Oh god, I remember that Tweet.
For what it is worth (since I watch Valliant for most of my sourcing), he has 2 advantages.
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He actually does financial analysis and risk planning as a day job, and Youtube is just a hobby. He also frequently shows his work that you can tell he isnt just pulling numbers out of his ass when it comes to the financial work, and his analysis of the typical "Hollywood Math" seems to line up with people who are known Hollywood insiders (like Chris Gore).
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He is close friends with WDW Pro, who is one of the most accurate Disney insiders in that sphere, and who has provided him with documents that back up some of his stances.
So it absolutely could be wrong. But he is probably a lot more right than just some rando.
They have also let a lot of the park fall into disrepair compared to the old Disney tradition of being anal about cleanliness and maintenance. Plus they are losing a ton of people to Universal Orlando, which doesnt have the same issues with reputation and state of the park, as well as having attractions that are rapidly becoming more popular. And that is before Epic Universe comes around.
It is almost comical how much money they lose on Disney+. A financial guy I watch put it in comparison of the money they lose on it is equivalent of a Disney Cruise Ship just straight up sinking every quarter (in terms of cost).
It is one of my main points used to show that ESG-money actually doesnt help. If it did, Disney wouldnt be withering like it has a vampire draining it.
And it is also why you see the breakdown between states the way you do. States in the South and the Plains still have lots of "you're on your own" attitudes that seem wild to people outside, because we still have natural predators. I live in a "city" of 50K people and I still see deer and coyotes near my house from time to time. And that is before we get around to the smaller scavengers like rabbits and raccoons.
Do you think anyone in New York City has seen anything more wild than a pigeon? So of course they are going to think that things are easy, and that if they ever go out to Yellowstone on vacation, they can go try and pet the Bison since it is just a furry cow (instead of, you know, a highly aggressive, extremely territorial, furry tank with hooves). Meanwhile, those of us who actually live out there knows if a rabid coyote shows up in the yard, you get a gun and put it down because if you called the sheriff for that he would scold you for wasting his time.
Its all good. But like I said, if you are wanting to do a more closed off country, Cultural Exclusion is probably your best bet. Because it makes it so that pops only have to have one trait be the same as your primary culture to avoid discrimination, and therefore assimilate. So you can get away with people only knowing, say, English and still have them start having to assimilate. Or have them be Protestant and have them start assimilating, etc.
The USA is indeed probably one of the better countries for a tutorial though. They are just such a way that you basically have to use Multiculturalism to not have major issues (although you can get away with Cultural Exclusion).
As someone who loves Vicky 3, I will agree that the agitators are kind of busted at the moment. I am waiting until the next update since they are going to fix the agitators as well as some new military upgrades.
Also, if you are wanting to do a more enclosed country, I highly recommend rushing automation tech. Yes, factories and farms need a lot of workers, but if you replace the need for workers with tractors and steam engines you dont need the immigrants. I have played through as a Nationalist, Culturally Exclusive Netherlands and did just fine (although it did mean imports for some of my goods).
As for myself:
I am currently doing one last build in Cities: Skylines before they drop CS2 later this year. Highly looking forward to both, and intend to build a city with the same name and build philosophy just to see exactly what differences exist.
After that, I have been playing Chivalry 2, Snowrunner, Stellaris, and Railway Empire 2.
Kansas City at least has shit to do if you avoid the worst parts, so I still go there a lot for day-cations. I can walk through downtown KC and still feel relatively safe.
I cant say the same for when I was in Denver.
The jobs are also moving to new locations. Austin and Miami have both been seeing a ton of growth in the Tech sector as of late. But unlike Silicon Valley, most of these companies are striving to be practical and actually make money, so it is less of a boom situation.
Will be interesting to see what happens as Silicon Valley continues to fall apart though.
I want to see the actual numbers come the end of the year. Because something tells me it wasnt any more than normal, it was just the media started reporting on them more. Like what happened with the supposed jump in fires at food processing plants that turned out to be in line with the average.
The only unusual derailment was the one in Ohio, and that seems like a situation where I am going to blame the railroad, since if my dad's hunch is right (from experience as a retired firefighter), it sounds like the railroad may have been cooking the books resulting in the wrong technique to fight the fire, causing the chemical fire we all saw.
When I heard they made the damn thing of carbon fiber, I called that it was either crushed like a soda can or just shattered.
I would argue it is not the West as a whole who has lost it. It is the ones who control this culture (or claim to) in a very specific area who have lost that, largely willingly in the name of political goals and a smug belief that they are somehow "enlightened" compared to those rubes outside.
It is the same reason that whenever they change things to "Reflect the world as it is today", it actually looks more like downtown LA than the actual world.
Oh yeah, I agree. Strategic is absolutely better than just winging it and giving in to every impulse (like you said with the Trans movement today). In fact, a little more strategic thought would probably do people good for fixing some of the situations we are in.
I was just giving another example to back up the other ones listed.
