• 0 Posts
  • 12 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: July 1st, 2023

help-circle







  • You know why Blockbuster worked? I was a kid, and this was a long time ago, so the exact figures may be off, but you could enjoy and experience the entirety of a movie for like $8, or you could buy that new release for like $30.

    And you got to keep a 90 minute experience for 24 hours, or pay a little more to keep it for a week.

    Now, the great thing about movies is you only need to clear one evening to watch it, so let’s say, realistically, most people have one solid 3 hours of free time a week to really sit down and enjoy a good media.

    So, sure, Ubisoft, take your $70 game (don’t try and tell me a video game is worth $120 because you’re withholding half the content; Blockbuster also didn’t try to charge you 50% more for a directors cut or extended edition), rent it to me for $18. Let me play the guaranteed maximum experience of say a 20 hour game over 8 weeks, and for just $2 more I can have it for 6 months. Oh, and last year’s releases? Half price.

    Somehow I don’t think that’s what they have in mind.


  • But then a good dictionary is ultimately personal, contextual, regional, and ephemeral, making it ultimately useless.

    I will never recognise ‘suposably’ as a proper English word. But my children might, and so to their children, until it universally is a correct, proper word. That’s the scope of the tide of language.

    Its a necessary battle between the old ways and the new, one that I know I am ever drifting to the wrong side of. When some people use the word wrong, they are wrong. When everyone uses the word wrong, they are right. The old guard dies and the new gaurd rises.


  • Normally I say the “usage defines meaning” argument is flimsy at best and actively encourages misuse that ultimately limits the ability for precision and nuance in language. ‘Since’ isn’t causal, ‘because’ (as one can guess) is. “I’ve been sick since Thursday” means one thing, “I’ve been dice because of Thursday” means a different thing.

    But then an old farmer will tell you a story about needing to buy some rubbers because they’re getting into their tranny and I think, “those words don’t mean that to me.”