phasersout

Well Dwayne Johnson is successful but he is not really a newcomer... The Scorpion King is 20 years old by now and he started his wrestling career in the 90`s.

And he is not really an "actor" actor - he is more like the Schwarzenegger of today I would say.

One could argue about Bruce Willis acting chops but he might will get an Oscar eventually for his lifetime work.

we are post-something alright. I made the same conclusion and it's weird that there is no new Bruce Willis on the market that made it in the last decade. We have people like Pedro Pascal who are good but not a-billion-dollar-garanteed-hit good.

When it comes to music and cinema what changed is we replaced major labels and cinemas with Spotify and Netflix... both are not paying as much as in the old days - up front and in the long run.

Music Albums are no more, most of us are just listening to singles right now – so why release an album at all? But the LP was basically invented by the Beatles who said we put out ten songs at once - before them like in the Elvis generation everything was released as singles! No one thought that you can make the kids buy an LP which was typically a collection of greatest hits until that point. Nobody thought 30-million-sellers like "Dark Side of the Moon" or "Appetite for Destruction" were even possible.

Artists these days need a build in audience which cater to the taste of their audience and then they maybe get the label contract or publisher deal - but I guess most just don't bother at that point and release their things on their own.

We live in a super fragmented market - I stumble upon these bubbles everyday where I think "so this person has a career for a decade appearently and I just learn now about it?" Even if it is completely up my alley...

But everybody can record an album these days that sounds like it was produced by bloody Bob Rock on a 1.000 dollar notebook... when it comes to music everything sounds pitch perfect - which it is thanks to Audiotune. And even "live music" is hardly "live music" anymore in a lot of cases these days. And most of it is derivative and banal.

Back in the days a major label could and would take some kids out of the gutter - who had no other choice to succeed but the Billboard 100 - and put them in front of 60.000 people where everybody just loved the same things. I mean these sort of things still happen but they are few and far between.

Why bother putting in the 10.000 hours to make a career in acting or music if you can get a business degree and make 6-figures anyways?

But I think it makes sense for these musicians to sell their publishing rights because its an easy way out. A lot of these people are old and its easier to give a couple o million dollars to your kids than a music catalog which they probably don't even know how to handle. I mean every musician worth a dime knows about the Frank Zappa family feud so maybe it's all in all better to give these music rights to people who actually know what they are doing.

not just soldiers.. everybody had a good time with amphies for a while there. I don't know if the problem got as big as oxycontin but it was severe.

But why would anybody PUTIN such an effort?

I run without any noise and sometimes I do when the track goes through a nice forest or so. But for anything longer than 3 - 5 km there is gladly no shortage of music-playlists, podcasts or audio books to choose from.

And I always wonder if there is a use case for unsolicited "dick pics" in real live...

I covered quite a few Nokia reviews back in the day and Nokia was by far the most arrogant company to deal with.

Every company has it's rules and regulations regarding review devices but with Nokia you had to sign up to three forms just to do your work. Partly with ridiculous rules like a missing charger or cable was up to 50 Euros or so.

And they let you very much know where in the pecking order you were regarding your publication and who would get the devices first and last. This was in Germany.

Everybody at Nokia strived for not just being difficult but outright jerks to deal with... so when Apple came around and the disaster started to unfold it was quite the show to watch...

"ah Nokia would like to invite you to this and that shebang..." ah no thanks I think I'm good.

I'm not the guy who carries a grudge but Nokia really made it personal with their whole behavior.

Apple and Samsung aren't perfect but their marketing people are always nice and super helpful.

I run PopOS on a Thinkbook and overall the experience is more hassle free than my Windows-System these days.

the problem is that social media is like Heroin and not even the parents are immune.

There is a difference in reading an article in a newspaper with critical thinking and lumping through a social media page where the whole purpose is not the content but to keep you glued to the screen.

Android manufacturers, unlike Apple, don't really earn much via the software - so there is really no reason for costly updates which keeps the customers from buying the next phone..

If Spartacus wouldn't have been enslaved there is a good chance that he might have ended up with Slaves on his own at one point or another in his life.

