I see, my bad!!!

We're going to see a ton of college & university closures/mergers in the next two decades.

College doesn't make much sense for most folks anymore. The community college -> in-state option is the most feasible, but even then the overall cost can be too steep to be worth it in a ROI sense for a lot of disciplines. Even average COA at Penn State and Temple ('cheaper' in-state options) are ~30k/yr and ~25k/yr, respectively.

There's two big things going on:

1. Wages haven't kept up with the skyrocketing cost of education. Median income has barely improved in the last 20 years while costs are up something like ~150-200%. When the, "you need to go to college or you'll be a loser!" narrative started 30 years ago going to school wasn't really that much of a burden unless one fucked themselves on purpose (e.g. expensive private or out-of-state public). It simply is not financially worth it to attend school for a lower-paying or even normal-paying career path. While it wasn't always the best idea - it was at least manageable because the cost wasn't extreme.

2. Kids are more privy today about the impact a large amount of student debt can have on them. This means less enrollment across the board in humanities (art/music/film/philosophy/history/etc.). It also means less enrollment at the myriad of smaller, (varyingly) more expensive schools that don't carry an explicit benefit from attending. Like Harvard (etc.) can be worth the cost in some cases, but an equivalently priced school (like Cabrini) that doesn't carry the same resume benefit is not. Years ago kids were just signing away to ~$100k in debt because they were told that they had to and it'd work out, but now they know it won't work out.

Unless there is major reform in higher education cost and/or government action to give average Americans way better wages a bunch of higher ed is fucked. We have too many colleges/universities that cost way too much, and everyone is realizing most of them won't do shit for them besides saddle them with insurmountable debt.

edit: I scrolled two inches down the page after commenting and saw /u/AbsentEmpire saying pretty much this, but more succintly, lol - sorry for the spam

Yes, but highly competitive universities have much larger financials. Harvard's total endowment is ~$50 billion. UArts' endowment is ~.108% the size. The president of a struggling university with poor financials has no business being paid ~$700k unless they are doing a phenomenal job at stopping the bleed and setting the institution back on the right track.

That being said endowment isn't really the best thing to defer to as the funds in them are all earmarked for specific purposes (i.e. this amount goes to aid, this goes to a cancer lab, this to club sport thing, etc.) - but it gets the point across.

There's a big middle ground, too - there are a lot of people who can start decent ideas but can't finish them. They'll find someone to work with to finish the tracks for less $ than just buying them tunes outright.

The average ticket buyer doesn't really care who makes the music as long as they like it, unfortunately.

ah cool, I see - thanks for sharing. I appreciate the perspective

It isn't really common for people to pick up a PhD for work. All of the people I know were just really interested & passionate in the subject. If they ended up with industry jobs they either burned out getting their PhD, disillusioned with academia, or just got a ludicrous offer (to still work on interesting stuff)

If someone wanted to just grind out a PhD for potential work opportunities with no interest in what a PhD is meant for they'd have to have a top 0.01% willpower lol

Except for highly specialized roles a company is, for the most part, totally fine if a regular candidate pulls away from an offer. If a candidate has a company pull away from an offer they may fall behind on their mortgage, go into debt, or end up homeless. You renege on an offer and the company will suffer the consequences of just... hiring the next person on their list of 500.

This equal responsibility power dynamic between employer/employee does not exist. Also read the room. Guy is venting about getting fucked over, and you're like -- "you'd do the same if given the opportunity, bro" - be serious

This is repeated a lot on Reddit, but fee-only planners aren't the 100% better thing for every case. Both options have their pros/cons.

The fee-only planners can be expensive (if they are good), and although the idea is to eliminate conflict-of-interest, they are still possibly biased in keeping you as a client. There are a million different ways to justify a financial decision as being in the best interest of a client, and if they do make a mistake (which happens - it is finance), they aren't liable for it unless they are grossly negligent or obviously malicious. They may also not recommend riskier moves that someone may be comfortable with making. If one does want life-insurance or anything like that they won't sell it to you either - but they'll refer you outwards. They are the better option for the average joe/jane/person (modest income/assets) looking for direction on long-term planning, though.

While the commission crew has a ton of scammers (like the ones mentioned in this thread), there are good ones, too - and if they are legitimate they are biased in keeping their managed accounts healthy as when their clients make more so do they. Any commission based advisor or group worth their salt won't be ramming whole life insurance down one's throat. Big money groups & institutions or higher net-worth individuals/families almost always have their money managed by something with a % fee structure.

A fiduciary is probably better for someone with a more limited (but not bad - using one doesn't make you 'bad') understanding of personal finance/saving/investing - with the usual mortgage, 401k/IRA/etc., some debt, some savings, etc. A fund or manager with a % fee structure is usually better for folks with more assets than the usual. Dunno which one OP is - you'd be surprised at how much money some people can just have sitting around they don't know what to do with.

Yep, my first job's official internal title was 'Application Developer' with a F500/telecom (in a data heavy, R&D type org). I put Software Engineer on my resume/linkedin as did everyone else. Eventually they modernized the titles after I left IIRC. I felt like 'Application Developer' made me seem like I was building Microsoft Access reports (etc.) instead of what I was actually doing.

Definitely don't use titles that have weight (senior/lead/manager/vp/director/etc. or II if you're a I) if you aren't one or don't say you're an eng/dev if you're doing BI or more network admin stuff - but if you're building software with a role like, 'Technology Analyst' or 'Programmer' I think it's 100% fine to call yourself an eng/dev.

No they won't - this is the industry now. Having a social media presence is the easiest way to be marketable and to sell tickets to shows. Labels, booking agents, and promoters all know this.

