily 30 minutes highlights.

The players

Time controls

In chess, time controls determine the time each player has to make their movies. A time control of 10 minutes means that each player has 10 minutes to use throughout the game. There can also be increments, which are added to a player's overall time after each move. For example, with a time control of 10 | 5 each player starts with 10 minutes to make their moves, and automatically gains 5 seconds on the clock every time they make a move.

The time controls for the World Championship matches may seem a bit complex at first. This is just for reference, if you intend to follow the games online, I'm certain that the commentators will make sure to remind you of these details.

The table above means that, on stage 1, each player has 120 minutes to make their moves. On stage 2, they have 60 minutes. On stage 3, each player has 15 minutes, with an addition of 30 seconds after each move.

Format

• Draw by agreement is only allowed after the 40th move (it used to be the 30th).

• There will be 14 standard games (it used to be 12). The first to achieve 7½ points will be World Champion.

• If, after the 14 games, the score is equal, there will be tie-break games in that order, with the subsequent tie-break only being disputed if the previous one maintained the tie.

  1. 4 rapid games of (TC: 25min + 10s)
  2. Best out 5 blitz games (TC: 5min + 3s)
  3. 1 armageddon game.

Scoreboard

Schedule

All games, as well as the closing ceremony, are scheduled to 07:30 AM EST / 12:30 UTC.

This will be updated with the results for each match, as well as the sum of the overall points. I will also try to sum up some experts commentaries for each game.

I generated markdown with a table of contents which is auto-generated on Emacs. I tested it on https://rentry.co and it works fine. On Tildes the links don't work. Is there a way to make this work? It would be nice to have that for longer posts. Thanks!

My two roommates and I just finally got over some kind of weird cold-like illness, took us 11-12 days to recover. Not Covid (based on 1 negative PCR test for one of us; I'm assuming we all had the same thing). Presumably, just your random cold/flu-type bug. A remote co-worker (400 km away, both of us in EU) has been experiencing a similar illness for over a week now, still not over it.

It took the three of us almost 2 weeks to get over it. The symptoms kept changing every 1-2 days (sore throat, then harsh cough, then chest/lung pain, then gas and intestinal issues, then headache, then back to coughing); had a false "I'm all better now" moment halfway thru, then Phase 2 kicked in. On top of which, I don't get sick much, and when I do, it's usually very mild and I'm over it very quickly.

So, I have a hypothesis. Thanks to all of the social distancing, OCD hand-washing, masking, etc for the past 18 months, "regular" colds/flus/germs have probably been going through some pretty extreme evolutionary stresses, just like Covid ... and are probably mutating/evolving a lot, just like Covid. Except all the researchers and specialists are pretty much completely preoccupied with Covid research/work, so no one has been paying much attention to all the other day-to-day respiratory illnesses.

I've seen a fair bit of news about how colds/flus have been much less common of late, due to the Covid-precautionary measures, but I have not seen any research or discussion about how those measures might be impacting other non-Covid illnesses.

Thoughts?