Hello fellow autists, I once thought snapchat was a shitty company that would eventually die out once everyone outgrew the photo sending communicating app. But somehow the stock price has had great momentum and even though I am a user of the app I do not see how it could be a 75 billion dollar company. Then I decided to do my own research and see a company that could certainly be more and no one can do what they can do. submitted by Amurphy747 to wallstreetbets [link] [comments] For boomers who don't know what snapchat is. It is a camera application that helps people to communicate through short videos and images known as a Snap. The Company provides Camera, Friends Page, Discover, Snap Map, Memories and Spectacles. Snapchat opens directly into the Camera, helping in creating a Snap and sending it to friends. It offers a range of creative tools that enables people to personalize and add content to their Snaps. Its chat services includes creating and watching stories, chatting with groups, making voice and video calls, and communicating through a range of stickers and Bitmojis. Memories enable users to create Snaps and stories from their saved snaps, as well as their camera roll. It also offers Spectacles, its sunglasses that make Snap. The Company's advertising products include Snap Ads and Sponsored Creative Tools, such as Sponsored Lenses and Sponsored Geofilters. App View on Home Screen The different screens on the app Snapchat is the #1 social media company from middle schoolers to millennials. Not everybody has Facebook, Instagram, or twitter. But in the younger age groups snapchat has become almost as common as a phone number and rather then asking for a phone number one may say "Can I have your snap?". Snapchat also stands out from other social media companies because it is the best at monetizing its users. Snapchat does not make money from its users, but rather takes its large amount of users and their data and then presents it to companies who wish to advertise. On top of that, snapchat has stayed true to its users and is very receptive of what users have to say, using their feedback to consistently better the app. I have been a user of the app since 2013. But going back to the main point of monetization because that's what you gambling addict fuckers love to know, snapchat has over one third of monetization of twitter and over one fifth of monetization of Facebook and Snapchat's growth outpaces them so much that it is not even close. Below is a table of snapchat growth just in the United State alone. Over half of the people from 12 years old to 34 years old have fucking snapchat and growth in users has grown about 5% a year and beats expectations consistently while twitter misses expectations every quarter and gets in trouble because so many users are inactive or fucking bots. But also going off twitter, Snapchat recently came with a deal connected to twitter so tweets can be directly taken from twitter and posted on snapchat. And the more integrated snapchat becomes in our society, the growth of users will only become more exponential. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/snapchat-statistics/ Long Term Bullish Case: Snap is winning with an "unduplicated and hard-to-reach audience.” And while Facebook is getting in trouble for monopolies, snapchat is coming right under our noses with the fact that they provide exposure to multiple, seemingly unstoppable forces: digital ad spending, mobile gaming and entertainment, and overall smartphone addiction which is only expected to grow and do not see any case where growth will be stopped anytime soon, throw in the coronavirus as a catapult that launches this stock to the moon. Around one third of Americans currently have Snapchat, how long till the rest of the world starts to catch up? Snapchat is entirely different then other social media companies because of how private you can make things. And the experience is a lot more personal which separates it from twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Which are all basically the same thing and makes Snap is in a different league of its own and has so much room to grow. Even though you missed out on ipo prices, theres no reason to miss out on more potential gains and in the last week there has been a dip of around 4% which is the perfect time to buy the fucking dip and ride the rocket to tendie town. Funds are buying it and lots of unusual options activity is evident. Someone just bought last trading day $929,726 of fucking 53c 01/15/21 for snap https://www.barchart.com/options/unusual-activity/stocks 70c 1/21/2022 53.50c 1/22/2021 55c 6/18/2021 Cannot go tits up, free money |
Hi all, submitted by kami4226 to TrashTaste [link] [comments] Two weeks ago, The Boys published their video on gacha games. This inspired me to conduct a survey on this subreddit on your thoughts and experiences with gacha games. Thanks to your support, there is a lot of data to sift through and a lot of interesting results so far. Due to IRL deadlines, I wasn't able to examine the data in full capacity, so I will be posting results in two or more sections. This first section will primarily deal with the surface-level headline data. I will also cover some of the reasonings and inner workings of what went into the survey and results (for those interested in the data scientist portions of things). A subsequent post/posts in the near future will cover topics I wasn't able to get to as well as more technical analysis of the data (regression, model-building, etc.) These posts will be presented in a semi-formal fashion, i.e., I'll lay out the posts like a research paper but I'll add personal interjections from time to time. (If you want to really get into the meat and potatoes, you can just skip to the "Results and Discussion" section.) With that said, allow me to introduce my initial findings: Our Trash Taste in Gacha Games: An Informal Community Survey Analysis on the Nature of TrashTaste's Experience Regarding Gacha GamesAbstractThe recent rise of "gacha games" has been bolstered by a number of intersecting trends. These include the mass popularity of anime or anime-like products, the increasing ubiquity of smartphones, and introduction of lootboxing mechanics by game publishers as a means of profiting off "free to play" or "freemium" games in the digital sphere. A