CDs suffer from different forms of degradation. I wouldn't trust a 50 year old CD if there was one as I do a vinyl record I picked.

Using the same master a CD would always sound better than a vinyl record, but I and many people would always take vinyl over a CD because of the praxis. Set and setting is important, in the end. Vinyl is more demanding in every aspects, it imposes more care and respect for what you're listening to.

The oldest CDs are from 1982 (43 years old) and are still working perfectly fine.

I don't have any that old, but I have some from the late 1980s which my dad bought. All still fine, my parents listen to them in the car.

I won't bother getting into trying to demonstrate Medieval art doesn't "suck", it's not worth dignifying. But you should be aware you might be placing too much emphasis on painting and drawing specifically as opposed to other art forms.

Fine, good point. Medieval paintings and drawings suck, but the pottery may have been incredible.

Yeah, why sacrifice dignity by providing a counterexample? Dignity is important.

Isn't the actual topic of this thread specific to painting? On sculptures, but the skillset is painting; you can't paint a marble bust with a chisel.

That reason is self-hype. The Renaissance was dreadful in comparison to the Late Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period in much of Europe.

The margins on memory for Apple were so absurd that they should have more ability to eat up the costs, if they wanted to. I'm assuming they would, to the extent that they're a device company more so than a service company yet.

I don't think Apple ever adjusts the price of existing products, for better (eating the cost of part shortages) or worse (over-charging for old parts). The real test will be what they do with upcoming products.

I can't find specific examples, but I'm almost certain they have at some points in the past adjusted pricing of upgrades mid-cycle.

Apple raised iPad Pro prices in 2017 by $50 to address NAND memory chips price hikes from the vendors: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/13/ipad-pro-price-increase.html

Apple also raised iPad Pro prices when OLED screens were introduced.

That's a new product, not a raise of he existing product as is discussed.

France has a long standing program for artists and entertainment technicians and while the niceties can get complex the big idea is that the State guarantees a minimum level of income if you work a minimum amount of hours per year for artistic purposes (507 I think), including teaching and rehearsals.

> We humans are predisposed to see anthropomorphic shapes in things.

This was sculpted by other modern humans.

Indeed. People 12000 years ago were literally just like people today.

The Wikipedia article links to the IAEA recovery video where you can more or less see everything : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5T0GkoKG8

Psychedelics aren't physiologically addictive and don't induce the same economics as what you'd generally think as "recreational drugs". There are no LSD or DMT cartels.

Maybe not exactly the same, but plenty of people do buy LSD and other hallucinogens from illegal sources.

The lack of cartels are perhaps a reflection of the lack of the international supply chains etc. associated with drugs like cocaine and heroin?

It's a reflection of the lack of money. Those substances are comparatively cheap, not habit forming and don't build up long term tolerance. A lot of them are pretty easy to DIY (though not LSD-25). The typical LSD user will buy a $10 blotter once in a while. The money flow is not worth mentioning in the broader scope of illegal substances trafficking.

> The lack of cartels are perhaps a reflection of the lack of the international supply chains etc.

No. Most of Europe (apart from Scandinavian states, Belarus and Russian Federation, I believe) has access to legal LSD prodrugs. Not analogs but a LSD-25 molecule with attached [it changes] something group which is detached after ingestion, making the ingested substance "the real thing". These do not pass the LSD/DMT Ehrlich test[0]. AFAIK citizens of at least a few US states can as well fully legally obtain such compounds from up north.

So no - lack of LSD cartels is not a result of the lack of international supply chains. As GP stated - it's because these substances have a very low addiction potential.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ehrlich%27s_reagent

Tangential, but some people have indeed reported batches of 1P-LSD passing that test.

I'm extremely tired of this attitude among French people that amounts to systematically shoot down any attempt at improvement with cynicism.

It doesn't come from nowhere, though. It results in having had to tolerate the French bureaucracy, French lies, empty promises, and French way of (not) doing things for decades.

That's just governments being governments. I've spent 50% of my life in Sweden and 50% of my life in Spain, and everywhere it's the same. "had to tolerate the $NATION bureaucracy, $NATION lies, empty promises, and $NATION way of (not) doing things for decades" probably applies to most countries in the world, I know it applies for the countries I've lived in at least, and seemingly France too. Heard the same about every home country of my friends also.

Governments just move really slowly. Best we can do is cheer for the efforts we think will improve things, even if it'll take years, and protest about efforts we think are harmful.