The unconstrained expansion of credit following the end of Bretton Woods system could only lead to the long term devaluation of the currency, something that’s theorically infinite is also inherently entropic.

Taxi (2004) was inspired by the French movie of the same name from 1998, and Just Visiting (2001) was based on Les Visiteurs (1993), they are both hollow, sterilized versions of the originals and made the fatal mistake of thinking they could just swap out the setting while keeping the plot, something that almost never works.

The original Taxi is a gritty, high octane love letter to the sun drenched city of Marseille and the broader French Riviera, it thrives in the collision of two distinct worlds, a taxi driver hailing from the low income suburbs of the city and the fancier world of career law enforcement, uniting against a common enemy in a chaotic investigation.

Les Visiteurs is a genius satire about the collision of medieval religious values and modern consumer society, making equal fun of spirituality and materialism through its various characters.

Just watch the originals with subtitles.

I’m definitely writing that down for my next super scrabble with proper nouns at grandma’s.

The simple fact of using the word “citizens” instead of people sounds awfully dystopian to me.

Me smelling the different camemberts in the aisle to find the stinkiest most ripe one to buy.

Remember that there exist alternatives to the big three US payment processors.

China’s UnionPay is pretty much global now, one can open a bank account remotely in Hong Kong or Singapore and go through UnionPay.

Russia’s Mir is the answer to the current geopolitical situation and the country being cut off from SWIFT, they are backed by UnionPay and are accepted all over Asia, Africa and increasingly in Latin America, many local banks in these parts will give you a card with Mir if you request it.

India’s UPI is also gaining traction in the subcontinent, in Europe Wero is rolling out as an answer to US dependency.

You don’t have to be a prisoner to the three American processors, even in the US and Canada, UnionPay is gaining traction as a result of the demand from the Chinese diaspora and business owners.

Competition is good for business.

Edit : typo car -> card

Obviously, if the goal had been to present it as anything other than AI, the watermark wouldn’t be there.

Unfortunately, most people want a frictionless experience, they want to click the “Sign in with Google” button and never think about it again, the moment you have to register manually, even with an email and password, fetch a client from GitHub/GitLab, or worse create a wallet and understand cryptographic keys, 90+% of the population gives up.

It doesn’t mean people are stupid, humans just evolved to pick the path of least resistance when it came to foraging for food, same principle applies to modern life.

Yeah, since Valve is not public the odds of the next head being an outside hire or some loud tech exec are extremely low.

GabeN is most likely to pick someone who’s been around with the company since the early days, like Erik Johnson or Scott Lynch.

If he wants it to stay in the family, his own son Gray could take over, he’s also a game dev.

Gabe has often expressed distrust of publicly traded markets, a plausible outcome is that his ownership gets converted into an employee-owned trust or a collective buyback, this would effectively permanently lock Valve into its current profile, distributing profils back into salaries and bonuses for the staff.

The only one that lets me keep in my library, download and install at any time games that were delisted 10 or 15 years ago by their publishers.

For that reason alone, they deserve my money over any other storefront.