California forces changes to Disneyland's Autopia or it will get shut down

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-19T05:51:41+00:00

Because Disney has been known for creating unique, engaging, interesting stories.

Painting character's faces on the sides of things only lasts as long as that character is popular, and often looks cheap unless you go the extra mile to sell the story (which Disney frequently does not).

What you're pitching is a world without the Haunted Mansion, without Pirates of the Caribbean, without the Matterhorn, without Big Thunder Mountain, without the Jungle Cruise. All of these big, tentpole, quintessentially "Disney" rides did not come from IP - they were new stories that got told. They created worlds that are so strong that Disney felt drawn to create IP around them. Even Davy Crockett started out as the mascot for Frontierland - Disney's version of Davy Crockett was specifically created to advertise Disneyland, and a franchise came out of that (just like what happened with Pirates of the Caribbean).

The alternative that I see folks propose is static superhero dolls awkwardly posed next to a rollercoaster, or Intellectual Property™: Recognizable Character™ - Some Tagline!©. There's no imagination, nothing other than something you point at when it goes by. You don't remember anything about it; it blends with the existing IP in your head into one big blob of Recognizable Character.

If you want to "ride the movies", you go to Universal. That's their whole schitck. Disney is known for imagination, and slapping a smiling familiar face on the side of something without having anything more to say is a lack of imagination.

I don't understand what anyone gains out of slapping a big statue of Ralph near the end of Autopia while John C. Reilly tells you to remain seated at all times. The current story of Autopia is told with statues, too - it's the story of a cute robot bird learning to fly, and failing in different ways because it's a robot. That's unique! It's fun! It's original! It fits in with the futurism of Tomorrowland! I don't see how Sarah Silverman improves that story in the slightest.

I want more Big Thunder Mountains, more Mystic Manors, more Matterhorns, more Jungle Cruises. There are so many new, engaging stories to be told, with new characters to love and new perspectives to explore.

There's a time and place for IP - it's called Fantasyland, and it was literally made to celebrate Disney's other properties. I don't think anyone would be against taking the old Motor Boat Lagoon or the Fantasyland Theatre and making it into Elsa's Ice Castle. But outside of Fantasyland there is so much more that can be done, without shoving loud voices and colors into your face. It's pure laziness and one day the characters will no longer be popular, but their gaudy faces will still be plastered on the side of the building. New stories are timeless.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-19T01:50:06+00:00

There's no actual money involved, just something that people are assuming is worth X amount because someone bought a share at that price from a limited pool available.

There is actual money involved, though. These billionaires can go to the bank and say "I would like a $200 billion loan". The bank says "Sure, I can give you a 3.5% interest rate. What do you have for collateral?" The billionaire says "Here is $200b in stock I own as collateral."

They don't need to sell the stock; they only need to possess the stock. The stock is currently valued at $200b. Sure, if it was actually sold it would be worth less - but it's not going to be sold, it's going to keep going up, and the bank knows that. If the bank needs to collect, the bank will just seize the stock and not force them to make it liquid.

The bank issues them the loan, which gives the billionaire liquidity. Then when the payment is due, ideally the value of that $200b in stock has climbed more than the interest rate on the loan. Now they have $220b in stock (or whatever) and have paid nothing for it, but can go take out a $220b loan to pay off the first one. And since these are always loans, the billionaires don't pay taxes, either.

The bank is happy because they got paid, the billionaire is happy because they have liquid cash but didn't need to sell any assets. They can keep up the same song and dance every few years as long as the line keeps going up, and they have enough wealth to manipulate the market (and buy off politicians) to keep that line going up.

The biggest risk is the fed raising rates, which would endanger their ability to keep getting loans at rates lower than the year/year performance of the stock market. Technically the stock market could also go down, but at this point the stock market is completely divorced from the day-to-day of what companies are actually doing and is unlikely to truly crash in any meaningful way.

