@JohnMcDonaldSB @PaulMLeu By 14 most adolescent boys move onto rollercoasters and find those at Disney too tame or too infrequent. They tend to move onto universal if not magic mountain. Same with legoland after 9.
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Greta T
21.2K posts
@PaulMLeu Nearly lost me with the cleverness Paul - not insulting my son I assume, but me? Simply said we enjoy Disneyland and asked what your thoughts are on attending pro sporting events.
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Happiest day when my son said he didn’t want to go to Disneyland anymore. The place has lost its magic. Caters to extended adolescents, diabetics in go carts getting to the front of lines, adult beverages in DCA ruined everything, and the most unkempt cast members displaying tattoos and piercings. So over it.
The New Yorker@NewYorker
For the most devoted fans, Disney has engineered an ecosystem of financial entanglement that goes far deeper than park tickets or merchandise, which keeps the magic—and the debt—perpetually compounding. In 2023, Ashley, a freshman at Quinnipiac University, in Connecticut, had $15,000 in her bank account. Excited by her newfound freedom as a college student, she decided to start going on solo trips. Walt Disney World, in Orlando, Florida, seemed like an obvious choice. She went during her winter break. Then she returned, six times, in two years. Soon enough, her account balance had dwindled to just five dollars. Perhaps unsurprisingly, many adults who have accumulated Disney debt seem to be chasing a feeling from their childhoods. One woman, who has been to Disney World more than a hundred times, said that visiting the parks takes her back to a time when she had fewer worries: “It’s the nostalgic feeling of what brought you joy when you were little and you didn’t have the stressors of adult life.” Read more about the Disney adults putting themselves in debt for the pursuit of magic: newyorkermag.visitlink.me/_JqtFg
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@SleestakLightng @ShawnNOrlando Yes but Disney gets the louder howls because it’s a right of passage for families. Sports less so, and the son might be into hockey while the daughter into basketball.
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@ShawnNOrlando Sports are being "ruined" by this too. As expensive as a day at Disneyland is, look at prices for a Clippers game for a family of four if you want halfway decent seats. Blaming the customer is stupid, but families are being pushed out of both these experiences due to the pricing
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Although this is engagement farming to the highest degree, Ill bite.
I see Disney adults no different from sports fans who watch and travel to root for a team they dont actually play for.
If Disney is for families, then why do we try to gatekeep from families without kids often
Michael J. Miraflor@michaelmiraflor
Among my hottest takes are: - Disney adults (esp with no kids) are ruining it for families by inflating the cost of everything. - Disney adults should seek therapy to deal with childhood issues, not more trips to Disneyland. - Disney should not cater to Disney adults. It’s for families. It’s for the kids.
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@Blake_Allen13 Modernism. Kagan abs Sotomayor are just fighting political battles but while the right can pick originalism or interpretism when it suits them to win , the left can’t after a century of fighting against it. The great tragedy of Dworkin is he lived long enough to be hoisted
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I don’t have a ton of well-formed thoughts here but something I’m chewing on is this: liberal jurisprudence is in bad shape. Not because there aren’t smart jurists, but because it no longer has a “grand unifying theory.” It lost the interpretative battle of the past half century
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@SeanTrende @bdquinn Fast food resonates with the public more. It’s supposed to be cheap. They don’t care if fancy elites at Ruth Chris have to pay more or if the upper middle class is priced out, and Outback is too infrequent of an occurrence to matter.
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@bdquinn THAT WAS MY POINT!! Inflation hits you no matter if you’re doing McDonalds, fast casual or something fancy. It’s why it topples governments.
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I kind of thought that Outback Steakhouse prices looked like real proper steakhouse prices until I scanned the menu of what a real proper steakhouse charges now. Holy moly.
Josh Barro@jbarro
We had @SeanTrende on Central Air this week to talk about redistricting and also Outback Steakhouse. Remember the family-size DoorDash meal with lobster tails that cost $125 in 2023? Well, now it’s $190! That Trumpflation will get ya. centralairpodcast.com/p/no-rules-jus…
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@gummibear737 Hasn’t just trump decided to lean on a blockade until either the Iranian regime spirals or they elect to lash out? Trump has a no problem with Pakistan but that won’t save irans oil
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As someone who does analysis, I can only analyze that which I know
And at this point the ceasefire in Iran no longer makes sense, based on what we know
I'm neither a panican nor a 5D chess guy
Given all of this, I think Trump is waiting on something...either the right moment to resume hostilities or a deal still being negotiated
And yes, it could be TACO Trump, but I don't think that applies to his handling of foreign policy...he understands the risk of being perceived as weak. At least I think so...but who knows!?
I'm just an analyst and Trump is very unpredictable. I can't make a prediction as to what he's going to do.
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@adrusi a. You’re banking on percentages holding up. It was close. Youre banking if real stakes it holds up. Not just cheap virtue signaling. b. Almost everyone is ultimately a red pusher. Different answer if 1% threshold but at 99% almost everyone is a red pusher.
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how i became a blue-pusher
i have a confession: years ago, in the first button poll, i pressed red
"well theres a correct answer here, right?"
then i saw the results and that we all won bc blue won
and i didnt get mad, just realized i was wrong and switched allegiances
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@largibs @PstafarianPrice It’s also very segmented. You’ll get less at a Ralph’s than a gelsons. To get artisan break you have to go up market. Parents shop at the general market.
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@PstafarianPrice What’s hilarious about that discourse is every US supermarket chain has a bakery section as well.
Back to your point, most in the US don’t buy it, not due to a lack of supply, but because it doesn’t fit with our normal diet. Don’t need fancy bread for school lunch sandwiches.