recent episode from the anime-centric podcast "Trash Taste" explored their experiences and opinions regarding such games. This post intends to further explore the general sentiment of gacha games through the podcast's official subreddit, TrashTaste, and discuss the results. Motivation A little bit about my background. Anime, anime-like products, and manga have been a huge part in my life. I remember watching Detective Conan, Pokemon, and Keroro Gunso and being introduced to Gundam and MapleStory when I was young. Since it seems to be a trend on this subreddit, I'll throw my hat in the ring and show my 3x3: [If you want further discussion about these and other related series, feel free to comment below or DM me] From left to right, up to down: Ah! My Goddess, Hayate the Combat Butler , The World God Only Knows, Carnival Phantasm (+ Fate franchise), Pastel, Q.E.D.: Shoumei Shuuryou, Yandere Kanojo, Accomplishments of the Duke's Daughter, The Gamer As I mentioned in my first post about the survey, I am a graduate student working on my masters for data science. I also completed a bachelors in economics. All of this combined made me not only interested in gacha games as an avid consumer, but also as a research subject. The Boys simply were the catalyst for spurring this project. Data Collection and Survey Construction Data was collected via Google Forms on the TrashTaste subreddit. The post that contained the survey was released several hours after the video was posted. Survey responses were collected for a period of 1 week from January 22 to January 28 (though there was a massive decrease in the rate of respondents after the fourth day). The survey was constructed based on my own experiences with gacha games as well as general demographics that would be useful to examine on a macro scale. Regarding demographics: asking respondents on several aspects of demographics is a tricky subject since not only does it mean divulging a group of variables known as protected classes, these could be markers that could reidentify anonymized people; thus, I stuck to "safer" questions (age and gender). I then asked which otaku material was preferred. The next set of questions dealt with those who were currently playing gacha games. I asked the number of currently played games, which ones (with an open-ended aspect since I knew I would miss some) and the top 3 games. For each of the top 3 games, I asked how long they have played, which server, how long the game was around, how consistent did they play, how far they were, their current level of commitment, how much they spent (open-ended), spending title, whether the game had PVP, hype moments (some open-ended), and why they play (some open-ended). Finally, based on the central theme of The Boys' video, I asked whether games should be regulated and what their policy recommendation would be (open-ended). Limitations and Oversights This survey is, obviously, limited by the research environment and my experiences. Academic papers have pondered about the effectiveness regarding survey reliability using subreddits, which may be interesting and impactful from a statistically-minded formal research. In addition, there were a total of 678 respondents which, while certainly plenty in any regular volunteer statistical number crunching, pales in comparison to the 104K members in this subreddit alone; this is going to affect the power analysis of these results. Submitting the survey hours after the video was posted (when the user activity likely peaks) likely limited user exposure. Therefore, this post will be much closer to the next video. Then there are questions I didn't ask due to oversight on my part - I'm only human.
Welp I answered that I don't play any gatcha games, but it didn't give me a chance to say why I don't play them or if I played any before.I probably would have asked something like: If you responded "no," why do you not play gacha games?2) As pointed out by u/Paoda and u/gzavwunt, I forgot to add visual novels into the "primary source of otaku source material" question! As a Fate fan, this was a massive oversight I regret (don't worry, I did at least watch the full visual novel playthroughs of Fate/Stay Night and Fate/Hollow Ataraxia). 3) There were a few questions that were open-ended that in hindsight definitely backfired. The biggest ones were the "how long has the game lasted" ( u/ShinyMilo ) and "how much you spent" questions. They are a mess to deal with, even with all the regex expressions I know, so I ultimately had to throw them out. The former in the end was merely a curiosity and the latter was somewhat salvaged by the "spending title" questions, so I'm not too bothered by it, but something I'll keep in mind in the future. Results and Discussion Here are the initial results, and I think there's some interesting trends we can look at. First, let's look at the demographics.
Figure 1 There were 678 respondents. There appears to be a considerable right skew (aka a skew towards a younger audience). There are a lot of zoomers among the respondents, though there are a considerable number of millennials as well. 2) Next, take a look at gender distribution: Figure 2. Male: 87%, Female: 9.3%, Nonbinary: 1%, Prefer not to say: 2.7% Well, somewhat not surprisingly, of the 678 respondents, an overwhelming 87% identified as males. Connor as "the 93%"? More like the survey as "the 9.3%." 3) For the final aspect of demographics, let's look at the distribution of answers for "What is your preferred consumption of otaku source material?" Figure 3. (to the nearest tenth of a percent) Anime and Manga Equally: 33.8%, Anime: 32.4%, Manga: 16.7%, Anime, Manga, and Light Novel Equally: 9.7%, Manga and Light Novel Equally: 4.1%, Anime and Light Novel Equally: 2.2%, Light Novel: 1.0% Of the 678, respondents, 32.4% prefer to watch anime, 16.7% prefer to read manga, and 33.8% prefer to consume anime and manga equally. Light novel readers (either as the preferred choice or read it equally with other mediums) amount to about 17%. Hot take here: I am one of the 16.7% that prefer to read manga/manhwa (pitchforks in the comments), but only because there are so many series that I like that either have only become adapted recently (Horimiya, HameFura) or haven't been adapted yet (Shuumatsu no Valkyrie). Next, let's look at gacha by the numbers.
