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Tom

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Everything posted by Tom

  1. Wow. As badly as they bungled the ending of the main series, who's going to sit down for 7 spin-offs? HBO over here taking notes from AMC and The Walking Dead.
  2. Eh, there's a lot here to unpack here. For several years many ocean carriers took losses, and some were in danger of going bankrupt as Hanjin Shipping did in 2016. It was a shipper's market for so long with such tight margins, and competition drove the rates into the dirt and at times shipping was at unprofitable levels for ocean liners. Nobody was concerned with global carriers operating at a loss so long as they could get their cheap shit across the ocean for dirt cheap. 1,000% is quite a bit of an exaggeration overall. Maybe at the highest end, but that's not an average by any means across the industry for all trades and commodities. I'd like to see where he's getting those numbers. Rates in the trade I'm familiar with have gone up about 300%-400% on the highest end of our most expensive lanes. Regardless, the steep rise in shipping rates post-COVID has been mostly driven directly by supply and demand. There has been congestion all over the world. You've had 100+ container ships just sitting off the coast of Long Beach at times unable to birth with hundreds of thousands of TEUs just sitting on the water. Container yards and terminals packed with containers and not enough truckers or equipment to move them out efficiently. This had created a huge worldwide container shortage, leading to shippers outbidding each other to use what little containers and space was left available. That's where most of the price increases have come from. Customers volunteering to pay more and outbidding each other for allocation. Fuel increases also played a part. Bunker costs alone are almost as much if not more in some instances as what all-in rates were pre-pandemic. I'm also curious if he's counting whatever NVOCCs and freight forwarders are adding on top for their profits as part of that 1,000%. So while, yes, ocean carriers have been having a great couple of years and are actually making some good money, it's not because they are just price gouging or taking advantage of a shitty situation like the Biden administration is implying.
  3. Not doubting you but that's not normal. I'd find a better place to start seeing movies. I saw a 6:00pm showing last weekend and looked at my phone as I was walking to my car and it was 8:45. At a run time of 2 hrs 27 min that's 18 minutes of trailers and commercials. Not too bad.
  4. It makes me think "I can't believe we're joining these backwater jugheads in the SEC who elect the likes of Tuberville and now possibly Walker. How embarrassing." Then I remember who our elected officials are in Texas and realize we're going to fit right fucking in. How embarrassing.
  5. You pretty much nailed it. I felt this same way when the show was airing weekly. Season 8 was shitshow, but there were three meandering seasons filled with mediocrity leading up to it. I think it was the end of season 4 when Tyrion killed his dad and escaped from King's Landing. That was the last time the show was really great.
  6. Is Fox News at least covering it this time? Or was there breaking news of a giraffe giving birth at some local zoo they had to air instead?
  7. He has since morphed into Mayor Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, Man of the Sewers.
  8. Look into TC Tuggers. So you don't wreck your shirt or hurt your hand.
  9. I think I have to side more with the critics than the audience score on this one. I actually liked Jurassic World pretty well, but these two follow-ups were phoned in. With everyone returning, I had hopes this would be better than Fallen Kingdom, but it wasn't. Feels like the only thought that went into it was "how many dino fights can we fit into a two-hour movie, and how many previous characters can we shoehorn in?" I'm kind of surprised William H. Macy and Tea Leoni didn't show up in the third act.
  10. Season 1 was discussed 6 years ago on the old site. PM Badmofo for a recap.
  11. Super trivial but when podcasts decide to do "live in front of a studio audience" episodes. It could just be coincidence, but it feels like these are happening more and more with the podcasts I listen to now that everything has opened back up. The entire chemistry of everyone on a podcast changes when it's live. They're always playing to the crowd and trying too hard to be cute with the audience. The audio mix is always off and there's always someone hard to hear over others or the crowd. If I read "live from" on a podcast description I'm tempted to just skip that episode for the week.
  12. It's probably going to be awful but I'm still going to go see it this weekend.
  13. Is that even a thing? Is there actually any correlation between people driving BMWs and being liberal? First time I'm hearing this. Prius? Sure. Tesla? Likely. But BMW??
