Random Dent

Out of curiosity I looked it up and I guess when it was built, the Statue of Liberty cost ~$250,000, which is only about $7.8 million in today’s money. And it costs about $6 million a year to maintain.

Yeah I used to be super addicted to Overwatch 1, but I bailed as soon as 2 came out. I can honestly say I’ve never played it since.

Back when the Queen was still alive, Stephen Fry described her role as being “as if Uncle Sam was a real person.” Meaning, being a sort of personification of the country without actually holding any real power over it. I’m not a huge fan of the British monarchy, but if we have to have one I’m at least glad it’s limited to being essentially a powerless tourist attraction.

It sucks that we all have to live through it, but I feel like the current times in the US are a really interesting test of the sort of limits of democracy. By that I mean, what happens if the majority of the population just willingly elects the worst person they can find, and at the same time every check, balance, rule and tradition that everyone assumed would keep things on the rails just… turn out to be kind of bullshit because nobody is willing to enforce them?

It raises all sorts of weird questions, like at a certain point is it okay to overrule democracy in some way to protect the country and the people, even if the majority seem to want to just run the bus off a cliff? And what about the people who didn’t vote for this? Are they expected to just go down with ship or have to leave their home country altogether? An informed and engaged populace is vital to a healthy democracy, but what if enough people are uninformed/propagandized enough that they just willing take down the whole country? Does the rest of the world just let it implode?

I have no real answers to these questions, but I’d love to be studying this whole situation from like 100 years after it’s all over.

Also even “Today” is not a happy song lol. From Wikipedia:

After the release and minor success of the band’s debut album, Gish, the Smashing Pumpkins were being hyped as “the next Nirvana”. However, the band was experiencing several difficulties at the time. Drummer Jimmy Chamberlin was undergoing an increasingly severe addiction to heroin; James Iha and D’arcy Wretzky had recently broken up their romantic relationship; and Billy Corgan had become depressed to the point of contemplating suicide and plagued by writer’s block. Corgan recalled that “after the first album, I became completely suicidal. It was an eight-month depression, give or take a month, and I was pretty suicidal for about two or three months.”

…

The dark, ironic lyrics of “Today”, describing a day when Corgan was feeling depressed and suicidal, contrast with the instrumentation. Michael Snyder of the San Francisco Chronicle said that the song is “downright pretty as rock ballads go” but that “Corgan manages to convey the exhilaration and tragic release he seeks.” Corgan told Rolling Stone that “I was really suicidal … I just thought it was funny to write a song that said today is the greatest day of your life because it can’t get any worse.” Corgan later compared writing the lyrics of “Today” and “Disarm” to “ripping [his] guts out”.

Yeah that’s honestly the main thing for me too. It’s $120 Canadian for the Deluxe version. My price point is like… $30, especially since by all accounts it’s not even finished.

• Does nazi salute multiple times at presidential inauguration and instead of apologising…
• Makes a series of nazi-related jokes
• Makes a speech at a far-right rally in Germany
• Retweets that “Hitler didn’t murder millions of people”
• Is apparently shocked that people are angry at him now.

Bit of a weird thought, but I wonder also if they see Mozilla as a sort of controlled opposition too? As in, keep Firefox around so they don’t get in trouble over antitrust or something like that?