Figure 4 Of the 678 respondents, 232 did not currently play and gacha games, 194 did currently play 1 game, 117 did currently play 2 games, and so forth. The most surprising finding was that there are a few people that currently play at least 10 games, with one even playing 17! 2) Next, let's look at the top 20 games that were the favorite, second favorite, third favorite, and overall most popular: "...Yet in most companies, the so-called “80/20 rule” applies: 80 percent of a data scientist’s valuable time is spent simply finding, cleansing, and organizing data, leaving only 20 percent to actually perform analysis." - IBM Figure 5 Holy cow, the quote above really hit for this particular question. There were about 75 replacements I had to do to make the game title uniform, with 15 related to Princess Connect alone! As for the analysis: you read that correctly. There are a whopping 103 total gacha game titles that the 446 respondents play. Genshin Impact comes as the clear frontrunner for the most favorite game, second-most favorite game, third-most favorite game, and overall most popular game. However, the top 5 games in each category are the same: Genshin Impact, Fate/Grand Order, Arknights, Azur Lane, and Fire Emblem Heroes. Garnt is certainly attracting his Fate peers here, including me. As a side note, I have to give props to respondents who were honest about their stances. There were a few that put 'H***** Gacha Game,' 'Taimanin,' and 'AGA' (Anti-Gacha Army). 3) Next, let's look at the distribution of how each person categorizes themselves terms of spending: Figure 6 This is a very interesting finding. For their most favorite game, about half of the respondents were free to play, a third were minnows, about a sixth were dolphins, and the small bit left were whales. As we move towards less favored games, the number of F2Pers increase and the number of whales decrease until there's none left for the third-most favorite game. It's an important lesson for natural resources and gacha game publishers alike: overfishing can lead to less species diversity. As an aside, I am personally a dolphin for Fate GO. I have no qualms sharing that I spend some cash rolling for (ironically) Gilgamesh and NP5ing Sheba during Gilfest 2018 or even spending some New Year's allowance on Spishtar last month. fite me 4) Next, let's look at what aspects made the gacha game most "hype:" Figure 7 The top answer was the introduction of new characters, anniversary events, and animation/art. It seems that many go for the "Anni is the Planni" strategy. 5) Next, let's look at the reasons why respondents play or continue to play their gacha game(s) [Note: I aggregated the numbers from favorite/second favorite/third favorite, so some users are double or triple counted, so numbers may look a little inflated. I will work on this for a future post]: Figure 8. Top 15 answers. The top answer for why respondents play or continue to play their gacha game was for "the waifus/husbandos" followed by "I enjoy this as a standalone game" and "I love the source material." The 114 of you who chose "Because jokes are the deepest lore," I see you Fate fans. Probably the most interesting and concerning reasons that were not shown here are the sizable number of people who responded with either learned helplessness of their situation or frustration with the gacha-industry complex. These include "Sunk cost fallacy" (shown on the graph), frustration over rerolling, feeling like it's "a second job," stating that they're "addicted and can't quit," or flat out "dunno, it's kina there." The Future of Gacha Games Learning about these trends are good and all, but how do we consolidate these opinions into actionable thoughts? This is where the last half of The Boys' video about what to do comes in. Here's the community's reaction.
Figure 9 83.8% of respondents said "Yes," 5% said "No,", and 11.2% said they need to do more research to come a conclusion. 2) Finally, I asked respondents an open-ended optional question that "If you could have a serious discussion about gacha games with a gacha game developer or lawmaker, what is the one policy recommendation you would suggest?" Surprisingly, 473 people responded to the question. In the given timeframe, I could not read through all of the suggestions made; I will make sure to point out the most salient ones in the next post. In lieu of this, I decided to resort to a "quick and dirty trick" in natural language processing: n-grams! Simply put, I first removed common stopwords such as "you," "have", etc., and tokenized each response (i.e. separated each response into a list of word "units"). I then counted the frequency that each set of consecutive words appeared in each response. I counted frequency of the top 20 unigrams (one word), bigrams (2 words) and trigrams (3 words). Here is the result: Table 1 This is incredible stuff. The top two unigrams are "limit" and "spending," and other frequent unigrams include "gambling," "amount," and "time." Bigrams tell a broader story, with the top bigram being "(spending, limit)." There are other bigrams that expand upon policy recommendations such as "(hard, limit)", "(gambling, addiction)", "(drop, rates)," and "(pity, system)." Finally, looking at trigrams, we get an even fuller picture: the top trigram is "(limit, much, spend)." Other prominent trigrams include "(hard, limit, spending)," "(thing, connor, said)," and "(treat, like, gambling)." While the suggestions of limiting spending are quite frequent (following the footsteps of Connor), this is a fairly well-researched topic in the realm of behavioral economics. In particular, it looks at the encompassing topic of intertemporal choice. This is a pretty complex and field-specific topic that is too long to discuss in entirety in this post, but I'll boil down the critical points relevant to gacha games. [WARNING: some math ahead] First, say that you have a set budget that you're going to spend over several periods of time. When we spend money in a time period, get gain joyfulness (called "utility" or simply "U") at that time period. Second, we typically discount the amount of utility we get in the future. We usually assign this as a set rate called the discount factor ( δ ) . Thus, we get the following equation: ∑ (U_t) * (δt-1) = U_1 + δU_2 + δ2U_3 + ... + δT-1 \) U_TThis simply means the total utility we get over a time period is the sum of all utilities of all periods based on today. All the above is considered in "classical economics" as exponential discounting. This assumes that
