Look at any setup audio is being mixed on and tell me how many sound bars do you see there? How many flat panels with nothing more than the built in speakers being used? None. The speakers being used and the tricks the equipment do to make multichannel audio work with fewer speakers plays havoc on well mixed audio. Down mixing on consumer device is just never going to sound great
There’s something to what you’re saying - but it’s also something of a spectrum.
Our need to turn up the volume in dialog scenes and turn it back down again in action scenes (for both new and old content) got a lot less when we added a mid-range soundbar and sub to our mid-range TV (previously was using just the TV speakers). I’m not sure whether it’s sound separation - now we have a ‘more proper’ center channel - or that the ends of the spectrum - both bass and treble - are less muddy. Probably a combination of the two.
Audio has become a WTF situation for me. I grew up with speakers that had a driver for low ends some where in the 8"-12", a driver for the mids typically in the 4"-6", and then a third for the highs in various forms of a tweeter. These were all internally crossed over so that only a single cable was necessary.
Now, we have "satellite" speakers that are smaller than the tweeter and are touted as being all that's necessary. Sound bars are also using speakers the size of an old tweeter just in an array with separation between left/right sides smaller than the width of the TV. Some how, we let the marketing people from places like Bose convince us that you can make the same sound from tiny speakers.
Multichannel mixes used to also include a dedicated stereo mix for those mere mortals without dedicated surround setups. These were created in the same studio with mixing decisions made based on the content. Now, we just get downmixes made by some math equation on a chip that has no concept of what the content is and just applies rules.
My theory is that many people don’t have space for speakers. Soundbar sounds better than TV speakers.
I also think the focus on surround means people don’t consider stereo speakers. Good bookshelf speakers are better than surround kits and easier to install. I also wonder if normal speakers are no longer cool.
Finally, I wonder if people don’t like the big receivers. There are small amplifiers but I can’t find one that works in home theater with HDMI port.
Bit of a tangent, but another WTF for me has been the mainstream return of mono audio for music (HomePods, Echos, many Bluetooth speakers etc.), after decades of everything being at least stereo.
Ugh, mono. Phasing is an effect that is used quite a bit, and when things are 180° out of phase and mixed to mono, oops, no more audio. Of course, my favorite use of 180° phasing was Dolby ProLogic to send that to the mono rear speakers. It was always fun listening to music that was not mixed for ProLogic but used 180° phasing as an effect in ProLogic decoding enabled. Random things would play from the rear speakers.
Reference monitor pricing has never been any where near something mere mortals could afford. The price you gave of $21k for 55” is more than 50% of the average of $1k+ per inch I’m used to seeing from Sony.
not familiar with the specific PO at Stanford, but I'm assuming the "ones outside" are the traditional drive up blue boxes that are also emptied/collected from the outside. I could see having these picked up by a truck on the way to a regional office without having the driver also need keys to collect from a location that is not open at the time of collection.
Someone somewhere probably figured out that it’s more efficient to have five drivers ride in a loop all day than to have each post office drain the boxes inside their postal map.
But it’s weird for a pleb to look at a box directly outside an office and assume that office isn’t responsible for that box. Outside a corner coffee shop, sure, but I can see the post office, it’s right there.
Again, your "right there" is just your assumptions you know the inner workings of the USPS. Maybe there was no Saturday pickup at that location until the outside boxes made it possible. This means no increase in that location's budget for paying people to do this. Now, it is part of the regional location (or similar) while at the same time now being able to offer a convenient Saturday pickup for those that use this location.
Not every location offers the same services. It's part of life. The complaining here is coming across as very privileged whining. Do you wish to speak to a manager?
And you’re ignoring the part where you’re blaming the customer for not reading someone else’s mind.
This is feeling like a work argument where the apologists are trying to block UX of DX improvements due to contempt for the people it’ll help and I am full up at the moment. Argue with yourself, I’m out.
well, if there's some "not reading" happening, it's you with the the rest of the comments upstream stating there is signage that clearly states there is no Saturday pickup.
that's moving the goalposts of the comment I replied.
"people who might not otherwise be able to win" would mean that without this rule change, the current admin would not have been able to win. that's clearly not true. all this does, as you suggest, makes it harder for their opposition to use a valid means of voting.
Those people previously benefited from not being in power, so voters forgot how abjectly terrible they were. This was helped by conspiring media egging them on about price inflation, much of which had taken years to set in.
