At A Conference In June, NBC CEO Steve Burke Explained What Would Constitute An Olympics Nightmare, Bloomberg

“At a conference in June, NBC CEO Steve Burke explained what would constitute an Olympics “nightmare,” Bloomberg reports. “We wake up someday and the ratings are down 20%,” he said. “If that happens, my prediction would be that millennials had been in a Facebook bubble or a Snapchat bubble and the Olympics have come, and they didn’t know it.” That nightmare is basically here, as the Olympics saw a sharp viewership dip for the first time since 2000. Among 18- to 49-year-olds, the damage is even greater than 20%, sitting at a 25% drop-off”

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NBC Olympics viewership is down 17% - Business Insider

AKA “It’s not our shitty, tape-delayed, reality-show style coverage, or our myopic and draconian social media policies - it’s those damn millennials and their snapchats!”

(via spytap)

No. It is the children who are wrong.gif

(via turnabout)

In contrast, the CBC network in Canada probably just got it’s highest Olympic ratings ever.

They streamed or broadcast basically every single event, and in order to watch you just needed to a) be in Canada and b) have the internet or a tv. None of this “cable subscription to access streams” stuff. Made it super easy to watch.

And everything was broadcast live, even the obscure sports. They might not have commentary, but they had multiple camera angles.

(via karatam)

meanwhile on twitter

I doubt it was predicted or designed, but when the practice emerged of delegating industrial policy to local governments, China invented a structural form of antitrust. The central state declares what industries are to be favored, and then many localities toss contenders into the ring. The unsurprising result is competition. At the national level, with astonishing speed, industries with world-class competences emerge, even when — especially when — no "national champion" comes to dominate. Great industries are what a nation wants, not great firms. Firms are just the players. They perform extraordinary feats, and we cheer them, but they come and go. The industry is the league. It is what endures and delivers decade after decade. A decade ago China did not produce electric vehicles. Now it is the world leader. It is the same story with batteries, solar panels, steel. In the US, we tend to provide government support to established national champions, Boeing perhaps, or Intel. How is that working for us? Large consolidated firms become specialists in exploiting market power and political influence rather than any technical facet of production. What if we financed state governments to field local heroes and compete in the big leagues? It boggles the American imagination to think that medium-sized, US-state-level enterprises could compete in high-tech, capital-intensive industries. But isn't China's experience an existence proof? Shouldn't the share-buyback-heavy, technical-achievement-light experience of firms like Boeing and Intel chasten our conventional wisdom?

Must do socialism so we have intense competition between the Colorado smartphone and the Massachusetts smartphone

We all know this site is US-user heavy, but I wanna know how many are vs aren't from the land of capitalism.

The reason Technoblade would have smoked Dream at Manhunt is not because he was categorically the superior pvp player, though he was.

It's because he'd have pulled an mcc build mart. He'd have done the WORK.

Techno would have watched every single available Manhunt stream, put together the data on Dream's movements and preferred escape methods, noted the version they were playing, and then- he'd have let the other five do the work.

Just like that bit with Quackity, he'd have followed at a sedate pace. Maybe wandered off once or twice to mine and gather resources, all the while informing his chat that he had no idea if this stupid plan would work but it's what he's got.

And in the last two minutes, Technoblade would have swooped in, absolutely obliterated Dream, and killed the other five for good measure because the man had a brand.

Techno's real power was not in his click speed or typing proficiency. It was in an ability to- with or without preparation- see a possibility no one else did and charge towards it. Whether this was taking advantage of the game's mechanics or just close listening, his threat was always in his intelligence and a mad will to just give it a shot.

Protip: if you live in a city, get involved in your local community. It will benefit your mental health significantly