One way this has manifested into policy action is the concept of "nudge theory" by Richard Thaler. This suggests that consumer behavior can be influenced by small suggestions and positive reinforcements; the argument is that it reduces market failure and encourages desirable actions. However, this is hotly debated ethically as being paternalistic and may not even work. Another theory brought about via behavioral economics is the idea of "present-bias preferences" by Ted O'Donoghue and Matthew Rabin. The idea is that when people consider tradeoffs between two future moments, present bias gives more weight to the earlier future moment. In this scenario, we have two types of people: naifs and sophisticates. Sophisticates know that they'll have self-control problems in the future, so they plan ahead while naifs do not see the self-control problems. Depending on if there is a cost or a reward, these two types of people will "cave in" at different times. In general, the utility function (called β-δ preferences) is as follows: For all t, Ut (u_t, u_(t+1),...,u_T) = δt u_t + β ∑ δτ + u_τ |t+1 < τ < THow do these relate to gacha games? Well, the former (nudging) is like the third party (iTunes store, Google Play) directly intervening on your behalf saying that you can only spend so-and-so this month. The latter (present bias) puts the self-imposed limit in your own hands, which a third party adds as a restriction. Consider these aspects in future discussions regarding regulations surrounding gacha games. [it's been a year since I've been fully immersed in this stuff, so econ folks please check if the explanations are suitable] Ending Remarks I hope these initial results illustrated some fascinating aspects of how our subreddit has viewed gacha games. I know that there are a few questions that I haven't covered here due to lack of time, so look forward the next part of the survey results! Let me know if there are specific statistical analyses you would like for me to examine in the comments. If you want to put friend requests for the gacha games I'm playing [Fate GO (JP), OPTC (JP) Dokkan (GBL)], DM me. In addition, I'm thinking about releasing a clean and anonymized version of the data in csv form not only as a measure of transparency, but also if you want to do your own data manipulation. If you (the community) approve at over 75%, then I will publish it in the next post. |
'In logic, reductio ad absurdum (Latin for '"reduction to absurdity"')...is the form of argument that attempts to establish a claim by showing that the opposite scenario would lead to absurdity or contradiction.'Classic rhetorical examples include:
'There is no smallest positive rational number because, if there were, then it could be divided by two to get a smaller one.'A modern example:
'Olive oil on your salad is not going to make you fat, otherwise people on the Mediterranean would all be morbidly obese.'In literature, this rhetorical technique commonly manifests itself in a writer adopting an absurd article of rhetoric or worldview, and playing it out over the course of a passage or text to its absurd logical conclusion.
'...words of one of his own countrymen, Don Felix Pacheco, as reported by Captain George Carleton, in his "Military Memoirs from 1672 to 1713." ... "it was next to an impossibility for a man to walk the streets with any delight or without danger. There were seen so many cavaliers prancing and curvetting before the windows of their mistresses, that a stranger would have imagined the whole nation to have been nothing less than a race of knight-errants"'An introductory note describes Don Quixote as:
'a tale setting forth the ludicrous results that might be expected to follow the attempt of a crazy gentleman to act the part of a knight-errant in modern life.'An early example of such socially noxious conduct occurs when the then-aspiring knight, for the business of ceremonially 'watching' his armour - some part of the ritual of being knighted - chooses as a spot a trough which the inn's peasant guests require for the watering of their animals. When the peasants take exception to the obstruction of this essential utility, Don Quixote interprets this as a villainous attack on his armour, and behaves accordingly:
'Meanwhile one of the carriers who were in the inn thought fit to water his team, and it was necessary to remove Don Quixote's armour as it lay on the trough; but he seeing the other approach hailed him in a loud voice, "O thou, whoever thou art, rash knight that comest to lay hands on the armour of the most valorous errant that ever girt on sword, have a care what thou dost; touch it not unless thou wouldst lay down thy life as the penalty of thy rashness." The carrier gave no heed to these words (and he would have done better to heed them if he had been heedful of his health), but seizing it by the straps flung the armour some distance from him. Seeing this, Don Quixote raised his eyes to heaven, and fixing his thoughts, apparently, upon his lady Dulcinea, exclaimed, "Aid me, lady mine, in this the first encounter that presents itself to this breast which thou holdest in subjection; let not thy favour and protection fail me in this first jeopardy;" and, with these words and others to the same purpose, dropping his buckler he lifted his lance with both hands and with it smote such a blow on the carrier's head that he stretched him on the ground, so stunned that had he followed it up with a second there would have been no need of a surgeon to cure him. This done, he picked up his armour and returned to his beat with the same serenity as before.'The whole novel is essentially a longform satirical experiment in playing the above ludicrousness out, ad absurdum, and is well worth the attention of any aspiring satirist.