I know there is a reason why I keep two separate Microsoft accounts - one for the Office stuff and one for my Xbox - because I'm absolutely sure that Microsoft will eventually mess something up one way or another..

But to be fair: Five or so years ago I couldn't change any personal data in my Playstation account for over two years! Sony wasn't able to perform a simple CRUD operation on its database - and the error message went basically nowhere.

You mean the iPod...

the same thing with games and that you only own a license of a game and not the game itself.

Started with WoW and getting kicked for "using" exploits which are ultimately just faults in a product that I purchased - why should I as a customer know and care for what an exploit is and what not?

That's probably closer to the truth than most other ideas...

does this new Arri camera really cost 4 million a pop? hm... well could be... I'm just a Wellington tax officer...

I always own a fortnight's worth of underpants so I can go on a two week vacation without having to worry about laundry...

fun fact: if the Habsburgers - during the Thirty Years' War - would have known that the Swedish Kingdom only had around a million citizens at this time they could have marched on straight to Stockholm and called it a day.

But population numbers were highly confidential in those days and since Sweden was vast to the north they wrongly assumed it was populated much more densely.

Cities in ancient Rome were full of public baths which were places of communication, cleanliness and wellbeing. Cleopatra even bathed in milk...

Wellness as a business is around forever...

"It's not a bug, it's a feature!"

I fully agree: I am a trained journalist and a programmer.

Ten years ago it was possible to feed a family with an editors salary and have a work environment that made for all around decent articles.

But then the public decided they are not going to pay for journalism anymore and that's exactly the reason we are where we are today. Endless SEO-Content-Attacks, a new breaking news headline every 30 minutes and editors that are not "editors" anymore but "content managers" - people who "write articles" for 20 dollars a pop and content creators who have to finance their notebook reviews with affiliate links of said piece of tech - wonder how independent these review are going to be. All the while publishers trying to get ouf of the reds and into the black and trying to appease the almighty Google ad good as possible.

You people brought that onto yourself. Anybody who wants to write for a career today must be able to afford it...

I always assumed it's on of those books that everybody has in the bookshelf but no one ever really read.

The market is way too fractured for new artists to reach a level like ABBA or U2 or the likes anymore (with few exceptions). Modern artists seem to build their "brand" on the "1000 true fans"-idea where musicians or authors only get deals once they have a build in audience. That's the reason most artists take to social media in one way or another

Before the internet there was a handful of major music labels and a dozen music magazines for example and those made it possible for relatively few artists to build lengthy careers and people seem to love the idea to stand with 20.000 other people in a arena and listen to the same music.

I am too old to decide if todays artists have it better or worse but one thing is sure: A lot more people can live off their art today than thirty years ago. But with that goes another thought: That back in the day only the cream made it to the top and had a chance to stay there.

In case of operating systems I often wonder what our GUI and workflow would look like if Windows, MacOS and Linux had equal market shares for the last twenty years.

Rummy is a Bridge alternative without the need for teams.

I believe we reached peak earth in the last two years. It's not just sand or food but also the logistics - people say it's the pandemic stupid or it's obviously the war - but these are all just catalysts.

Too many people just want too much shit. 7 billion people are really not that many - but 7 billion people who wants to live like Westerners that's a big problem.

All the while we are still living in the age of exploitation. We can build marvelous things now but our recycling is still stuck somewhere in the medieval ages...

This whole party can only last if the recycling of an iPhone becomes as financially sexy as building one...

Pretty cool, but you still need a big ass subwoofer for the low end..

I can tell you right away that eternal hellfire is made up because nothing is infinite.

Have you ever heard of in vitro?

I think that would actually be a good field for machine learning: To separate sound-alikes from copycats.

It always bothers me that these claims are often about a simple melody, while arrangements or rhythm patterns seem to be fair game - if I would use the drum patterns of "Smells like teen spirit" in my song I don't think Grohl could claim anything. But if I would go "Coding in my Pyjamas" with the melody of "Living on a Prayer" I'd have Bon Jovi's lawyers in my mailbox in a heartbeat.

But that being said, I think the copyright overall should be a lot more relaxed with a lot more leeway for creatives because the status quo is just ridiculous.

Can recommend Origins as well, riding past the pyramids has something pretty cool about it...