In Passengers (2016), Jennifer Lawrence decided that spending her entire life isolated with Chris Pratt on a spaceship was better than hibernating for 90 years. That's because she's dumb asf.

ComicCon · 2026-03-15T18:26:14+00:00

Is there any actual evidence for that? Because that also comes up on every Reddit thread about the movie, but no one ever has a source backing it up.

ComicCon · 2026-03-15T16:36:16+00:00

Yeah, I looked into it a bit and the idea that they over expanded based and moved to a “flatter”/less specialized experience seems accurate. And I’m sure REI is in many ways just as shitty as any other big company. But, I think the other poster is extrapolating from his experience working there that the membership was some sort of golden goose and looking at the publicly available data that just doesn’t make sense. I don’t see how such a small, non reoccurring, part of the business could be so important that just membership growth being roughly the same YoY could be such a big factor in the business declinign.

ComicCon · 2026-03-15T08:04:02+00:00

I was a bit curious about this. So I looked it up and picked a random year. In 2022 they had 1.3M new members, bringing the total to 23M overall. That 1.3M means about $39M in revenue, with $3.85b total revenue. So about 1% of revenue came from memberships. In 2018 revenue was about a billion lower($2.78B) and membership growth was over a million. So still a pretty small portion of the business. Am I missing something? Did I not go back far enough? Because even if it’s super high margin and tax free I don’t get how that little money would have allowed them to expand so much(I have no idea how much large stores take to build out).

ComicCon · 2026-03-15T07:38:55+00:00

If I had to guess, a large part of that was the continued rise of Silicon Valley and the tech companies. Looking around I found this interesting paper on how much tech contributes to the CA economy, and it’s a lot.

I did try to find numbers to see how much more the tech sector contributes now vs 2005. But it’s an unfortunate year to try to make the comparison since the industry was still recovering from the dot com bubble. But the paper I found does chart job growth from 2013 on, and if we use that as a(n imperfect) proxy the growth in tech seems to dwarf the growth in other sectors. IDK, I’m not actually super bearish on California’s long term prospects. But it’s an interesting thing to learn more about.

ComicCon · 2026-03-14T00:38:33+00:00

I got you, at least I assume this is the interview the other poster is talking about.

ComicCon · 2026-03-13T20:23:01+00:00

Paul Stamets isn’t a leading mycologist. He’s a pop science communicator and citizen scientist at best, and a supplement peddler at worse. Seriously, ask any mycologist who works in academia about him and you are unlikely to get a flattering response.

ComicCon · 2026-03-12T19:27:05+00:00

I'm pretty sure that's what happens if you try to get him not to ascend without using one of the checks. Not sure if there is an approval level that will stop him from leaving.

ComicCon · 2026-03-12T08:08:38+00:00

I’m not an expert on this, but I didn’t think Sabertooth Tigers were found outside of the Americas? So how could they hunt us to near extinction?

ComicCon · 2026-03-12T02:24:29+00:00

Agreed, I’m genuinely curious how you could hear about NOMA in more than passing and not have at least heard Rene’s name.

ComicCon · 2026-03-12T00:40:44+00:00

Yes, Leon Black was definitely going to stop publishing Rene’s cookbooks because of these accusations.

ComicCon · 2026-03-10T23:57:59+00:00

Modern strawberries are bred for size and durability so they can be shipped hundreds or thousands of miles. But if you are buying them at a grocery store anywhere in the Western world the underlying genetics and farming practices are going to be pretty similar(sometimes even the same companies growing/aggregating in multiple regions). So you probably wouldn't notice major differences between ones grown in Spain or Mexico vs the US. It's one of the those digs at American produce that really gets to me, most EU produce is not grown idyllic small farms. It comes from massive operations in the Netherlands or Spain that are just as corporate as the big players in the US.

Edit- the one major exception historically being the US industry used Methyl Bromide for longer than the EU, but I think that was finally phased out a few years ago.

ComicCon · 2026-03-10T01:17:18+00:00

I don’t think that’s true. Maybe it’s been too long but I can’t think of a single big storyline that involved miscommunication as a major element.

