wozniacki's comments

From what I have learned about this whole show business / movie business / music business game as played at least in N. America and U.K. (?), the whole thing is pretty rigged and works on a "handshake" basis for the lack of a more loftier term. Hollywood , for the sheer amount of global power it wields, is amazing when you think about how its run like a company town & how little scrutiny it gets overall.

I highly recommend watching the HBO series, Vinyl (2016) about a record executive from the 1970s & the music business then. All those radio hits - that were hit and the ones that werent - you've always scratched your head about make a lot more sense when you understand the inner workings.

[1] Vinyl (2016)

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3186130/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinyl_(TV_series)

Yes, indeed. In as many words.

Two things here that come to mind:

1) The lack of muckraking agents in this whole affair - individuals, investigative bodies, the media, non-governmental agencies, British billionaires who have the wherewithal to finance private investigative operations etc. The sheer magnitude of that shortfall is just worrying. For those that are not fully familiar with the scope of the issues here :

    Between 1999 and 2015, an estimated 3500 staff employed by the state-owned
    Post Office service were accused of fraud, theft or malicious accounting.
    
    Almost 700 of them were convicted in courts and some 230 were jailed.      
    Most were legally compelled to repay the amounts they were accused of
    fleecing, resulting in bankruptcies, marriage failures, substance abuse and
    even suicides.

    There was just one not-so-little problem – virtually all of those people
    were innocent.[1]  

I mean how does something like that go on for so long! Especially when lives have been torn apart! Its one thing for public money to be pilfered & squandered. That happens everywhere. But those people have been wrecked, if that article is to be believed.

2) Whats more concerning is the larger question :

   a) if people have been made to put up with these kinds of horrendous miscarriages of justice for
   so long, in a postal services affair, what other miscarriages of justice are there that go 
   unnoticed, uninvestigated and unpunished. 
   b) is this "part and parcel" of middle income British life? do the Brits put a large amount of
   trust in their unimpeachable public institutions? do they pull themselves back, short of calling 
   into question the integrity of those that are tasked with such jobs? (atleast more so than is
   the case in the United States and elsewhere). I ask because I've come across things that seem to 
   buttress exactly that : 

      It is also forcing everyone to pay higher taxes for worse
      public services: The great British Middle Class live in
      a world of petty crime that goes un-investigated let
      alone punished, over-crowded emergency health services,
      and ever-lengthening NHS waiting lists (Britain has one
      of the lowest ratios of doctors and hospital beds per
      patient in the whole of the OECD).  

I have come across this kind of uniquely British reluctance to call a spade a spade, in quite a few other instances as well. Dr. John Campbell of Youtube fame comes to mind but I digress.[3]

[1] Inside the incredible and devastating postal service scandal that could bring down the UK government

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/inside-the-incr...

[2] Britain Should Stop Pretending It’s a Rich Country

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/18/stagnant-...

[3] Dr. John Campbell

https://www.youtube.com/@Campbellteaching/videos

Having said that, is this list of recent robotic moon landings, comprehensive? Include this Japanese mission should you want to.

     Robotic Moon Landing Missions in 21st Century

     Chang'e 3(2013)
     Chang'e 4(2019)
     Beresheet(2019)
     Chandrayaan 2(2019)
     Chang'e 5(2020)
     Omotenashi(2022)
     Hakuto-R(2023)
     Luna-25(2023)
     Chandrayaan-3(2023)
     Peregrine M1(2024) [1]

[1]

https://twitter.com/IndianTechGuide/status/17446149885918046... 2

https://i.postimg.cc/T1Ccxw2X/Robotic-Moon-Landings.png

I cant help but think the Japanophile contingent on HN are super eager to grade-inflate anything and everything remotely applause-worthy Japan related in general.

Mind you being nice is not the same thing as being genuine.

The problem is not with advertising ( or over advertising ) that youre happy when your are indeed happy.

The problem is with not doing so when the situation is inversed - that is advertising youre unhappy when you are indeed unhappy - and couching it in good cheer for outward appearances.

