fantastic_four

Even when you're being completely unreasonable they act like you're totally right. I've always heard that Bezos demands that classic "the customer is always right" attitude across Amazon's entire shopping experience. What pisses me off the most about them is the way they jack prices up above MSRP regularly even on items that are readily available from other smaller retailers. I'm talking here about items sold by Amazon, not by the third-party sellers that are pervasive on their site. They have automatic price checking bots that check larger retailers, and if they have no major competitors for an item they usually jack the price up on that item. Walmart does this now too, but they're TERRIBLE at it. They will jack up prices to double or triple MSRP on items sold by and fulfilled by themselves, and it's really irritating. I don't even trust Amazon and Walmart as a place to check market prices on food, clothes, furniture, etc anymore since they jack prices up unreasonably high so often.

None of the tech based companies chase profit. They pursue balance sheet value, through % of market share. They are not focussed on the profit and loss performance, that is secondary. Sports unions split based upon revenue as well. I only follow the NBA, and for decades they've had a roughly 50/50 split between the players and owners that varies from contract to contract. I recall it being 48% / 52% at one point in the past, but it usually hovers around 50/50. Not sure why it would be harder for studios to split based upon revenue than it would be for sports teams...

There's a checkbox on the Amazon checkout screen that shows up for some items indicating that if you don't specify otherwise Amazon might ship it directly in the manufacturer's packaging. I see that checkbox showing up for that batmobile when I add it to my cart and go to checkout. So if you don't notice it's there you may or may not have it shipped like yours was. If you click the "Ship in Amazon Packaging" button beneath the warning then they ship it inside of one of their boxes. Most of the time I don't care because I'm going to toss the packaging anyway, but sometimes I do because I'm buying something that I may try to re-sell later in which case I ship it in Amazon's packaging. Usually they ship it in their own packaging anyway even if you don't specify. I've forgotten to specify it many times--or not forgotten and left it alone because I didn't care--and I've still never had something shipped directly in the manufacturer's packaging. I have no idea which items they do this for. I think in general it's larger items, but I could easily be wrong.

A few other future Haslab notes: The most likely large character that could possibly fund is a huge Apocalypse. His primary power is the ability to manipulate his own body at will including growing in size, so a big version of him makes sense. Toy Biz did a build-a-figure of a big Apocalypse in the 2000s that is still decent. I have it, and it's still my favorite action figure form of the character. However I don't think it would even do Giant-Man numbers unless they just kill it with the design, so they'd need to adjust the cost so that they needed less than 10K backers. To really overcome the space and storage concerns of most collectors of a Quinjet or Blackbird they'd have to really design the crud out of it. I wouldn't buy one unless the top half of either was removable so that the bottom half effectively becomes a diorama that you place somewhere, but if you like you can also put that top half back on. The possibilities are vast to make it more attractive, but the design complexity could become daunting to overcome most collectors' space concerns over those big vehicles. Think about the first Haslab, the Khetanna. That one is inherently more space-functional than the Quinjet or Blackbird because it has an upper deck that you can place figures on for display. They further enhanced the display capabilities by making the sides removable so that you can have even more display storage space on the lower decks. GREAT design on that vehicle, and they'd have to put similar thoughtfulness into a Quinjet/Blackbird to enhance the appeal to space-conscious collectors, which is the great majority of us.

They could do a FantastiCar without it being a Haslab. Could be a deluxe release between $40 to $80, or it could even be a build-a-figure packed into a wave of figures if it's the original one shaped like one big oval. If they did the 80s version that would be a deluxe, and in fact Toy Biz did a deluxe release of that version back in the 2000s. I have it, and it holds up fairly well. Not the best engineering, but it works and I really like it. It's also usually available on eBay for well under $100 which is where I got mine new in the box. Here's a video review of that old Toy Biz Fantasticar where they use modern Hasbro figures in it to demonstrate that they all still fit into the seats, Thing included.

