Aceticon

I wasn't criticizing the value of Art, just pointing out the horrible economics of it from the point of view of the vast majority of its practicioners and having a go at explaining it.

And yeah, a lot of people in present day ultra-materialist Consumer Society don't see the value of Art even all the while they consume its products (such as Music and Films).

Well, attempting to become an actor the old fashioned way (no degree) could be far less expensive if it wasn't for the massive house price bubble in the city were most of the work (and netwoking opportunities) are - London.

Also since my contact with the Acting World was via a few years of Acting Lessons (in my case purelly because I enjoyed it rather than having any ideas of going into it) which seems to be quite a common side-gig for such people, I did meet a significant number of actors and actresses who weren't from rich families and just kept limping along for years after having taken an Acting Degree, doing maybe one play a year (and hoping it would run for longer than one month) whilst doing other work in between (such as working at a pub or giving Acting lessons to amateurs like me) to make ends meet.

This was a decade ago and expenses for living in London, namelly housing, have gone up a lot since.

There's a bio from Michael Caine and reading it knowing present day Britain makes it pretty obvious that the conditions that allowed so many working class lads to get were he got back in the 70s (and which, by the way, also applied to that generation in the music world) aren't there anymore - nowadays if mommy and daddy aren't at least upper middle class or wealthier, it's pretty much impossible to make it in the career even with a scholarship to a good Drama School because of how stupidly expensive London is. Personally I think this reflects negativelly in the quality of British Actors and even up to a point in how much and how well certain kinds of life experience get played (i.e. based on stereotypes and shallow rather than realistic).

And all this is without going the whole "connections are crucial" part of it which means the scions of the right people get all kinds of chances giften to them whilst the others are fighting for crumbs.

In the UK I got quite close to the Theatre World for a while and for Actors in the UK at least the problem seems to be that way more people go into Acting over there than the need for Actors with the result that most earn less than minimum wage in average from Action (which is possible under UK work laws because actors are freelancers and most spend long periods without any income from it between jobs).

Judging by other areas such as Tech Startups and Game Making and from what I know indirectly from the Fashion World, which all seem to be quite exploitative and pay below average for most people working in it, I think all professions that have an image of Glamour (in a broad sense) end up with most of people working there making comparativelly peanuts even if there are a handful of superstars and high level managerial types making tons of money.

Also, by the way, Architects make good money. Graphics Designers, on the other hand, not so much.

I saw the whole Brexit thing first hand and I also saw how EU Membership was sold in my home country of Portugal which was way poorer, and the arguments were anchored on completelly different things.

The whole argumentation in Britain was anchored on quite massive Delusions of Grandeur (i.e. "Britains and Britons are better than the rest") amongst most of the population (even Remainers used the argument that "we can better change the EU from the inside", a viewpoint anchored on the idea that Britons knew better that everybody else) whilst in Portugal it was almost the opposite since one of the attractions of EU Membership was bringing better laws to Portugal from Europe (back in the 80s there was this whole idea that everything from richer nations abroad was better, which in this specific subject turned out to be mainly true).

Also on the Economic side of the argumentation, in Britain which is a much wealthier country the argument that "we lose money because of the EU" (which, by the way, was total bollocks) was easy to believe, whilst in Portugal it would be a crazy hard sell since the country is much poorer and the only natural resource it has is the sun, which is hardly something that could be claimed that the EU wanted to steal ;)

Then there's also the whole "big" (relative to the rest) country and "small" country side of the argumentation - being part of a big group is a massive protection for small countries in a World were medium side and bigger countries will invariably bully smaller ones, not always in peaceful ways (just look at what Russia, China and the US do, the latter sometimes via proxys as is doing at the moment via Israel).

So I strongly suspect that in Moldova the arguments were similar to those in Portugal and not at all like those in Britain.

