These fat bangers are well past the expiration dates on their labels.
- It's always amusing (and almost always disheartening) to watch thinly-disguised partisan-but-self-interested cheerleading, especially regarding elections more than a year out, from the perspective of the "opposition" party. Right now, that amusement is primarily concerning the Jackasses (although locally it concerns the Heffalumps) — especially the refusal to engage with fundamental factors, instead focusing on minutiae. It's fascinating to see "analysis" of Mamdani's primary victory and successful candidates' obsession with "image" that won't engage with the primary problem both parties have: The widespread near-senility of party gatekeepers and candidates. Unless and until the party mechanisms agree that "retirement age means from elective office, too," we're going to have these problems — and that's not happening any time soon, as internal advancement to "gatekeeper" status, not to mention "party consensus candidate" status, is almost entirely by seniority. (And I'm saying this as well within that "retirement age" demographic.)
Militaries are frequently, and rightly, criticized for being prepared to fight the last war, and for selecting leadership from those successful in the war before that. Even out here in a state so blue it looks like a continuation of the ocean on a map, our "senior senator" is in her sixth term, is about a decade older than I am, and shows no sign whatsoever of stepping aside (which would require generation-skipping!). But nobody is making Castro-going-on-forever jokes about incumbents. Yet.
- This is also reflected within the arts community, especially regarding public access to the arts. Whether based on distribution of copies (even of "newer" acceptable forms of works) or nineteenth-century perspectives on "copying" applied to actually faithful (probable) copies, it's almost entirely being shaped by people too old to be innovative creators who can support themselves (let alone families). Even worse, most of those who control the arts aren't qualified to engage in them — often not even as amateurs and dilletantes.
Lurking in the background remains the usual problem: cui bono? Certainly not anyone working in areas not already considered "mainstream" — and the demographics of that particular list of "nontraditional" means of trying to profit in the arts are cringeworthy at best. Nor, at the margins, are parallel problems that ignore "age".