'George Wittkowsky argued that Swift's main target in A Modest Proposal was not the conditions in Ireland, but rather the can-do spirit of the times that led people to devise a number of illogical schemes that would purportedly solve social and economic ills.[2] Swift was especially attacking projects that tried to fix population and labour issues with a simple cure-all solution.[3] A memorable example of these sorts of schemes "involved the idea of running the poor through a joint-stock company".[3] In response, Swift's Modest Proposal was "a burlesque of projects concerning the poor"[4] that were in vogue during the early 18th century.'Some extracts which caricature the pompous, deadpan mathematical logic of contemporary rhetorical pamphleteering are as follows:
'A Modest Proposal also targets the calculating way people perceived the poor in designing their projects. The pamphlet targets reformers who "regard people as commodities".[5] In the piece, Swift adopts the "technique of a political arithmetician"[6] to show the utter ridiculousness of trying to prove any proposal with dispassionate statistics.'
'I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28 pounds.'
…
'I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, labourers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend, or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants, the mother will have eight shillings neat profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.'
'Voltaire actively rejected Leibnizian optimism after the natural disaster, convinced that if this were the best possible world, it should surely be better than it is. In both Candide and Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne ("Poem on the Lisbon Disaster"), Voltaire attacks this optimist belief. He makes use of the Lisbon earthquake in both Candide and his Poème to argue this point, sarcastically describing the catastrophe as one of the most horrible disasters "in the best of all possible worlds"'How Voltaire plays out the logic of Optimism ad absurdum is best illustrated by the various repetitions of the phrase 'all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds', confronting the reader with the insane prospect that such events be considered compatible with such a world:
'The entertainment began by a discharge of cannon, which, in the twinkling of an eye, laid flat about 6,000 men on each side. The musket bullets swept away, out of the best of all possible worlds, nine or ten thousand scoundrels that infested its surface. The bayonet was next the sufficient reason of the deaths of several thousands. The whole might amount to thirty thousand souls. Candide trembled like a philosopher, and concealed himself as well as he could during this heroic butchery.'
...
'Candide fainted away, and Pangloss fetched him some water from a neighboring spring. The next day, in searching among the ruins, they found some eatables with which they repaired their exhausted strength.After this they assisted the inhabitants in relieving the distressed and wounded. Some, whom they had humanely assisted, gave them as good a dinner as could be expected under such terrible circumstances. The repast, indeed, was mournful, and the company moistened their bread with their tears; but Pangloss endeavored to comfort them under this affliction by affirming that things could not be otherwise that they were.
'“For,” said he, “all this is for the very best end, for if there is a volcano at Lisbon it could be in no other spot; and it is impossible but things should be as they are, for everything is for the best.”'
'...and the German practitioner of Technological Medicine who removed his appendix with a rusty can opener and a pair of tin snips (he considered the germ theory "a nonsense"). Flushed with success he then began snipping and cutting out everything in sight: "The human body is filled up vit unnecessitated parts. You can get by vit vone kidney. Vy have two? Yes dot is a kidney … The inside parts should not be so close in together crowded. They need Lebensraum like the Vaterland."'We will shortly touch on another Burroughs example, but must make a brief aside to introduce the concept of the 'bolero structure'.
...
Meeting of International Conference of Technological Psychiatry
'Doctor "Fingers" Schafer, the Lobotomy Kid, rises and turns on the Conference the cold blue blast of his gaze:
'"Gentlemen, the human nervous system can be reduced to a compact and abbreviated spinal column. The brain, front, middle and rear must follow the adenoid, the wisdom tooth, the appendix … I give you my master work: The Complete All American Deanxietized Man …"
...
'Schafer is not listening. "You know," he says impulsively, "I think I'll go back to plain old-fashioned surgery. The human body is scandalously inefficient. Instead of a mouth and an abyss to get out of order why not have one all-purpose hole to eat and eliminate? We could seal up nose and mouth, fill in the stomach, make an air hole direct into the lungs where it should have been in the first place …"
'BENWAY: "Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? ..."' Full routine for the interested.
'Steve Harvey: "We asked 100 people, what is the male reproductive organ?" Contestant: "The penis" SH: "A WUH... HUH??" audience erupts into laughter Steve Harvey grabs onto podium to support himself laughter gets even louder SH: O lordy... one man goes into cardiac arrest and many others begin vomiting profusely from laughing too hard SH: YOU PEOPLE NEED HELP the Earth shatters and Satan rises from the underworld to claim unworthy souls the universe begins rapidly closing in on itself SH: (putting on a weary voice) Survey says... the board shows 100 for "penis" Harvey is able to get off one more shocked look before existence as we know it comes to an end.'It is also abundant in skit comedy, including much of Tim & Eric's work, as we will see below.