I was hoping Galactus would be a build-up-over-multiple-movies villain like Thanos was. They're doing great with that with Kang between Loki, Quantumania, and the other content he's scheduled to be in, and Galactus is a much bigger, older, significant, powerful, and more popular villain than either Thanos or Kang, so I'm holding out hope that's what they do. However they do him I just hope they do it well...

I backed Giant-Man and can't wait to get him. Very disappointing to not get the Skrull head, and I hope they either just throw it in, that some international numbers get added in and take us over the finish line, or that they extend it another day or week in which case it would be guaranteed to fund. My guess is that one of those three things happen. There have been a LOT of comic Skrulls released over the past few years including grunt Skrull troops, the Skrull Queen, and two different Super-Skrulls, and a Giant-Man Skrull would be an incredible centerpiece to support displays featuring Skrulls vs. the Avengers, SHIELD, or the Kree.

My guess is that the Marvel Legends team will take a break from Haslab next year, although if they go even cheaper down to the $100 to $150 level that could work. There are no other large characters that would fund, and vehicles barely matter for superheroes. Vehicles are absolutely critical for GI Joe so it's an evergreen source of Haslabs for that franchise, and they're pretty important for Star Wars, too, although not so much for any Jedi or Sith. Fin Fang Foom would be expensive, and he's not at all popular. Marvel Legends collectors assume he's popular for the wrong reason. Hasbro made a build-a-figure of the character back around 2008, and his price on the market for years has been VERY high. However it's not high due to popularity, it's high due to scarcity. That wave was one of the first Hasbro made, and the quantities were low. There were also distribution issues. There aren't many copies of that BAF on the market as compared to most of the other Toy Biz or Hasbro build-a-figures. Someone in China made a knockoff of it, and even with that supply added into the marketplace the overall supply is still quite low. If they made him a HasLab he would be quite expensive to do at scale, and fans would just constantly point out "but we can get him on eBay for $100 to $200"! There's also a big issue with the name that I won't go into but will if someone wants to discuss it. Maybe a cheap-ish Punisher van could work, but Marvel has backed off of him recently due to the violence endemic to the character so who knows if they'd even approve it. Maybe an X-Men Danger Room or some other diorama. All of this would be less popular than the current three successful Haslabs though which is why I'm guessing they just take a break next year. If they do people will be much hungrier for a new project in 2025 or 2026.

I think I'm squarely in that demographic--never seen any episode or even segment longer than 5 seconds of Doctor Who, and so far I'm digging this season. It was pretty entertaining up through episode 2, but wow, I LOVED this last episode with Miss Minutes and Kang. Does anyone have an idea for why Timely/Kang is living in the late 19th century in this episode? In the comics Kang is from our distant future, and that's what He Who Remains said about himself in that last episode of season 1. So I'm pretty clueless on why Miss Minutes is now acting like he's actually from the 19th century.

Looks like the unfortunate photographer who had to shoot a pic of the Empire's worst scout trooper said it. Which is probably a cue for someone to revive the shameful pic of me in a Magneto helmet that circulated the forums a decade or so ago.

They said he started repressing it after Palpatine executed Order 66 because if had shown his ability the Empire might have become aware he had survived the purge.

I don't understand what you're saying here. Anakin didn't train Leia, and Leia didn't train Ben. That example right there is one of the absolute clearest in the story that it's mostly genetics. How was Leia trained? Luke did it. And before Luke did it, who WANTED to train her? Yoda, as expressed in Empire Strikes Back when Obi-Wan said "that boy was our last hope," and Yoda says "no, there is another." Why was Leia their "last hope" if Luke ended up dying to Vader on Bespin? Because Yoda knew she was likely to have a high midichlorian count like her father. If everybody has the same capacity to control the Force then neither Luke nor Leia are anyone's last hope, right? Yoda and Obi-Wan can just go to the far reaches of their galaxy, or even to another galaxy entirely, and start training a whole new generation of Jedi to take on Palpatine and Vader. And the major Force users in the Abams/Johnson sequels don't have to be the kids of Force users from the previous trilogy. Most humans with genetic potential don't use that potential, but those genetics still get passed along and who knows, their kids might use it. The great majority of people in excess of 7 feet tall never play basketball, but it doesn't mean their kids don't have the genetic potential to be better at playing if they decide to do so.