Just because it happened in my backyard so I know some of the fine details, Brown vs. Board of Ed was shopped around and they chose Kansas because we always had a strange relationship with segregation (the Klan held power just long enough post-WW1 to pass it, and just enough to make it difficult to get rid of). As such, the schools were segregated in Topeka, but we had actually achieved "Separate but Equal". Both high schools in the town were maintained to a similar degree, both had similar quality teachers, both were serviced by busses, etc. And the people suing didnt even think they were badly served, they just wanted somewhere closer so their daughter didnt have to walk across a train line to get to school.
It was the Civil Rights activist who decided it could be used as a case to overturn Plessy, and they were right.
I am on dekachin's side, ie Pro-Ukraine. I just think that NATO and its people cringe-post from time to time. Doesnt change the fact that I will pay good money to watch Russia get destroyed by Ukraine.
I mostly stopped commenting on it because it had become a case of "Brick wall arguing with Brick wall", where neither side could even agree on the details to have the debate in the first place, much less practice the definition of insanity yet again.
I am sure everyone on here already knows my stance on the Ukraine war, but I will never defend the media coverage of it. They are just as "head-up-ass" "cringe personified" as they have always been.
Now we need to see if Time had an article about the Russians shenanigans in Chernobyl and the Red Forest early in the war. Because it would make this article title even more hilarious.
Military should never get involved in politics, ever, about anything.
Yes, but they pretty much always have, even in the US. Which is part of the reason we try to make sure generals dont have that much power in a war.
Although yes, there is indeed much fear to be had if they start micromanaging things too much.
I am going to "actually" that picture. Eisenhower had a ton more honors than that, and if he actually wore them all he would have looked more like Milley. He just didnt like wearing them all because he felt it was unnecessary and distracted from his role (which in its own right gets the actual point of the image across).
Either way, the main point is still accurate. The US has almost always been characterized by its generals being little more than politicians who dont really get what they are doing. Which is why, even back to the time of Washington (as well as the ideals of the "citizen soldier" that the US was founded on), we practice "Strategic Chaos" and place almost all of our emphasis on field officers and NCO's, with Generals doing little more than going "I want you to do X by Y time with Z rules of engagement." And then every single NCO takes that, interprets this on their own, and then you end up with effectively hundreds of tiny armies advancing on you from unpredictable directions instead of one giant army.
And when you get a general who actually knows what they are doing, like Eisenhower? God help you.
Agreed. Its the same as how almost every Star Wars fan I know basically picks and choses from the Disney Star War the stuff that they like, and then everything else they enjoy about Star Wars is still the "Legends" continuity. And then much like with Trekkies, there are plenty of Star Wars fan made things that are beloved by the community.
There is a part of me that thinks we might actually be able to get to a point of more stuff being the public domain like that though. Mickey Mouse is coming up on the end of his time as the exclusive property of Disney. In the past, they could have just gotten an extension to their copyright and gone on with their thing. But now that there is growing anger from parents and consumers over the company (Disney has recently been polling in line with the likes of EA in terms of approval), and the fact they have alienated an entire political party who would have done it for them? Now, there is a good chance Mickey could go out to be used by anyone, just like Winnie the Pooh (another example of the woke not being able to effect his shared cultural reputation).
Considering the Arthurian mythos are in the public domain and any random schmuck can make something for it (which is why there are like 5 billion different movies of it), I would imagine it is.
Technically, most generals are. Thank your lucky stars the US Military in a war situation is built around NCO's instead.
Probably. I have a coworker in my machine shop who is more politically incorrect than I am. And he said that at his high school (which, incidentally, is the same one I went to almost 10 years ago), the social interactions work like this. All of the Woke ones are very much the minority, but very loud. A few teachers feed their egos, but most of the teachers dont put up with it. And most of them are fed up with the Woke types and have even started deliberately antagonizing them on some occasions.
But then, I also live in a midsized town in a Red state. So maybe there is differences in major Dem strongholds.
Although Sone shows seem popular with gen Z, I would think most people are tired of the massive push for black, lgbt, and girl power.
It is especially true when you look at the revealed preferences of what Gen Z actually does. The shows that are "popular" with them will pull in less than one million viewers (which includes those watching just to roast it), and the movies that are "popular" with them usually underperform. Meanwhile, every Gen Z guy I knows watches anime and has their personal big-titty waifu of choice, they all play video games with hot women and big guns, and they have apparently been digging up and watching stuff from the 90's and 2000's the same way many Millennials watch '80's movies.
The trailer I saw was just a prerender setting up the conflict. But if you know of a gameplay trailer, I am all ears.
Incidentally, this is probably why it is so hard for modern creatives to create a good Superman story. Superman is supposed to be the ultimate paragon of a moral character, who has absolute power and through sheer force of will refuses to let it corrupt him, because it is the right thing to do.
Most modern creatives consider such a notion to be both laughable and impossible.