People in most cultures value genuineness over fake cheer although no one really is fully immune to fake cheerfulness and often find themselves falling for it - even when they want to fight it. Because in the end after all the cake and watermelon, its a form of deceitful presentation of the self - whether the person intended it or not. It trips you up in your read of the other person and thus leads to a maladjusted state of affairs where you are forever adjusting and hedging your reactions to the others person true emotions. Its a tax on your mental faculties.

    Between 1999 and 2015, an estimated 3500 staff employed
    by the state-owned Post Office service were accused of
    fraud, theft or malicious accounting.

    Almost 700 of them were convicted in courts and some 230
    were jailed.

    Most were legally compelled to repay the amounts they
    were accused of fleecing, resulting in bankruptcies,
    marriage failures, substance abuse and even suicides.

    There was just one not-so-little problem – virtually all
    of those people were innocent

Thats a lot of accusations and prosecutions don't you think, for it to go unnoticed or uninvestigated for such a long duration, dont you think?

Doesnt the UK have independent non-political bodies that watch the watchers? What about protections for whistleblowers who call these things out?

Frankly that sounds Banana-Republic-ish and not something you would find in a first-rate advanced economy.

[1] Inside the incredible and devastating postal service scandal that could bring down the UK government

https://www.news.com.au/finance/work/leaders/inside-the-incr...

Also not mentioned is the recent rise of Ad-Free ( yes completely AD-FREE as in not a single ad ever! ) platforms like KICK.com [1][2]

Amouranth used to stream exclusively on Twitch.com but now has moved mostly to Kick.com and streams the majority of her time there.

In this respect, Twitch's draconian content policing needs mentioning. People would receive week-long bans for unnamed reasons or super petty things. They rode the woke train as hard as they could and it was a sight to behold! They've recently slightly relaxed some of their disallowed content policies.

[1] Kick - Statistics & Facts https://www.statista.com/topics/11394/kick/#topicOverview

[2] https://www.similarweb.com/website/kick.com/

Where do you guys live where your getting these counterfeits and sketchy items? I really want to know. Not being snide. My experience has been very different with Amazon, which is why Im puzzled.

Are you guys not in the U.S.?

   People tested them. That's especially true for brand names like 3M.

Would you link to the tests?

   My masks were made in South Korea, and I bought directly from the
   manufacturer's US-based distributor.

Also link please!

Where do you shop for the things that go into or on your body if I may ask?

   I know just my own life doesn't nullify the statement but all my friends were
   the same I mean outside but I don't know of them who has glasses as adults.

This statement is confusing. And this is something I'm super keen to learn more about. So lets see if I understand this correctly.

You mean you _do not_ know of any friends who _do not_ wear eyeglasses as adults?

Let me rephrase that.

   You played outside as a child. You now wear glasses. 
   All of your friends played outside as well. All your friends now wear glasses
   as well.

Is that correct?

Let me quickly ask you if Norwegians are seeing the same rates of Tesla mishaps as the rest of the world ( or atleast North America )?

If you happened to be unaware all of these Tesla-skeptics ( atleast this latest round of skeptics ) are being buoyed by this Reuters report about major problems Tesla owners have faced off late. One describing a new owner's experience with his spanking new Tesla : "The vehicle’s front-right suspension had collapsed, and parts of the car loudly scraped the road as it came to a stop."

   Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective
   https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/

Are you going to just issue a proclamation without so much as corroborate it with 1/20th the amount of legitimate facts that article supports its case with?

And we should take you at your word because youre more pedigreed? or enjoy more clout in the HN-sphere?

Is that it? Is that what this site has come down to? Ha!

An excerpt from a WaPo opinion piece, earlier this year:

   But look outside this golden world and you discover a
   different picture. Real household income hasn’t increased
   for the past 15 years. The average UK
   household is 20% poorer than its peers in northwestern
   Europe. A survey for the Resolution Foundation in January
   found that 11% of Britons (the equivalent of 6 million
   people) hadn’t eaten when hungry because they didn’t have
   enough money for food.
   .
   .
   Britain’s low-growth economy is not only relentlessly
   reducing the country’s living standards (on current
   trends, the average Polish family will be richer than the
   average British family by the end of the decade). It is
   also forcing everyone to pay higher taxes for worse
   public services: The great British Middle Class live in
   a world of petty crime that goes un-investigated let
   alone punished, over-crowded emergency health services,
   and ever-lengthening NHS waiting lists (Britain has one
   of the lowest ratios of doctors and hospital beds per
   patient in the whole of the OECD).[1]

[1]

Britain Should Stop Pretending It’s a Rich Country July 18, 2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/07/18/stagnant-...