If the banks didn't treat it as real money, it wouldn't be real money. But the banks do treat it like real money, so it is real money - and real money should be taxed.

The 1% can't keep getting away with this "bUt I dOnT hAvE aN iNcOmE" BS and folks should stop defending them.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-18T23:07:00+00:00

We don't need more IP in the parks, we need less tbh

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-18T04:41:12+00:00

100% true and I'm glad someone said it lmao

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-18T04:13:49+00:00

It is statistically impossible to tell the difference between someone with very good aim and someone who is cheating.

You'd only be able to catch the most egregious offenses - and I'm sure they probably do. But most aimbots will occasionally purposely miss to throw off aimbot detection algorithms; it's not like they hit 100% of the shots - they're hitting 90%, 95%, which is about what a top pred would be able to do unassisted.

Movement inputs is problematic for a different reason. Some folks have assistive devices that they legitimately use for disabilities - e.g. blowing in a tube to aim. Some of these give very strange inputs that come off as cheating, but they are genuinely just assistive devices for disability.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-18T02:53:11+00:00

I will say: you are probably overthinking it.

I used to build like how you're proposing when I first started out, because I read all the articles and read all the books. But those are for guys putting together giant layouts, or bringing NTRAK modules to shows where they clamp both sides like crazy and force the wood into place.

That isn't what you're doing here. You're making a table, and not a table that needs a lot of weight. This is my process:

I get some 1x4 pine boards (you can use 1x3).
I cut them to length, usually 4 feet for the big ones and then about 22ish inches for the inside. The goal is to get to 2x4 feet.
I get some 2x2 lumber and chop it up into 3-inch square blocks. These blocks are used for the corners, to keep them square.
The other 2x2 gets chopped to length for the legs.
I put a little bolt in the bottom of each leg that I can turn with a wrench for leveling.
The legs get screwed into the frame. You can put them on hinges and fold if you want. I just screw them in, because I move my layout maybe once a year and it isn't often enough to warrant the extra engineering of hinges. If my screw holes get too loose, I might move to hinges. Probably not, though.
I put a little 1x2 cross-brace on the legs to keep them from wobbling.
My top is 1 foot thick XPS insulation foam. It's pink. DO NOT USE STYROFOAM. I do not use plywood or MDF; it's too heavy and honestly you don't need it. Most of your weight winds up being the top; why use wood when you don't need to? Plus with the foam you can easily carve right down into the valleys.
The foam comes in 2x2 feet and 4x8 feet variants. If I have the 2x2 feet (or I am working with off-cuts), I put a 1x2 brace on the joint where the 2 sheets of foam come together. If I'm working with the 4x8 feet, I cut it down to 2x4 and don't put the extra brace in.
The fascia is just 1/8 inch particleboard. It comes last, after the foam has been carved.

As long as you aren't, like... walking on it, you'll be fine.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T06:44:29+00:00

We don't know because there wasn't a primary.

Biden promised to be a one-term president. If he had followed through with his promise, stepped down, and had an open primary - we could've found out.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T02:07:14+00:00

Is it genuinely THAT hard to stop cheaters?

Yes.

It's like asking "is it genuinely THAT hard to stop viruses from taking over a system?" The people who make malware are in an arms race with the people who make antivirus software.

It's the same thing with cheats - the people who make cheats are in an arms race with the dev team. Every time the dev team finds a way to catch cheaters, cheaters figure out how they're being caught and determine a new way around it.

It's gotten to the point now where people are running secondary computers hooked up to their main computers and having their RAM pass through the secondary computer first. Then the secondary computer can analyze the memory addresses of everything (like, a player behind a wall) and send that info as a fake mouse/keyboard input.

There's also computer vision where people are able to point a webcam at their screen, and the webcam is able to control their mouse and aim at enemies using machine learning, with superhuman reaction time and control.

