The fact is that technology advances and makes other technology obsolete,

Yeah, it happens on both sides, it’s an arms race. It will swing the other way eventually - it always has and always will

The second thing you’re not addressing is how long the “ebb and flow” takes anyway

That was intentional. There’s no estimating a timeline, but with the development of technology it’s not unreasonable to expect a reversal even in a decade. Anyway, if you’re trying to ward off doomerism you’re not going to do it by only looking at what you stand to gain

Looking at the world rn, I dont think things have a tendency to get better on their own

This is called a recency bias (I think lol) - you’re looking at the world rn and assuming its trends must continue. When you look at history you see that there are ebbs and flows, and that stasis is rare. If you focus on certain things, you may certainly decide we’re in a downtrend. There will always be an uptrend afterward. And vice versa

Yeah I’m not subscribing to a whole service just so I can watch 3/4 of my team’s games and no others. I want a service I can subscribe to and see all my team’s games, and preferably all the games in one league. If it was multi-league that would be great, but I’d rather subscribe to one league at a time than subscribe to all leagues with randomly blacked out games.

Until then - and I know it’s unlikely to ever happen - I won’t be spending money on watching sports on tv

I always call it Magic Math. There’s so much of it when you start learning about investing/trading. “Buying calls has infinite potential for gains. Selling calls has infinite potential for losses.” Like, yeah, that’s mathematically true. But at the end of the day it’s not practically true, you’re just putting a lot of weight on what you could be getting instead of what you are getting.

That’s how I pronounce it too! Jw because idk what country OP is from, nor their first language. So they might pronounce it differently, and I’d pair different surnames depending on pronunciation

Pronounced væləntain with an “eye” sound or væləntin with an “ee” sound? Or some other variation?

They did surgery on a grape

I’d recommend deciding what you’re looking for in a VPN, then using r/VPN’s comparison guide to find which one suits your wants.

Is this the best method? Idk, but it’s what I did and I’m pretty satisfied. I decided that the most important factors to me were port-forwarding, price, speed, leak protection, and encryption - basically in that order. Using that criteria I settled on AirVPN, and I have no complaints so far (one month in).

Some people care more about ethics, or ownership, or what have you. So what you think is the best VPN will depend on your needs. There’s no perfect VPN anymore, imo

Edit: As others have pointed out, some VPNs also come in optional packages. Ones such as Proton. That’s something else to consider if you’re in the market for stuff like antivirus or secure email

Do you really? How do you go about proving that kind of thing?

Eh, you can definitely use verifiable facts to derail a discussion.* It all depends on context and whether those facts are being framed truthfully and with good faith. There just isn’t enough context to go off of here. I don’t really care about OP’s politics because the point stands whether I agree with his politics or not

*Edit: See the book Merchants of Doubt about how cigarette companies in the 70s misused scientific findings to cast doubt on the link between cigarettes and cancer. Stuff like pointing out how women and men had similar smoking rates, but not cancer rates. They left out the part that women smokers tended to be much younger. Thus, in a couple decades their cancer rates matched men’s, but by then the damage was done. Bam - use of verifiable facts to lie and derail

What I was thinking too. X-tard is ableist and plain dumb. I wish we could actually read the post and comments, though, because it’s hard to tell what OP was really saying. Is he claiming that dissing on MLs is racist? Hard to say, but if he is that’s ridiculous

I guess potentially, but typically it’s a result of fetishization. I’m not queer though so I’m no authority

Someone who fetishizes or primarily tries to date transgender people

Not to mention employee protection/rights laws that don’t always apply to contractors

Taxi companies tend to be smaller, more locally owned businesses with actual employees instead of “contractors.” Why would we *not side with them?

Edit: missed an important word

I’d be curious to see which would be more practical: a decentralized version of Lyft/Uber powered by blockchain, or an employee-owned version of Lyft/Uber where workers keep all their earnings and pay a small portion for administrative fees to keep the app running.

Admittedly I’m always skeptical of blockchain’s ability to actually solve problems. But maybe it would have fewer infrastructural costs? Who knows