Journalists learn a new phrase that sounds techy / flashy and beat it to death. Watch CNBC for 5 minutes and you will see their "experts" use the phrase "hyper scalers" at least 5 times.
I hate the way the press and seemingly most people are approaching this but am completely unsurprised: "You are either a heathen who supports murder or you are a virtuous supporter of the people and this man deserved to die." Two things can be correct at the same time. 1) Murder is not OK. 2) The insurance industry is completely broken as it incentivizes terrible behavior and this CEO was a scumbag who perpetuated this behavior while possibly insider trading.
Would be cool if it could detect area specific accents. I grew up in Kentucky and tried it in a very thick Eastern KY accent and it just said native english speaker. (technically true)
Here's what it sounds like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bB8vHRH9A6M
Isn't the point of buying brands like that that you shouldn't need to fix after only 10-20 years? I have a denon receiver from the late 90's that I upgraded from and has been my garage/shop amp for the last 15 or so years. It is covered in dust and dirt and still cranks like the day I got it.
I also bought a 10+ year old Denon amplifier and overall it's great, but over time it developed some minor issues with components like Alps potentiometers and switches. Unfortunately, Alps doesn't produce some of those parts anymore (like the ones discussed here: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/source-for-alps-a...), so it's really not easy to source parts for repairs. It would be nice if you could simply ask the manufacturer to sell these components to you directly.
Well, yeah. I know I have a lot of 20+ year old audio stuff still going strong.
Some things like capacitors have a lifespan just due to their nature.
A McIntosh owner might also enjoy knowing that accidental "user error" type stuff can be repaired. It's pretty difficult to actually blow out an amplifier unless you're doing some real torture test type stuff; the fuses should blow before you can do any real damage. But still, after having plunked down megabucks on an amp, it's probably nice to know that your $10K or $20K investment can be repaired if you really manage to screw something up.
Not that I personally would ever consider owning McIntosh gear. I'm sure it's nice, but at the prices they're asking... I'm good.
As for tigers, I am not sure - there are some safety standards you'd need to comply to so that your neighbors don't become meals for Fluffy.
As for cannabis, all you need to do is move to one of the more enlightened states that allow cultivation. Given time, I believe all states will recognize the benefits it brings.
I had the exact same experience. I live in a small mountain town with 500 people. I saw the local dentist in town for 10 years and he was great. Regular checkups, rays, cleanings etc. with one patch when I chipped a tooth. The office definitely seemed old school, nothing fancy. My dental health was fine. He retired and was unable to sell his practice so it closed. I googled around and found a dentist in a much larger town 2 hours away. Super nice office, all the latest technology. After the first appointment he said that I had something like 5 old fillings that needed to be repaired and a bunch of other stuff. I have good dental insurance but he was going to charge them something like 5k. It just felt scummy. I didn't go back and now go to another "country" dentist in the next town over and it's back to normal.
I took the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago in about 2008. Our departure out of Seattle was delayed 12 hours, I was not able to get into the sleeper cabin that I paid for until Spokane, where we were also delayed for 8 hours. Once we departed Spokane, the staff were universally rude, unhelpful and generally shitty. Our train was so delayed that they had combined the EB coming out of Portland with ours so they started rationing meals (which I had also paid for as a part of my fare) to half servings.
Having spent a lot of time in Japan I compare this to the one delay I ever encountered in roughly 25 Shinkansen trips: I took the Shinkansen from Tokyo to Niigata, a roughly 3 hour trip. The train was delayed by less than 5 minutes. When we got off the train in Niigata the conductors and staff were waiting by the door to bow and apologize profusely.
I'll never set foot on another AmTrak.
more recently than your experience I took a similar trip. The staff was great, the food was great and we experienced no hitches. However, at the other end of the train they had a sewage flood of some sort, puddles in the passageway, I felt very lucky.
one interesting thing I didn't expect, there were a large number of Mennonites/Brethren riding the train (they did not ride in sleepers), all sexes and ages, including very cute little toddlers wearing full "formalwear".