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Begging people to look in other shopper's carts at the grocery store
How often do you see soft sliced bread? (regularly). How often do you see bakery bread? (almost never)
Leo/Täubchen🐦@affairemayaling
these are in almost every supermarket chain here. this is what we mean when we say you don’t have bread in your grocery stores.
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@EWErickson The limit is house office space. They’d need a big beautiful ballroom of their own. The house floor isn’t as much of a problem since no one is ever there but the sou (assuming we want to even keep it) would likely need to be moved, perhaps to said ballroom.
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I think, at a minimum, the House should expand to 1000 members in 2030, but it'd be better to have way more than that.
Chuck Todd@chucktodd
There really is only one way to improve representation for all Americans in Congress: UNCAP THE HOUSE! It’s what the founders intended; they did NOT want to see Congressional Districts that were bigger than most major cities. Want to dilute the influence of courts and partisans, UNCAP THE HOUSE!
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@FrMicheleFSCB @dmweisberger @RobertKennedyJr It’s very simple…they trade housing travel growth and cars for things like food and healthcare. In food they trade selection, snacks like chips and soda, fast food, breakfast and year round availability for locally sourced.
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@dmweisberger @RobertKennedyJr That’s honestly one of the greatest mysteries to me.
The poor in Italy eat so much better than rich people here. And eating is one of the most important acts of each day.
Why is it?
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I just spent 2 incredible weeks in Italy and it is so frustrating to come back to the U.S…
How is it possible @RobertKennedyJr that the Italian food supply is so vastly superior.
I literally ate bread at every meal, dessert multiple times per day, and generally ate way more than I do in the U.S.
Not once did I have acid reflux. Not one headache, no digestive problems, and I didn’t gain any weight.
If I ate the same way in the U.S. (I used to at times) I would have gone through a full bottle of Tums and Advil just to get through the day…
WHY does the U.S. allow glyphosate in wheat, high fructose corn syrup in food and who knows what in our milk products?
The difference in quality of life in Italy vs the U.S. is staggering from their common sense (anti corporate) food regulation.
WHY aren’t more people upset about this?
The U.S. is the richest country in the world and we eat like one of the poorest.
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@blightersort @asymmetricinfo Ai is wonderful at structure (something a lot of human writers are terrible at). My son wrote a screenplay for a class: his teacher missed structural problems like the turn ai easily picked up. Ai is terrible at creativity and original content. If it doesn’t see, can’t imitate.
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assuming you mean it's better at imitating john oliver than it is at imitating most writers (rather than better at imitating john oliver than most writers are at imitating john oliver), that's definitely believable mostly bc oliver's schtick is so formulaic and stale you could prolly write an Eliza-like chatbot w/ fairly simple rules that could do a credible john oliver
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Ironically, I find that AI is better at imitating John Oliver than most writers.
Richard Hanania@RichardHanania
Wait, John Oliver actually ran a segment with the premise that “AI models don’t work well”? Wasn’t this guy telling us to get on our knees and worship scientific experts when they said there were more than two genders? Now when experts are building the most revolutionary technology of all time he stops believing them?
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@blightersort Oooff. You’ve been spared. My kid does travel sports so I’ve gotten to see the horror of these boxes for soccer tournaments. You are required to stay there (kick backs to the tournaments). They are the spirit airlines of hotels…paper thin dry wall and floors.
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ah, so maybe airport hotels are a distinctly better product than city hotels, could be.
in the US i tend to stay in air bnbs outside of occasional travel needs so maybe i'm getting a biased perspective. (vs when i visit the capitals of europe it's usually for a couple days to show the kids before we decamp to a house in the countryside and so we stay in hotels.)
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this is true but also in recent years i've been surprised when staying at relatively nice hotels in touristy Paris or Rome at the general shabbiness.
Megan McArdle@asymmetricinfo
One reason that people often struggle to believe how much richer Americans are than Europeans is that European central cities are much nicer than American ones, and both travelers and expats tend to flock to central cities.
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@blightersort Unlike the us, Europe didn’t build the boxes with the free built in breakfast.
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@blightersort Legacy structures with a built inn revenue stream (airport crews). You still find the same among the major airport hubs like Heathrow and de Gaulle. But yes a shabbiness has set in for the high but not higher end in the cities…squeezed by boutiques and higher end.
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@AlexanderB6024 @BriannaWu Space because membership in congress isn’t growing anymore. There’s been proposals to increase the size of the house to make it more representative and decrease the power of small states. There wouldn’t be enough office space for such an increase.
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@AlexanderB6024 @BriannaWu The capitol is connected via underground tunnels (complete with mini subway) to three large office buildings. The White House has the old executive office building next door (the setting for the series “veep”) but has also outgrown it. The capitol hasn’t needed as much more
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Hot take, but we shouldn’t just give Trump the ballroom. We should expand the White House as well.
It was designed in a much simpler point of human history, and the truth is there is not enough space for the people needed to lead a government of a country our size.
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@DBalazada Do nothing is not an option for them since they are staring down economic collapse. They will either attack (risking catastrophe but hoping to further get the left in us and Europe to pressure Trump to settlement) or cave.
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BREAKING
• Phone contact between Araghchi and American officials has continued in recent days
• In the past 24 hours, firm messages have been conveyed from Washington: the United States will not change its position, is not rushing into a deal, and will not compromise on the nuclear issue
Three scenarios now being examined in Tehran:
• Maintaining the current situation and waiting for a U.S. move
• Conceding and reaching an agreement
• Deliberate escalation: targeting Gulf states or moves in the Strait of Hormuz
Shift in IRGC approach:
• Until now, they assessed Trump was under pressure to reach a deal and could be leveraged
• His tweets and conduct were interpreted as signs of weakness
• A reassessment is now underway: understanding that Trump is not rushing and does not intend to concede
Bottom line:
Iran is being forced to recalibrate in the face of a far more rigid U.S. position than expected.
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