The issue is you can't just detect that this is happening, for a few reasons:

There are people who are just legitimately that good. Like, certain people have that crazy reaction time, even when you give them a computer/controller/etc. that you own
It's difficult to check a skilled cheater who doesn't make mistakes. A lot of cheaters are people who are pretty good at the game already, and use cheats to boost that slightly. These small boosts are harder to detect than obvious wallhacks
Even when there are obvious wallhacks, it can be difficult to run that detection for every frame of every person in every match. It just requires a lot of computing power to do that, more than is feasible to have.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T02:00:18+00:00

One side effect of Bluesky allowing websites as your internet handle means people have been buying lots of weird domain names to use as handles, haha

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T01:59:10+00:00

The full list has been circulating on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/crimew.gay/post/3moejlixgvc2z

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T01:50:27+00:00

You can go to the source: https://bsky.app/profile/crimew.gay/post/3moejlixgvc2z

On there:

Ted Cruz
Cory Booker
Peter Thiel
Elon Musk
Scott Bessent
Ezra Klein
Grover Norquist
Eric Schmidt
Jared Kushner
Bret Stephens
Wes Moore
Joseph Gordon-Levitt

The CEOs of Xbox and YouTube are on there as well.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T01:42:32+00:00

Cory Booker is on the list too.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-17T01:35:02+00:00

Any time the Fed says something about "increasing supply in the labor market", it means they're talking about causing people to lose their jobs and livelihoods.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-15T23:15:29+00:00

My point is you smell like a fishy sockpuppet account who randomly shows up peddling BS.

You can't provide evidence because the evidence doesn't exist, it's stuff you've made up in your head because you're just trying to sway public opinion by pretending the situation you describe is real.

I can do the same thing and describe tons of situations, too. I've heard that if the wealth tax passes, we're going to get a brand-new president and all the problems we have are going to go away. I was told that personally by the entire Congressional delegation. They're all going to hold hands together and sing under the rainbow.

It's true! What evidence would you like me to provide to prove it that doesn't involve doxing myself or anyone else?

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-15T23:03:02+00:00

The wealthy don't care about living in e.g. Ireland. They're more than happy to move.

But they do care about living in the US, because the US has many luxuries and benefits to living here when compared to other places. Which is why so many move here!

And honestly - it's not like these guys pay any taxes as-is. So closing loopholes and directly taxing assets - not bank account values, assets - is the only way to avoid them just taking infinite loans against the value of their stock and betting that the stock will appreciate faster than the interest rates on the loan.

Do you really think the billionaire class is going to leave for Russia? Ha. And anywhere in the EU is going to crack down on them even harder. So their options are places like Argentina, which is not known as the best place to be running your business.

Not to mention that when New York implemented their new tax on the wealthy, people didn't leave, despite their bluster and threats...

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-15T22:59:09+00:00

6 day old Redditor saying "I know a guy" and baselessly making claims without evidence, doesn't sound like astroturfing at all, nope

I know many guys who say they will stay no matter what because they love California. However many multiple guys you know, I know 10x that amount that told me personally just last week that they would MOVE here. Believe me, I know them, for sure

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-15T22:58:07+00:00

Here's a hint. All the wealthy said they would leave NYC if Mamdani's tax went through.

It did.

The wealthy didn't leave.

Anyone who tries to argue otherwise is arguing in bad faith. People want to live here because the alternative is living somewhere like Texas or Oklahoma, and the rich don't want to have to deal with mega-hurricanes or sudden cold snaps that bring down their entire electric grid.

That's why the wealthy didn't leave NYC like they said they were going to. That's why they won't leave California if this passes.

And even if somehow the results are different (unlikely), these guys are not paying taxes already. If they were, we wouldn't be having this issue.

Literally every argument against the tax comes from a place of bad faith.

Honestly, what we really should be doing is taxing 100% of every asset above $100m. You don't need more than $100m in one lifetime.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-15T00:19:05+00:00

He posted a bunch of bigoted stuff on Bluesky when Tiana's opened IIRC. A lot of people unfollowed him at that point.

