If it makes you feel any better, I always hear and appreciate the little countermelodies coming from the Euphs

Oh, don’t worry about that. The inflated egos are distributed across all the musicians too. It takes a special kind of personality to achieve that level of singular proficiency.

I think it’s one other reason to HAVE a conductor, is to have an ultimate authority on some matters where musicians egos get involved.

In many (most?) compositions, there are going to be some banger little licks in many different sections. It honestly kinda sucks sometimes when you’ve got one… but you gotta hold it back because it’s still just a supporting component. To you, as the musician… you might fall in love with it, wanna push it, take the opportunity to shine and generate some goosebumps. And, obviously, since you’re God’s gift to the world, you SHOULD. The composer was WRONG to hit you with a mp. Maybe the composer’s French Horns couldn’t lead with it, but they never envisioned your talent.

The trumpets shoot you a look to calm down? Fuck 'em. They always get the spotlight.

Having a structure with an ego to rule all egos helps (does NOT eliminate) these kinds of things.

At the highest levels of proficiency, knowing “when to play” doesn’t rreeaallyy require a conductor.

An orchestra of professionals mutates into this crazy combined organism. A hive mind, with thousands of signals being generated and consumed among the members. Negotiations all over the place.

The conductor stands in the front not just because it’s convenient, but because they’re in the best relative position to understand what the audience will ultimately hear. If I’m in percussion, positionally I’m getting a skewed take on the relative dynamics of the piccolos. As a professional, they’d have a good “gut feel”, but thier ears are simply not in the right spot to know for sure. The conductors are.

The acoustics of a performance space are drastically different when the seats are full of meat, too.

The conductor is acting as the source of truth and feedback for that hive mind, from a physical position which gives them the best understanding of the complete sound being produced. While professionals CAN do a very passable job of distributing that work, it’s an additional burden and with an imperfect set of inputs. Having one person set the tone and act as that authority frees up capacity on the individuals to do thier best work.

You don’t see the trend? You mean you haven’t seen the aggregate survey data showing the trend? Or are you saying in your personal encounters, you haven’t observed any change?

Alternative perspective, for what it’s worth:

50/50 is actually comparatively huge. Considering everything else has been 90/10.

The first departure from your god-king is always the hardest. I expect for many, this is the first break, and will make any subsequent break mentally easier.

Also keep in mind that people who identify/lean Republican has taken a little more than a 10% haircut since January 2025. Any “republicans say” is an increasingly smaller subset of the total voting population… getting more concentratedly nuts as they boil off the more rational ones. Even with this more concentrated version of Republicans, it’s STILL not popular.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not GREAT… but there is a trend line. It’s not moving as fast as it should, but it IS moving.

On the flip side, imo there are some brilliant people with good ideas, and thier persuasiveness is hamstrung because they just can’t stick to a word count that appeals to thier audience.

If you know that your audience has a 6th grade reading level… avoid a long form essay.

“When did neighborhoods become full of strangers?! We gotta get off our phones and get to know each other in our communities. We should be able to borrow a cup of sugar!”

Check it out, you can pitch socialism in a way that’ll amp people up in like 3 simple sentences.

If you can’t or won’t do it yourself, by all means ask AI to help you lower your barrier for entry.

Basically all left (or even neoliberal) discourse happens in such an echo chamber people have forgotten how to talk irl.

That’s an interesting take. I’ll guess we’ll see.

I’m curious as to what circumstances could unfold in which Canada would be asking to join the USA in the next 100 years, let alone in “a few” years.

You’re right. I edited my post to make the words more accurately capture my intention. Thanks for the vibe check. I was out of line.

If you don’t feel like you need to move your feet when you accidentally drop it (to avoid a toe smack) , it’s too small.

The fact that 3.5" floppies were self-sealing to make handling irrelevant (put your greasy fingers on any surface you fucking want) is another obvious advantage.

There are more. Before putting something on blast, really run it through forwards and backwards. You might be surprised at how many pros/cons fall out of a genuine consideration.

Sorry for the wording of my original post… it WAS needlessly adversarial.

Oh, I couldn’t tell you what the 2 things are. I don’t have a keen eye. I’m just waiting for someone who does.

A keen eye would pick up 2 subtle but clever additional references in the background and related to the specifications of those particular drives.

To me it reads more like an artist who is tired of justifying thier art, and is recalling a time they met notes with honesty.

You probably didn’t expect that comment to make me feel so old.

Your right to privacy ends where your actions that impact the public begins.

Allowing elected officials (allowing, not even MAKING) to sign NDAs with private companies provides cover to do shitty things and get influenced by lobbiests.

The Weezer pork and beans video was actually fucking sweet

Ok

I think you’re missing what this is. They’re not adding sponsor segments.

They’re scanning the video, establishing where “free visual space” is, and then embedding advertising into that space. It becomes part of the video, not an intermission. You don’t cut a “time segment” to remove it, you have to cut a “space segment” to remove it. And then what do you fill it with?

There are certainly ways to mitigate it, but they’re not great.

I think it’s great to have at least one person thinking about these things.

I can’t deny that her urge to decorate does make the house look better. It makes me happy.

I just don’t think she can comprehend the absolute vacuum in my brain where “home anesthetics” should be.