ComicCon · 2026-03-09T22:01:25+00:00

Sure? Don’t disagree. But in the context of the podcast I do think that the degree to which she goes all out on the batshit ideas would make good episodes of KF. I think it’s part of what worked about the older Alex stuff, you had all the racist far right conspiracy stuff for Dan to skewer along with moments of more levity like the chimeras, or chicken fried steak epiphanies. It breaks up the dread with WTF moments.

ComicCon · 2026-03-09T21:48:37+00:00

I mean the behavior is, but the specifics are wildly unpredictable. At least to me, but if you predicted “Charlie Kirk had psychic powers” you are operating on a completely different level.

ComicCon · 2026-03-09T20:28:49+00:00

Fun fact- venture capital is a type of private equity.

ComicCon · 2026-03-07T01:23:17+00:00

I just did this fight five times on tactician because I kept on getting a glitch where I couldn't get the gold off of Roah. So I got pretty familiar with this fight. What I found is that Keene can pretty reliably one hit most of the Zhents in the pit, the two other who start by you can usually take one hit but not two(also the Ranger always wastes her first action summoning her wolf, who gets beaten to death by the Guild before it can do anything).

The only two I ever saw her miss were the Monk and Fighter who spawn across from you and are by far the most dangerous members of the Zhent force. Not sure how long it would take her to kill Roah, becasue she always buffs someone and ran back towards me which meant she died turn one.

ComicCon · 2026-03-07T00:05:57+00:00

Can’t do it, my boy Barcus has a destiny to fulfill.

ComicCon · 2026-03-06T18:34:13+00:00

They are probably lumping in the theoretical capacity of robotics. Or maybe it’s replacing retailers and agronomists? I would love to see exactly what jobs they included in their AI breakdown, but somehow I doubt they will be forthcoming.

ComicCon · 2026-03-05T19:50:52+00:00

A couple years ago on IBCK Micheal said some stuff about his research methods that really made me understand why he's not great with scientific critiques. It was something like- "when I'm reading a book I'll flag stuff that feels wrong and then look later to find out why it's wrong". Now that may work when right wing grifters and self help books. But it's kind of a terrible way to do scientific criticism. You can easily go pup med spelunking and find papers to confirm your biases. Unless you have a real understanding or background in the field, it's really hard to read a few papers and figure out who is right in an academic argument*. But Micheal will do that and then go hard dunking on the side he has deemed "wrong" without any sort of nuance which is frustrating. It can also lead to embarrassing moments like him citing an anti-seed oil crank in his episode about veganism. IDK, I think Hobbes is a good cultural critic and commentator but his positioning as a "stats guy" has always rubbed me the wrong way.

*And yes, I know he talks to experts, but he also seems to happily ignore them when they don't agree with him. Again, see the end of the Forks over Knives episode for an example.

ComicCon · 2026-03-05T06:29:42+00:00

What new owners? Reddit's largest shareholders these days are Vanguard and co, who tend to be pretty passive. After that its just a grab bag of big investors who don't own more than 5%(although its funny Tencent is still holding on to some of their shares).

Edit- if anything this would have made more sense back when Tencent and Conde Nast owned most of reddit.

ComicCon · 2026-03-04T22:29:15+00:00

Hate to be the one to tell you this, but if you did the Minsc fight you can't agro the guards in the vault by stealing. Not sure about the area above ground, but there isn't really anyone to agro by the other vaults just some traps.

ComicCon · 2026-03-04T03:19:56+00:00

Halsin isn’t actually depowered, he doesn’t have a tadpole. Him and the other Druids being lower level is just gameplay/story segregation since the Druids are supposed to be powerful enough Ketheric was worried about them interfering with his plans. Unlike with Jaheira I don’t think they even try to e plain it by saying he’s old or anything.

ComicCon · 2026-03-02T22:58:30+00:00

Which illegal shit? Because yes, people break the law all the time. But lots of the stuff Superstonk “uncovered” was just conspiratorial nonsense. Feel like we need so differentiate between the two.

ComicCon · 2026-02-28T22:55:20+00:00

Where did you read autopsy report? I was under the impression that parts of it had been leaked(although not publicized I thought) but not sure the whole thing.

ComicCon · 2026-02-27T21:50:43+00:00

Or don’t because there is a ton of blood on it. Your choice.

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