[–] 2 points 3 days ago (1 child)

Others have already mentioned this, but OP seems to completely miss the fact that USPS is obligated to perform its affordable, uniform-rate deliveries to rural areas.

https://www.ips-dc.org/the-public-postal-service-and-rural-america/

Rural areas account for 88 percent of the geographic area served by the Postal Service, but just 16 percent of the U.S. population.

Some 57 percent of post offices are in rural areas and while they serve a vital purpose, nearly two-thirds of them have not been profitable in recent years.

Given that most of the population lives in cities, it makes sense that competing operations would form to provide services that can be cheaper, faster, and capable of shipping packages that are extra heavy, large dimensions, or require refrigeration. Specifically because these private shippers rely on USPS for last mile delivery or do not service rural areas at all, they are able to operate with much better margins. These companies grow into megacorps because, as OP mentioned, economies of scale. If someone needs to specialty ship something they are going to prefer to use a well-known business with a proven track record that services the widest area. Once a company is servicing an area, it becomes more efficient and therefore profitable to increase deliveries within that area, creating extra incentives for a shipper to grow.

I'm not here to say that USPS is flawless, but it is inherently at a disadvantage for urban delivery due to the losses it incurs to fulfill its obligation to service the country as a whole.

This is getting long-winded for a showerthoughts response, so I'm just going to link information regarding the additional obstacles USPS faces:

https://govtschemes.org/usps-operational-restructuring-plan-update/

https://govfacts.org/government/federal/independent-executive/usps/understanding-the-biggest-problems-facing-usps/

(I realized after reading that govfacts.org are AI generated articles, but there is good information, so I am still including it)

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if my life trajectory went slightly differently if I discovered them back in 2002 as well.

    Love Gunship, been a fan since their eponymous album (though no such track yet, haha) and I've been listening to Unicorn pretty regularly since its release.

    I haven't heard of Your Inland Empire, but I like their sound from the track you linked. I'll have to check out more of them.

    I don't listen to The Midnight a lot, but they are what immediately come to mind for retrowave with vocals.

    Since we've only discussed artists with vocalists, I'm not going to go too deep into non-vocalist solo artists but I love darksynth, so I gotta give shout outs to Pertubator and Carpenter Brut who are the goats of the genre and have several tracks with featured vocalists. And a much more obscure darksynth artist without vocals I am going to recommend is Orax's Love Kills the Demon as it emotionally vibes closer to TBM than a lot of other things for me.

    A bit more mainstream, Shiny Toy Guns has some similar energy to TBM, more so on their first and third albums, though I guess they've been on hiatus for 10+ years now.

    Let me know if any of this tickle your fancy. I didn't pick out any real goth stuff, but I should have been asleep hours ago, ha

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Oop, I am bad at checking replies.

    Yeah, TBM is criminally underplayed. If they hadn't shown up on a Pandora station for me some 15 or so years ago, I don't know if or when I would have encountered them. Glad you're enjoying them! They have a really unique sound that scratches an itch in my brain that no one else really does.

    I'd be happy to trade music recs as I'm big into retrowave and some goth as well.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago* (5 children)

    This doesn't fit the prompt in a technical sense, but does so thematically:

    The band originally known as Imagica changed their name due to overlap with another artist. For one week they went by Nothing and Nowhere (shared with their first album and a track that would appear on a later album) before settling on their current name, The Birthday Massacre. The Birthday Massacre was the original third track of the Nothing and Nowhere LP, but was renamed Happy Birthday during the band's final name change.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 months ago (1 child)

    Terminator 2 and Baldurs Gate 3.

    A three act story where you jump forward or back in time could be interesting.

    Though I'm not sure how much Terminators add to a D&D setting when there are already dopplegangers.

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