Better yet, this needs to be the law of the land for all parties. Once someone reaches 60-65 or so, they need to step aside and serve at most in an advisory role. Let the younger crowd take the helm of leadership.
I guess I like this at the party level, not enforced by law... but I understand I'm being pedantic and it probably means the same thing. I just don't want the law to say, "Hey 65+, we don't have to listen to anything you have to say any more!"
I like the idea of some crusty old Bernie Sanders type running for office on his own, for years on end, sniping votes and still managing to steer the candidates a bit on some of his pet issues... but I think it's irresponsible for major parties to endorse people who are so old.
Like... look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg... a beloved judge who just overstayed her time on the bench and died in office... opening the door for Trump to replace her. But... then again Mitch McConnell kept Obama from being able to replace a judge too... just a tricky spot. Democrats got outplayed, and we'll be feeling it for the next generation to come. Ugh. But I do think that if RBG had just resigned at say the start of Obama's 2nd term that we'd be in a better spot today. Can't imagine even McConnell would have been able to keep the vote from coming up for 4 years...
Between this, and their binding arbitration debacle a while back, I will never use their products. Had a Roku back when they were first released (and before they became awful as a company) but haven't used it in years. No interest in giving assent to corruption and corporate overreach.
"...8% more protein and 7% more fat than regular rice"
Let's see, 100g of cooked rice has 2.7g protein, 0.3g fat and 28g carbohydrate, according to USDA data. The stated increases yield 2.9g protein and 0.32g fat, not exactly a stunning increase. Referenced research is behind a paywall so I cannot discern from that how accurate this is. None of which, of course, detracts from its value as proof of concept.
Same here. I had an additional cable channel subscription through Prime, which I've now cancelled, as I don't wish to tolerate any advertising in my video stream, so I will simply stop watching any video on Prime. And as you pointed out, the quality of Prime video offerings has been in decline of late.
Why won't I leave Prime (yet)? Because I have an "Amazon" visa credit card, with an admittedly serious 5% permanent discount on all purchases from Amazon (as well as companies they own, such as Whole Foods.) I won't stop purchasing products through Prime just yet; am simply careful to avoid anything that looks problematic, price-gouged, or needing aftersale support, and the discount lock-in is too attractive to me to ignore for now. But video? I can always find it elsewhere.
Same goes for "FreeVee" because "Free with ads" isn't free.
FYI, if you cancel Prime but want to keep that card, they will downgrade you to a blue Amazon branded card that still gets 3% back at Amazon. I don't know if you still get any discount at Whole Foods since I might only go there about once a year at most.
So if Prime is failing you in other ways, don't feel like you need to keep it to keep your discount.
I'm in the same position. I originally subscribed to Prime for the shipping benefits. We also started using the Prime Photos platform for our photo storage and sharing. Then I got an "Amazon" CC and I really enjoy/use the 5% cash-back program. I even have a FireTV Cube and outfitted several people with FireTV devices.
However, I'm seriously reconsidering my choices. Almost my entire family is in the Apple ecosystem and we recently purchased an Apple TV device to replace a FireTV, and I must say that it is a much better experience. And iCloud is a better photo/video sharing platform for us than Prime Photos ever was. Really, the only thing keeping me subscribed to Prime is the cash-back program.
As for Prime Video, it has always been the most crappy of the video streaming options. It's always frustrating when the things that I want to watch are not included with Prime and require a purchase or rental. And now that there are ads and lower quality, the chance that I'll watch anything on that platform is steadily declining.
I feel sacking customers got really popular during Covid and continued after.
Many phone systems have a thinly veiled threat about zero tolerance policies, to treat staff with respect, and in the case of certain government agencies here in the UK, that they will refer cases to the police. The same is repeated on written posters in eg doctors and dentist offices
Just a coincidence I’m sure but I find employees (especially on the phone) even more condescending and unhelpful these days
Earlier, banks used to warn customers at least once for any disrespect towards employees. Now, expect big banks and financial institutions to close accounts without any warning, unless you are a wealthy client. Charles Schwab and Chase do that.
I get that the majority, perhaps the vast majority, would prefer such a socially high touch "bulletin board" model, but... some of us run away screaming from such things. I find Discord impossible to navigate in terms of finding discussions of issues that have already occurred, and having to perform my own "archeological excavation" to discover the tidbits that are actually relevant to me is orders of magnitude harder and more irritating than, say, perusing/searching a discussion forum or similar online venue.
For those of us who came of age during the "RTFM before bothering anybody, dammit!" attitude toward supporting engineers, looking for already posted answers to a problem that likely someone else has already solved is vastly superior to bothering someone about a problem they might well be tired of talking about for the 100th time.
I've never been good at "conversation" in real life or online; some of us simply aren't and have/find our strengths elsewhere, and increasingly it seems all online discussions about, say, issues around a game published by a small indie vendor are being pushed to Discord and in some cases even shutting down other online communication channels in favor of that. A vendor who keeps its online discussion forums available and supported is always going to get a lot more interest from me than what I see younger companies doing.
