On January 25, hundreds of workers at an Amazon warehouse in Chicago were presented with a baffling choice: sign up for a ten-and-a-half-hour graveyard shift, or lose your job.
Management informed workers that their warehouse, known as DCH1, would be shut down, and they were being offered a shift that runs from 1:20am to 11:50am, which is known as “megacycle,” at a new Chicago warehouse.
That being said, when I got Sinden working with some of my favorite light-gun classics, from Nintendo’s Duck Hunt to Sega’s Gunblade NY, Sinden’s sales proposition held up. Simply changing my aiming angle helped with one finicky screen, while my two others worked perfectly by default—particularly with precise, “through the sights” aiming I demand in a good arcade shooter. When configured incorrectly, you can get stuck with a more “relative” aiming situation, like in old Wii games; in those cases, the verbose menu system will be your friend. I’m glad I generally didn’t have to rely on it.
Uncut Gems is a very wild thriller. If it were a book, it’d be a “page turner” that has the slightest of statements on how awful it is to step on people who have been stepped on for generations and how bad gambling addiction is.
As with all things that depict some terrible fiction I wonder how many people will watch this and think “gambling is fun” despite the punishment that Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler) goes through, and more importantly what his loved ones go through. Sandler’s performance is kind of amazing from someone who is best known for his comedic roles, and those comedy films have been critical failures for years. As Howard Ratner, Sandler is a character that seems to feel no difficulty in putting his family through hell and destroying their lives even if Howard ostensibly loves them and tells them so, it’s clear that this isn’t enough, he isn’t really there for them. The words Howard says when he tells his kids how proud he is are hollow because the film is telling us Howard cares more about gambling than them.
Deriving entertainment from “what will happen next” in Uncut Gems is disturbing. What happens next is always someone getting hurt, terrified, or ruined because of Howard’s gambling addiction and we don’t find out what the consequences are for them, because the film is almost entirely focused on Howard’s perspective.
One of the saddest things about exciting movies like Uncut Gems is the fiction that the protagonist’s behavior is exciting and successful and romanticized. Howard would be very successful at gambling, he doesn’t lose as often as he should even when taking bets that others think are losing bets, if it weren’t for the meddling of another character in the film Howard would succeed, he would be rich. Ultimately, his gambling is a problem only in that the gambling introduces bad people into Howard’s life, but the film says it is those people who cause the worst of the problems, not Howard. I think that is sad, and much like other films about crime it still, pathetically, has a positive outlook on the activities it depicts… if only it weren’t for the violent criminals that get in the way. Much like The Irishman, another recent film that depicts bad people ruining the lives of their families, Uncut Gems makes its protagonist’s life a thrill. The people that suffer along the way? Uncut Gems doesn’t give a shit about them.
As a fiction, Uncut Gems is fine, it is exciting, it is ultimately as meaningless as the latest Marvel film in messaging and challenges practically nothing the viewer already thinks. In the universe of Uncut Gems, women are almost entirely brainless sex objects who only exist in their relation to men, white men are the functional actors but are failures at parenting. Racial minorities in Uncut Gems can only fulfill roles as athletes, sales people, and musicians obsessed with jewelry, money, sex, and success. Few characters besides Howard are anything but obstacles to his obtaining success, or money, or sex, and that’s the only bad thing that we are allowed to see in him.
I like Uncut Gems, but of course I like Uncut Gems. It is a movie built for me, a white male adult.
Keycap aesthetics and ergonomics are so incredibly subjective, but my absolute favorite are MiTo’s SA Laser set and they’re finally up for order again on drop. The color scheme is very bold, but I fell in love with the mix the first time I saw it and that’s what got me into really custom mechanical keyboards. The SA keycaps feel great to me, though they are tall, and it can be difficult to find a board that really compliments this color scheme.
Like most custom keycaps, the SA Laser keycaps are sold in the “group buy” format where you’re pre-ordering them before they are made. They’re at a special pre-order price for the first 30 days of the group buy. Drop and MiTo have a history of delivering quality, so I am not concerned about recommending them for that reason but it is important to keep in mind that there have been massive delays to all production so the expected shipping date for these isn’t for over a year in March 2022 which is hopefully just building a lot of slack in.
The good news for MiTo’s sets is that he has been working towards making them more available on an in-stock basis, but I suspect that has been hampered by the pandemic as well.
From the day we started the fantasy sports section, I’ve gotten one question, repeatedly: “Why Chris Vaccaro?” But a close second is, “When is The Athletic going to get into sports betting?” My friends, the answer is … “today.”
You might think that just means they’ll provide coverage targeted towards gambling, but no, it’s worse:
As you may have seen pretty much everywhere, we’ve partnered with BetMGM. This was not, by any means, a short process — I think it’s been about eight months in the making. I want to assure you that your overall experience on The Athletic will mostly remain unchanged. And in most cases, it’ll get much better and deliver way more value.
[…]
So whether you want to tinker with our models before you place a sizeable wager, read some columns and simply enjoy the insights because it makes you a smarter fan, or maybe you’re like me and want to try a $3 longshot parlay across a few sports that will pay back $213.10 — we’re here for you. And we’ll be here in the comment sections for your feedback, questions, concerns, or general razzing of bad advice. (Try as we might to avoid it, there will be bad advice. That I can promise.)
I don’t doubt that most, if not the majority, of money that funds publishing is corrupt because it is impossible to earn a dollar under capitalism without stepping on someone else, but it is difficult to imagine a more brazen hijacking of the process of reporting than explicitly joining, and thus foisting your readers directly into, gambling.
Incredible but maybe not entirely surprising for an outfit that was originally born out of the notoriously libertarian Y Combinator start-up program.
