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LCHorn

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Everything posted by LCHorn

  1. I’m sure we have the same goals for making sure a certain fidelity to truth accompanies the news, I’m just trying to correct this conclusion that media consolidation is to blame. It’s a little like blaming horse and buggy manufacturer consolidation when the internal combustion auto has become popular. Who cares if there’s only two options for yesterday’s tech? In large part social media is shaping popular consensus, the national agenda, and it’s where most marketing dollars are going, political and otherwise. If you’re worried about Disney pulling Kimmel off the air and that depriving his 1.6 million viewers of his anti-Trump views, you’re missing Theo Vonn’s 4.6 million YouTube subscribers and many more listeners of his podcast. Also, the reason I’m belaboring this is because it’s probably better than 50% of the reason the Dems lost in 2024. They have been habituated to mainstream media and that’s not where the majority of media consumers are anymore.
  2. 40 years ago you had the big three broadcast networks and cable news was still consigned to early adopters. Most people would have gotten the news of the day from a newspaper. In terms of broadcast, most households had a preferred station and/or anchor and the big three spent a lot developing their on-air talent because it helped retain viewers. 60 Minutes, for example, was the most profitable news program on air and regularly competed with The Cosby Show, Cheers, and others for the highest Nielsen rating in a given week. Let’s talk impact-over the 85-86 tv season 60 minutes averaged over 20 million views. In the last week of August (admittedly, not usually a great time for max tv watching), the top over the air program was Sunday Night Football with 10 million views. Basically, the article posits that there has been media consolidation (I’d argue that it’s always been controlled by a small number of firms) and that this is bad because: If that is true, then the decline in viewers would indicate that they aren’t overshadowing shit, in fact they are fiercely competing with social media companies because their share of ad revenue has fallen off a cliff. And social media basically exists to monetize smaller, independent voices. Anyway, the is largely to say who gives a shit if Kimmel gets silenced?* What you really need to be terrified about (and there was a NY Times op-ed on this very thing today) is when the admin leans on Alphabet to make criticism of Trump unavailable in their search results. *this isn’t to take away anything from the necessity to preserve Kimmel and any other voice that would be categorized as oppositional. Silencing those is a prelude to more consequential steps.
  3. In the interest of accuracy, this is a big mischaracterization of how consolidated the information stream is. The article is mainly pointing out that the corporations that own broadcasters are relatively small, but that was true 40 years ago, too. The problems with our country coincide with those broadcasters losing viewers to social media and YouTube and it’s not because they created a monolith of homogenous news production and acted in cartel like ways to preserve market share. In fact, it’s the diversity of approaches that’s been the hallmark of the last 20 years as each tried to create niche as declining viewership sapped ad dollars. I totally agree that more competition and more choices is better than less, but that’s because it makes it harder for ill intentioned regulators like a Trump FCC to limit their independence.
  4. I think there's a coherent end game, it's just begging for scraps rather than forcing the Republicans into remembering they run an equal co-branch of government. Regardless, and at risk to my personal income (I'm a mortgage lender and shut-downs are usually bad for rates), I'm here for it. Democratic leadership needs to remind Democrats that they still exist. I'm also on team #fuckthefilibuster. If the GOP will abandon it (which is probably what's poised to happen) it'll be easier to pass pretty much everything down the road and I'm weary of legislative roadblocks being used to deny popular measures.
  5. Let's just take a look at some of the executive leadership at risk of needing to move, work remote, or find alternative employment.... I'm kind of picking on these three because Scudder is new (and presumably ran on making changes), and Cathey can at least tout campaign experience, and these are the next three on the leadership page. Is there anything about these three individuals resumes that make you go "I'm a donor, this a team with the experience to be effective spenders of my money"?
  6. I've had a little crush on her since The Babysitters--there's something about her that's super attractive despite relatively plain features. We're seeing it next week at the Bullock--hoping it crushes word of mouth because the trailer is terrible.
  7. Institutional knowledge of how to lose races and advise inept campaigns? He probably needed the pretense of moving the headquarters to jettison the dead weight that’s attached itself for the last 30 years.
  8. Yup, unborked, thanks!
  9. ooh, whatever you did sped things up dramatically. I think you're on the right track if you haven't fixed it entirely.
