But ratings are different from profits! A show can be very highly rated and unprofitable. And that’s precisely what Times article describes. It also goes into the shifts in viewership that are likely responsible for the loss of revenue and profitability. McDonald’s wouldn’t keep selling the Big Mac at a loss… they’d either hike the price, cut the cost, or stop selling it. It sounds like CBS was trying to improve the situation but the gap was widening, not narrowing. How long do you expect them to lose money on the show before cancelling it?

I am a fan of the show and am sad it was cancelled. But if you look at the facts, it’s far more likely that this happened due to financial reasons.

While the timing does feel suspicious, it’s pretty unlikely that it was an implicit or explicit part of the settlement. According to NYT it’s been losing money for years, despite having good ratings:

“The Late Show,” a fixture of the network for over three decades, was racking up losses of tens of millions of dollars a year, and the gap was growing fast, according to two people familiar with the show’s finances.

…

“The Late Show” began losing money at least three years ago, two people familiar with the finances said.

While sometimes losses make sense in business (eg Costco’s $1.50 hot dogs), I doubt this was one of those cases. I personally think the cancellation was a separate decision, though still related to the Skydance acquisition, because they probably wanted to cut unprofitable shows in order to improve their valuation.

I think the bigger issue is that it’s so believable that this could have been a quid pro quo! When you pay $16 million to settle a meritless lawsuit with the president as a bribe so your business deal goes through… you’ve lost all credibility. You’re shown you’re willing to bend the knee to the self-appointed “king”.

I’m not enjoying hearing one of my preferred pop culture references being explained like you’re a fucking museum tour guide lol

Yes.

Lol

But it’s actually not that bad… It’s not good beer but whatever it is, it’s nice 🙂

It can be both, and I’m not sure I see the distinction. It’s a coping mechanism, and that’s not actually an awful thing.

Growing up in church, nobody was creating hypotheticals and then trying to explain it using religion. It’s just not what it was about. But I guess if you brought up babies with cancer, then yeah the “mysterious ways” argument would have been a prime cop out to avoid challenging faith too much.

Most commonly, people just wanted to know how to handle the (typically less hyperbolic) challenges in their own lives. They believed they were good and faithful and didn’t understand why God would allow bad things to happen in their lives. Ultimately the “mysterious ways” line was just a coping mechanism, that came with advice to search for the silver linings, and think about past challenges and how they resolved, as evidence of the mysterious ways. Of course it also served to avoid challenging their faith too.

At the end of the day, religion has its very bad elements that I won’t defend. But it’s silly to ignore that for most people, they’re looking for ways to interpret life in order to find meaning, or maybe cope with struggles. For myself, I’m not religious, but if I were trying to help a friend dealing with something difficult in life, I would still encourage them to look for silver linings and to reflect on past challenges. Not to use it as evidence for some god working in mysterious ways, but just to give them perspective to realize that they have the strength to overcome challenges.

I do believe that’s a freezer.

People aren’t misunderstanding the issue. Third party cookie support is being dropped by all browsers. Chrome is also dropping them, but replacing them with topics. Sure, topics is less invasive than third party cookies, but it is still more invasive than the obvious user friendly approach of not having an invasive tracker built into your browser. No other major browser vendor is considering supporting topics. So they’re doing an objectively user unfriendly thing here. This is the shit that happens when the world’s largest internet advertising company also controls the browser.

I know this is a joke, but assuming you’re the author, then you’re under no obligation to follow the license. Only people to whom you transmitted the code are bound by its terms.