That's the guy. If you see him again, punch him for me please. In the nicest way possible, of course. How about we skip nice and go right to a solution that hopefully prevents the same problem in future generations?

I guess I'm confused why this is a problem. It's not about the poor suffering, it's about people who are easily replaced by others with the same skill, more skill, or technology, needing to find a different line of work or to obtain skills/education that allow for something other than "easily replaced". That situation happens nonstop without A.I., throughout history. What's different this time? It will happen quicker? That might be a good thing. Things that go wrong slowly for just a few people at a time take years to get solved. Things that go wrong quickly and impact a lot of people will get solved more quickly because it impacts a lot of people. This might be the first point Roy has made about automation replacing labor over our decade-plus discussion about the topic that I mostly agree with him on--certainly the poorer and less educated you are the more you suffer from automation's effect of replacing jobs, and the richer you are the more you benefit. And your point is valid as well, so I'll address it. The primary difference this time as compared to history for job obsolescence is that before now the vast majority of people who lost jobs to automation were those who were least educated, but with AI that pool may easily expand to HIGHLY educated people suddenly getting replaced by automation. Accountants, lawyers, and many other white collar workers are at clear risk of getting replaced within the next half-century, and it may happen even MUCH more quickly than that. One of the more dire pronouncements I've heard is that if you're now one of the many new remote workers then your job will be one of the first white-collar jobs to get replaced by AI. As a newly-remote computer programmer who sees AI significantly encroaching upon my work I take that possibility very seriously, albeit not as blindly pessimistically as Ned Ludd did a bit over two centuries ago. I'm not ready to go around smashing code-writing bots just yet. This time it's not mostly just the poor and uneducated at risk, it's large swaths of EVERYONE who isn't rich. So what do you do if you're a parent with a kid or a concerned teenager about to enter a university? Skip the majors at risk of getting replaced by AI lest your $200K to $500K education become largely devalued before your working years are up--if not far sooner than that and your degree becomes obsolete shortly after you graduate? It's a tough thing, and I really haven't heard great ways to navigate this terrain. It may end up disenfranchising MILLIONS of people over a very short period of time, i.e. 5 to 10 years, and while futurist enthusiasts such as myself have mapped out many of the milestones for how society has to change on the way to complete automation the one with the biggest risk is exactly what we will do as the value of human labor starts to significantly decrease. And even futurists don't make foolproof roadmaps, so we may be entering a half-century to century period of significant pain for larger groups of people than history has ever seen as we struggle with how to deal with the possibility of exponentially-increasing automation. I'm not sure the value of human labor has decreased significantly at all since the start of the Industrial Revolution despite the fears most popularly started by Marx made us all aware of, but once it does start I don't really trust even the most educated among us to clearly see capitalism's decline before large portions of several GENERATIONS of people are significantly struggling. But that's the pessimistic view. There are some pretty easy fixes to patch capitalism as automation increases, and I'm sure many of them will get enacted. They may be enough. Can't get too much more into detail with those lest the argumentative among us tank the thread.

That falls apart in two ways--one, all the Yodas are Bruce Lee somehow, then? CLEARLY if an entire race has a high midichlorian count that's something genetic. Two, so we're to assume that somehow the Jedi were magically able to spot all of the Bruce Lees as babies? And they can spot a LeBron James or Shohei Ohtani in the womb BEFORE they had the life experiences that made them who they were? Their path had already been laid out by then, and the Jedi knew that this particular kid was going to have the many epiphanies it takes plus work his arse off to become a star? Or were these kids BORN with something the others weren't that the Jedi could detect? Any organism COULD fly. But only some are born with wings to actually do it. Not all of us can be Grogus.

