Star Trek has a long-standing habit of referring to pop culture from the 20th century—Riker playing jazz standards, Tom Paris knowing how to start a Model T, etc. I've gradually realized that this unintentionally has a creepy implication about the world of Star Trek: that there simply isn't any memorable pop culture from the 21st century onwards. I hope that doesn't end up being the case.

The thing that struck me as missing from that piece was rent. So many of the great movements in art and culture came from places where cost of living was way lower than it is now. So much good art, music and culture came out of 70s and 80s Britain because lax squatting laws and unemployment benefit meant you didn't have to be rich to do art. Nowadays it's all posh wankers. See also New York.

The avant garde--the source of the new--doesn't flourish in regressive times or in what we've had since the 1980s: the obsession with wealth and materialism. And it shows in mass media where an unhealthy percentage of new stuff is remakes of one kind or another. See, too, Summer 2024 where the two largest, most lucrative tours were Taylor Swift and Pearl Jam. Both acts are creatively reactionary, that is, possible only because of what preceded them.
The rate we're going it's going to be a long time where the new and different dominates or at least has an audience and is influential.

There is something weird about a mainstream publication (majority-owned by an ex-wife of a founder of a major tech company) asking why art isn't weird. Guys, the call is coming from inside the house. There is interesting stuff all around you. If you are waiting for your overlords to deliver weird art to you...well, that never happened in the first place. Also, the author links to an article claiming cultural progress is at a standstill, but when you click through, the article says the opposite. I am tired of lazy writing.