The answer to the question “who thought this was a good idea?” Is Coca Cola. The companies (and distributors) selling these products to stores negotiates with those stores to build these displays and decides what they look like.

Fuck em.

I see you missed my point.

I can’t believe I’m on the music industry’s side on this. It’s a sad day when I have to root for the team that’s made it hard for me to make a living while they fight against the team that’s trying to make me obsolete.

You don’t come across as ignorant, no worries. It’s mostly just nomenclature.

“Black Churches” are simply churches (usually, but not exclusively Baptist) that are located in or near, or cater to Black communities. There’s usually a Black pastor. I’ve never really thought about why this is a thing until reading your comment, but my guess is it stems from the post-slavery and post-equal rights movement era thing. The federal, state and local governments put forth a lot of policies that are in retrospect kinda shitty to Black people. I imagine this led Black Americans to form congregations that they wouldn’t be quietly pushed away from, and feel overall more comfortable in.

In modern America, they are just labeled that. There are no restrictions or rules against who can go to the church. I am a white, non-religious audio engineer, who works Sunday mornings doing sound at a “Black Church”. I’d say about 10-15% of the members at this church are white or non-Black. The church is located within a section of town that has a more diverse population than other areas. The pastor and his family that run the church are very nice, and very welcoming of all the patrons. They’ve always been very nice to me, even knowing that I don’t follow the religion.

This is also how I spell it, but is it the correct spelling?

Edit: I should have just read further.

That 15 yr old cracked CS5 I have on an old hard drive is looking mighty scrumptious right now.

The sheer amount of accounts I don’t follow and/or adds I DO see already do this for me. It’s a nice “feature” they added for me. Way to go Meta. I get bored fast now and close the app.

I do this too, thankfully I work from home. No has to listen to me but my cat.

This record was released in 2001. A few years pre-iPod.

I would buy ANY political stance Drummer is selling.

Well, I can’t take them with me…

As a musician who has been following this closely for a while, it keeps getting worse and worse. Musicians of my status have less and less opportunities to make a living off of our art in a world that is becoming increasingly easier to produce and distribute in. I’ve done this a long time and have had moderate success in the past. It’s to the point now though that the ways I THOUGHT musicians made money was never available to me, and the way we DID make money when I started almost doesn’t exist anymore either.

Ummm it’s hard to do without giving up a wonderful 9-book, 7 or 8 novella plot, but I’ll do my best. It’s ultimately a space opera, but the ideas explored are well thought out and intriguing. I don’t think it really gets as deep into what you’re looking for as you’d like but it’s still a wonderful book series.

Future humans, in our solar system, lots of political intrigue between the powers of the UN (all of earth), the Martian Congressional Republic, and the Outer Planets Alliance (people of the asteroid belt, less of a govt, more of a political movement). Someone finds what might be alien life or alien technology (possibly sitting for a billion years in outlets solar system), and the rest is what happens to humans in the wake of that.

The tech itself gets into possible collective consciousness, planet-sized carbon crystal data storage and quantum entanglement. Along with things like worm hole technology and heavily bending (but not really breaking) the laws of physics.

It’s all written with VERY sound scientific thought behind every little nuance of the story and all the tech involved.

It’s not the hardest of sci-fi and ultimately there’s isn’t a ton in the narrative specifically about this, but there’s some really interesting stuff in The Expanse series (book, not show) that touches on this kind of thing.

The premise is really cool which is what interested me enough to read the first book (Startide Rising) which I enjoyed.

Future human race is entering a galactic civilization, where all the space-faring species were “uplifted” by a previous space-faring race. Uplifting essentially means educating, breeding, and enhancing species to the point of our intelligence. Humans in this universe have done this to dolphins and great apes. The other alien species in the series looks down on humans as no one knows who or even if humans were uplifted. The main characters in Startide Rising were humans, dolphins and one chimpanzee, all on a spaceship crashed on an alien world.

I would suggest at least giving the series a shot.

Oh god is that why I’m this way?!

Why this list was ever sealed to begin with is beyond me.

Oh weird, that projecting thing again.

Civil forfeiture laws are absolutely insane in this country. And I truly don’t understand how any of them are constitutional in cases where no serious crime (at least more serious than a seatbelt ticket) has been committed.

Weirdly, I am days fresh from a vasectomy.