If anything it is better for an aspiring act. I personally do think it sucks and it should only be about the music - but it was never really like that anyways. Finding success before this social media era was either winning the lottery with getting discovered (which really didn't happen all that much) or being connected in the right places. Building a social media presence is a way for an independent artist to market themselves and find success without having to have a bunch of cool connections or rely on a 1-in-10000 chance of someone giving them a shot off of a demo. Even soundcloud shit was rigged back in the day - people were doing payola with giant repost networks.

Sure there are a bunch of fake (but successful) influencer types who are getting booked with shit music but those acts have always existed - they're just more visibly obvious now. They were just ghost-produced industry plants before.

yeah, overall it sucks - I think these stores are great little cultural boosts for whatever communities they are in. I remember going to them as a kid and loving it, so it does make me a bit sad that kids today won't experience that as much. Probably some fault on myself for shopping elsewhere too - I guess I assumed they'd always be around so bought elsewhere. Changing of the times I guess.

I mean yeah fair. I'm not the biggest in-person comic guy. I do have ~200 or so issues (and more graphic novels) but a lot of it is from internet ordering, yard sale finds, or cons. I'm also not a big manga guy at all so biased perspective there. I made sure to salt my comment with a fair bit of, "I don't really know what I'm talking about so here's my assumption" lol

I still do think my general statement holds true where those who'd buy in person in the city just aren't around locally as much anymore. I'd like to hear from someone in the manga community about how common it is to shop in-person, collectors value, etc on their perspective on this

My assumption is that comic book readers are trending older and older every year - so the market in the city is drying up a bit as older folks move out and newer ones come in every year. Newer kids are trending more towards manga/anime and less towards superman & batman. Two minutes of looking up stats (though I don't know how accurate this is) seems to suggest something like this. This data seems kinda fucked (and probably so is my 'analysis'), anyways -

Manga looks like a huge chunk of the market (53%) - but the stores I've been in here haven't had a ton of it. I've seen way more superhero comics / graphic novels, though allegedly 'traditional' US comics are only at 6% of market share.

I can't imagine Boomers (~25% of the market) are reading a lot of Manga over Marvel/DC/etc., so it seems these stores in the city are mostly carrying merchandise that the younger generation isn't as into and that the boomers aren't around to buy. Looks like Philly has ~66% of people under age 44.

20 years ago comic book stores were probably doing way better because a lot of the folks who grew up reading them then lived in the city, but a lot of them have since moved to the suburbs - and the kids turning of age who always replaced them are now reading manga instead.

I'd imagine the internet and manga having less of a collector culture has some impact as well.

yeah for sure, maybe one day they'll invent silent construction tools lol

When I've had to sleep during the day I've found success with putting 'brown noise' (more low, mid frequencies than white noise or rain audio) on a speaker on some lower volume, a fan, then noise cancelling headphones or airpods playing something soothing ('binaural beats', thunderstorm, etc). It doesn't stop the noise from coming in, but I think it makes loud noises less jarring (to me, at least) given the brain is more accustomed to a wider range of frequencies.

IMO the 80% should be spent in the DAW (or whatever hardware / hybrid setup you may have) actually messing around and making music -- then the 20% (or less - depending on where you are in your journey) should be on 'upskilling' - learning new techniques, watching tutorials / producer content, mixing/mastering processes, sound design, bit of theory (if making anything melodic), referencing other artists, etc.

If you spend all of your time making music but never bother to invest some time in learning anything new it'll be harder to improve.

On the other hand if you spend all of your time in the rabbit hole of Youtube content you'll learn about a lot of cool tricks but won't be able to incorporate the things you learn into your production.

iirc IMANU does in his Patreon discord pretty frequently

I've been thinking about getting more into Bitwig myself honestly so whether or not OP gets into it I may, hah. I have it rent-to-own'd on Splice. I appreciate the help!

I don't agree with the guy above's point about being the 'bitwig expert', but I don't think it would be the best for someone brand new to start with Bitwig for the sole reason there isn't a lot of content out there made with it.

If OP is brand new they are going to be spending a lot of time watching tutorials - and it can be confusing for someone to watch tutorials, producer streams, etc. in a different DAW than the one they're in. I remember watching someone working in FL (when I had ableton) like my very first month and it confused the shit out of me.

Bitwig is dope though.

I'd definitely help contribute to development on this (time permitting) if you sent me some details!

here's a cool video oddprophet did where he goes through making tearout guns/stabs with it

i'd say i use it mostly for different distortions on different bands, though I don't make a lot of tearout-y stuff

yeah multipass is a pretty fun thing to mess around with

There are a couple ways to do this -

Kilohearts has a great tool called Multipass - super easy way to do multiband processing. You can get all of the kilohearts stuff for a $10/m rent-to-own program. In this case you'd use Khs flanger inside of multipass on the signal above 200hz.

Another way (though this is specific to Ableton) is to create an audio effect rack. One signal will be your dry, and the other signal will be your low cut flanger. Mix/eq them to taste.

Another way is pretty much the same as the audio effect rack - duplicate the channels and have one be the low-cut flanger and the other the original signal - then mix/eq to taste.

Market is pretty saturated for entry/new-grad/junior level roles in IT/Software Eng (and related)/etc at the moment - plus a lot of places are either slowing hiring or doing layoffs.

With just an associates and no experience you'll have a hard time landing something unless you credential up and/or build a portfolio. I work as a software eng so take my advice with a grain of salt, but if you're looking for IT roles you want certificates like CCNA, Sec+, cloud shit (azure, aws), etc.

/r/ITCareerQuestions probably has a lot better info + people much more knowledgeable than I am

where was it plugged in at???