Greed, thy name is Disney

 Right, so, time for a break from my usual rants about the shit state of the world (and a traditional holiday Fuck Off to the major offenders in the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the Israel/Hamas thing while I'm thinking of it) - time instead for a rant on the shit state and trend of commercial video streaming currently, with a special nod to Disney+.

If Wikipedia's dates and figures are right, Netflix first launched their stand-alone streaming service in 2011, for just shy of $8 per month.  At the time, it was an amazing value, compared to cable TV subscriptions closer to $40 or $50 a month (if memory serves), especially given its two major features.  Namely, they had a library of titles large enough to practically guarantee you could watch whatever you want, and, whatever you watched, it would be ad-free.

In the intervening years, enshittification has changed that dynamic greatly.  First, the larger owners of most popular films and shows decided that they would rather be making money themselves rather than handing content off to Netflix, so they launched their own streaming services, with varying degrees of success.  Quickly, given the niche nature of their content, some such streamers made "bundle deals" available to get multiple stream sources for a reduced price, echoing the bundling that started cable down its road to ruin.  More recently, most streamers have started splitting their content into tiers, not based on things like how many screens you can have running at once or the audio/visual quality of the streamed content, but on whether they can feed you ads at the same time.  So, now, sticking with Netflix for this example, you can access a greatly-reduced range of content under one of three plans:  "good enough" quality with ads for about $7/month, the same without ads for more than $15/month, or high quality without ads for about $23/month.  In contrast, Curiosity Stream offers their (admittedly niche) content for no more than $5/month for a high-quality stream, which should give a good idea as to how much of other streamers' fees are due to meeting hardware requirements to supply their customers.

But, like I said, I really want to focus on Disney+ for a bit here.  Why?  Well, I had an account a while back (likely when they launched in 2019 at a roughly $7/month price point).  I specifically didn't go for their ESPN and Hulu bundle for about $13/month, for one simple reason:  I take a hard stance against paying for ads, which was part and parcel of any Hulu experience at the time.  So, I watched my fill of Disney fare, Star Wars stuff, and the odd National Geographic content, and let my subscription lapse, ready to wait until more content I cared for had accumulated.

Here we are in 2024, and I caught wind via a YouTube ad - Disney+ is doing a Black Friday sale, $3/month if you sign up for a year up front!  Color me intrigued!  So I go to the Disney+ site and... oh, it's another Hulu bundle, with ads on Disney+ as well.  Normally, something they charge about $11/month for.  And the ad-free version of that bundle isn't on sale at all, and they would want you to pay about $20/month for that.  And there's various other bundles available, but none where you could get everything they have on offer, for up to about $30/month.  And just getting Disney+?  Not even shown in the same area - you have to dig in the FAQ section for it - about $10/month with ads, $16/month without.  And with all those choices, nothing is mentioned about stream quality - it's probably high-quality, but who really knows?

Now, here's the thing... I get Disney's angle on this, they want to push bundles to maintain engagement, and they want to normalize ads, because they can make more money overall that way (otherwise, they wouldn't bother to offer it).  But, in doing such a deep discount on one service option without providing any discount for anything else, their message is, basically, "you would be a sucker to do anything but this."  And, looking at their price structures, and how much everything else costs versus a $5/month ad-free Curiosity Stream subscription (or, for something a little more mass-market, an $8/month ad-free CrunchyRoll subscription), I have to agree.  But, since I won't pay for ads, that's not happening, and there's nothing that's come out from Disney in the past few years that makes me want to bend over and take it, either.

So, congratulations, Disney, you managed to both lure me in the door with one offer, then drive me out again with all your other offers.  Well, I'm sure, eventually, maybe, you'll produce something I'm willing to pay a premium to watch.  But today is not that day.

Day 1000 has come and gone, and the world churns on

 Day 1000 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine came and went last week.  Courtesy of a favored saying of the age, "elections have consequences", our current President took a look at his scheduled replacement, and decided we need to push out as much materiel to Ukraine as we can, while we can, and has also relaxed the restrictions on using our weapons on Russian soil.  Russia responded by updating their stated stance on using nukes to include countries that provide weapons to their opponents, and tried to back up their words by using a ballistic missile (of the sort that could carry nukes) on Ukraine... after letting us know first over the "let's not accidentally start World War III" hotline first.  Putin's not happy, and that's fine by me, especially since he could just stop this whole mess any time he likes - well, maybe that's not an option for him domestically after all this time, but that falls squarely into Not My Problem territory.

Of course, the whole Israel-Hamas fight is still going on as well, and that's still a "pox on both houses" thing.  Seemingly, the International Criminal Court agrees, since they've put out arrest warrants for the leaders of both sides.  Netanyahu responded by calling it "anti-Semitic".  No, this isn't an attack on the Jewish people at random or as a whole, just tagging the people leading both sides of a needlessly brutal conflict to maybe pay for their crimes someday.  I know, consequences for your actions is such an outdated way of thinking, but I'm a little old-fashioned that way.

