I read your other post and thought I’d give you some insight about why you shouldn’t pursue another degree, especially in music. I did multiple degrees in music and I have never worked professionally in music. In fact, by the time I completed the program I hated playing my instrument and didn’t play for almost a decade.

The only reason to attend a university for music is if you need/want the credential or the ensemble experience. One uncomfortable truth is that most freshman piano students have over a decade of training before they start college. If you aren’t ready for the entrance audition now, then music school isn’t the way to go.

You can take private lessons (often from the same professors you’d have in school) for instrument technique, theory, repertoire, and ear training. You don’t need the university for that.

One thing people don’t like to talk about when it comes to music programs is that they are lifestyle degrees as much as they are intellectual degrees. There’s the classist element, the physical element (as a pianist or guitarist you can’t use your hands for any physical labor), and the financial element (instrument maintenance, performance quality instruments, travel, etc.).

Take the investment advice from others in this thread to set yourself up and then find some private teachers. You don’t need a degree to study music.

Edit: DM me if you want to talk about this more.

I can understand that and how it would be somewhat comforting to know you have a purpose. The thing that trips me up about this particular thought experiment is that once the realization sets in that one has implanted memories then naturally one has to doubt every single thought, feeling, and memory. That instability of self is terrifying to me (not to say that I have any way to confirm that I’m currently not a replicant).

The definition of bootlegging is so broad that I think you can even legally be charged with bootlegging if you source your alcohol products for sale from anywhere other than a distributor, e.g. buying in bulk from Costco or a discount liquor place to stock the bar.

In general, I think it typically means illegal transport and sale, since not too many people have historically trusted moonshiners or developed a taste for moonshine. There was that weird moment in the mid-2010s where reality TV caused a huge interest in moonshine, but that was just distillers realizing that they could capitalize on a trend by making unaged 80-proof corn liquor, throwing some cinnamon sticks and apple slices in a Mason jar, and calling it “moonshine.”

This is an interesting take, I guess.

To fill you in, the replicants in Blade Runner are banned from Earth and are typically used in extremely dangerous lines of work like asteroid mining and space warfare, or sex work and mundane industrial labor. They aren’t considered people and are literally corporate property (i.e. slaves).

I personally side with the replicants who came back to earth to demand their makers “correct” the genetic time bomb they encoded into their DNA.

I’ve always interpreted “small government” as single-party with lots of privatization of government services instead of small government that stays out of people’s lives.

It might be possible that dice took over in usage because most people are never introduced to the concept of dice being singular. Very few mainstream dice based games from my childhood used less than two dice: Monopoly, Yahtzee, Farkle, Risk, Parcheesi, Backgammon. Trouble is the only one I remember that used a single die and that game didn’t even let you roll it.

The Garden of Eden is in Missouri!

Only because their basic needs are already met by the income of, you know, their regular professional job.

Musk’s obsession with an author like Heinlein, who wrote several books about a multidimensional polygamous space time sex cult with a dash of incest, makes a lot of sense.

Every Chick-fil-a I have ever been to was exceptionally clean and staffed entirely by white teenagers, typically girls. They also have a simple menu and good advertising. I can’t put my finger on it, but something about “clean” stores staffed by young white girls appeals to Chick-fil-a’s demographics. White southern religious people love Chick-fil-a.

It’s pronounced Brutananadilewski!

The Man Who Fell to Earth was a documentary!?

The square Swiss flag works well because of the cross. If it were oblong, it would look unbalanced with the cross in the middle.

I’d take out the 13 stripes from the US flag and just use the naval jack.

In general I think any flag that is using seals, crests, or text should probably have a redesign, not necessarily to remove the icons, but to simplify them. (US state flags are the worst offenders here.)

Belize has a flag that looks like it could be the flag of a midwestern state.

The flag of Cyprus is just an outline of the island which, I feel, relies too much on cartography for its symbol. What if you’d never seen a map?

You’d take Scotland out, but leave Northern Ireland?

I had a century egg once. Like a hundred rotten eggs suspended in a salty pond-muck jelly. My body literally refused to swallow it.

Oh. Oh, no.

Remember when I said that you have been thinking about this a lot more than they probably have? This is exactly what I mean.

If you actually love this person and you think they may not feel the same way, then what do you think will happen when you drop this bomb on them?

A lot of times the need to tell someone you love them is a selfish act while unconditionally loving someone is a selfless act.

Meditate on why you need to tell them.

Whatever you decide to do, remember this: You have spent a lot more time thinking about this than they have.

Keep it simple, don’t overwhelm them, don’t talk about the far future, and don’t have this conversation in a place where they can feel trapped or coerced.

I’ll respond to this because I’m a father and have observed a lot of things about other parents that I never noticed or paid attention to before becoming one. There are some seriously selfish-ass people who treat their kids like accessories or tea-cup dogs. On the other end of the spectrum, there are people who treat their kids as franchises or property and view the kid in terms of ROI.

Some people only find value in themselves as mothers or fathers (“I’m the goddamn pater familias!”) where the role is often more important than the kids. While the act of parenting can be selfless, there is a performative element to it that takes over some people’s identities and personalities (clothing that advertises your “parent-ness,” name-brand clothing, chic and fashionable accessories, strollers that cost as much as a used car, humongous houses and baby suites, paying for full- or part-time help, excessively documenting “baby’s” life and sharing it widely beyond friends and family, et cetera and ad nauseam).

Now, there’s another take on selfishness I’ve picked up on from anti-natalist threads which is specifically tied to the concept of agency: a child has no agency regarding the circumstances of its birth. The fact that two people can intentionally (or even worse, unintentionally) choose to procreate is viewed as immensely selfish since it denies the created being of all choice. Parents often “want” to have a kid; but there is often no “need” (biological imperative notwithstanding). Hence, a selfish act.

Another expression of selfishness is that some parents cannot help themselves from creating clones. From birth, the kid is a reflection of the parents’ identity, interests, politics, hobbies, and media fandoms. The political or religious parts are especially disturbing—no kid has a valid opinion of the election and has no solid foundation for belief in a deity. Raising kids with values is one thing, but creating little mouthpieces that just repeat parents’ opinions is another. There is also the chance that a parent will try to live vicariously through their child and push them into sports or academics so that they can fix their mistakes or relive the past.

All said, some people make really shitty parents. And I don’t mean shitty people—there are lots of pleasant and thoughtful people who are fucking terrible caregivers. I think that some people felt too much social, cultural, or religious pressure to be honest with themselves and stay away from parenting. I think that nothing says selfish like knowing that you shouldn’t do something but do it anyway because you know that you will benefit from it in some way (financially, socially, etc.).