'I am passing room 10 they moved me out of yesterday … Maternity case J assume … Bedpans full of blood and Kotex and nameless female substances, enough to pollute a continent … If someone comes to visit me in my old room he will think I gave birth to s monster and the State Department is trying to hush it up …This format runs parallel to reductio ad absurdum, but is distinct from it in that it does not necessarily seek to disprove an argument, merely to demonstrate the ridiculousness of its subject matter via hyperbole. In this case, Burroughs uses the initial impression of the State Department trying to hush up the fact of a male citizen having given birth as synecdoche for his contemporary America's desperate attempts to downplay its own ugly realities, and incorporates these realities - colonial history, homosexuality, and as is implicit in the final explosion - and clearer with reference to other passages featuring The Technician - the atomic bomb.
'Music from I Am an American … An elderly man in the striped pants and cutaway of a diplomat stands on a platform draped with an American flag. A decayed, corseted tenor--bursting out of a Daniel Boone costume--is singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," accompanied by a full orchestra. He sings with a slight lisp …
'THE DIPLOMAT (reading from a great scroll of ticker tape that keeps growing and tangling around his feet): "And we categorically deny that any male citizen of the United States of America …"
'TENOR: "Oh thay can you thee …" His voice breaks and shoots up to a high falsetto.
'In the control room the Technician mixes a bicarbonate of soda and belches into his hand: "God damned tenor's a brown artist!" he mutters sourly. "Mike! rumph," the shout ends in a belch. "Cut that swish fart off the air and give him his purple slip. He's through as of right now … Put in that sex-chanhed Liz athlete … She's a full-time tenor at least … Costume! How in the fuck should I know? I'm no dr de designer swish from the costume department! What's that? The entire costume department occluded as a security risk? What am I, an octopus? Let's see … How about an Indian routine? Pocahontas or Hiawatha? … No, that's not right. Some citizen cracks wise about giving it back to the Indians … A Civil War uniform, the coat North and the pants South like it show they got together again? She can come on like Buffalo Bill or Paul Revere or that citizen wouldn't give up the shit, I mean the ship, or a GI or a Doughboy or the Unknown Soldier … That's the best deal … Cover her with a monument, that way nobody has to look at her …"
'The Lesbian, concealed in a papier-mâché Arc de Triomphe, fills her great lungs and looses a tremendous bellow.
'Oh say do that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave …"
'A great rent rips the Arc de Triomphe from top to bottom. The Diplomat puts a hand to his forehead …
'THE DIPLOMAT: "That any make citizen of the United States has given birth in Interzone or at any other place …"
'"O'er the land of the FREEEEEEEEEE …"
'The Diplomat's mouth is moving but no one can hear him. The Technician clasps his hand over his ears: "Mother of God!" he screams. His plate begins to vibrate like a Jew's harp, suddenly flies out of his mouth … He snaps at it irritably, misses and covers his mouth with one hand.
'The Arc Dr Triomphe falls with a ripping, splintering crash, reveals the Lesbian standing on a pedestal clad only in a leopard-skin jockstrap with enormous falsie basket … She stands there smiling stupidly and flexing her huge muscles … The Technician is crawling around on the control room floor looking for his plate and shouting unintelligible orders: "Thess thupper thonic!! Thut ur oth thu thair!"
'THE DIPLOMAT (wiping sweat from his brow): "To any creature of any type or description …"
*'"And the home of the brave."
'The Diplomat's face is grey. He staggers, trips in the scroll, sags against the rail, blood pouring from eyes, nose and mouth, dying of cerebral hemorrhage.
'THE DIPLOMAT (barely audible): "The Department denies … un-American … It's been destroyed … I mean it never was … Categor …" Dies.
'In the Control Room instrument panels are blowing out … Great streamers of electricity crackle through the room … The Technician, naked, his body burned black, staggers about like a figure in Götterdämmerung, screaming: "Thubber thonic!! Oth thu thair!!!" A final blast reduces the Technician to a cinder.'
"I just need one more bump!"The former skit anticipates the fixation with gambling-originated audio-visual reward cues in the development of tackier PC, console and mobile games, particularly those marketed to children.
'AMERICAN HOUSEWIFE: (opening a box of Lux): "Why don't it have an electric eye the box open when it see me and hand itself to the Automat Handy Man he should put it in a water already … The Handy Man is outa control since Thursday, he been getting physical with me and I didn't put it in his combination at all … And the Garbage Disposal Unit snapping at me, and the nasty old Mixmaster keep trying to get up under my dress … I got the most awful cold, and my intestines is all constipated … I'm gone*** put it in the Handy Man's combination he should administer me a high colonic awready.'*Of the three Cinco products, the Super Seat is perhaps the most recognisable as relating to a real product category, though it's worth noting that various highly dubious tanning 'solutions' do currently exist.
...
