Folks in Mississippi passed an initiative for a fairly lax medical law in 2020. Some Karen mayor of one of the suburbs around the capital city used judicial chicanery to get it thrown out at the State Supreme Court, along with the ability of the populace to vote on ballot measures going forward.

I doubt that OP was debating you in good faith, but it did happen at least once in the last few years. The Republicans certainly didn't waste the opportunity to minimize the effects of democracy on their power.

I'm working my way through House of Leaves right now, and the real horror is the grad school flashbacks from trying to follow the footnotes.

Farscape is like Mormonism

gotta watch Trek first to catch the references!

ZIYAL: Why don't you just let Garak design a dress on his own? You know whatever he comes up with will be beautiful.

GARAK: My dear, I find your blind adoration both flattering and disturbing, but she does have a point.

Judging by The Dawn of Everything sitting next to it, I'd guess that book is Debt: The First 5000 years by David Graeber!

I have to back into a parking spot in a shitty, shared driveway. If I don't throw my (automatic transmission) car into neutral and coast into place, my car will decide I'm too close to the curb and just slam the fuck out of the brakes while still several feet away from where I intend to be. It sounds awful and it scared the absolute shit out of me several times before I internalized the workaround.

Good thing I'm not a fan of the backup camera in general, or this problem would be even more irritating, since the camera turns off when I go from reverse to neutral.

I started on a small instance that fortunately gave a heads up when they decided to shut down. When I moved to a second, small instance where I ported all my community subscriptions, it shut down with no warning. It's a shame, because both instances were topically-focused and small enough to avoid defederation drama.

I love the idea of decentralized infrastructure, but now I'm on .world because I just don't have the time or willpower to move every few months, and I definitely don't have the wherewithal to run my own instance.

Sure, but why's the coke mirror on the floor??

That's not Shrek, that's Marshall Applewhite

I like this one

I'm actually just now coming up on my tenth year in the biz, and most of my experience is with indie venues and artists

my perspective on these very good questions is somewhat limited!

On the marketing side, it seems to involve a lot of social media and local publications rather than the traditional music press, as you point out.

I'm sure A&R execs still do their thing with the big labels, but there also seem to be a shitload of small booking agencies/management groups that handle a lot of the organization and business end for national-level indie artists. It seems that a lot of folks in those organizations are doing actual work and not just sitting back collecting a fat executive bonus.

As far as jobs disappearing, my bet is on the assistants and other staff with indirect roles that maybe aren't as involved since technology has allowed more folks to work from home. I'm thinking along the lines of people eschewing large studio spaces for home studios, since a lot of mixing and mastering can be done "in the box" on a computer with a good set of monitors and a decently-treated room.

I imagine the same would go for some of the distribution and licensing side, since instead of depending on a major label or hiring a person to mail out CDs to a bunch of radio stations and such, you can just use an online service like CDBaby to get your tracks submitted to multiple streamers at once and keep track of royalties without needing a dedicated accountant.

Again, take all this with a grain of salt, since my experience is still somewhat narrow! And also, I don't intend anything I've said as a defense of do-nothing execs sitting back and amassing wealth at the expense of us regular folks on the ground. It's just that in my experience, most of the non-artist people involved with the entertainment biz do actually provide value to the artist and fans.

The only way we cleared Tainted Lost at my house was playing co-op!