The Miscellaneous Thought Thread

[TP2000]

Whether a man was more masculine back in the 60s versus now is in my opinion a very silly futile discussion.

It wasn't a discussion of "masculinity", which is quite a subjective thing. It was a discussion on the average testosterone levels of American men, which has been studied and documented medically and scientifically. And the medical-scientific consensus is that testosterone levels have fallen dramatically in the last 50 years.

Which, when you just look at the average 30 year old guy wandering around town today, is patently obvious.

Men's testosterone levels declined in last 20 years

A new study has found a "substantial" drop in U.S. men's testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age.

www.reuters.com

 

[Disney Irish]

Disney+ in a lot of other countries has a 6th section called Star, with a lot of content from 20th Century and other miscellaneous corners of the company. I was pretty confused when I went to Italy recently and it just popped up on my account.

The reason it comes to mind is that I watched the original 5 Planet of the Apes movies this past week on HBO Max, and now I want to watch the 2001 one and the newer trilogy. They’re all on Disney+ in other counties, but not here! Might be time to get a VPN.

Star outside the US is basically what Hulu is here in the US. The only difference is Hulu isn't its own tile on D+, partially because of its shared ownership right now between Disney and Comcast, and then different rights due to content from other Studios. Some of us here have long suspected that once Disney gets full ownership of Hulu in 2024 that it'll become more like Star with its own tile in D+ in the US.

There is a long running thread in the Movies/TV forum that goes over a lot of the debate we've had on this site surrounding all this:

Disney's Streaming Services: Disney+ (and Hulu, ESPN+, Star, & hotstar)

Disney+ Preview page: https://preview.disneyplus.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%2B Pricing $7/mo ad free ($70 for the year, which is $5.83/mo) will be "likely bundled" with a price discount with Hulu and/or ESPN+, but no pricing announced yet (contracts with Hulu's partners needs...

forums.wdwmagic.com

Having a VPN really does make a difference, allows for more content from any regions. I personally use Canada for my regional settings for D+ in my VPN, but any place D+ is outside the US will work.

 

[Disney Irish]

IM me when the bullet train finally opens from Merced to Bakersfield a decade from now.

I'll send a muffin basket to Sacramento.

The Bullet Train is a perfect example of NIMBY here in California, the routes kept changing due to lawsuits and made it less economically feasible. The project predates the current and previous CA administrations and went off the rails so to speak back when the Governator was in office.

Had we just moved forward and built the initial phase of Bay Area to LA along the original route it would have been done by now. But because everyone had to have their say on the project from both sides of the aisle it got hacked, slashed, mismanaged, and rerouted so many times until we got to where we are now. I don't blame any particular party with the fails of this project, both sides have their fingerprints on it. I won't go into a further long diatribe on why we still don't have high speed rail in this country, but suffice to say our political lobbing system is a primary factor. With projects like this we need to take a page out of the playbook of places that already have bullet trains, they just get it done for the betterment of their citizen. And so we'll be one of the last industrialized countries on the planet with no high speed rail, we just need to get it done.

Anyways, hopefully one day we'll have high speed rail of some form in this state and this country.

 

[Disney Irish]

It wasn't a discussion of "masculinity", which is quite a subjective thing. It was a discussion on the average testosterone levels of American men, which has been studied and documented medically and scientifically. And the medical-scientific consensus is that testosterone levels have fallen dramatically in the last 50 years.

Which, when you just look at the average 30 year old guy wandering around town today, is patently obvious.

Men's testosterone levels declined in last 20 years

A new study has found a "substantial" drop in U.S. men's testosterone levels since the 1980s, but the reasons for the decline remain unclear. This trend also does not appear to be related to age.

www.reuters.com

Just curious, I don't want to get into a long debate, but has anyone here thought this might be part of the normal evolution of a highly industrialized species? I bring this up as there have been studies that suggests that as we go into space that testosterone levels will drop anyways, as the lack of gravity will cause lower bone density and muscle mass.

Anyways its just an interesting thought. Maybe this is meant to happen as we evolve in the long term from a single planet species into the multi-planet species.

 

[mickEblu]

Do all the Paper towel dispensers at Disneyland suck or am I doing something wrong?