  10. Fwiw, I’m having the same issue with Safari 18.6.2, I presume it’s embeds.
  11. He could easily be a good guy now, but he was a weirdo back when Varsity Blues was filmed per a couple of my fraternity brothers who were extras. The story I remember best was that he stuck his thumb out of his pants zipper in between takes of a pep rally shot and was saying (bear in mind this is in front of a stadium crowd of extras of all ages) “look Mom, Dawson has his pee-pee out”. Regardless, fuck cancer.
  12. I was east of Houston and most of the dads of my friends worked at the Arco plant or Chevron Cedar Bayou (or they farmed, and most of them were hurting, too). I also recall being invited to Baptist Sunday school (we were Methodist) and being incredulous when told the apocalypse was two, maybe three years away. I don’t know what it is about these people that they are so eager for the hereafter, but I think it’s maybe an American version of Edith Hamilton’s description of the richly imagined afterlife created by Egyptian slaves.
  13. @cabowabo was being sarcastic... I love Luhnow, too, but with the benefit of hindsight his draft record and international signings show there was some performance based criticism we seem to overlook. I mainly appreciate the faith that Crane appeared to place in him to roll the dice in a way that Click and Brown can't.
  14. I was a little disappointed and felt the last three episodes lacked suspense. I'm sure Hawley wrestled with this, but investing in a protagonist who appears to be invincible robs the viewer of the natural tension from putting the protagonist in peril. What's Wendy/Mary's peril? The hapless (to this point) Weyland-Yutani corp and their agent Morrow? Also, I don't know if this is lighting, how it's shot, creature design, etc., but the xenomorph here: Is so much less scary than here:
  15. Mexico is much closer, has better food and you don't have to learn Portuguese.
  16. Yeah, I think you have to contextualize a) who was available and b) was the move supportable, regardless of who the decision maker was. This isn’t like rolling out Chris Carter because you want to keep the payroll low. Abreu and Walker were relatively affordable and patched a hole. Also, 1B league wide has become a position with surprisingly little offense compared to the 90’s/early 2000’s. Anyway, the 2025 Astros don’t have the stink of Baytown refineries because the owner fucked around with 10% of the payroll, it’s because the other 90% didn’t get it done.
  17. Who exactly are we talking about here? Hader and Verlander? The Altuve extension? The Astros wanted Abreu under Luhnow and I think if Click hadn't been fired, Abreu and Montero still get signed. Sorry if you're being sincere (I'm sure you are), but this reads like ill-informed Clutchfans drivel. "Why don't we have four All-Star starting pitchers? Brown is stupid! Go trade for Ohtani!" The story of this season could just be that a team with a poor farm at the AA and AAA got hammered by injuries and doesn't have the depth to replace them. It could also be that the team's highest paid players under-performed or were hurt. Valdez and Altuve are competing for the worst second half performance they have a lot of company. This off season is going to be a good time to disrupt things, not just because the team is poised to miss the playoffs, but because next year looks worse barring some upgrades.
  18. What do you think Crane or Brown should have done differently? Personally, the only thing I want from Crane is a willingness to run the budget up to the CBT apron and to make sure that the scouting and development personnel have every resource they ask for. The first box is clearly checked and I'm not in a good position to evaluate the second, although I think it's clearly better run there than under McLane. If those are both "yes's" then I prefer the owner to be checked out.
  19. I guess we’re in the few, my wife put the hammer down and we’re headed to Waldemar or we’ll just take a that exorbitant camp tuition and use it for basically anything else that doesn’t include drowning our daughter. I still think the Eastlands are getting sued out of business, but I’m a little surprised it’s taking this long.
  20. What do we think the chances are that Espada is fired after the season? He was hired under Brown but it’s hard to think of him as “his guy” since he was already in the org.
  21. Wtf, I watched that clip, too. Worse, I’d never seen a single second of that show previously and I was at least somewhat proud of it.
  22. I’ve got a buddy with the Centurion; it’s forever ruined Platinum for me.
  23. My feeling is that the preservation of a Fox or Newsmax in the interest of free markets and/or free speech has been indulged too long. You probably drive that voice online, maybe that’s better, maybe it’s worse but at least it’s taking action.
  24. I sympathize, but personally it's hard to to feel proud of the name on the front of the jersey if it's not committed to knowing the truth to be made free.
  25. That’s a good example of the failure of imagination on the part of MAGA opposition and why Biden and Garland should be forever asterisked in the history books with “oh, by the way, they failed the republic”. it doesn’t matter if it’s legal. If you have power and you think it’s wrong you make it illegal. It’s the current playbook and we should have been using it to avoid this truly avoidable four years.
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