It's different than campaign contributions. When I see a campaign ad I acknowledge that it's a campaign ad. What's devious about the bot armies is it gives the false appearance that my neighbors hold certain beliefs when they do not.
The wealthy (who do most of the polluting) will push any extra cost in taxes onto consumers and then continue polluting. The only way that a tax would help at all is if it were so expensive that many people were forced to stop driving and even then the usefulness is reduced by the fact that major polluters often have plenty of money and will insist on pushing any extra costs to them onto others. That means no reduction in the number of semi-trucks on the road, no reduction in, or penalty for, the pollution they cause, and the consumers getting sick by the dust are now also getting screwed by higher prices.
You start out by measuring tires with some metric, like "pounds of of particulate released pe 50,000 miles when loaded at x", and tax tires with a worse rating higher. Them you're gonna have to keep an eye on additives to tires, because it's always possible someone will find something that makes tires wear slower but the particles more toxic.
I'm in the NixOS camp, and while there have been a few fiddly bits the community support has been excellent. It and Arch have a following among more skilled users so I imagine that factors in.
s/skilled/willing if not happy to fart around in their os config rather than doing actual work/
That's all fine but if I've learned anything in 20 years of using Linux it's to stick to the beaten path. It's rarely worth deviating (to me). There be dragons
It's fun to mess around but we should manage expectations. It likely won't be trouble free.
I turned on the radio for kicks a few weeks ago, just to see what it was like nowadays.
Ads. It's all ads. Like 10 minute blocks of ads interleaved with radio hosts reading promo weather and promo traffic, followed by ads, then maybe a song. Then more ads.
Check out a listener-powered station such as KEXP at 90.3 (Seattle) or 92.7 (SF/Oakland). If you live outside of these regions they stream at KEXP.org or on their mobile app. You can also listen to the last two weeks of shows at https://www.kexp.org/archive/.
While I’m a long time fan of KEXP and KCRW, I just can’t say enough good things about KYRS. It’s a local broadcaster with dozens of eclectic shows by volunteer DJs who lovingly curate music and content. It’s broadcast out of our central library downtown and has a rather unreliable radio tower that had a tendency to go down during big storms. The programming is brimming with enthusiasm and positive energy, and has helped me discover music that simple wouldn’t get played anywhere else. I love how human the DJs are, they sometimes ramble, or miscue a track, maybe wander a bit far from the mic. It feels completely organic and in stark contrast with your average media in 2024. Check out their stream on https://kyrs.org
I've listened to plenty of listener powered stations. They don't have ads. Just weeks of effectively ads when they are begging for donations. I'd rather have an ad.
Plus every listener powered station I've ever listened to has tons of shows I don't care about or even tolerate. Streaming doesn't have the same issue. Just as an example: your KEXP appears to play country, jazz, and electronic, reggae, and metal. I think a lot of people aren't going to be interested in all of those options.
I listen to KUTX and KEXP and appreciate that there are shows hosted by different DJs that play different genres at different times of the day, and week.
On Friday afternoons KUTX has had a old school dance show.
I don't really listen to funk or disco but I always enjoyed the energy of that show on Fridays, and have come to associate it with the weekend and get excited when it's on
I'm not interested in everything KUTX plays, but I'm way more interested in the variety they offer and the chance to discover new artists like Adrian Quesada, JUNGLE, or Khruangbin, who I otherwise never would have discovered, than I am in whatever twenty year old mainstream dreck is on iHeartRadio's single-genre no DJ shuffle broadcast
> I don't really listen to funk or disco but I always enjoyed the energy of that show on Fridays, and have come to associate it with the weekend and get excited when it's on
I had the same experience when I regularly listened to wfmu. The human connection is a really wonderful quality of broadcast radio.
ASCAP/BMI charge radio stations a lot for a license to play music. Spotify's licensing costs are pennies for the same reach as a local radio station. It's no surprise that the expensive distribution channel is packed with ads.
Having lived abroad for some years, I can attest that this is definitely worse in the US than elsewhere. There's definitely ads (less host-read promos, maybe), but it does not seem so overwhelming. I noticed the difference quite drastically once I moved back.
Maybe it depends on the station? Classical California (KDFC) has few ads. Also, since classical music are relatively long, you get fewer interruptions between songs.
No FM radio station outside of a college campus has ever succeeded without ads and any form of media that I cannot pay for and receive ad-free is trash to me.
And as far as college radio goes, I'm don't need a new pothead to tell me how revolutionary Kind of Blue is every time the old one graduates.
Even public radio has ads. They use a fancy word instead of "ads" though back when I dumped any form of media from which I could not banish ads Archer Daniels Midland was one of public radio's largest sponsors... for... reasons.
> No FM radio station outside of a college campus has ever succeeded without ads and any form of media that I cannot pay for and receive ad-free is trash to me.
Quite a few public radio stations in Europe don't have ads. They're paid by taxes and you receive them ad-free.
In the US there is a requirement to make “public service announcements” every so often. Most of them are pre-written in a book by the board and you just read them.
I found one about the nutritional benefits of pork rinds and another about the versatility and utility of duct tape and just read those. Many of them were clearly commercial in nature. I forget if we were allowed to make our own.