U.K. does a shoddy job of nearly everything - from wireless connectivity to infrastructure to healthcare dispensation - compared to even similar sized advanced economies.

Just take broadband / wireless connectivity.

Outside of London / S.E. England, the rest of the country has shoddier coverage than places like Thailand! Twitch streamers who have tried to livestream their exploits outside of London were met with spotty coverage at best. You can go watch the VODs yourself. Its unbearably bad even with the aid of cellular-bonding equipment ( multi-SIM multi-data plan fused to provide better signal ).

Whereas in similarly sized places like South Korea the same live-streamers have been able to stream the length and breadth of the country with a single SIM data plan, right from their phones without so much as a bitrate drop-off!

Large swathes of U.K. are still serviced by those one-lane-each-way thoroughfares you saw over a 50 years ago in films such as Straw Dogs and A Clockwork Orange.

My personal gripe - air conditioning is nearly non-existent outside of big box commercial establishments & good non-bed & breakfast hotel chains. ( This is the case across much of Europe - scores of people died in a heat wave in France not so long ago )

[1] The size of South Korea is approximately 99,720 sq km, while the size of the United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 sq km, making the United Kingdom 144% larger than South Korea. The population of South Korea is approximately 51.8 million people, while the population of the United Kingdom is approximately 67.8 million people.

Solely addressing the mask use part of your reply, I've found that it greatly helped reduce the number of times I fell ill ( even mildly ) from things you list like colds, coughs, sore throats & fatigue.

I can't believe that there are no substantial studies that have studied the ability of consumer grade surgical masks ( and/or N95s) in preventing common illnesses, very reliably when used regularly.

Why aren't these things conclusively studied, beyond any degree of doubt?

I fully agree that these alma maters shouldnt be fetishized.

But this obsession is not without its merits either - some leadership positions are exclusively carved out of the ivy league bunch

Things like Hedge fund CEOs and/or Presidents, Supreme Court Justices[1], Presidents and such.

Europeans are not entirely devoid of some form of elitism either in picking their leaders.[2]

[1] The Road to a Supreme Court Clerkship Starts at Three Ivy League Colleges

The chances of obtaining a coveted clerkship, a new study found, increase sharply with undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton.

The justices themselves are products of elite educations. Eight of them attended law school at Harvard or Yale, and six of them have undergraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale or Princeton. And six of them had themselves served as law clerks at the Supreme Court.

[2] Don’t Call Me Doktor

German politicians are obsessed with earning Ph.D.s—but plagiarism scandals tend to catch up to them and derail careers.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/04/germany-politics-higher...

With Italy, we may not want to use 'quickly' and 'cheaply' too soon.

The collapse of the Ponte Morandi / Polcevera Viaduct was just a few years ago and is still fresh in the minds.[1][2]

[1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Morandi#Collapse

[2]

Police release new footage of doomed Morandi Bridge collapse in Genoa https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V479srTBlAk

Genoa motorway bridge collapse caught on camera https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Pl0rsVdXxM

German delegation’s response at UNGA when Trump says “Germany will become totally dependent on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfJv9QYrlwg

Same reason the U.S. allows all other sorts of privacy invasion like the White-Pages-like search sites that will gladly share ( for free ) your past 11 something U.S. mailing addresses you've resided at, the names, ages & addresses of your family members & a whole host of other information ( you may have to pay for this bit ). All you need is someone's First & Last name. Even the U.S. state is not really needed.

The reason being someone is reaping massive benefits from whatever loophole allows for this kind of data collection & is shoring up initiatives so that loophole isn't plugged.

Now try the same search with a U.K. resident or E.U. resident you know of. I'd say you will have a markedly tougher time gaining access to similar information, with just a few clicks & without ever pulling out your credit card. I have no clue if U.K. is similarly compromised off late but a few years ago ( prior to Brexit ) it was not the case.