 

[waltography]

Do all the Paper towel dispensers at Disneyland suck or am I doing something wrong?

They're very inconsistent. The ones by the Space Mountain exit are great, the City Hall ones are so stingy, and the Adventureland ones don't work half the time.

 

[waltography]

"We Don't Talk About Bruno" hit #1 on the Hot 100 this week! https://www.billboard.com/music/cha...-bruno-encanto-number-one-hot-100-1235025313/

I don't know about you, but if we had to suffer through that Frozen Fun summer campaign after Frozen, I want an Encanto Summer at DCA; it's only fair.

 

[Phroobar]

"We Don't Talk About Bruno" hit #1 on the Hot 100 this week! https://www.billboard.com/music/cha...-bruno-encanto-number-one-hot-100-1235025313/

I don't know about you, but if we had to suffer through that Frozen Fun summer campaign after Frozen, I want an Encanto Summer at DCA; it's only fair.

 

[Mac Tonight]

Do all the Paper towel dispensers at Disneyland suck or am I doing something wrong?

I miss the old days of the manual dispensers. A lot of the automated ones are either always broken, or they dispense such a small amount of paper towel, you need at least 3-4 turns to get enough.

 

[mickEblu]

I miss the old days of the manual dispensers. A lot of the automated ones are either always broken, or they dispense such a small amount of paper towel, you need at least 3-4 turns to get enough.

Agreed. They just don’t plain work for a good 2/3 of the time on the first, second or even third try. Half of the time they just don’t work at all.

 

[mickEblu]

So the Mystery of the changed Main Street Station announcement continues to be a mystery. Family and I decided to board the train on Main Street on to my surprise I find 6 Train Station employees just standing there inside chatting. I politely ask if they may know why the announcement changed to the old one with a Frontierland spiel one CM responds saying it’s always been that way. When I say no it actually used to say New Orleans before the closure there was an awkward silence and they looked me like I was some defiant weirdo. I guess they re so used to do dealing with “passholes” they immediately box you in when you ask those kind of questions. Just a very awkward exchange.

What’s the weirder is at the NOS Station is playing the correct spiel. I honestly think they just turned on the wrong train station announcement at the Main Street station and not a soul has noticed for the past 8 months.

 

[PiratesMansion]

In 2023 Disney will exercise its option to buy out Hulu, and then they'd merge their three domestic streaming platforms (ESPN+, Disney+, and Hulu) together as they have in the international markets.

I'm unfamiliar with how the pricing and setup works in international countries, but knowing how Disney operates I can't picture them going from two streaming services to one here, or doing anything substantially different from what they're doing now.

As much as Hulu is clearly the second banana domestically (never mind that it has far better content for my own purposes), I can't picture them just up and folding it once they have full ownership. They have no financial incentive to do so.

 

[SplashJacket]

I'm unfamiliar with how the pricing and setup works in international countries, but knowing how Disney operates I can't picture them going from two streaming services to one here, or doing anything substantially different from what they're doing now.

As much as Hulu is clearly the second banana domestically (never mind that it has far better content for my own purposes), I can't picture them just up and folding it once they have full ownership. They have no financial incentive to do so.

I'm curious to see how the transition occurs, but Disney's biggest streaming problem (according to execs) is a lack of sufficient adult content on D+. The only way to solve that is by raiding Hulu, and if you raid Hulu, you're just going to water it down.

Disney is currently in a difficult spot with streaming in the U.S. because any gains made by Hulu now, will come out of Disney's pocket later when they exercise their option to buy it out.

As the industry continues to consolidate, I see Disney being able to take a pretty firm foothold, because Hulu current has a live tv (cable substitute). As traditional Cable continues to die, I see Peacock, Disney, and Paramount moving their live tv options over to their direct-to-consumer platforms, forming a hybrid of streaming and live programming.

Just recently, they added three ESPN documentaries to Disney+. They're going to try to make a platform that everyone must have, and you don't do that by whimpering on with separate entities. I don't know what the official umbrella all this will be under, but their current system was always meant to be short-term.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I'm curious to see how the transition occurs, but Disney's biggest streaming problem (according to execs) is a lack of sufficient adult content on D+. The only way to solve that is by raiding Hulu, and if you raid Hulu, you're just going to water it down.