If there's one thing I learned from observing Brexit first hand as an EU immigrant in Britain, is that the vast majority of people don't really care about the EU unless they are or see a way to directly benefit from it (as I benefited from Freedom Of Movement) and even when they do care they don't understand how most of the mechanisms which are the point of the EU affect their lives (hence Brexiters only saw immigration and not how an island with no natural resources and a Service-centric Economy can't just default to WTO rules for exporting Services because WTO Treaties don't cover those, whilst even Remainers couldn't see the whole "together we're stronger" side and kept claiming that Britain could "better change the EU from the inside", which is not a teamplayer position).

So EU membership ends up being sold to the public on pretty generic promises of improvement of their own lives and on single sides the EU's many-sided nature, a message which is far easier to distort and even use in reverse by anti-EU actors.

How else would the twisted sense of humour character trait be passed to the next generation?

I had a family member that invariably turned violent when drunk (but only towards his wife) but wasn't at all like that when sober.

I've also been drunk and several levels and around people at various level of drunkness, have done so in various countries and retain just as well in memory what happens when I am drunk (even at the "end up in hospital from alcohol intoxication" extreme) as when I'm not, though because I also remember well how it felt, I feel no regret for the crazy shit I did when drunk.

From my own observation it's not normal for most people to seek violent thrills when drunk, though I've seen it happen more in certain countries than others, so it might be a cultural thing. Also those who do turn violent when drunk are roughly split into three groups: those who go for violence against equally minded people for the fun of it (which are probably the ones you're thinking of), those who have pent up aggression and when drunk dump it on some hapless victim (which seems to be this lady) and those acting some power fantasies (i.e. when drunk in a group were they feel safe from reprisals they turn violent but alone they don't).

Personally I'm fine with the first kind (who am I to judge what consenting adults do to each other, including violence), but the other two are just bullies who normally are too afraid or self-repressed to act on their true nature.

Nah, it's pretty normal.

You see it a lot with people who are generally seen as "nice people" when not drunk and then turn into very violent people when the are drunk (a member of my family was like that).

A lot of people run around with pretty nasty issues that they do not act on because of social inhibitions and/or awareness of the social consequences of acting on those, and alcohol lowers those inhibitions and the "think twice before you open your mouth" that makes people take those secondary implications they're aware of into account - alcohol just takes away the internal overseer that was stopping them to be who they really are.

This is not excusing their actions: when not drunk those people are NOT nice inside, they just act nicer than they are because they know the consequences of doing otherwise and don't want to feel social shame, or in other words their being "nice" is just a mask and they'll probably act on those not nice things in their minds if they feel they can get away with it (IMHO, this is why some people who are nice, meek and even submissiness when powerless, turn very nasty when they find themselves in a position of power).

It's even better: a lot of essential or close to it things are pretty much monopolies or cartels (for example, Internet access in most of the US) so people have no actual choice but to pay a specific entity whatever they chose to charge.

It's like tax but without the upside of taxes (which is that they're money that's supposed to entirely end up benefiting you, even if most of it indirectly) because when you buy a product or service from a monopoly or cartel only part of it goes to cover the cost of the actual product or service you're getting and a large fraction or even most of it goes to shareholder dividends, which has zero benefit for you.

I've taken to call these things Taxes Paid Directly To Private Companies.

Isn't that just tribalism or clubism in general?

For example, if one looks at footbal (soccer for Americans) fans, their "judgement" on the validity of faults and sanctions (or lack thereof) is entirelly dependent of whose team they support and almost invariably they side with whatever the important people of "their" team (like the coach, important players and even the club's manager) say with zero logical analysis and if you actually bring logic into it and it goes against "their" team, the biggest fans just get angry and dismiss it all.

People with a strong emotinal bond to a "team" judge messages in that domain based on the messager and which team it favours, rather than on the contents of and supporting evidence for the message itself.

I bet Bliken will go there personally to rebuke them, since that's the only way he can give them a wink and a nod along with the stern warning.

The most punitive thing you can do is give it a 1 star review.

As it so happens it's also the nicest thing you can do for everybody else since it makes it less likely people will download that app.