> did they establish these shifts, or were these shifts already gaining steam independently and they popularised them?
You're assuming The Beatles had significant control over their own success.
The Beatles are highly comparable to other phenomena such as The Simpsons and the iPhone, and discussing their merits and contributions is just as irrelevant. All of what has been said about them applies to The Beatles.
EDIT: I almost forgot about Michael Jackson.
EDIT2: To answer your question more directly, mass media picks and chooses what it popularizes. The artist can choose what they make, but they cannot choose to be chosen. The audience doesn't choose what is mostly heavily advertised either. You can insist that modern ads don't have this effect anymore, but we're talking about a different era.
I find physical exercise, not smoking, and talking to people very enjoyable. These things in particular keep me sane and reassured.
When I was an obese smoker who avoided people, I was stressed out by a lot of other things going on. As soon as those stressors were gone, the bad habits also went away without so much effort.
It's worth considering how many of these perceptions of "discomfort" are caused by other aspects of culture, not nature or nationality or era. All my stress was coming from trying way too hard as an insecure younger person.
I believe they mean having alternative choices in what one can legally consume to get high/drunk/etc. Anecdotally I know a few folks who went from illegal pot in high school to wine as adults because it is more socially acceptable, then back to pot when legal.
I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal. Let's not whitewash the past. It became legal for a reason.
If you feel this way about pot, have you not also considered that similar already occurred with alcohol roughly a century ago (in the USA)? Why do you think cops avoid overpolicing bars when they'd be entirely in their right to do so?
Personal use of drugs is the clearest example in all of criminal justice where people of all beliefs have to admit there really is a much bigger and widespread mental health problem at the root of it. This is very very far from a new topic. There's nothing special about pot.
> I don't know any pot smoker who ever gave a flying crap if it was legal.
I know plenty.
Generally they fit the pattern of being familiar with it from exposure a few times as teenagers or such and liked it, but it wasn't a big enough deal for them to want to find and maintain a relationship with a drug dealer, concerns that if they pulled it out at a party it might lead to consequences within their social or professional circle, etc.
I don’t know what GP is smoking. Most people do not maintain a relationship with a drug dealer. Legal access available from a convenient store front unlocks plenty of users who did not want the legal risk or hassle.
The biggest case you can follow is Canada. Even wine-drinking elderly sometimes switch to cannabis, due to lessened hangovers. Also, removing the friction is a huge boost to basically any industry.
Edibles/beverages are widely available now. Previously you'd have to purchase flower on the black market then use your home kitchen (which could be shared with your parents) to decarb and infuse it.
Sorry, but what way do you think I feel about pot? I was just providing anecdotal examples to explain the reasoning of why pot being legal could have an impact on demand for wine. It’s just a demand curve relationship, not my personal opinions on the legality of pot.
For the pot smokers who care about legality, it does matter for folks who have to take drug tests for their jobs. Several of my good friends stopped using it when that was a concern.
I happily smoke pot while illegal if it happens to be around and someone else provided it and I don't have to drive that day or do anything the next day. I chipped in or did favors not to be a mooch but never bought it directly myself, nor posessed any. None in my car, my house etc.
So that means very infrequently. Depends how many and what kinds of parties I found myself at that year.
I totally like it, will not hesitate if conditions are right, and the only reason I stayed away not doing any more than that was it wasn't worth the risk.
Even today I don't risk it because sometimes I drive across many state lines and I don't want to worry about keeping track of where I might possibly get in trouble if I piss off a cop at a traffic stop, which I am likely to do.
I don't think it's so crazy that there are pot smokers that can take it or leave it. Merely, you would probably never have realized I was a pot smoker, because I don't talk about it all the time for no reason, or even think about it. We'd have to be not merely aquaintances, but we'd have to sometime be at the same party at the same time with the other conditions met. You can't count these people that you have no way to know to count.
There absolutely is a contingent of "wine mom" types who used to enjoy a glass of wine in the evenings but have transitioned to gummies or other edibles before bed.
I know several people who started drinking less and used pot more back when they were able to get their medical marijuana card. Now that it's legal here, I expect more people have done the same.
Not everyone is a hardcore binge drinker or an all-day-every-day pothead. There are lots of occasional-to-moderate users of both, and legalization of weed has increased availability for the casual user. There are many casual users nowadays who have never interacted with the illegal side of things, and never had a relationship with a dealer.
Weed is not a direct replacement for alcohol, but it can be a preferred alternative sometimes, for some people, and legalization has made that more attractive.