'"It was K.E. put out the Octopus Kit for Massage Parlours, Barber Shops and Turkish Baths, with which you can administer a high colonic, an unethical massage, a shampoo, whilst cutting the client's toenails and removing his blackheads. And the M.D.'s Can Do Kit for busy practitioners will take out your appendix, tuck in a hernia, pull out a wisdom tooth, ectomize your piles and circumcise you. Well, K.E. is such an atomic salesman if he runs out of Octopus Kits he is subject, by sheer charge, to sell an M.D. Can Do to a barber shop and some citizen wakes up with his piles cut out …'
"And I strongly suspect that when this revolution takes place, art will no longer be distinguished by its rarity, or its expense, or its inaccessibility, or the extraordinary way in which it is marketed, it will be the prerogative of all of us, and we will do it as those artists did whom Freud understood not at all, the artists who made the Cathedral of Chartres, or the mosaics of Byzantium, the artists who had no Ego, and no name." - Germaine Greer Town Bloody Hall.I don't think that when Greer said this what she thought she meant was:
'Hey guys, did you know that in terms of male human and female Pokémon breeding, Vaporeon is the most compatible Pokémon for humans? Not only are they in the field egg group, which is mostly comprised of mammals, Vaporeon are an average of 3"03' tall and 63.9 pounds. this means they're large enough to be able to handle human dicks, and with their impressive Base Stats for HP and access to Acid Armor, you can be rough with one. Due to their mostly water based biology, there's no doubt in my mind that an aroused Vaporeon would be incredibly wet, so wet that you could easily have sex with one for hours without getting sore. They can also learn the moves Attract, Baby-Doll Eyes, Captivate, Charm, and Tail Whip, along with not having fur to hide nipples, so it'd be incredibly easy for one to get you in the mood. With their abilities Water Absorb and Hydration, they can easily recover from fatigue with enough water. No other Pokémon comes close to this level of compatibility. Also, fun fact, if you pull out enough, you can make your Vaporeon turn white'However, she appears to have been thoroughly prescient as regards the democratisation of certain varieties of art. Whether this has necessitated in a transformation of what 'art' is, and whether or not such a transformation represents a quantitative degeneration, or qualitative perversion, is outside the scope of this already inexcusably long essay.
'Let's say, you've been a bad girl. Let's say, hypothetically, you've been a naughty girl even. Ok, and if you were a naughty girl you would also be my dirty little slut right? Then hypothetically speaking you would be my little cumslut. Now; let's say that you're also daddy's girl. Now that we've established you're both a bad girl and daddy's girl, then I believe you'd agree with me when I say you deserve a spanking. Am I not correct? A bad girl deserves a spanking, and as I am daddy; you are my girl, so I am the one who must provide punishment.'Early examples of these pieces play around a demonstration that Shapiro's argument style is tenuous since it can be used to 'prove' absurd points with just as much soundness as believable ones - i.e. none. More recent examples, like the Smash Mouth All Star one, use these now-familiar format as the backbone of a meme, parodying its tokenistic intellectual jargon by applying it to what is obviously not a logical argument.
...
'Now, lets say, hypothetically, that somebody once told me that the world would proceed to roll me, and made the claim that I was not, the smartest tool in the shed. Which would lead us to look at the facts and see that she was looking kind of dumb, due to the fact that she had placed her finger and her thumb, in the shape of the letter L, located on her forehead. This would mean that the years would start coming, and logically wont stop coming, that I was, hypothetically, fed to the rules, which would proceed with me hitting the ground running. Which didn’t make sense, to live for fun, in a way that your brain gets smart, yet your head gets dumb, seeing as there’s so much to do, and so much to see, so now I must pose the question, what is wrong with taking the backseat? This is due to the fact that you’ll never know if you don’t go, nor you will shine if you don’t glow. For you see, you are, at this moment, an All-Star, so get your game on, and proceed to go play, indeed, you’re an All-Star, get the show on, which would entitled you to get paid. That would mean that all that glitters, is indeed gold, and that only shooting stars, can participate in the process of breaking the mold.'
'Hello, fellow homosexuals. It is us, [MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR CORPORATION]. Here to remind you that we support your lifestyle now that it has been federally legalised and it is completely socially safe, allowing for us to capitalise on your existence now it's mainstream. Look, we even changed the colours of [LOGO]! Why did we wait this long to come out and 'support' you? Haha, no more questions, homosexual. Buy our product. Buy our product. BUY OUR PRODUCT.'This is the logical outcome of applying the ingenuous tone of corporate support for progressive issues with their conspicuous lack of support for the same issues when they were at a more vulnerable stage. The suggestion is that if one is to perceive corporate progressivism as sincere, one must accept that for unstated reasons, presumably cowardice, corporates choose not to adopt these practices until they become mainstream, this being of similar plausibility to the alternative hypothesis that progressivism simply now adds value to a brand.
'A procession of TV chefs await judgement on their food. The first of them takes two polite steps up onto a raised plateau before a panel of minor celebrities at a three-place dining table decked with chequered red bistro cloth. The ranking panelist has delivered their preliminary summary of the contestant's menu, as well as a narrative of their endeavours, and is preparing to pass sentence. We are anticipating two and a half minutes of cuts to faces, food and furniture before the score swells from a blend of NASA-pre-launch-countdown and sneak themes into despair or reconciliation harmony as the revelation is made.
'All these shots are indeed presented, but compressed into a single second's runtime, after which the judge delivers a concise and helpful assessment of the food.
