You don’t need a selfie there, just use the Gimp.

Lol this is brillant

I wonder the same, my theory is that this gesture is used both as a loyalty test and a way to further polarize society.

Making this gesture draws clear lines in society: those who say it was fine, those who say it wasn’t, those who don’t take a stance (ie the media calling it a “controversial gesture” or similar). So Musk & al now have a clearer idea of who stand where. It also cleaves those “for” and those “against” further away, solidifying their base.

Another explanation is this is part of the normalization of extreme rethoric and symbols. I doubt he could have gotten away with it ten years ago; who knows what they’ll be able to do and say in 2035?

Yet another possibility, he did it on a whim and the neo-nazis like Bannon are now seizing the opportunity. It’s unclear how planned this was and how intentional the consequences were.

(And all might be true at once)

It is your opinion town centres are dying from not enough parking space?

This used to be the mainstream opinion back in the sixties, but nowadays basically any “revitalisation” programme will be removing asphalt, because small business health has been shown to be correlated with how well connected the area is to public transport, and how pleasant it is to loiter in.

“4 chords” is a cool mashup but it’s not really a valid point in this conversation.

The songs in “4 chords” don’t use the same 4 chords, because they are higher and lower than that. So you might say they use the same progression, but that’s not true either, because they’re not always constantly in the same order. So the best you can say is “it’s possible to interpret pitch- and tempo-adjusted excerpts of these songs back-to-back”, which isn’t a very strong claim.

In fact there’s a lot of things separating the songs in “4 chords”; such as structure, arrangement, rhythm, lyrics, or production. Another fact is that it’s perfectly possible to use these four chords in a way that you’ve never heard before and would likely find bizarre – it’s a bit of meme, but limitation really can breed creativity.

This isn’t to defend the lack of creativity in the big music industry. But there’s more to it than just saying “4 chords” to imply all musicians do is follow an established grid.