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Ehhh, some classics started as #1 hits, or the era equivalent.

I'll grant that #1 hits probably aren't a very good metric, because it's just 'whatever is best among what's new lately.' I have a generally low opinion of most 'pop' music that cropped up in the last 10-11 years, and few to no people seem to remember it long after it's gone. Songs with...

AI may be able to replace a lot of mid and low-tier mediocre music, but the thing that makes for #1 hits isn't just technical competency, it's the passion and emotional investment of the singer in what they're engaging with. Hatsune Miku has been around for more than a decade, and while 'she'...

I have absolutely zero fear of AI-generated stories usurping my position as a writer. The difference between good and bad writing is not what tropes are used, how cliche the story is, or what narrative structure you build around. It's whether or not the story has soul, whether or not the...

Mostly. I've known a few others.

Entirely possible. I think all but one of them were deeply committed Christians.

The weird thing is, almost all the artists I've known are either excessively humble, or reasonably modest about their art. Maybe it's just the ones that are more arrogant just make so much more noise they're vastly more visible?

This: Is my first post on this issue. Unless we're taking an absolute line on luxuries, where everything past food, water, and shelter, is a luxury, then no, I have not been focusing on luxuries, though I have included some of them. AC doesn't just make a house/office more pleasant, it makes...

I have never earned as much as much as 18 grand in a year in my life. I know exactly how much increases to food prices hurt, because food is a large part of my small budget. I have gotten by for a long time by living within my means. I have a very good idea how much the cost of living is, and...

I'm not as old as some people here, but being born in the mid-80's, I remember the 90's very well, and the 00's and 10's even better. We are factually materially more prosperous now than we were at the start of the 90's. People have more stuff, better stuff, and stuff nobody had at all. If you...

The 2008 financial crisis was a serious tipping point, and the Trump years have been the only glimpse at economic improvement since. I'd still say we were on an upward arc for 25 out of the last 40 years, but 11 of the last 15 have been a mix of stagnation and decline.

No, it hasn't. Air Conditioning in homes is now standard in the US, large screen TVs are common, only the poorest do not own a desktop, laptop, smartphone, or combination of the above. Cars have more safety features and amenities, the internet exists in general, Microwaves have gone from...

I wouldn't be that harsh to Abhorsen, but I'd certainly say he's a prime example of why the Libertarian party will not amount to anything in this generation.

This is one of the few times I've seen you grossly and completely wrong about something. First off, as other people have pointed out, removing Intellectual Property Rights completely frees large companies to make profit on other people's work with no recourse. You and I might not like the RIAA...

This would be the part of the simulation cycle where they learned to implement that kind of thing.

I think the really interesting thing that will come, is not 'just done by AI' media, but drastically reducing the number of people needed to make a large-scale project. For example, getting good 'skeletal' animation, then having human animators put the 'skin' on the models in ways that don't go...

What I think it will certainly end up doing is producing a 'floor.' Give the bot a few million cycles, and it'll put out a generic piece of media for you. If human creators can't make something better than that, they won't be able to make a profit anymore. Past that, who knows?

'Participation' without a metric for hours included is meaningless. Even before WWII a fair number of women worked part time jobs, and some even full time. This wasn't considered strange. The big cultural shift in the latter half of the 20th century was the denigration of the 'stay at home...

This is also when women becoming employed full time started to become a cultural norm. Don't underestimate the effects that roughly doubling the labor force has on wages.

It's hard for me to fathom just how comprehensively wrong you are here. Have you been reading too much science fiction lately or something?