What certifies what music is? Was it pounded on a buffalo drum? Plucked on a string? Chanted in gothic cathedrals? Played in royal opera houses (or not)? Is it printed and sold in a store? Music label contracts? Radio playtime? MTV airtime? Napster availability? Youtube/Spotify/Amazon has it?
Now it's "Did humans make it?"
In the end, the same rule has always applied: "I play, therefore I'm music."
The things you cut out were all loaded with sugar - the cocaine/crack looking stuff you buy in bags/buckets, and the heroin-looking corn syrup in jars.
Sadly, food companies have been jamming that dope into everything that they can. Us Americans shouldn't have to go out of our way carefully reading nutrition labels (all while doing grams to teaspoons metric conversions) or avoid entire aisles in grocery stores just to avoid weight gain.
Ok, I misused the word incel. I meant "insular, anti-social, introverted, possibly neuro-divergent, IT employee".
Do you feel better, Anonymous Coward? *Sigh*... What a sad loser. I may be done with Slashdot's crowd at this point.
Higher than average salary === Less job security.
And yes, MANY of us in the tech field are overpaid. That's just part of the risk.
Corollary: If you're underpaid in tech, you either love the job/culture/cult you're in or you're an incel that can't stand change.
Congratulations, Mr. Lee. "Innovators' like you are helping to turn America's higher ed system "degrees" into the fancy toilet paper that a typical degree from Belarus or Congo would be worth.
Colleges will likely have to turn to extreme measures to survive. Don't be surprised that if by 2030, all college exams will be done with pencils and paper, in Faraday cages.) Maybe now's a good time to invest in Bic or Dixon Ticonderoga?
Whenever a politician decries the loss of "states rights", it's a bullshit argument. How do we know this? Because unless you go back to the Constitutional Convention era and the infancy of this country, damn few people have gone to sleep genuinely worried about "states rights" on their own.
Instead, there's always some other dark, hidden motivation lurking behind it.
I work at a higher ed institution stateside, and we're back to five days a week now by school presidential mandate. The public reasoning is, "The students need to have everyone available to them in person when they're here. Give them the best experience possible by being here to immediately help." The private reasoning is, "I know that some of you can and probably should work from home, and that 2) this 'collaboration is better' line some say is bullshit for jobs that people need to be locked in a closet to concentrate better. But the campus looks WAY too empty -- we need bodies here! And I can't tell a majority of college employees - faculty, student affairs, campus police, parking, etc. - that the non-student facing, all-day computer jockeys get special privileges. That majority would go ape-shit, and with all of the societal pressures coming down on higher ed we don't need that right now. Just be thankful that you make as much or more than them while getting the public sector perks. So please do your part by shutting up and dealing with it."
In short: Until human beings stop being petty and jealous (e.g. human), PHBs will always have that leverage over their employees without some pandemic-level emergency scaring some humility into everyone.
As long as everyday people can't go into a marketplace and effortlessly, ubiquitously use it, that's not gonna happen.
Even if it did become the world's currency, imagine the power consumption needed to power it for everyone.
And then don't forget the world's banks. They'll want their cut of the action, too.
Duh. The principles behind avoiding debt aren't new. From forgotten Saturday Night Live skits, Popeye cartoons - "I'd gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today," - to Bible stories and old parables, we all know debt is bad. Avoiding it all sounds as easy as, "Just Say No."
But IMO, credit cards are as addictive as the strongest pain killers - with people trying them out without fair warning and getting hooked. Case of one: After a 90s education on a large, public university campus where credit was so easy to obtain that you couldn't walk to class without stepping over those 4"x"6 credit card applications, I was young and dumb - starting to racking up a few grand in CC debt. Then after graduation and real life started, student loans came due while houshold CC usage patterns didn't improve (the wife: "I don't care - I've gotta buy diapers for the kids"). Then I over-payed for a relatively modest suburban house just as the 2000s housing bubble started growing.
In the end it all came to a head during that recession, and I spent almost 15+ years fighting through 6-digit CC balances (tied to the house purchase) and WAY too much student loan debt. I had to use every trick in the book (this side of bankruptcy) to finally pay it all off in the last couple of years.
The key point: Even after all of that financial pain and steeling of my soul, I STILL feel the impulsive pull of easy credit like a token-carrying AA program grad. And it's still easy for me to judge others currently in CC debt, even though admonitions like yours come off as pointless as a random, "Just say No!" bumper sticker for the next generation of debt suckers.
And the underlying, "not my problem," attitude driving this is just a lie we tell ourselves. We all pay the price for under-regulated, predatory-level debt like credit cards. Higher crime. Higher taxes and/or government debt. Strained welfare programs and abuse/graft, leading to over-reactionary DOGE cuts. Etc.
Of the three examples in the summary: I haven't see The Electric State, but Red Notice was absolute garbage. It was 105% celebrity - and 0% quality/story. and it didn't matter. All 3 leads brought their own A-game style you'd expect from each of them, but Ryan Reynolds's wit grew tiresome really fast, and The Rock and Gal Gadot could've been swapped out with any other two handsome/hot bodies. (If Red Notice doesn't prove that celebrity alone doesn't carry a movie, nothing will.)
The Gray Man was better, but despite a great action piece involving a streetcar it also was completely predictable and mostly forgettable. Only Chris Evans's turn as a charismatic baddie - which stole the show from Ryan Gosling, and that's tough to do - was worth remembering.
So why we get more of the overfunded, undercooked cruft from above? Because they still get eyeballs. I've seen 2 of the 3 above, but I haven't watched "The Irishman," "Marriage Story", or "The Power of the Dog" - and I probably never will.
Ultima IV was the first D&D type computer game that wasn't all about hacking monsters and accruing gold/power/spells.
The ultimate path to winning the game was just as much about being GOOD to everyone - like a paladin/knight having to live within eight virtues - all while still defeating monsters, solving puzzles, and interacting with others. If you did anything obviously "wrong"... "Thou hast lost an eighth!!"... and you had to correct your behavior to get that "virtue" back.
That concept was way ahead of its time in the science fantasy genre.
I see the neck of logic soft and supple, then..I pounce! Nine months later the code is done and I maintain it for the next twenty years.
LOL - So, umm... I have to ask. Is this about programming or where that little bastard Jimmy came from?
If you're referring to larger denomination notes that are small/modern ($500, $1000s - last printed in the 1930s, IIRC), those sell today for a lot more than 33-50%. If they're not in tatters and look half-way decent, $500s sell for at least 2.5x-3x their face value ($1500+). And due to their increasing scarcity, $1000 bills easily sell for $3500+. And these are average wear bills. They're all collectors items now.
Random trivia: inflation was non-existent for 40 years in American history: From the civil war to around 1900. I'm not saying correlation === causation here, but only after the Federal Reserve was formed did inflation of the dollar really become a real issue. And stopping the coinage of gold (1933) and silver (1965) coinage - along with leaving the gold standard - sealed the dollar's fate.
When I went from Intel-based to Apple Silicon (M1 laptop), I had to leave it behind as my Linux VM of choice. Ubuntu it is...
The less time planning, the more time programming.
