Country music is locked in an ideological valence, it has no room for anything other than right-wing dogma, usually expressed through bro-country anthems of drinking and pretty girls and pick-up trucks. The genre basically kicked out progressive singers like Kacey Musgraves, even as she released multiple critically acclaimed and successful albums. And there isn’t much room for female country artists right now; in 2022 there was one ONE female solo country artist (Miranda Lambert) that managed to crack the top 100 country songs on country radio. Only two others scored hits by recording duets with male country singers. All the rest were male acts. There just isn’t a future for female country artists right now.

Maren Morris has a good voice and great songwriting chops, she already proved she can cross over with “The Middle,” so this seems like a logical move.

Man, this is deeply dystopian. While state and federal regulators are having a conniption about TikTok/ByteDance gathering information on Americans, that same information is hoovered up by all the other social media companies and freely sold by data brokers. The response should be sweeping privacy legislation and regulatory reform, but I have very little confidence that will happen in the near future.

It’s the niche stuff that made Reddit useful. For example, Amazon reviews are no longer trustworthy, but there were really good recommendations in reddit threads about which devices or products worked. The DIY subreddits were incredibly helpful. I got good recommendations for motorcycle tires and ultralight backpacking gear and Android apps and hotels in particular destinations from reddit. I got walkthroughs on how to set up a Plex server or do a particular project with a Raspberry Pi on reddit. With so many subs, there was almost always a thread for what I was looking for. That was the value. I expect it will take a while to rebuild that elsewhere, but I’m sure it will be recreated.