Maybe it's just a big cultural shift, and I am no longer relevant. Not ready to "go away" just yet...
I too loved Bandcamp for its sane approach to acquiring new music; unlike "most people" I refuse to use the streaming-only services, and insist upon buying albums and listening to exactly those selections I choose (and I prefer to listen to albums in their entirety, even today).
Perhaps I'm just old and set in my ways, but choices made by others, especially algorithmically generated "options maximizing my engagement", hold no attraction for me whatsoever. Losing such freedom of choice would be painful in the extreme.
I also refuse to use streaming services, and prefer to curate my own music - but for me, it's less about algorithmic suggestions, and more about actually owning the things I've paid for.
A streaming service or an artist can pull music from a service (see Neil Young), but they ain't going to be reaching into my hard drives and pulling the mp3s out of it.
I am all in on owning things as well. To the point that I'll buy Blu-Rays where I can too, rather than sign up for an extra streaming service.
With music in particular, I definitely see discovery as a problem though -- particularly these days when "radio" isn't really a thing (at least for me). Spotify might be able to fill that gap, but I haven't really tried yet.
I'm also worried that "owning digital things" is going to become harder and harder as time goes on, but I haven't quite been able to put my finger on what the tipping point for that is going to be.
Yeah it seems like it's going in that direction. The new generation seems fine with streaming services, now. I worked for a few customers who want to retain their physical music in their homes with a media devices and stream it to all their devices in the home. Slowly but surely many home entertainment devices that store music have been slowly removing those features in favor of streaming services. This has been making it very hard for people to retain physical copies of their music without some sort of custom solution that has to be maintained.
For me, I refuse to use music streaming services, I rely heavily on my digital music collection most of which comes from Bandcamp. Bandcamp is the last bastion of physical digital music where there is direct interaction between musicians and music lovers. If it dies, we are screwed. If its possible, id actually like to see it be supported from donations like Thunderbird is if it was possible. I don't like the idea that it relies on commercialism.
Ownership is indeed the other reason I don't do streaming. I pay for a track or album, download it, and it's mine.
I do see this capability disappearing in coming years, however; especially with growing use of "AI" tools to, say, craft ever more complicated barriers to avoiding rent-seeking.
I used to leech Mp3's with the best of them, trawling through blogs enmasse before music was consolidated by giant aggregators. DI.FM is different though, its a streaming service, curated by humans (who are the worlds best DJs), has a sustainable buinsess model and lets you download streams.
Its very intersting how my music taste has evolved over the years, the more genres and types i was exposed to, the more i discovered. Nothing beats going to a concert you dont know anything about and having the night of your life. Im one for nostalgia, no doubt, but i think listening to the same song, in the same tone, over and over again, is a simplistic view of music and ruines its potential magic. Music and moods are instrinically linked. What happens if i was to listen to my favourite rockband, but instead mixed into chillout music that ebbs and flows over 5 or 10 hours. I get to hear the songs i love, in different ways, evoking different emotions and memories. I find that extends the life of music, not run it into the ground, dulling all those memories that triggered your love in the first place. I kissed that girl for the first time listening to this song, fades if you listen to that song everyday.
Spotify is automated radio, warts and all. Popular amoung the consumerist sheeple, often coupled with tv and shopping subscription technoligies. Society has always had this cross section of music interest, chinstroker outlets always existed at fringes, hardly able to survive in the world they helped create. Music sells. Captalists like to sell things people love to buy. A victim of their own success. Such is the harsh reality of this economic system, things just cant be done, they have to be done to death, then revamped and rebranded and the cycle goes on.
> I used to leech Mp3's with the best of them, trawling through blogs enmasse before music was consolidated by giant aggregators
That's not the only alternative. I've never done that.
> Its very intersting how my music taste has evolved over the years, the more genres and types i was exposed to, the more i discovered.
I couldn't agree more! But streaming services (or old-school radio) doesn't work well for me when it comes to discovering new music. I get that plenty of people find that a great path and more power to them.
But for me, streaming services are like radio you pay for, and music radio has never been a thing of value to me at any point in my life.
And, financially speaking, "radio you pay for" makes no sense to me. If I'm paying money, I want to have the music available to listen to any time I want, on any device I want -- not just when a DJ decides it's time to play it, or only when I have an internet connection.
But don't get me wrong -- I am not saying that streaming services are stupid and shouldn't exist. I'm just saying that they don't provide value to me, personally.
I too listen to albums in their entirety and don’t interact too much with autogenerated content.
But I was on Apple Music and now I’m on Spotify. The amount of new albums I get to listen to would put a massive dent in my bank account if I was buying them as I go.
