FriendOfDeSoto

Der mit dem Schlumpf tanzt.

Would that mean I'll be getting more in dollars due to that having high value?

You posted the answer yourself.

Every central bank designs its own bills. The US chose to be boring, bland, and hostile to people with visual impairments. The reason why they won't change that in a hurry is because it would necessitate an expensive switch in vending machines to handle different size bills. They could change the color but greenback is their brand. European currencies have pretty much always had bills of different sizes.

The exchange rate of currencies depend on many things. Prices depend on many things. Comparing Swiss ones with American ones is almost pointless. Switzerland has high VAT rates (high taxes in general) and thus salary levels will be higher as well. Swiss tourist will go nuts spending stateside because everything will just be cheap to them. Because they won't finance social security, universal health care, or a bunker place for every citizen in case of thermonuclear war in the US. But they do in Switzerland.

Fans. Keep a paper/manual one on you are all times, as backup if you have a battery powered one. On those do your research to find one with a good battery.

If you're running your A/C you can set it at a higher temperature if you run a ceiling fan or upright fan at the same time.

Don't wear black or dark colors.

Cooling packs in the freezer, wrap a towel around it, put it on your head, hold it on your hands.

Just a wet cloth around your neck is great when you're out and about.

I think the surprise two-week break is not just a courtesy to MF and their pledge drive. I think it's also to finish going through all the old episodes, cut out the MF jingles and misleading references to their network, ads sold through them, and jumbotron sales pitches, etc. And to set markers around the interstitials so whichever platform they will use can insert new ads.

I'll be very surprised if they don't end up on Patreon like everybody else. What I also find puzzling is this support gap. If I wanted to migrate my subscribers, I would want to offer them the new way right away. Now folks like you will cancel their MF support and just twiddle their thumbs and the longer the wait the more doubt some might feel and the harder it will be to get them to re-sub.

The longer I thought about it, the more I think it might be the network squeezing its creators that kicked this off. Changes in percentages of fees that stay with MF, unwillingness to raise jumbotron fees or slots, lackluster ad sales, a change of management - tick what might feel appropriate. They started the fire and we see Uxbridge Shimoda reacting to it. That would explain the weird communication and drawn out transition we get.

I went on a tear late last year and started relistening to TGG from ep1. I'm down to All Good Things now and had planned to continue with DS9. I've put that on hold for the time being. I'm afraid I'll be invested in finishing it and being driven mad if I get five AI-generated-and-read ads five times an ep.

@bradboimler@lemmy.world has posted a link in this thread that would be the next thing I'd try to investigate.

You can turn off read receipts in settings > privacy. So I think if the person you sent the message to has turned this off you won't get the two ticks in a circle. Could it be that?

I've been using Signal for about 5 years, WhatsApp for longer, LINE for shorter. The only one that seems to get background process killed occasionally is the latter. I'm on a Xiaomi phone and their version of Android wants to kill everything, except their own apps. Signal stays up.

Nobody has ever complained about not getting Signal texts to me.

Have you actually seen evidence of missing messages? There could be human error involved or you caught ghosters red handed.

Not yet.

Just read the newsletter. More ads incoming, talk of "industry standard."

I'm sure there are reasons why they want to go this route that I don't understand. My personal fear right now is that we will be witnessing a version of podcast enshitification.

I don't know why but I find the abruptness of the announcement rubs me the wrong way too. A show that prides itself on producing everything well in advance gave virtually no indication that this was coming. So next week we go back to Farpoint. Next week rolls around and we get this.

The timing is bad. Money will be tight thanks to peace loving, senile president Dukat's recent well thought out military excursions and impeccably humane diplomatic messaging. You don't want to give subscribers a reason to stop their subscriptions in a time when every penny needs to be pinched. You will lose subscribers because they will forget to make the change. You will lose subscribers because now you are forcing them to reevaluate their decision. You may lose more if your new asking price is higher than before. I fail to see how they could not lose subscribers here.

Tbh I always disliked the marketing messages of MaxFun, never really liked any other of their shows, so I don't mind seeing the back of them. They had a touch of the Pluribus, I paraphrase: "come to our events even if you are a bit weird, we will love you, guaranteed!" I stopped listening to their guilt tripping, which I call their pledge drive messages, after year 2 or so. Couldn't fast forward fast enough through this like it's the Enterprise intro. Ask for support, no problem; I listened to every episode till the very end. But there is a manipulative line you can cross for me and they do in those drive weeks. So will we be hearing less of that? Or more of it all the time? A surprise two-week break is maybe giving me too much time to ruminate on that.

Fucking hell, I had a lot of thoughts about this, didn't I. Sorry it got so long and thanks for reading through my parasocial therapy sesh.

Have another go at reading the post. The question wasn't what's stopping the US from building both, the question was whether OP's explanation does justice to the status quo. My first sentence includes the word "also," indicating that this is additional information that I found wasn't sufficiently weighed in the single paragraph.

This is a thread and I read other people pointing out other things. So I didn't.

I think you need to read more of the article you neglected to link to. I also think your irony gauge needs adjusting. Thank you for rage baiting with us today.

There is no entity called "the world" that can flick through contingency plans. You can bet those who benefit from oil that would have sailed through the strait with no problem hadn't the orange toddler started a war have a plan B. Whether that's reactivating a few old pipelines or just sending ships the long way around, fuck knows. I'm not swimming in petrodollars. None of these plans will cost the same. All contingency plans cost more money. They might be raising fuel prices too much but they couldn't not raise them at all.

No one foresaw this development because it is - and that's the diplomatic term for it: fucking stupid. And that's why there isn't a plan B in place that can be used in the same way right away.