'"Thank you Chef." [Departs]
'The next contestant steps meekly up. As the judge begins to summarise, her monologue speeds up beyond comprehensibility, the cuts to faces, food and flashback are strobed through, the chef judged and dismissed in the course of a half-second - the audio slowing as she departs from the stand just enough to make audible her helium-pitched "Thank you Chef".
'White VHS fast-forward lines begin to tear across the shot as the queue of three remaining chefs are suctioned almost simultaneously up to the podium, their individual retrospectives coalescing into a single sequence of almost superimposed images, and drawn immediately off-set by the merciless current of accelerated time.
'The perspective cuts to that of a boom-mounted camera tracking backwards over the heads of the audience, whose babbling pitches up to a note of urgent complaint as they are magnetised out of the space like iron filings and replaced with an identical crowd and a cast of interchangeable chefs is processed in seconds, dismissed, and relieved by another. As the camera reaches the back corner of the seating area, the shot slips out the back of it through its workings and recedes up and away from the boom crane over the isometrically-oriented set.
'Chefs and audience are now arriving and departing in continuous flow, as the widening shot reveals a procession of 1940s German steam engines discharging batches of cast and crowd backstage-right. Backstage-left the retired cast are stripped and dismantled by multiarmed factory machines; incinerated in a conveyor-belt procession of coffins now resembling a time-lapse shot of a highway. Sound-effects of industrial chaos.
'Alternative sets are now visible in an animated polyptych of Inferno, booms windscreen-wiping over the sets, generations of cast and audience discharged by an elaborate network of heavy and light rail, busses, ferries, light aircraft, blimps and hot-air balloons; variations on cast disposal: full-body mincing like cattle, dissolution in cauldrons of acid - chorus of autotuned medieval agony; remains pumped, carted, airlifted back in the direction from which the vehicles come. Roar of engine-Doppler in all directions.
'A volcano booms over the spectacle, its flare illuminating the blackened steel rigging of a cavernous warehouse. A billion helium-pitched screams knit into a continuous, wavering ring.
'The warehouse spectacle fizzes grey-white and fades to a purple-and-white text banner:
'YOU ASKED FOR THIS
'DONATE NOW'
'What should they know of England who only England know?'The significance of this is that in stepping away from and back to your instinctive style, you may gain a crisper, more critical appreciation of what your habits actually are, and may return to their exercise with an improved sense of their strengths and avenues for expansion.
"He can shoot, he can make the right plays, he can defend, he's a 7-footer that can shoot all the way out to the 3-point line," Durant said, according to ESPN's Royce Young. "That's rare. And block shots -- that's like a unicorn in this league."
Gambling addiction statistics show people between the ages 20 and 30 have the highest rates of problem gambling. 75 percent of college students report having gambled during the past year. The risk of developing a gambling addiction more than doubles for young adults in college settings. Of course, the United States is a big country, so that tiny percentage actually equates to over 5.77 million people. By comparison, Americans with a substance abuse problem number around 7%, or 20 million people. Unfortunately, the United States does a lousy job of addressing compulsive gambling. Sadly, it is estimated that over 80% of people who suffer from some type of gambling addiction never seek treatment, no matter how bad their problem is. Other statistics reveal that while there are people who do seek treatment for their gambling addiction, over 70% end up returning to the world of betting. 4. 750,000 individuals aged 14-21 are addicted to gambling. While gambling addiction is often viewed as an “adult” problem, recent research suggests that it affects young people as well as adults. Over three-quarters of a million of young people aged 14 to 21 have a gambling addiction. Only 5.4 percent of people with gambling addiction report having attended gambling addiction treatment or related self-help groups. This disparity in recognizing the problem and accessing treatment may be due to outdated beliefs that compulsive gambling is not an addiction. Online Gambling Statistics. World gambling statistics show that around 26% of the population gamble. That means around 1.6 billion people worldwide gamble and 4.2 billion gamble at least once ... Approximately 0.5-1% (figures vary in different states) of citizens suffer from this addiction. This is so due to the changes in the betting industry due to digital technologies. More people can now access betting entertainment via different online services, therefore the cases of unhealthy gambling have increased greatly. Compulsive Gambling: United States Gambling Addiction Statistics. The North American Foundation for Gambling Addiction Help reports that approximately 2.6% of the U.S. population has some type of gambling issue. That adds up to nearly 10 million people in the United States who struggle with a gambling habit. According to the same gambling addiction statistics, 1.1% of respondents were classified as moderate-risk gamblers, while 2.4% were classified as low-risk. Moderate-risk gamblers can experience some problems and negative consequences, while the problems associated with low-risk gamblers are minimal, and there are no negative consequences the data can account for. Gambling and gambling related problems are common among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, but there is new evidence that African Americans are more likely to experience gambling-related problems than white Americans. Differences in problem and pathological Gambling (PPG) among people of different races are not well understood.
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More Philippines documentaries - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBRLKmBip431VqbgbyIPBm-mkjfFJhj91Angeles City in the Philippines is a well-known sex ...
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