I've had this discussion enough times in enough different forums to not care to pursue it again unless someone offers clear and compelling evidence that Lucas intended it one way or the other, or that some subsequent author has--and so far I haven't seen any new angles or information. When both sides are balanced together there are enough indications in both directions to not be able to tell--but the strongest signs point to midichlorian capacity being mostly controlled by genetics. But, again, there are plenty of examples in the opposite direction most explicitly expressed in the films by Rian Johnson in Last Jedi. The Mandalorian further cemented that by making Grogu yet a third example of his species having a high midichlorian capacity with the previous two being Yoda and Yaddle. At this point we have to wonder if EVERY member of his species can control the Force.

He also tried to quantify it with midichlorians. So why did Anakin have more than any known Jedi? Did he hone that somehow while working for Watto?

Winds are all around us, and we all have the potential to use those currents to help us fly. Wish me luck!

As far as I can tell only Rian Johnson in Last Jedi has tried hard in the movies or television series to establish that anyone can be Force-sensitive. Lucas clearly seemed to prefer that it be somehow tied to genetics. The fact that Johnson was allowed to just change canon on the fly is another brick in the wall of Kathleen Kennedy's mis-management of the Star Wars universe since Disney acquired it. But Lucas contributed to this by not making it crystal clear how this is supposed to work. But I'm not sure how consistent that has been across all of the films, cartoons, and extended universe. I wouldn't be shocked if there are dozens of allusions to the idea of anyone being a Force wielder throughout canon. If anyone disagrees or knows of other references to anyone wielding the Force in other works please do share.

So that was in Rebels? That sounds like Filoni setting up early that she is Force-sensitive, and I guess it finally broke through. Did I miss something earlier in this series with Ahsoka indicating that she saw Sabine's Force sensitivity? I now have to assume that's why she was training Sabine, because she knew she was Force-sensitive.

Weird mid-credits scene in that it was central enough to the story that I don't get why it wasn't there before the credits. Usually credits scenes are fun but not necessary, but this one shows Sylvie and what she's up to. That's central enough to the story to usually not be a credits scene.

To play devil's advocate, it's hard to believe "there's no shame in it" in anything that has to be described as "there's no shame in it" We all benefit from capitalism, but kids don't know that. Even a third of adults don't realize that it's still better than every other option, at least for now. If Roy posted in this thread he'd defend the anti-capitalist perspective. That will change eventually once automation starts significantly decreasing the value of human labor, but I'll be pretty shocked if I live to see that. My kids might.

Coincidentally that Mattel brachiosaurus that's a Target exclusive popped up on BigBadToyStore after I posted pics of it yesterday. BBTS often buys stuff off the market and re-sells it, so I assume they took advantage of the Target 25% off toys sale this week to buy a bunch of them. I've seen them buying and selling/scalping toys for 5+ years, so I can only assume that's what happened here. Sometimes I notice it myself, but far more often someone posts about them doing it on Reddit with dozens of people chiming in about how slimy they are for doing it. Note that I'm using "scalping" in an entirely non-pejorative way. I have zero issue with doing that, but scalping is when you buy something desirable at market or below-market prices and instantly re-sell them. BBTS has been doing that since at least 2019. Whenever Amazon runs a sale on their Marvel Legends exclusives they usually pop up on BBTS that same week or the next week. Two or three times I've seen desirable Walgreens exclusives pop up early on their web site before they even hit stores that then show up at BBTS marked up about $10 above MSRP. It mostly seems like one of the execs there do what any market-savvy collector might do and just shop for bargains that can be re-sold for more. There's no shame in it despite the large number of kids and lower-income young adults who constantly complain about it on Reddit and in other forums.

They must be price matching another retailer... wonder which one.

One possible path for intelligent life is that its ability to spread throughout the universe exceeds its ability to destroy the entirety of its living space all the way up to the point of a weapon that can destroy the entire universe. And once that kind of weapon is invented it gets used, and that resets everything and is the source of the Big Bang that started this universe. Maybe we'll set off our own Big Bang in a few million years and start the whole thing over again. Or maybe Family Guy was right and this started the Big Bang.