Disney is currently in a difficult spot with streaming in the U.S. because any gains made by Hulu now, will come out of Disney's pocket later when they exercise their option to buy it out.

As the industry continues to consolidate, I see Disney being able to take a pretty firm foothold, because Hulu current has a live tv (cable substitute). As traditional Cable continues to die, I see Peacock, Disney, and Paramount moving their live tv options over to their direct-to-consumer platforms, forming a hybrid of streaming and live programming.

Just recently, they added three ESPN documentaries to Disney+. They're going to try to make a platform that everyone must have, and you don't do that by whimpering on with separate entities. I don't know what the official umbrella all this will be under, but their current system was always meant to be short-term.

I can't speak for the others, but you can already watch live TV (or at least, live CBS) on Paramount+.

I don't see ESPN+ having a long shelf life. That content is a little too niche for a company like Disney, even if sports in general remains a relative goldmine of ratings/profit.

In many ways, it makes sense for them to consolidate their holdings into one super streaming service. But I just don't see modern Disney willingly going from two (well, three-ish with ESPN) revenue/content streams to one-they're just too greedy and there's too much pressure to see revenue growth. I suppose they could do something like $10 for current Disney+ content and $10 more to add the existing Hulu content-the Disney Bundle by another name. I'm having a hard time picturing how all of this will play out.

 

[PiratesMansion]

I just replaced my expired 2020 tickets by calling Disneyland, since I imagine a price increase is imminent over the next few days/weeks. A few things I didn't expect about the process (I'm sure people who have gone back since reopening know the bulk of this):
1. I was pleasantly surprised at how varied the on-hold playlist was. Some modern stuff, yes, but things I wouldn't have expected to hear like "Let's Get Together" from the original Parent Trap, Davy Crockett, Mickey Mouse Club...just seems weird that they're so afraid of such musical variety in the parks themselves.
2. I had assumed that they would simply have me pay the difference between my old ticket and the current prices. Not so. I had to buy an entirely new ticket and they will refund the cost of the expired ticket to me within 10 business days.
3. A surprise to me that probably shouldn't have been one-you can buy Genie+ and add it to your ticket just like you could with MaxPass. Ok, fine, done.
4. The park reservation system is just stupid and arbitrary. I'm a teacher in Illinois, so there's a 99% chance I'm not going to the parks before June, but the summer isn't reservable yet-May 31st is the latest date currently entered into their system. But from their system's perspective, I can't just *not* make park reservations; I have to make dummy reservations (and cancel them after the purchase goes through) in order to complete the transaction. Every single thing about this reservation system is more trouble than it's worth.
5. Despite the horror stories I've heard about Disney and other companies right now and their phone lines, I was only on hold for about fifteen minutes. Not too bad, really.
6. I still think it's dumb that out-of-state residents didn't get any extension on their ticket expiration dates given the policies that were technically in place when the parks reopened.

VERY happy I had purchased my 2020 ticket direct from Disney-I've purchased from other companies before and had no problems, but it made this process much easier than it could have been.

 

[TP2000]

The Bullet Train is a perfect example of NIMBY here in California, the routes kept changing due to lawsuits and made it less economically feasible. The project predates the current and previous CA administrations and went off the rails so to speak back when the Governator was in office.

Had we just moved forward and built the initial phase of Bay Area to LA along the original route it would have been done by now.

I'm sorry, but... are you trying to say that the bullet train won't have any problem going through the backyards of Atherton or Pasadena (very wealthy communities), but it was those pesky hard scrabble farmers of the Central Valley that had all the power to slow the bullet train down?!? They're to blame for its epic failure?

The NIMBY mentality hasn't even hit the two biggest cities in the state yet. Just wait until Palo Alto and Atherton hire a few lawyers and PR firms to kill the route there. Fresno farmers have got nothing on Atherton.

HSR route through Corcoran, California - Median Household Income $40,519

But the route through and along these residential neighborhoods is going to be a piece of cake and welcomed with open arms by the very wealthy home owners???

