I’m old enough to remember when HBO’s entire point was you paid for cable so you wouldn’t have ads. That was their business model.

Then sometime in the late 80s or early 90s (I dunno, that decade’s kind of a blur) they started sneaking ads in between shows, but not in the middle of shows. But you were paying a higher price, with a few ads. Then they started showing ads to everyone, and still making you pay. I’m still salty about that.

This was always going to happen. They’ll compound paying PLUS ads, and you’ll like it, because what choice do you have if all services are doing it?

Fuck them all . 🏴‍☠️

e: massively borked that first sentence

Oh, speaking of scifi, I read another article (which I cant find now, unfortunately) about space walks: astronauts can't just climb into a space suit and exit the space station, because that would cause decompression sickness. They have to undergo about 24 hours of preparation, then spend time in a decompression chamber once they re-enter the station. I can't find the article I read atm, but here's one from space.com that talks about it:

About 24 hours before the spacewalk, astronauts undergo decompression, the same procedure divers follow when returning from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the water. Inside the space station, air is pressurized to the same degree as it is on Earth at sea level: 14.7 pounds per square inch, or 1 atmosphere.

But inside a spacesuit it's 4.3 psi, according to NASA, which is about the same pressure experienced at 30,000 feet (9,000 meters) above Earth. Experiencing a rapid drop in pressure from 14.7 to 4.3 psi causes nitrogen bubbles to form in the bloodstream and get stuck, blocking blood flow — a condition known as "the bends" or decompression sickness. To avoid the condition, astronauts camp out the night before in a closet-sized airlock while wearing their space suit so their bodies have time to adjust to the change in pressure.

Source: Spacewalks: How they work and major milestones

e: Sandra Bullock would have died of decompression sickness pretty quickly.

In the early days they didn’t; that was the whole point of them. You paid a subscription specifically not to have ads like free broadcast television did.

It only lasted like a decade, but it was their whole selling point.

e: keep in mind, too, that broadcast tv at the time was where all the good content was. HBO only showed movies that had already been in theatres (thus the name Home Box Office) and Showtime’s hook was soft-core porn. (‘Do your parents have Showtime?’ was sleepover code for ‘can we watch kinda-porn after the ‘rents have gone to sleep?’) There wasn’t the dearth of original shows/movies we have now. They weren’t studios back then.

e2: sorry for multiple edits, but also bear in mind that when HBO first came out, people were watching their content on televisions like this, which was so inferior to movie theatres that ‘it’s in your home advertising free!’ was basically their whole selling point at first.

That’s how you get eaten by t-Rex skeletons and spanked by monkeys.

Yes, this. Ore-Ida.

Lol. What a dumbass.

Grandpa Munster looks happy and has open, welcoming eyes. Meanwhile the actual social vampire looks like Munster after a week-long coke bender.

Nothing about him looks happy or welcoming. He looks like the guy who assures me he’s the carpool for Sunday school so it’s totally cool he’ll pick up my kids but lol no. I’ll take half a day off instead.

I just want to hug you all. Happy whichever holiday you’re celebrating right now. Loving all of you.

Technology Connections sounds straight up my alley, thanks!

PBS Spacetime is already a standby. I’ve seen all of them at least twice. I’m always up for more watches.

Omg I want to print this out and staple it to my chest. I’ve been accused so many times of being a ‘one-upper’ when I’m just doing my best to relate to people.

I also need a label like sandpaper has – I’m like 60 grit abrasive.

Oh god, I’m doing it again, aren’t I?

How old are you?

I don’t need links to tell me what this was like when I vividly remember.

Yea, cable television first became available in 1948. Regular middle class families did not have cable television for a long time after that.

Mobile phone service was available in 1959. Guess how many people had it? A good friend of my family had a car phone in the mid 70s. Guess how common that was?

You can’t go by invention dates on stuff like this. You’ll be amazed at how long some things take to gain market acceptance.

I mean, I’m not going off a belief, I actually lived this.

Yes, the clear reception vs bunny ears was awesome, but that was also limited on televisions like this, and I’m talking specifically about the content.

My family were always early adopters of technology (I started gaming in ‘79 with both the Intellivision and Atari – Intellivision was far superior). We had HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime as soon as they were available.

I’m talking about the late 70s and early 80s when they were commercially available to the masses and the cable wars began.

The late 70s were absolutely the early days of commercial cable tv.

I swear that spite and hatred must fuel longevity somehow. Kissinger made it to 99.