I still purchase Vinyl and the odd CD, but that is reserved for my top must have records. A flat rate for music just makes sense to me, and allows me to check out and discover so many more new artists than in the old days, where my music taste was much narrower and confined to more mainstream “classic” rock and the like.
For the few albums that are there sure, it works. Unfortunately the vast majority of the time there isn’t anything there. Most artists just aren’t on bandcamp. Or the artist is on there but only a subset of their albums are. Even if I started using it more, it would be so rare, as I’d need to go use Spotify or my own physical/digital collection most of the time, which means when the album ends I’m more likely to keep listening on the current platform, not think to switch back to bandcamp to see once again if the newest Metric album is suddenly there, or if any albums apart from one are there etc.
Also the amount of similarly named artist/albums that are tributes or fan “sequels” or straight up just the same named artist a a little bit of friction to make search.
Bandcamp exists in an odd space where unless I’m willing to have my music choices heavily restricted it then it loses out to traditional a-la-carte purchasing of albums whether physically or on digital storefronts, or to just using a streaming service. If I was a young kid in primary school again, it would still lose out to pirating music as well I think.
Just to offer a counterpoint - there's so many indie and small bands I've found while listening to Pandora. Most or all of which I would have never discovered otherwise.
Sure, maybe they don't pay as much as me buying the CD would for the artist - but I likely would have never found them any other way. Now, they get something every time I listen to their songs.
I would, however, enjoy much higher quality audio. Even with the top tier Pandora plan, it's still MP3's, albeit high quality MP3's.
I tried a couple streaming services a while back, and them rather annoying. I've discovered a lot of good new bands through Bandcamp, just reading about related bands in genres I like. The annoyances of the various streaming services just push me away, and yes, potentially to my own detriment in missing out of artists I might not discover any other way.
This is an interesting point, actually. I rarely play music in the background when I'm doing other things -- but I listen to a lot of music. When I do, I put an album on and listen to it with my full attention. In other words, I listen to music like other people watch movies.
It was only in the last few years that I learned that I was unusual in this.
That's how truly good albums shine, specially if you do it in the dark, you can travel to different worlds :) But yeah most people don't have the patience.
Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them? If so I'd like to know which are some of your favorites.
> Can I safely assume that you also listen to some albums multiple times to get to know them?
Absolutely yes. Like with good books and movies, you can't really appreciate music fully on a single listen. And a lot of music reveals wonders only after you've become very familiar with it.
Also, with some of my favorite artists (Kate Bush comes immediately to mind, but she's not the only one), I often dislike their music on first listen. It's only after sitting with it a few times that I fall in love with it.
It would take too long to list my favorites, but here's what I've been listening to over the past week: Martina DaSilva, Oriana Curls, Yello, Frank Zappa, early Pink Floyd, miscellaneous Venezuelan salsa bands.
I once went to a "blind concert" (basically a pitch black theater) where they played Atom Heart Mother, I didn't know that album but I was a big PF fan, and it was a wonderful experience.
Atom Heart Mother is a wonderful piece of work. The albums I've listened to in the last week were Obscured by Clouds and Meddle.
> Like Zeta?
I'm actually new to the genre and still finding my way by listening to single songs from different groups to figure out the ones that appeal to me the most (that's why I didn't name a specific band). I hadn't come across Zeta, but they look like the right sort of thing. I'll check them out. Thanks!
Meddle is one I listened to religiously for a while. I do find that I can get obsessed and then "burnt out" with a particular album or even band. This happened to me with PF, I can still listen to them, but not with the same focus.
And that's not entirely a bad thing, because it makes me value more the (few) bands or composers who stand that test.
Salsa is wonderful to explore, in particular if you're able to find a good group to watch live :)
Can you explain why you are so opposed to streaming? I actually do both and own a few hundred lossless albums as well. Usually if I think something is moderately good, I'll purchase a lossless copy (unless I buy a CD of it, which I'll rip to my collection). However streaming is a more modern version of radio to me when I don't want to dig around playlists. I'll find new music I like from whatever spotify or apple music serves up if it's new to me, quite often. Just curious.
Im the total opposite, I don't want to own music (some things sure) but streaming services allow me to use the music I like to listen to wherever I want. I can make playlists and organize how I want it even make my own "radio stations" for different moods.
There is no way I can and will buy the amount of metal music I consume lol.
Also the algo that suggests new music is awesome! I learned about a lot of new bands just by using that feature.
This right here. Either we collectively as a species take steps right away to correct course and achieve a sustainable now, or nature will do it for us; and the latter will occur cataclysmically. The former, too, except hopefully with less loss of life.
This. When all else fails, and this is the only way, then it is the way. I, too, am more than happy to pay $ for a high quality physical media, but if they aren't satisfied with my one time purchase, and instead choose to force me to pay for each subsequent rewatch if that is what I desire, then they will no longer get my business, and I'll find other ways to get what I want. Why should I not?
