Jesus fucking Christ, they didn't sell out to a fucking company! He transferred ownership to two long-time users of the site! There wasn't even a deal struck, he just said "you're the owners now!"
DaedalousIlios
joined 2 years ago
Music artists absolutely fucking hate music streaming services! It's too big to not participate, and in a lot of cases, their record label won't let them not do so. But the pay is absolute shit! If you care about tbe artist behind the music, buy their music. If you don't want to have all your music stored on device because it takes too much room, there are self-host options.
Going solely with streaming is actively screwing artists over, especially in the case of Spotify, which pays out to the tune (pun intended) of 0.0001¢ per stream. Even an artist as well known as Weird Al barely makes enough to buy a sandwich from what Spotify pays! Other platforms are better, but not by much. I don't say this to guilt trip; many big names make good money from record deals and will be just fine, while most of us don't make much. Indie artists are the real losers here.
That said, music had gotten cheap! Most of your favorite indie artists will sell FLAC versions of their albums for $10 an album, or $1 a song on Bandcamp, and prices are between $10-20 for major artists on platforms like Qobuz. It might take time to build your library back up, but the average person can make a huge difference here by taking the money you would spend on Spotify or any other platform, and buying your music directly. You'd be paying the artist more than they'd get from you streaming nothing but their album every day all year, eventually you'll be paying less in the long run by not being subbed to a greedy music platform, and you'll get better quality!
Maybe I'm not a loud person. Maybe I'm anxious. Maybe I live in a state where I can be shot for being loud about it. Maybe I have other people who need me, and my death would inevitably lead to theirs too. Maybe being loud about it endangers my well-being in other ways.
Or just to circle back to the first point, maybe I just don't wanna fucking be loud and that's my goddamn business! It's not "giving them what they want," it's giving me what I want!
Being queer isn't about being the loudest most obnoxious person in the parade, it's about being who you are! If you're loud, good for you! I'll be home playing video games with my polycule.
The secret is to be incredibly neurodivergent and unlock the secrets to extreme hyperfixation. The more you lose track of time, the better, as this is also the threshold where hunger ceases to exist.
-source, one incredibly autistic fuck (me)
I'm stealing this concept for my TTRPG usage!
In my honest opinion, I could hype it up even more. But to give you an incredibly grounded opinion, it is a lot of fun, especially if you enjoy JRPGs. I find it to be a very well made game, and even a friend of mine who normally is a big FPS nut is absolutely addicted to it, even playing it over the new DOOM title. I would say you're, in the worst-case scenario, incredibly unlikely to regret trying it at least. The only very clear problem I have with it is that it can be incredibly easy to over-level yourself in it.
Tl;Dr, yes*
I find this discussion to be an exercise in frustration. There's a lot of philosophical jargon that gets glazed over and nuances that often get ignored. I also think it's an incredibly complex and complicated topic that we simply do not have enough information available to us to determine in a scientific manner.
For instance: what kind of "free will" are we talking about? Often it's "Libertarian Free Will," that is, absolute agency uninfluenced by any external factors. This much is disproven scientifically, as our brains run countless "subconscious" calculations in response to our environment to hasten decision making and is absolutely influenced by a myriad of factors, regardless of if you're conciously aware of it or not.
However, I think that the above only "disproves" all notions of free will if you divorce your "subconscious" from the rest of your being. Which is where the complication and nuance comes in. What is the "self?" What part of you can you point to as being the "real you?"
From a Christian perspective, you might say the "self" is your soul, which is not yet proven by science, and thus the above has no bearing on, as it cannot take the soul into account. But from the opposite side of the spectrum, from a Buddhist perspective, there is no eternal, unchanging, independently existing "self." And as such, the mind in its entirety, concious awarness or not, is just another part of your aggregates, and from that perspective it can be argued that a decision is no less your own just because it was not made in your conscious awareness.
With my ramblings aside, I am a Buddhist and so my opinion is that we do have free will, we're just not always consciously aware of every decision we make. And while we cannot always directly control every decision we make, we can influence and "train" our autopilot reactions to make better decisions.
Relatable tbh. I think a good part of it was depression in my younger years, but, I used to be an incredibly angry person.
It took a long time for me to accept that the truth is, you don't get angry about shit you don't care about. Hard to accept that half the things I'd get angry at weren't worth it. The other half anger just wasn't a helpful response. Been a long process of learning to have a better reaction for me.
I don't think that matters. This is likely a decision handed down by upper management. And that's what makes it depressing; what could've continued to be some of the greatest creators of Sci-Fi video games instead have mismanaged their talent and shot both their feet off.
Man, as somebody who grew up with Halo, it's really depressing to see how they seem to just be utterly incapable of an original thought anymore.
He sold his company for eight figures and used that wealth to build these communities for the people most in need, not (just) his (now former) employees.
But even if he was still CEO, the fact remains that it's not just for his employees and pay is still just half the equation: he doesn't control the price of rent, and the real solution is rent control. Otherwise nothing stops landlords from just raising rent higher ans higher once they figure out that employers will just pay their tenants more.
So yes, good pay matters, and we need comprehensive minimum wage laws and worker protection, but we also need rent control. And preferably to banish all landlords to the shadow realm.
How do we know there was? How, exactly is one to prove that a transaction didn't take place? Sure, he, the former owner, could say there wasn't, but that doesn't mean any more or less than what he already has, which is that he believes the new owners share his vision for the site! And at least he picked two people who, to my understanding, have been around Nexus for awhile!
I'm not saying it's impossible that Nexus enshittifies, and I understand that it's been a trend lately, but this, as of this moment right now, feels like senseless panic that ought to be saved for when they actually do something wrong! I'll join the hate wagon when they start brutally monatizing the site or taking IPOs.