For most of my life I haven’t been interested in country music because the contemporary popular stuff tend to be terrible. I’m currently discovering some of the old(er) good stuff for the first time (also watching that Ken Burns documentary a few years ago really ignited my appreciation). Currently (as in this minute as I type this), listening to some old Steven Earle songs for the first time and wondering why I didn’t know about this.

Honestly, even some of the more pop stuff pre-2000s was good. I do love me some Dwight Yoakam. But I can’t handle any of the stuff they play on country stations these days. All the songs sound the same and are almost all about the same exact things. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just have AI coming up these songs at this point.

For people who are afraid that raising wages will mean less people employed: for the most part, wage demand is pretty inelastic. Studies have shown that wages changes really don’t mess with numbers employed that much. Most places only want to employ the least number of people they can already. They can’t go lower, generally.

I guess I’m one of the few voices of dissent again… I enjoyed last week’s episode, but this episode is disappointing again. The romance between La’an was very unnecessary and unnatural. They had no chemistry and it felt incredibly awkward. I still can’t stand their choice for Kirk. Feels like I’m watching Darrin from Bewitched (or some other “ordinary working man” type character) doing cosplay and not a star ship captain, and certainly not a captain like Kirk. Not only does he not have “the look,” but I hated the way he delivered all his lines.

The only breath of fresh air for me is that a disaster takes place someplace other than New York, LA, or the US in general. However, they definitely didn’t hire enough extras for Toronto. Everywhere looked too under populated and not enough racial diversity (ie: where were all the Asians? Toronto is filled with East, South, Subcontinental Asians). I’ve never seen the streets of Toronto so sparse.

Therein my frustrations with older Trek. I see and appreciate what they were trying to do, but their inherent biases were on full display despite creating a show about a better progressive future.

I think mander.xyz is having some issues right now. Neither links work even though they were working earlier.

Just judging by the subreddit, this community is likely not going to see a huge membership. I don’t want to cut anyone out. I’m fine with everyone sharing the space and just specifying which region they are posting about.