megopie

Prices really haven’t come back to normal. Average prices is around 7 dollars a dozen, with lows around 5 dollars a dozen depending on area.

In 2019 it was between 1.30 and 2 dollars a dozen.

The H5 bird flu strain hasn’t been contained, and it probably never will be, it’s been rampant for nearly half a decade at this point and they’re still nowhere near containing it. It’s endemic in the migratory bird population. At this point the only flocks that won’t be routinely wiped by it are smaller flocks in better conditions.

Beyond the reality of higher turn over in flocks due to routine outbreaks, it also gives them an excuse to steadily press up prices to pad margins.

The prices are also still like 5X what they were before this bout of bird flue started over 5 years ago.

More like with debt, but who will buy the bonds that fund that debt?

They could probably start by putting all the units they’re holding off the market back on the market, but that wouldn't let them keep rents artificially high.

And if they did that then they couldn’t exaggerate the value of the buildings, since the theoretical earnings is based on the average rent multiplied by the total number of units.

And if the value of the buildings dropped because the average rent fell, then they would suddenly be over leveraged on all the loans they’ve taken out with the buildings as collateral, and they couldn’t take out new loans to pay the interest on the old loans.

We wouldn’t want a that to happen now would we?

Like, they’re shooting them selves in the foot right now, this demand they’re trying to cut costs to keep up with, was artificially created by them!

Open AI is the largest single source of the demand, and they’re just redeeming credit Microsoft gave them in exchange for letting Microsoft use their models. Much of the rest of the demand is from users messing around with, or accidentally activating, the models from OpenAI that Microsoft has hastily welded on to anything they could. Microsoft could argue that’s bringing in money, but really Microsoft just raised the price of the office suite and didn’t make it clear that people could have kept the old price by switching to a new tier that didn’t have the features. Like, they could have just raised the price without the new features and pocketed the money without inducing demand or giving OpenAI free compute.

And now to pay for that unforced error, they’re going to let their games side fall even further behind. Like, it’s not happening yet, but, I think we’re quickly going to reach a point where Xbox has gone the way of the Dreamcast, and windows is no longer the default for PC games because it’s such a bloated mess.

That’s the core of the issue, crunchy roll has sat its self as a corporate middleman, buying the rights to distribute shows and then charging consumers a subscription for access.

But they can’t be bothered to do the only actual damn work their position would realistically demand, beyond renting server space; providing translations for the foreign media they’re distributing.

That’s without even discussing the fact that not a single penny users give them will end up in the hands of any of the exploited artists who actually made the shows, since the industry doesn’t work on residuals or any other kind of profit sharing, the licensing fees crunchy roll pays essentially going straight to financiers.

See that’s the kicker, for the longest time it was basically all fan translated subtitles, and only recently have payed for translation become the norm.

So it’s really quite pathetic for them to try and save a few bucks by replacing a proper translator with a LLM, given that there are still plenty of passionate fans who would have done it for free. Especially given that translating between Japanese and English in a cultural context heavy situation is something these LLMs are really bad at.

The issue is that for a lot of these people their idea of a plant based diet is an analogous to what they currently eat, and products that emulate that are quite expensive. Bean tacos are cheaper than beef tacos, but imitation ground beef tacos are more expensive.

Perhaps it’s a lack of imagination on the part of people and perhaps it’s that the marketing of plant based diets has largely been pushed in the mainstream by companies offering premium meat substitutes.

Be nice if there was a way to use it that was just a web page.

Almost like there’s some kind of deeper generational economic divide, almost like all the people who own all the stock are retiring and starting to live off investments, and thus companies are pressured to payout ether in buy backs or dividends, so prices are rising while quality and pay falls, and only those benefiting from the record profitability can afford the new prices.

Sort of like the allocation of resources and labor are being redistributed to a retiring and wealthy leisure class and the burden to support that is falling on the younger generation.

It’s a matter of optics and positioning, he’s saying he wants to do these things, he’s saying “ here’s how we do these things, and the average citizen of the Empire State won’t pay a dime for it” and he has the mandate of the public in NYC to do them.

If the state legislature blocks these, it’s on them to explain why they won’t do it. They have to go to their constituencies and tell them that “no we will not raise taxes on the wealthy to pay for public services”.

In wealthy bedroom communities lavished in generational wealth like Mount Kisco and Whiteplains, that will go over just fine. But In Schenectady, Rochester and Buffalo, that’s going to ruffle some feathers.

Sure upstate dislikes NYC for taking up all the oxygen in the room, but their fundamental gripe is with the elites of NYC who refuse to spend a dime to support them. The elites of NYC in the suburbs throwing out fire and brimstone about spending money on public services will strike a sore spot with upstate voters desperate for public investment.

The legislators from upstate will say “We shouldn’t be letting NYC spend 9 billion dollars on their public services when ours are falling apart.” And the public there will say “yah! Let’s raise taxes on the NYC rich to pay for our public services!” and now the legislators who don’t want to tax the rich have to explain why they will be funding no ones public services.

All he has to do at that point to get these past is say “ let hit the rich NYC elite piñata a little bit harder and we can fund my proposal and stuff in upstate”. Without control of NYC proper’s politics, the rich are caught between a rock and a hard place, the actual legislative influence of the communities they live in is tiny compared to NYC and upstate.

Well of course, if an initiative for a public services decreases revenue it’s a failure! I mean, clearly the goal of a public services is to make money! Not, you know, provide a service to the public, what an absurd notion!