I recently discovered an independent station in my town that has no ads, and real local DJs that play whatever the hell they feel like. I assume it's run as a labor of love. The music is refreshingly diverse. Deep cuts, artists I've never heard of, and popular songs from long ago that don't easily fit into a genre like "classic rock."
"And as far as college radio goes, I'm don't need a new pothead to tell me how revolutionary Kind of Blue is every time the old one graduates."
lol. yes. I am a dj on college radio and i hear & see this all the time. It's mildly amusing, but it also makes me the "wierd critical guy," because I have a deeper knowledge of music than them.
But you might be missing the fact that college radio isn't all college students. It's just public radio.
Independent/college radio was full of music (even if you didn't care for it) that was curated by people that gave a damn. They are/were better than whatever your algo thinks it can do.
I feel like basically all I listen to is human-made playlists and recommendations from humans? RYM might be a good place for you to start, but you can also just do the obvious thing of starting from a couple playlists you like and finding other playlists by the same people. Eventually you'll find people who seemingly do this full-time.
Really weird for me to see people talking about how bad "the algo" is. Do people just open up Apple Music or Spotify and tell it "find stuff for me to play"? I know that's a thing it will do, but it never occurred to me that I'd actually want it to do that.
>Do people just open up Apple Music or Spotify and tell it "find stuff for me to play"? I know that's a thing it will do, but it never occurred to me that I'd actually want it to do that.
I do this with Apple Music.
And, to be honest, "the algo" has been really good. The "create a station" feature has introduced me to a few dozen artists at least.
There are an endless number of playlist mixes on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Music. I usually go for the YouTube ones because that will introduce me to music I’ve never listened to before, such as this one I discovered some some 5 to 6 years ago I still pull up when I want to listen: https://youtu.be/DbHa-pllnDU
If you want human curated music, you can have that. If you want an algo-driven mix, you can have that too. I flip between both and playlists I put together for myself.
I'd posit that at least part of those better sources might still get some of their recommendations from a station from somewhere even if you don't realize it.
Radio does convey a sense of locality and connection that nothing else quite replaces for me (including web radio).
There's something unique about browsing the FM (or AM, where still available) in an unknown place, seeing whether you can still get the same station the next day on a road trip etc, and knowing that some people in the general area are listening to the exact same thing at the same time.
Long distance listening on shortwave can also be quite fun, although fewer and fewer countries are still active there. It's still fascinating to hear your home news an ocean away with just a small wire, a handheld radio, and no network whatsoever!
Obviously I wouldn't trade Spotify for it, but I'd still be sad to see it go.
I didn't pose a dichotomy. I said one thing is better than the other. If enough people disagree, the crappier thing will survive regardless. I don't think they do, though, which is why terrestrial radio is dying.
The implied dichotomy being "for enough people, streaming is so much better than radio that they'll completely forego radio", or maybe "see, even you prefer Spotify over radio".
But that's not how it works. Even I, a single person, can very frequently listen to Spotify and occasionally listen to radio. I don't have to trade one for the other completely!
> If enough people disagree, the crappier thing will survive regardless. I don't think they do, though, which is why terrestrial radio is dying.
Is it really dying, or stabilizing at a lower-than-before-Spotify-but-non-zero rate? Listening rates in Germany and Austria have been pretty stable over the last 20 years, for example.
> I wouldn't trade Spotify for it, but I'd still be sad to see it go.
Compared to that. Or listening to any Youtube or podcast instead of listening to the radio station hosts prattle on instead of playing the next track.
Nostalgia for radio is like nostalgia for the winter I worked at a cozy cafe at age 17: I have some good memories and every once in a while when I'm stressed at work I yearn for those simpler times... but there's a reason why I will never go back. No need to glorify it just because of some fading attachment to the yesteryears.
Of course you're free to listen to whatever you want, but I'm still happy to tune in to my old home town/country radio station every once in a while (when visiting or via streaming), and I still find their programming quite enjoyable. So it's not abstract nostalgia to me.
I don't think the medium (voice) is what sucked since podcasts are all the rage now. I think the difference (at least for me) is that with podcasts I get much less ads and much less garbage and straight the content I want.
ie: I want a techno beat radio. The traditional radio will keep cutting with ads and worse with someone who thinks I want to hear his voice announcing the song; or cutting to talk about something related/unrelated but that's not what I am looking for.
It may be, but to be fair, I either stream music via Pandora or listen to Podcasts. Sometimes, I'll play specific music I have on my phone. Basically, my phone has replaced every function the car stereo had.
And for long trips, streaming beats terrestrial radio. After an hour or two, you'll have to search for new stations as you leave the range or the previous tower. Then you'd better hope there would be a station you could tolerate in some places.
Podcasts are superior to talk radio. As they're curated by you.
Etc, etc.
The major thing we've lost is the specific curation done by some stations. Top 40 radio is what it is, but some stations existed to play things outside the charts.
It’s not dead. Lots of good stations around. I recommend KYGT-LP out of Clear Creek Colorado. Lots of good stations also broadcast online it’s amazing.
Or maybe the RF leak is what will get noticed as a distress signal so that benevolent aliens can come and rescue us from our pitiful worchless, zitless existence.
I think so too but I'm conflicted. I wouldn't want to give up my infinite jukebox that I have on my phone, but at the same time I think the loss of shared culture is real.
American Graffiti is the movie that first made me think about it. The DJ (Wolfman Jack) is a central character in that movie.
