cait: it rules how we're in the inevitable stage of capitalism where, instead of the competition and innovation we were promised, it's just unqualified execs destroying hundreds of years of reputation by slowly stripping their companies down to nothing in order to marginally increase profits

it rules how we're in the inevitable stage of capitalism where, instead of the competition and innovation we were promised, it's just unqualified execs destroying hundreds of years of reputation by slowly stripping their companies down to nothing in order to marginally increase profits

Incredible post from the best writer on Boeing that we've got. The level of willful negligence from executives on something that carries human beings through the sky is astonishing and should be a crime. Sorry I forgot to make a joke. prospect.org/infrastructu...

Suicide Missionprospect.org What Boeing did to all the guys who remember how to build a plane

we were discussing this in regards to our previously favorite hotel in Vegas, the Cosmopolitan, slowly taking away amenities and making the experience worse and worse while continually going up in price anyway

what happened to businesses competing with each other to give the best service and draw in customers. what happened to that. (don't answer this. it's rhetorical)

if you look at pictures of golden age Vegas, it's all hotels absolutely burning money on renovations and shows and amenities to get people's attention and now they literally don't even give shitty free drinks to gamblers even though that is one of the easiest ways to get people to spend money!!!

Cosmo used to be our favorite because it was luxe and mysterious and their marketing was honestly kind of horny, and now they're trying to be more "family friendly" and wring more money out of people by making everything suck ass

it was my husband's birthday so we rented a cabana at the pool and it was unbelievably disappointing. that shit is not cheap and the employees were all nice but clearly understaffed so the service was terrible because EVERYTHING runs on a skeleton crew now!!

and you can't even yell at the right people because it's not like the people actually in charge are going to be working the front desk! i'm certainly never going to yell at some poor minimum wage worker who is doing their best with what they've been given so like what are my options here

Everywhere is just criminally understaffed right now. And I keep wondering how long this skeleton-crew mentality can last before things just fold in on themselves

there's a big reason lots of white people are gentrifying mexico city right now and its this ^^^

the whole appeal of Vegas is that it's horny, raunchy, and a great big ball of fire. nothing about Clark County is supposed to be family friendly. there's the suburbs for that.

When the Cosmopolitan got bought out by MGM it was game over. Totally agree that the old horny/mysterious/lucury/weird vibes were great. Was lucky to have gone there when it opened but now I’d rather just do the Aria

Used to go to Vegas until one night I was walking the strip and saw a father & mother in shorts and t-shirts who couldn't afford the shows or casinos being handed a postcard for a prostitute only feet away from their kids. Since then, it's been New Orleans for me.

my glib answer for years was there’s nothing I can do in vegas I can’t do at home in new orleans, except cirque de soleil for a while that wasn’t true, but increasingly it feels like it is again

To me there's the glitzed-up, phony, overpriced Vegas entertainments and then there's the off-kilter, drunk-on-the-street, second-line-funeral-parade-in-the-Treme, voodoo-legend-on-St.-Ann-Street vibe that is NOLA. And there's the food. My choice is clear.

when my dad helped opened THE STRAT hotel/casino in the 90s (he immigrated here to marry my mom in '92), his first big american job was to sell these special "VIP packages" that were basically giving out high roller suites and chips for tourists to play at the strat. you never see that anymore.

Tangential: Las Vegas had a significant influence on postmodern architecture, as documented by Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi in the mid-60s; the undeniable appeal of places like LV and the Madonna Inn doesn't pencil out on a business school spreadsheet. 99percentinvisible.org/episode/less...

Lessons from Las Vegas - 99% Invisible99percentinvisible.org On the University of Pennsylvania Campus, the Library of Fine Arts is a richly ornate and eclectic structure belonging to the School of Design. Completed in 1890, it is currently designated a National...

it's DEI

someone got hungry hungry hippos for our sons and it was an absolute flimsy piece of shit compared to the spring loaded smooth action ball gobblers we all cherished

and that used to be the entire point of Vegas! cheap fantastic lodging so you’d stay and go gamble

The mob knew how to run things. Corporate control enshittifies everything it touches

I’m going in October and all of the hotel reviews I’m reading are a variation of “my partner and I were there for five days. The hotel charged us an additional $200 resort fee when we arrived and didn’t give us clean towels.”

they're switching to pump bottles bolted to the walls for shampoo and soap. you literally don't even get to take home a little soap anymore

top 10 worst travel development post-covid

i love when they're like "it's more sanitary" when it's absolutely not

Yeah, that's super gross. I bring my own stuff anyway because I'm picky, but I'm *absolutely* not using a communal pump at a hotel.

Hotels won’t give us towels anymore! I miss them actually like… doing any housekeeping during your stay.

god that was beginning to be a thing in vegas even when we were going, like yeah each new hotel or renovation added "value" but it was mostly veneer and they just slowly ratchet everything up more expensive to more efficiently fleece everyone, it's always been the game but don't outright TELL me

Part of this is because I won't cram 10 dudes into a hotel room any more but it's nuts to me that I felt like I could go to Vegas all the time at 25 and now at 40 the idea of even staying on the strip doesn't sound great

we stayed downtown for the first time ever and it was actually really nice. we might switch from Cosmo to Circa

Yeah I’ve heard good things about Circa, will probably do that next time

you can see my girl!!

I'm sold

as a son of the mojave, i pronounce thee and mr cait, official vegas lovers

Stayed in a big strip hotel this past week and there was no in-room coffee. The Comfort Inn we stayed in on the way out had in-room coffee!! Ended up making weird iced lattes with instant Starbucks coffee and tiny half and half cups.

American made cars aren't even lasting as long as the terms of the loan to buy them anymore

Resort fees are the worst thing that ever happened to Vegas. I don’t even want to go there anymore. 🙃

we are truly in the Age of Garbage. nothing lasts and everything sucks

I really enjoyed @docseuss.bsky.social's article about this, that also references the Boeing post. docseuss.medium.com/the-biggest-...

the biggest threat facing your team, whether you’re a game developer or a tech founder or a CEO, is…docseuss.medium.com If you are running a business, your goal, generally, is to make money. A lot of people go to business school to learn how to do it, and…

Good article

That was a great read thanks for sharing 🙏

the ruining companies part might even be worth it if it ended in nationalization or punitive measures taken against the people responsible but we're not even getting that lol

Because companies don't compete to have the best goods or services. They compete to be the most profitable. The primary product of a corporation is investment returns.

And to get investment returns you want profit right away. Which you do either by raising revenue or cutting costs. Raising revenue requires expertise in the particular industry and upfront costs--it only works if you know stuff. Whereas cutting costs can be done by anyone and works... for a while

You poor people fail to understand that the seed corn is the most delicious kind, which is why we simply must eat all of it

How much sawdust can we put in the flour and still charge full price?

Just a race to strip the parts off and make as much money as we can while the car drives off the cliff

It's bonkers, elsewhere in business you have to target value in 3, 5, 10 years. But for some reason with public traded companies it seems to be profit right now or bust.

Ripping the paneling from the walls to feed the flames in the fireplace so we can save money by not paying our gas bill for heating.

You’re telling me this is a bad idea, yet even you have to acknowledge how warm these flames are.

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