Given that this is hacker news, the answers here are unsurprisingly biased towards building toys. Blocks/Duplo are great, but who is going to explore the newly built environment? Enter the die-cast toy cars/trucks/construction equipment/farm equipment. I've had good luck with the Ertl 1/50th scale stuff, which can be purchased in lots on Ebay.
I was hoping that the pendulum would swing the other way with the scandal over too many passengers bringing out their bags on a recent AA evacuation caused by a burning tire. The push to eliminate checked bags has created a chaotic cabin environment that probably exacerbated the situation. There's no sign of it getting better either. The overcrowding of overhead bins creates a prisoners dilemma where flight attendants pressure passengers to put smaller bags under their seats, disincentivizing bringing anything but a big roller bag.
Paying for a group to sit together is really just a roundabout way of charging extra for the middle seat that solo travelers don't want. There's something gross about it, creating a market price for a nonexistent good.
In the interest of good HN commenting spirit I'll assume good faith on GP and elaborate on my snarky post. I'm sure that many people are tired of comedian's incessant refrain of the importance of "punching up." It's pretentious and tired, but before that the tired phrases were "I just want to make people laugh" and "I make fun of everyone equally." GP's first ethnic group cited were the Scots, so let's go there in the context of North America. Depending on your view, Scottish people are either part of or closely related to the dominant ethnic and racial group. They are not recent immigrants and share language, accent and given names with the majority of the population. By contrast (and especially in the 90s when the Simpsons enjoyed its prime) South Asian immigrants are a visibly different recent minority ethnic group. They have distinct languages, accents and generally don't use western given names for their children. So the Groundskeeper Willie/Scottsman argument is creating a false sense of fairness. To make a tired youth reference, making fun of the grunge kid with the long hair and the weird pale kid with the sweatpants and long fingernails aren't the same thing.
As to why not have whites play Asians even in a cartoon when they can just as easily play space aliens and pink unicorns? The same reason we all hate Big Bang Theory, it leads to tired and insulting jokes based on shallow stereotypes. This is why Asians don't like Apu, because most of the jokes around him are based on lazy and frequently negative stereotypes. The jokes about space aliens and pink unicorns could also be lazy, but there's no space aliens or pink unicorns to get affected by them, fortunately. Remember that Nahasapeemapetilon isn't even a name in any culture, it's made up to sound funny to western audiences.
I know dang likes to tell us that Hacker News turning into Reddit is an illusion, but sometimes it really does turn into Reddit. Like this comment, right now.
- Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter cost: $583M
- Artemis II cost: $4.1B
Manned spaceflight is the most expensive PR program ever to get money for unmanned spaceflight