Over my adult life I've watched tickets for major acts go from under a hundred to over a thousand dollars. I used to have friends who would go to concerts every other week and see whoever was in town, but now the only people you can see at a reasonable price are local indie bands, and frankly that scene just doesn't appeal to most people. The music industry is like a sheep farmer who decided to kill and skin his sheep for leather and is now surprised that the wool isn't growing back.
Is this on X? I remember when DJT got unbanned and didn't immediately post there, I guess that was when he still had enough money to afford a shred of dignity.
Same thing with how normalized a bunch of therapy speak has become, but of course that has the additional wrinkle of everyone misusing it because they're not licensed therapists.
This video is pretty cool, I love the throughline of ancient empires founding cities as centers of imperial administration, those cities being abandoned after the empire collapses because they're pretty useless, and then finding a new purpose as emperors hundreds of years later dug them up to "prove" their claims to the throne. And all of this is thousands of years ago, far enough that we only know about the old empire's cities because of the archeological work of the slightly-less-ancient civilization!
Dunkelzahn (circa 13,000 BC – August 9, 2057) was a Western Great Dragon. He was the 7th President of the UCAS elected, during the UCAS Special Presidential Election of 2057, but was assassinated on the night of his inauguration, later believed to be a self-sacrifice ritual to prevent the Horrors from crossing over into the Sixth World early. The policy led by his successor Kyle Haeffner can still be considered as marked by Dunkelzahn's ambitions to fight racism, exclusion and poverty and renew UCAS international relations.
the bit about fighting racism, exclusion and poverty made me actually laugh out loud when I read it. Even in the cyberpunk future with elves and orcs libs talk like libs I guess.
This is why the industries expansion works the way it does, with the state completely owning and operating the industries in question. The devs realized that even in virtual worlds Dengism is the only sane path.
Like 90% of US taxes are collected automatically, I don't think it would work even if people were into the idea. A little over half of Americans get money back on their taxes when they file them, because the government automatically took more than it should have from their paychecks.
But yeah it is a huge contradiction that Americans seemingly don't trust their government, but love their military and police. Personally I think the rhetoric around not trusting government is just a cultural shibboleth that right wingers hijack to justify reducing social spending and not a real thing that people believe.
Taken on its own, the first scene of this movie - where Team America blows up France for basically no reason - could be read as a critique of American interventionism. "This is what we do to other countries, imagine if we did it to white people!"
Also, if you were to take the final monologue, and put the text "THIS IS WHAT AMERICANS ACTUALLY BELIEVE" under it, it would actually become really funny.
Currently debating between going to bed early and getting a midnight burrito. Seems like I encounter this dilemma every night.