Speaking of consequences and the lack thereof, the lead-up to the transfer of the Presidency continues apace.  The judge that convicted Trump on multiple state felony counts has apparently decided to lay low a bit, indefinitely postponing his sentencing - so Trump gets to decide how hard he wants to push his appeals process, but that's almost a given, since he really doesn't want to go down as America's first felon President.  Meanwhile, Trump continues to announce the appointments he wants to make, and I can't decide how much of that is "these are people he knows and likes" and how much is just maximum trolling.  At least we won't have the (credibly alleged) pedophile Matt Gaetz around as either the incoming Attorney General, nor as a U.S. Representative, after his multiple withdrawals.  There's still plenty of unpleasant people maybe getting into positions of power, depending on how the Republican Senate handles things.

Locally, things remain reasonably sane for the time being... so long as you're not homeless, at least.  On the plus side, the local/regional "homeless warehouse" got shut down.  On the minus side, that shutdown occurred without much in the way of plans for handling the demand otherwise, from what I can glean.  On the other hand, my local city council just modified and enhanced their "public camping" laws to both eliminate any need for camping equipment to be involved and make it a misdemeanor with potential jail-time attached.  Gotta love that whole "go be homeless somewhere else" vibe... not.  That, and I really don't like laws where application is left to the discretion of law enforcement on the scene, since you know anybody looking to apply this is going to make a value judgment on how "homeless" the target looks or was behaving previously.

So, to quote Cartman, screw you guys, I'm going home. After the disappointment of Starfield's DLC, nothing remotely recent was calling out to me, so I hopped back into Disgaea 2 PC for the first time in a while.  Rather, I started from scratch, and I've made it further than I ever have to date.  Sadly, Steam Deck's sleep mode isn't a panacea for the Item World length problem (I've had actual gameplay problems crop up using it), but setting aside a weekend afternoon I've found to be doable.  Of course, that leaves a lot of time during the week for shorter fare, which I was filling with various smaller games from my Steam backlog.

Then Death Stranding got surprise-dropped on XBox, with a 50% sale to start knocking it down under $20, meeting my cheap-bastard requirements.  I'd heard good things about the game over the years, so I gave it a go.  It's definitely a novel game, both in the gameplay loop and the world building, and it's sufficiently occasionally weird to keep my attention.  The "rebuilding America" theme is a little on-the-nose for current affairs, and it's mentally tricky dealing with them trying to map a much smaller gamespace onto the continental U.S. (likely not a big deal for developers/players in other countries that just don't grasp the scale of this country), but that's the extent of the "bad" that I can really dredge up for this game at the moment.  Long story short, I've found it good for under-an-hour play sessions so far, and I'd recommend it for anybody to check out on XBox.

Two days on, and I'm still shell-shocked

 This shouldn't have been hard, my fellow Americans.  One of the two finalists for the position of President of the United States was not only a well-known terrible example of some of the worst of human behavior, not merely a convicted felon due to his business dealings, but somebody who held the position before, and did such a piss-poor job of it that he was tossed out on his ass, in spite of his best efforts at sedition and thanks to the cover provided by his party faithful... and that was all before adding in recent indicators of mental decline due to advanced age or encroaching dementia.  Still, somehow, among those of us who could be bothered to vote, over half decided that this wasteoid was the better fit for the job!  Not "darn those wiley Republicans for manipulating the voting systems in their states" half either, but full-on winning outright in all of the "swing states" as well!  I mean, to modify the old saying about grand juries, if he'd been running against a ham sandwich, he should have lost.

So, what was it, exactly, that made so many of you run away from his opponent?  The fact that she's on the team of the guy currently in office, and they weren't able to rein in inflation set into motion by her opponent quickly enough?  Or maybe you took umbrage at the way she replaced her current boss on the ticket, and didn't want to reward that behavior?  Felt taken for granted?  Sucked in by his cult, maybe?  Something to do with her race or gender?  Honestly, I'm curious, but that's all I am... the fact is, none of those reasons, or anything else I've heard so far, comes close to excusing trying to bring back the guy who incited a mob to try and overthrow the results of the last election he lost.  I'm not merely disappointed in you all.  Rather, I'm actually disgusted by you.

See, you've not only brought back on the biggest threat to democracy and the Constitution we've seen in our lifetimes, but you've done so after the Supreme Court the Republicans rigged in their favor has shown their willingness to play Calvinball with the law to get the results they want.  You've also given control of the Senate over to the Republicans, and there's fair odds, as of this writing, that you will have also given control of the House of Representatives to them as well.  If that last domino falls, then congratulations, you've likely set the stage for him to make the dictator-for-life play... unless, of course, you seriously believe that there's enough Republicans in either house willing to cross him and thwart his plans, and those of his inner circle as well.  Me, I don't see it.

So, now, we wait for January.  In the meantime, we might get some entertainment value from his sentencing for those felonies he's already been convicted of, but that's about it.  After that, it's at least a couple of years of horror for a fair number of people, I'm sure.  While I'm saddened in general, I'll also admit to looking forward to some schadenfreude to come as well - after all, that joke about "I never thought the leopards would eat my face" is certain to apply here, too.