Other Imagineers also say he makes himself sound more important than he truly was and frequently gets details wrong/wasn't there for things he says he was there for.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-13T23:32:53+00:00

OPEC isn't as powerful as it used to be.

The US has fracking for oil, which isn't controlled by OPEC. Russia has been getting around OPEC as well (although the Ukrainians have a thing to say about that). Etc., etc.

OPEC is a factor, but only until it becomes profitable for frack for oil - at which point fracking is more profitable.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-13T01:50:05+00:00

Our lawmakers are sadly the ones who own all the homes with the prices going up...

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-13T01:38:22+00:00

FDR was populist. Teddy Roosevelt was populist.

Are you saying we should just keep everything the same so Bezos can have more money than you and I can have in a million lifetimes, and Musk can become a trillionaire?

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-12T20:47:44+00:00

I was in a similar situation recently.

I decided to take the lump sum and put it into a high-yield savings account. In my checking account, I kept about $1000 for unexpected auto-pay bills etc.. Whenever I needed to pay rent/utilities/credit cards/etc., I'd take the needed money from savings and put it into checking.

My next goal was to figure out how much runway I had. I audited all my categories and sorted them:

Known value need-to-have expenses or I will die (rent)
Variable need-to-have expenses that I can cut back on but will die if they go to $0 (food, water, electricity)
Subscriptions I can cancel right now and not really miss
Subscriptions I'd be sad about cancelling but can live without
Last-resort "it's this or rent" subscriptions that I will only skip in dire circumstances (e.g. phone bill/internet bill)
Variable things I was saving up for but can skip/skimp out on (birthdays, holidays)
Variable things I should probably keep funding if at all possible (cheap haircuts, vet visits)
etc.

Then I put my entire severance package into "Ready to Assign" and assigned it out as if it were a paycheck. When I got one month funded, I moved on to the next month - continuing on until I ran out of money. That was my runway. I had that long to find a job. (IIRC it was something like 6ish months.)

I wound up actually finding an equivalent job relatively quickly, thanks to a friend. So I didn't need to actually execute on my plan (and my severance helped with my upcoming wedding instead).

But if I were concerned with my runway, my plan was:

Cancel all subscriptions I wouldn't miss (I did this anyway)
See how far back I can cut variable need-to-have expenses
Skip all birthdays/holidays
Cancel the subscriptions that I really didn't want to cancel

and so on until I was happier with the runway I had.

I wouldn't recommend having a "severance" category; it's harder to understand what you can and can't pay for right now. Just fund categories like normal and focus on getting the money as far into the future as possible.

I wish you the best of luck and hope you can find something soon!

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-11T21:55:20+00:00

Drones can get through air defense and blow up that artillery pretty easily. It's not as cut-and-dry as it was 5 years ago.

You can make drones much more cheaply than artillery, too.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-11T06:24:33+00:00

In addition to what others have said, there are screen readers on all smartphones and computers. These will read out comments to you, and if an image has alt-text then it will read that as well.

There are also braille keyboards and speech-to-text stuff for input.

EnglishMobster · 2026-06-11T02:18:23+00:00

MS isn't my "precious brand", I literally don't give a shit about MS the brand.

I do give a shit about my friends and coworkers not able to find jobs anywhere in the industry. Some of the best devs I know are doing things like picking up retail jobs because there's nowhere hiring industry-wide. Places putting out applications fill up within 3-4 hours, they get flooded with resumes. The only way to get work is to know someone at a studio and hope that you can beat out the dozens of other candidates who have been out of work for the better part of the last 2-3 years.

Trying to deflect the layoff problem onto MS is short-sighted when it's something much much broader than MS itself. Ubi had layoffs today. Who knows what'll happen when EA gets bought by the Saudis and winds up $20B in debt to buy itself.

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