exasperation

An electrician certification proves that you can do something. A bachelor's degree is just a checkbox to prove you went through the motions.

Why is it that you think that an electrician certification is less about checkboxes than a 4-year university degree? Or that the checkboxes are somehow more difficult to game? Most trade schools themselves are a joke, so you have to play the meta game of getting the cert and networking your way to a job. You know, same as your university degree.

The fact is, most trades pay shit, and their big advantage is that you get to start earlier in life, and that you have more opportunities to get overtime pay. That can be a good option for your 20's, especially during a jobs boom (most trades are infamously boom and bust cycles), but by your 30's you will get passed up by most of your degree holding peers (and you'll totally get left in the dust in your 40's and 50's).

It's not good advice to young people. Electricians, plumbers, welders, etc. don't get paid very much on average, and the ones who break out from that low pay are either highly specialized or climb the small business/management ladder (at which point they benefit from concepts taught in school as well).

I don't think we're talking about love here. We are talking about S-E-X in front of the C-H-I-L-D-R-E-N!

Sex Cauldron? I thought they closed that place down!

Intellectual property is shorthand description for a very particular type of exclusive right. Compile enough exclusive rights and you might have a big competitive advantage that nobody else can overcome in a particular market.

But not every exclusive right is actually intellectual property. Sometimes it's just normal property, like owning a particular building that is really good for filming particular scenes in. Or owning a particular unique car that you can rent out to those who want to use it. Or it might not be property at all, like the simple right to truthfully declare that a particular movie was directed by Christopher Nolan.

IMAX's competitive moat includes intellectual property (its trademarked name, presumably a bunch of patents in its equipment), but also includes a bunch of physical things: a production line and supply chain for a very specific format of physical film, physical equipment like cameras and projectors and editing hardware/tools, etc. And some of it includes other intangible rights or legal powers (contracts, rental agreements, financial arrangements that make it hard for others to compete).

So both of you are right that IMAX keeps its competition at bay through both intellectual property and other property rights, and other financial and legal powers and relationships (like, I'm sure they work closely with these A list directors). All it it blends together into a dominant position in their niche space. Most movies just choose not to use film at all, and even a bunch of other film formats are still in use. But IMAX still stands out for their specific format.

I've always been in that weird space of apparently hella attractive to some and then the complete polar opposite to others, so I've experienced both.

I'm a man, but in a similar boat. In terms of physical appearance I've been unconventionally attractive/ugly hot most of my adult life. The way some people react to, like, Adam Driver or Benedict Cumberbatch or Cillian Murphy.

It took my entire 20's to learn to steer my dating life towards wanting to be with people who already found me attractive rather than trying to convince someone to find me attractive, and finally learning to deal with higher rejection rates than the typical person, while sorting through the people who found me to be ugly, without necessarily knowing in advance who would be in which category.

I also learned that there were people who were embarrassed at their own preference of finding me attractive, and that was its own minefield. Or those who wanted more external validation of their choice in me and didn't necessarily find it in their friends who thought I was ugly.

I came out of that roller coaster of a decade for the better, and ended up picking up from that experience a certain amount of confidence, the kind that says "I already know I'm attractive whether you think so or not," and having less patience for certain types of relationship insecurities, either from myself or my partner.

And then I met my wife shortly after that revelation. She still teases me that I have the confidence of a much taller man (a riff on a 30 Rock line we both love), but I don't think I could've gotten her attention if I didn't learn lessons from a series of failed relationships.

Just because the public hasn't seen it doesn't mean that the decisionmakers, and people the decisionmakers trust, haven't seen it either. The review embargo lifted yesterday and there are plenty of reviews of the entire 10-episode season. None of them seem glowing, but none of them seem bad, either.

That means the first season is completely finished, that the execs and the reviewers liked it enough to believe that an early renewal makes sense, given the existing Rick and Morty fanbase (and what I imagine is a pretty modest budget).

And in the United States.

The practice described by OP exists, but the practice must be disclosed, including any additional retained water by percentage.

I think there's some truth to the idea that the relative ranking depends on what context you're talking about.

Pure population? Houston.

History and politics? DC to the top, Philadelphia and Boston in the mix.

Economically? The Bay Area has tech and Houston has oil and gas.

Domestic tourists and international tourists? Certainly a conversation to be had for DC, Las Vegas. Miami maybe?

What about cultural influence domestically, and abroad? Do Nashville, Atlanta, and Miami fit in somewhere?

San Francisco by itself, maybe not. But as an entire metro area that includes Oakland and San Jose and Silicon Valley? Yeah, it's got influence.

If pizza quality is going to be a consideration for city tiers I'm not sure any of the other cities in this conversation are actually any better.

Does it have a distinct regional pizza style? Yes, two in fact.

Does it do other distinct regional pizza styles really well? Yes, it's gonna be way better than most other American cities.

There's an xkcd pointing out that it's a lot easier to hate something everyone else likes, than to love something everyone else hates, and that honestly really changed the way I view popularity and contrarianism. I respect contrarians who can love what is hated but I'm totally dismissive of anyone trying to criticize what is popular.

with a proven audience

Christopher Nolan is his own brand that has a proven audience. In a sense, Universal paid handsomely to poach him from Warner Brothers, and giving him big budgets is part of that deal.

Sometimes in public forums my goal is to show the neutral third parties who might stumble upon that thread to see for themselves which view is more reasonable. Bad faith arguments that are common sometimes need to be knocked down whenever and wherever it persists.