Neat. I cancelled Hulu a few months ago, and this doesn’t make me regret my decision. I like some Disney content, but they’re corporate vultures and, based on their practices, they don’t deserve any loyalty.

And Comcast, of course, can fuck themselves to death. I wish this wasn’t an amicable takeover and Comcast would lose badly, but that’s just my murderous mouse fanfic.

If the Cheneys of all people can jump ship, there’s hope.

And when are they appropriate or inappropriate?

This is my big problem. In a group where people are telling stories about themselves, when it’s my turn, my stories are inappropriate somehow. In 50+ years, I still haven’t figured out what I say that’s wrong,

I’ve spent ages analysing my stories compared to others and I can’t figure out the difference, and no one will tell me. Is it the content (seems comparable) or how I tell it?

It seems better to just say ‘pass’ in those situations and stop engaging.

Why are you so bent about this?

Again, how old are you? Do you actually remember this time? I gave one anecdote, but ask literally anyone my age and they’ll say the same. You certainly know people my age, don’t take my word for it, ask them what sleepovers were like before and after cable tv became a thing. Everyone my age remembers a massive shift, especially with Showtime.

With/without cable wasn’t an easy change. Lots of people didn’t accept it easily because it seemed technically complex. That’s part of why my family was an early adopter: my dad was an aerospace engineer, so it was a no-brainier.

The televisions sold in the late 70s were not set up for cable, so you needed a cable box and to configure your tv a certain way – typically by setting one of your two dials to channel 2, 4, or I think UHF 12 (?it’s been a while, but it depended on your tv, and you’d have an auxiliary dongle, too), you had to plug a cable box into your tv (which was nowhere near as simple as now), and then maybe sacrifice a goat. I joke, but the wiring out of the back of those things wasn’t easy. It wasn’t clear ports with matching inputs, but more like in the back of old school audio speakers, but more of them.

That doesn’t sound hard, but for most people the tv was a magic box that pictures came out of. These were your grandparents, they weren’t good at technology.

The majority of channels had ads because, again, they were just the same channels as without cable.

In the late 80s, yeah. That’s after what I’m talking about. It sounds like you’re talking about the era of Nickelodeon and the height of Showtime/Cinemax porn. I’m talking about more than a decade before that.

Yes, by that point, cable had settled into the subscription + ad model I’m saying was the down slide. I’m talking about way before that, when it hadn’t yet devolved.

Again, I’m not making this up, and I kinda wonder what you think my motivation would be to do so, but I’m very curious how old you are and if you’re just going on things you’ve read or if you were alive for this.

e: clarification

Shit serves a purpose. You need it to live. It’s so important, after you’ve had an operation they make sure you can do it before they let you go home.

Ted Cruz serves no such purpose. He’s literally less useful than shit.

Uh, what? Have you owned a Mac in the last 30 years?

That’s not how it works. I’ve had two macs in the last 20 years, and more than a dozen Windows machines. I had to reformat the Windows PCs every year or so for various reasons until they became obsolete after like 5 years, but my macs have worked for 10 years each with no issues, and always upgraded to the latest OS easily and always for free. Both my macs lasted 10+ years of heavy use (my current one is 5+ years and still young).

Every time a Windows update came out it was an ordeal and I dreaded it; with each update I’d start looking at the cost of replacing the whole machine in case it bricks and it’s just not worth fixing things. Mac updates are barely a blip in my workflow.

Adobe projects that can't be accessed on a workstation not running Monterrey or whatever

This makes zero sense. The Adobe suite runs much better on OSX than Windows by orders of magnitude, even on outdated and non-updated OS. There’s a reason most designers and professional VXers have always preferred Mac. (eta: also, rereading, this makes even less sense because Adobe projects don’t care about your OS when opening; just the version of Adobe itself. You can easily open projects made on a whole different OS: Windows/OSX, any recentish version with no problem. Even files made in CS6/OSX can be opened in the latest cloud app on Windows easily. You’re either mistaken here or being deliberately dishonest for some reason.)

I’ve been in IT/software development and VX design for a few decades and I’m really wondering how this is an ordeal for you. It makes no sense to me. My 3000 dollar laptop has outlasted 5 1000 dollar windows machines. You get what you pay for.

e: some words were cut

Also, in my few decades in the industry, the sales and marketing staff always ran Windows, but the design staff usually worked on Mac. That speaks for itself.

or what happens when you lie on the floor with your head between two speakers listening to Pink Floyd.

I’d forgotten how much I should miss this.

e: also

Ad-free, and local access

This is what made Bob Ross a thing in the early 80s.