HSR also has to get through Atherton, California - Median Household Income $525,000

 

[No Name]

Star outside the US is basically what Hulu is here in the US. The only difference is Hulu isn't its own tile on D+, partially because of its shared ownership right now between Disney and Comcast, and then different rights due to content from other Studios. Some of us here have long suspected that once Disney gets full ownership of Hulu in 2024 that it'll become more like Star with its own tile in D+ in the US.

There is a long running thread in the Movies/TV forum that goes over a lot of the debate we've had on this site surrounding all this:

Disney's Streaming Services: Disney+ (and Hulu, ESPN+, Star, & hotstar)

Disney+ Preview page: https://preview.disneyplus.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney%2B Pricing $7/mo ad free ($70 for the year, which is $5.83/mo) will be "likely bundled" with a price discount with Hulu and/or ESPN+, but no pricing announced yet (contracts with Hulu's partners needs...

forums.wdwmagic.com

Having a VPN really does make a difference, allows for more content from any regions. I personally use Canada for my regional settings for D+ in my VPN, but any place D+ is outside the US will work.

But dammit the Planet of the Apes movies aren’t on Hulu!

I think the optional bundle works best for the company and the customers and I don’t see why they’d combine them (apart from maybe sharing login info if you bundle). I’m grandfathered in to getting Hulu free with Spotify, so really I just don’t want to be paying for something I’m already getting. I’ll read into the debate more though.

 

[Disney Irish]

I'm sorry, but... are you trying to say that the bullet train won't have any problem going through the backyards of Atherton or Pasadena (very wealthy communities), but it was those pesky hard scrabble farmers of the Central Valley that had all the power to slow the bullet train down?!? They're to blame for its epic failure?

The NIMBY mentality hasn't even hit the two biggest cities in the state yet. Just wait until Palo Alto and Atherton hire a few lawyers and PR firms to kill the route there. Fresno farmers have got nothing on Atherton.

HSR route through Corcoran, California - Median Household Income $40,519

But the route through and along these residential neighborhoods is going to be a piece of cake and welcomed with open arms by the very wealthy home owners???

HSR also has to get through Atherton, California - Median Household Income $525,000

Actually the peninsula cities such as Atherton already tried to sue in 2008, in fact they were the first to sue, and while they had some small victories they ultimately lost in 2013 when the judge said enough.

California high-speed rail finally wins Peninsula lawsuit after five years

California high-speed rail finally wins Peninsula lawsuit after five years

www.mercurynews.com

This is part lawsuits I was talking about, every time there was a ruling in favor of the peninsula cities the HSR authority had to go back and redraw the route which caused more and more delays. Again this is a perfect example of NIMBY that I was talking about.

 

[TP2000]

Actually the peninsula cities such as Atherton already tried to sue in 2008, in fact they were the first to sue, and while they had some small victories they ultimately lost in 2013 when the judge said enough.

California high-speed rail finally wins Peninsula lawsuit after five years

California high-speed rail finally wins Peninsula lawsuit after five years

www.mercurynews.com

This is part lawsuits I was talking about, every time there was a ruling in favor of the peninsula cities the HSR authority had to go back and redraw the route which caused more and more delays. Again this is a perfect example of NIMBY that I was talking about.

The Atherton crew stopped caring when even Sacramento admitted the California High Speed Rail system would never extend beyond Merced-to-Bakersfield. Using diesel locomotives. At 110mph to 125mph, or about the same speed as the Wolverine in Michigan, which also uses diesel locomotives.

California to scale back $77 billion high-speed rail project: governor

California Governor Gavin Newsom said on Tuesday the state will dramatically scale back a planned $77.3 billion high-speed rail project that has faced cost hikes, delays and management concerns, but will finish a smaller section of the line.

www.reuters.com

 

[Disney Irish]

But dammit the Planet of the Apes movies aren’t on Hulu!

I think the optional bundle works best for the company and the customers and I don’t see why they’d combine them (apart from maybe sharing login info if you bundle). I’m grandfathered in to getting Hulu free with Spotify, so really I just don’t want to be paying for something I’m already getting. I’ll read into the debate more though.

I believe you can watch the remakes on Hulu, but as for the original PotA movies I believe they are locked up on HBO Max in the US where a lot of Fox content is until the contract expire.

As for the rest, only time will tell what Disney does in the US after 2024.