That's a pretty big claim. Alcohol's harm to major organs like the liver is pretty well known. What kind of harm does THC/CBD cause when consumed orally?
Alcohol poisoning is a thing. I have yet to hear of a case of canabanoid poisoning. Canabanoids also don't lower your inhibition, which is why DUIs went down in states that legalized. The difference in risk could not be more stark.
> Before I tell you about the first thing, I just want you to remember our brains were still developing when we thought this was so funny.
Are we seriously going to keep saying stuff like this to enculturate young people?
I used to love NPR (I suppose my brain was still developing), but it's offhand comments like this that show too much ulterior motive and keep driving me away from ever listening again.
This American Life is an independent program, not produced or distributed by NPR. The person who wrote that is a TAL producer, not affiliated with NPR.
Also, were you trying out some new vocabulary? enculturate is not appropriate in the context you used it, and it’s not clear what exactly you were trying to convey, other than your own grumpiness, which came through loud and clear.
> but it sure seems like Musk was right to be concerned
You might want to consider if you are out of the loop. I don't think Musk is "concerned". If anything, I wouldn't doubt this is partially his idea. It's just the latest iteration of "reality TV".
It's been over a decade that we've had this style of marketing popularized by Trump. It works very well. There's even an Elizabeth Holmes one coming out soon (You Can See Everything)! I'm actually very excited to see Nathan Fielder's take on this genre of unhinged drama.
As someone who woke up early to see Starship today, I promise I would love to believe that he's actually playing a crazy person. I don't think we can reject the notion entirely. But there is zero evidence for it and a lot against. (He also doesn't need to be personally writing anything to constantly be on social media.)
The entire magic trick is that you believe celebrities act as completely independent individuals with immense power. Elon's sanity is irrelevant.
It works beautifully on so many different types of ego. If you have power fantasies, you can either choose to live vicariously through the celebrity or immediately find your equally toxic anti-fan group. Everyone else at least just finds it entertaining to watch all kinds of people make asses of themselves.
Meanwhile, nobody ever really questions the basis for all of this. The public side of a celebrity is a brand that is indeed as carefully planned out as any other ad campaign.
The only difference today is that things must be done like this to get ahead of naysayers since everyone has a voice online. All the bad faith is now a feature, not a bug. As soon as they figure out all the ways something could be argued against, they have to pre-emptively find the dumbest ways to say it to cast doubt on the legitimacy of dissent.
It's like a Penn and Teller act. They don't even have to hide any of this for the illusion to still work.
I don't maintain a non-pseudonymous internet presence because I don't think I could be unconcerned about folks shitting on me online–I got upset when my cat ghosted me for an hour after I got back from a holiday a month ago.
It's a journey of maturation I haven't yet completed. I suspect neither has Musk (if he recognizes it as a shortcoming).
I'm not aware of any of the really cheap pedals found online being capable of Full NAM A2.
The only ones I've seen run on sub-$1 chips that can only do NAM A2 Lite at best, generally by 'down-converting' NAM profiles to their own internal format. They are still very impressive but they aren't doing what this claims. Yet.
I know this is going to sound ridiculous, but the way the dithering is used feels very "generated" and chaotic.
Human pixel art tends to be very deliberate about the exact colors of every pixel and their placement tends to follow idealized (but not necessarily geometric) shapes.
The last time I saw dithering this sloppy was decades ago when people would scan photos as low color images. It is its own vibe, but it's a cold and rough one. These artifacts feel more "realistic", but it felt like slop back then too.
For an example of just how much of a rabbit hole this is, Lucas Pope's forum post[0] about the dithering in Obra Dinn shows how much time can be spent on getting it right.
In recent months (I don't use it enough to confidently state when the change occurred) Google's LLM summary more often answers the wrong question rather than confidently answering the question wrong.
If it answers and the answer is for what I asked, it is right much more often than not. With that said, "trust but verify" is more like "don't trust and also verify" anyway, which is the same metric that should be used for most websites.
You're assuming The Beatles had significant control over their own success.
The Beatles are highly comparable to other phenomena such as The Simpsons and the iPhone, and discussing their merits and contributions is just as irrelevant. All of what has been said about them applies to The Beatles.
EDIT: I almost forgot about Michael Jackson.
EDIT2: To answer your question more directly, mass media picks and chooses what it popularizes. The artist can choose what they make, but they cannot choose to be chosen. The audience doesn't choose what is mostly heavily advertised either. You can insist that modern ads don't have this effect anymore, but we're talking about a different era.
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