  14. Every single American should have unrestricted access to a single shot flintlock musket if they so desire, just as the founders intended. Any other type of weapon designed after 1791 I'm cool with banning citizens from owning outright. I'm pretty sure this Supreme Court will back me up on this. They seem very consistent.
  15. Just realized I don't have access anymore either. Pls help. TIA.
  16. Not sure why this gets repeated so often, but there is zero reason to believe Joe Biden was the only candidate who could have beaten Trump. 2020 was mostly about Trump, not who the Democrat nominee was. And whether you loved or hated him, it was always Trump that drove turnout, not Biden. Luckily, it turns out there were about 8 million more people who were sick and tired of the Trump show and wanted a return to normalcy than the Q-Anon cultists and "vote Republican at all costs" people. 2020 was not about Joe Biden. He was just a familiar face with recent ties to the Obama administration. I think the majority of D candidates could have beaten Trump in 2020. People are generally dumb and many falsely tie inflation and gas prices to Joe Biden because he shut down the building of one non-operational pipeline that factored zero into the price of oil or wouldn't let oil companies drill on public lands, but at the end of the day it's going to hurt Biden. Incumbency will likely not be any advantage in 2024. The supply chain crisis isn't going away in the next 6 months, and Republicans will hammer Biden on it. There are going to be plenty of people who just think about how gas was $2.00 when Trump left office and how it's $4.30 now and will pull the lever for Trump again despite what a reckless buffoon they know he is.
  17. We're supposed to post videos of us doing the bench, right? Aren't there rules?
  18. And that's fair. I'm all about choice. I'm sure there are a number of people who enjoy working away from home. My brother-in-law chose to stay at the office for the two years he had the option because he had three young, noisy kids always running around the house at home and he found it distracting. To each their own. A company I worked for more than a decade ago, long before this became a national debate, gave you the choice to work remotely from home after you'd been there 1 year and proved yourself reliable. Some people chose to stay and work from the offices, most chose work from home. In the end, everyone seemed happy and I'm sure the company saved money by only needing to lease out a much smaller office space for about 25%-30% of the work staff that was ever on site. There were happy hours and work events available to everyone regardless of whether you worked in office or at home.
  19. Who has claimed only management should work from home? Absolutely nobody. Dude, when COVID happened and started this conversation, do you think only managers went and worked from home? If your job doesn't have a function that requires you to be on site, there's the qualifier.
  20. Again, it just amazes me seeing these posts from you, Mackelmore, and others that are cheerleading for a lower quality of life for workers. Why? What do you personally benefit from it? Do y'all also root for workers to have higher health insurance deductibles and fewer vacation days? Is it because you're on the back nine of your career/lives and you think that the younger generations shouldn't get something better that y'all didn't get the opportunity to have? Also, the idea that Elon and others suggest when they claim people working from home are "pretending to work" is kind of nonsense, too. If I wasn't working, people would figure it out pretty quick. If you can continue to not do your job and get away with it, you might not have a real job.
  21. Super weird to see some people actively rooting for corporations everywhere to force everyone back to their miserable commutes and offices. Our company already brought us back in a couple of months ago and we've already had two people quit to do basically the same thing but for companies that offered full-time remote. I've been at my company about five years and genuinely enjoy what I do, and I've been debating possibly doing the same thing if the right opportunity comes along. Even at the office, 95% of the people I communicate with daily are sitting in offices in Chicago, on the west coast, east coast, and overseas, and we communicate either by IM, email, or phone. There's very little reason for me to drive 45 minutes each way every day for something I could do just as well and efficiently in my home office. And this is just my own personal opinion and I'm obviously not speaking for anyone else, but I would personally choose to work from home even if it meant less money in the long run and the chance of being passed over for a promotion if it meant never having to come into the office again. The money and time you save, the bullshit and annoyances you avoid at the office, as well as the freedom to live anywhere you want is too great to pass up if you have the option. Money isn't everything.
  22. Oh shit, Jon and John? They're getting the band back together! Yeah, I'll probably watch this.
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