Here's some very recent writing that will help you understand what's happening:

https://www.organizedmoney.fm/p/how-private-equity-is-drivin...

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/data-centers-arent-the-ma...

Mysteries abound.

The .eu branch that card zero criticized seems to be based in Amsterdam, the capital of the Netherlands (an EU member). Or am I missing something?

I think people are questioning the "Archive" part, not the "Europe" part of the name

The wealthy parts of Mexican cities are substantially more well-managed and upscale than the poor parts of American cities.

Of course, on average Mexico is poorer, has a lower GDP per capita, and so on. But the level of ignorance among Americans is astonishing sometimes.

Yeah that's "the government and people part", it's talking about the average. Of course the rich enclaves in Mexico are doing better than the average, you can find that in many places on the planet that are on average terrible places to live. But taking that into account makes it harder to crow about the ignorance of Americans, as it's so historically fun to do.

Yeah but the guy said Mexicans are incapable of fixing “anything” in their country. Which makes is clear he has no actual connection to what it’s like to be in Mexico.

As someone who has actually done that, and speaks Spanish, and has spent considerable time in over a dozen Latin American countries my impression of Mexico is that it’s one of the wealthier and more advanced countries in the hemisphere and often feels like a borderline first world country on par with Southern European countries like say Greece.

There's no definitely about that at all. The city of Westminster issued a statement that seems fairly clear that they were as surprised as everybody else but are taking steps to protect it.

Yeah, one of my distant friends is a councillor in a borough where Banksy did a mural years back and it was definitely much more about ensuring the standing "Send in workers to paint over any graffiti" reaction doesn't happen than some sort of "That's nice, the committee which issued the permit for this didn't tell me when it would happen". So far as she told me she heard about it the same way most people did, it was on the local news that morning.

Actually it’s a great example of something different, where the person who was original and eventually becomes ubiquitous and groundbreaking and widely imitated to the point where it's hard to understand just how original they actually are.

There are many examples of the same thing: Andy Warhol and the soup cans and screen-printed portraits with different color backgrounds or Led Zeppelin and English folk hard rock songs that have hobbits in them are two of them.

Eventually, it's hard to even process their work in the context of how predictable and trite it seems to be a few decades later.

This is exactly what everybody said about rap and drum machines and sampling when I was growing up in the mid to late 80s.

They were right and wrong. A lot of it was really formulaic bullshit, and much of it doesn't hold up at all. But it also spawned one of the most creative and exciting periods in music history.

Will this be the same? It feels like it won't, but that's how things feel in general because I'm old. So who knows?

Not a valid comparison, I feel. I may be hindsight, but rap and electronic music came from vibrant underground scenes and to many critics and music fans of the time was seen as at least interesting and at best ground breaking.

AI music on the other hand comes not from the underground, but from corporations. You'll be hard pushed to find any critics or music connoisseurs singing its praises.

It's hindsight. At the time it was a pretty mainstream opinion that it wasn't music at all, just talking over fake drums and stolen copies of other people's songs.

The culture changes.

How would this even work though? I'm a real musician and producer/engineer. I've gone on tour, put out several albums, and so on. I've also been involved in the music business and worked with a bunch of really well-known artists.

I also have been playing with Suno like everyone else, and have made a whole bunch of songs that I think are hilarious that I've shared with my friends, where I write all the lyrics and detailed notes about what I want the song to be, and then AI does the rest.

I'm not going to post it to Spotify, but if I did, what am I on their list? Am I verified or not? I'm a real musician. I have rooms full of musical instruments that I can play, and I can send pictures of them, but how does that relate to this policy of theirs?

Yeah, as I mentioned in another comment, this should be at the track level, not artist. Artist makes no sense. Only a matter of time before MJ's estate starts cranking out some new tracks under his name.

just don't share the slop not that hard? share your actual art

Yeah, of course. That's my plan.

But that's just a personal choice. If I made something amazing and I wanted to launch it, I would. And I'm still lost as to how Spotify would classify me under these rules.

That’s not the underlying reason.

I am a practicing Zen Buddhist and I wouldn’t agree with this description, at least not in my experience and the community that I’ve participated in.

Specifically I would say the concepts of “striving” and “intent” aren’t ones I would use.

What it actually is takes a little more to pin down (famously) but I would consider the concept of surrender to be more applicable. In fact I would say the absence of striving would be a good sign you’re on the right track.

I would consider staring at a wall without intent to be completely compatible with Zen practice.

Ah nice to meet you!

This is where Zen gets tricky and most people drop out.

All spoken words have duality and as a Zen practitioner I’m sure you know the ultimate goal is non duality, so you can never say it directly

But to your point, yes non - striving is the ultimate goal also, but you cannot ever aspire to it without striving in the first place. Being a zen practitioner is all about understanding nuance, so some level of striving is necessary.

The most famous zen trap is trying to not try, which is inescapable and also impossible to explain to a layman. The discipline I speak of is being committed to walking that fine line of trying to induce not trying… for years.

Staring at walls is compatible yes. But true zen is a difficult discipline. We have to be inclusive though, so yea 5 minutes of mindfulness is good if it works for them

i’m not sure but they may be speaking about rinzai zen. watched a few bits and bobs about rinzai and some of the practices are kinda of that “willpower” ilk. dunno, never practiced it, not my vibe.

they definitely were not describing soto-zen tho, that’s for sure.

edit — i find it almost koan-esque that there’s two schools referred to as “zen”, both of which generally dislike the label “zen”, both of which have very different practices and methods.