Yes!! Gotta love Kagi and the ability to tailor search results to be exactly what you want.

This is for the US, not sure about elsewhere, but…

The easy and reliable way for most people is probably just bikesdirect.com
I’ll fully admit that their website looks like you’re immediately gonna get scammed, but it’s legit and I’ve ordered from them. Don’t just trust me though, search around and find people who have posted and can verify that they’ve ordered and it’s legit.
They’re importers who sell branded and off/non branded bikes direct from the manufacturers at a heavy discount. Shipping is free, but it takes a pretty long time since they’re shipping it from China

The hard and less reliable way is to ask around. I got to be good friends with the owner of my local bike shop, and he’s the type of person who organizes races and does a lot of custom work, so he knows a couple people who run small bike factories/workshops in the US. They sometimes have bikes that have some marks on the down tube or a slightly messy weld etc. but otherwise perfectly great bikes that they can’t sell. So it’s definitely a long shot and more likely in cities with a big biking scene, but this is where you get the best deal. I got a frame for $300 and they would have sold it for over $1500 but didn’t because the holes for a water bottle cage were milled slightly off center.

I can only on road bikes as that’s what I ride. But it seems like the biggest factor that drives up prices is a combination of weight and aerodynamics.

For just regular people, If you know where to look you can get a high end bike that was unfinished at the factory and didn’t get painted/stickered/branded and pay a fraction of the price. A lot of time the branding is what really drives up prices.

But in the very high end it’s really all about weight and aero. Professional racers will pay a hefty premium to knock a few grams off of their bikes total weight, or to get parts that are more aerodynamic and thus give you better power transfer between your bike and the road.

And then the lighter you want to get, you start getting diminished returns, and exponentially higher prices. Like if you compare a 3 pound saddle to a 1 pound saddle it might be a little bit more expensive. But then if you have a 150 gram saddle and want to get a 100 gram saddle that might be 20x the price.

Lighter parts also have to sustain the same amount of forces (and sometimes much much more) as their heavy duty steel counterparts so finding things that can undergo this amount of stress and not break plays into it as well.

And this doesn’t even go into materials. The big new thing is titanium bikes which are ridiculously expensive but will last several lifetimes if taken care of. And then carbon fiber is difficult to make and even more difficult to make well. Much lighter and than other materials but really only flexes in one direction and can be really fragile if under the wrong type of stress.

New cars have all sorts of privacy issues too. I think it was the Mozilla foundation that released a report recently that claimed every single modern electric car harvests as much data as they can about their users and sells it.

This is the real answer. If your business relies of billions in VC money every year to stay afloat, then you don’t have a sustainable business and probably shouldn’t keep doing what you’re doing. Last time I checked Uber eats has a negative margin on every order…

Darn tough are the only socks I buy. They’re around $25 USD per pair, but that’s incredibly cheap when you consider you’ll have these socks for the rest of your life. I bought 12 pairs a few years ago and now never have to worry about socks again.

Too late, Baldurs gate 3 already came out. And I didn’t need to buy horse armor with real money. 10/10

I think you’re focusing too much on the ROI and and not the distinction between projected ROI and a guaranteed one. They can expect to make a return, but the cannot do so with any degree of certainty. Whereas with a sponsored segment, that is guaranteed money before the movie even opens.

And you’re correct, good movies have been made under capitalism. Good movies are also made with sponsored segments. I’m arguing that they’re good despite the pressures of capitalism, not because of it.

I mean look at Elemental, huge, expensive production, one of the biggest animation houses in America with a history of incredible and influential work, huge media and ad campaigns and yet… it was a flop (at least domestically). I’m sure they expected to make a lot more money than they did.

The true evil is often banal.

I guess what I’m saying is I don’t see either top gun or Barbie movie as “partial propaganda”, I see them as entirely propaganda. So, at least for me, having some additional propaganda for Samsung phones or car brands doesn’t seem out of place or jarring for me.

It’s honestly more jarring for me to see how the military is portrayed compared to what it’s actually like.

Subtle phrasing can change Christianity into kink in a matter of seconds

It might not be as obvious as literally winking into the camera, but Top Gun had substantial monetary investment from the U.S. military, and they definitely tried to make being in the military look cool and fun and attractive.

They definitely don’t show what it’s really like to be a service member, and that’s for good reason.

What does surrender mean? Will he actually spend any time in a cell?