The United States went through a roughly 100 year period or so where conservation efforts were... er, not terribly great. It took about 100 years for humans to shoot an incredibly large passenger pigeon population into extinction, and bison which once numbered millions on the plains was reduced to mere hundreds. Fortunately, in the mid 19th century to early 20th century in particular, people began to notice and started protecting areas. Thank goodness for that, but a large portion of ecosystems did get wiped out (to give one example, roughly 95% of the California redwood forests).
Megafauna do get most of the attention, but a lot of the hidden economic / scientific benefits of maintaining biodiversity I think comes from smaller parts of the ecosystem -- for instance, drug discovery. Or, the widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique for copying DNA... which for all we know is a technique that might not even exist today had preservationists not had the foresight to preserve the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park, where the crucial enzymes for this technique were found.
Unfortunately that period also roughly corresponded with the rise of the middle class and lifting the majority of the population to a level of material comfort that was (at it's peak at least) the envy of the world.
Most of the worst environmental damage today is not happening in the highly developed west, it's happening in the rest of the world that - understandably - doesn't care as much about saving the local animals as it cares about catching up to the material standards of the wealthy world.
Gearslutz.com is, generally speaking, a bit over-focused on gear sometimes (posts about hardware for instance dominate the electronic music forum in a world where software pretty much dominates everything in that department). :)
I think though that this article was focusing more on accessibility, at least, that was my takeaway. There are many sub-genres and scenes of music that might not initially make the most money compared to top slick commercial pop production. In the early 1980s, the initial cost of equipment to make and record certain styles of music could be a barrier of sorts.
To make something like, say, electro in the early 1980s, you would have to purchase... something. A synthesizer and a drum machine / sequencer is probably minimum requirements. Juan Atkins for instance lists his gear for his Cybotron days here [1], it's not "minimal" or "pawn shop" level for sure. Generally speaking, the home studio was still "demo" level recordings in the 1980s (there are exceptions); "Clear" likewise was recorded at a couple of professional studios and mastered at a separate studio.
Not all artists were doing this much, of course. But there is a reason that the sampling drum machines of the late 1980s (Akai MPC 60 and Emu SP 1200) were seen as "democratising"; previously, the barrier of entry to create sampling oriented beats was much higher, and now, all of a sudden, there was a relatively affordable machine that could allow you to do this.
These days, with a laptop, you could probably pretty easily make an electro style track using free or low-cost plugins and DAWs.
You are correct though, that all the gear in the world won't make a difference if the ideas aren't good (and even Mr. Atkins says this himself in that interview, "you don't want to go out and invest in all that gear just to push a couple of preset buttons and make a track that 20 people across the world could have already made."). I just think that the greater affordability and quality of today's equipment allows more artists to realize their vision (and if it also allows more hobby level people to be able to afford to just play around a bit, that's okay too :) ).
It's a conspiracy theory, so even education doesn't always help. Kary Mullis is one example of someone who was smart enough to win a Nobel prize for his work on PCR... but unfortunately later fell into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole for HIV, climate change, etc.
I have read that anxiety issues [1], as well as a personality spectrum called "schizotypy" [2] which in itself can be linked to severe anxiety issues at the heavier end of the spectrum, [3] is linked to the ability to believe conspiracy theories [4]. My guess is that the wide spread of conspiracy theories related material (which COVID-19 has amplified to considerably) boils down to some combination of mental health and other social and/or economic anxieties, and the conspiracy theories really won't go away until some of these anxieties are addressed.
I'm not sure whether this holds much merit in reality as it is purely speculation, but I'd strongly suspect that a great deal of modern popular conspiracy theories are designed and initially propagated by PSYOP groups to influence and control certain aspects of reality for whatever intended purpose (that's kind of the essence or purpose of a PSYOP) - like for example, preventing Bill Gates' eliminating third world poverty or whatever his goals are. Some of his philanthropic work will quite possibly have a snowball effect on a certain areas that some countries won't like which would give rise to misinformation campaigns to sabotage and hinder his work.
They both have in common that they are a technology stock with a familiar name, particularly ones that have had a very good stock market run in the last 10 years.
I agree though that due to what appears to be a bubble, these investments aren't that safe at the moment. It appears that these type of stocks have benefited recently by retail investors entering the market and piling in. ( https://thehill.com/policy/finance/510796-are-trading-apps-p... -- though, as the article points out, the Robinhood investor bubble is smaller than the effect of the Fed's QE etc. ) Under normal valuation, Tesla at this point I don't think would be considered "speculative" -- risky, but not as risky as some. But a P/E ratio of 1000+ even after this recent dip is IMHO pretty difficult to justify.
r/wallstreetbets is pretty unreal to me -- many people are focusing on high-risk options on these heavily valued stocks, and (by the comments) appear to be putting a lot of their "eggs" in only one or two "baskets", to use the popular phrase. It's not ending well for some of them, judging from some of the posts.
Tesla was growing before the crisis. Largely due to their Chinese gigafactory, which is a pretty big deal, since it shows a.) They will be in the good books of China for the time being. Till their eventual tech ripoff at least. b.) They have the potential to gain the same brand value that Apple accrued in China. Definitely don't deserve the current valuation though - I was lucky I happened to be holding some when we bought some after buying my first car.
The kind of options plays on WSB are insane tbh. I don't mind putting my eggs in one or two baskets, as long as they are stocks of steady companies, but options? No way.
I doubt they care much about the "eventual ripoff". Their strategy is to out-pace competitors through innovation. It is the same reason they open sourced almost all their patents.
Megafauna do get most of the attention, but a lot of the hidden economic / scientific benefits of maintaining biodiversity I think comes from smaller parts of the ecosystem -- for instance, drug discovery. Or, the widely used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique for copying DNA... which for all we know is a technique that might not even exist today had preservationists not had the foresight to preserve the Lower Geyser Basin of Yellowstone National Park, where the crucial enzymes for this technique were found.