The same number of 55+ voters in the US that was the margin of victor for this election die in a year (~2M, ~5k/day). I admit, I'm unsure if those who voted for this have felt sufficient pain yet to vote better, and the votes of those who don't age out by election deadlines are hard to predict, but election results since the presidential election have been very favorable. NYC and Seattle have both elected democratic socialist mayors recently. Certainly, I have no doubt deep red parts of the country will continue to vote for this until death, but those parts of the country also have lower life expectency.
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/behind-trump... ("Most adults who were eligible to vote in 2020 – but declined to do so – stayed home again in 2024. But among those who did turn out, Trump had the edge. Among all 2020 nonvoters (including those who were too young and ineligible to vote in 2020), 14% supported Trump in 2024 while 12% supported Harris.")
Observing demographic systems ("demographics are destiny") and its context within a political and governance system, and then building a thesis from those observations is simply academic. Attempting to predict the future isn't a fantasy (death or otherwise) imho, but I do enjoy trying to predict the future from observations and data. But, from your comment "A small price to pay for election integrity," (when elections were already high integrity) I can already deduce your mental model and that it is not grounded in facts or data.
> "We're going to start with an executive order that's being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they're corrupt," Trump said later Monday, during a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the White House. "And it's time that the Republicans get tough and stop it because the Democrats want it. It's the only way they can get elected."
> Although Trump himself urged his supporters to vote using mail ballots prior to the 2024 election, Democrats have been significantly more likely to vote using mail-in ballots, compared to Republicans, since the 2020 election. That gap has only gotten wider in recent elections as GOP-led states have passed more restrictions on this method of voting.
> But legal experts say Trump does not have the legal authority to tell states how to run their elections.
As the saying goes, "Every accusation is a confession."
DJT is fixated on anything where he can put his thumb on the scale. this is no different than demanding states gerrymander their maps in his favor. also, clearly DJT won, so not really sure what the argument here is. the original comment said unable to win. QED or some such
Why would something picked up from you box not be considered within the postal system's control? Does your box not get picked up from daily?
Also as a slight bit of victim blaming, why would you not drop something of this importance and time sensitive directly into a more controlled drop off?
> why would you not drop something of this importance and time sensitive directly into a more controlled drop off?
In some places I'm sure there will be ICE deployed to make sure nobody who doesn't look American enough will need to prove they are American before they can vote. In their place I would suggest mailing it early to make sure the vote is counted.
> Why would something picked up from you box not be considered within the postal system's control? Does your box not get picked up from daily?
It does. I live on a rural route and as far as I can tell it doesn't get postmarked until it actually processes through the closest city's PO. They get backed up sometimes, I guess?
> Also as a slight bit of victim blaming, why would you not drop something of this importance and time sensitive directly into a more controlled drop off?
It wasn't anything that important - I think it was either a holiday or birthday card. The only reason I knew at all is because the recipient didn't get it until about 7 days later and told me when it was postmarked.
not sure what the point is. this is possible, clearly as that's what has happened. i'm only asking why with the known situation that something left in your personal box not getting postmarked as expected for whatever reasons would you allow something of this import to be handled that way? you only file taxes once a year, and most people only vote every four years. making arrangements for that infrequent to have a piece of mind something was postmarked as expected doesn't seem too outlandish to me. i even stipulated potential for victim blaming suggesting if you read the context that i was in no way suggesting whatever you want to think is a gotcha
Many of the RTOs described in TFA already have extended hours on April 15 where you can drop it off up to midnight, and it would be post marked as the 15th even though the postmark stamping would be after midnight.
haha, you seem to think laws a democratically created. we should all by now know that most laws are written by others that donate the most to the congress critters that just attach their names to them.
Long ago I was told of looking at a timeline so that time "travels" from left to right is the normal view, but now rotate that timeline so that it appears as a dot to you. You now see all events of the timeline, but without reference to "when" they happened. Lots of scifi plots are also described as such
Think about a maze drawn on a piece of paper. Because we’re in 3D you can see all of the maze at once but if you were a 2D entity inside the maze you would only see the walls / entrances / exits directly in front or behind you. Now imagine drawing a line from the entrance to the exit - that’s 2D + a time dimension. Now make it a 3D maze and an entity existing outside of spacetime would be able to see all events happening at once in 3D.
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