it includes a halt on publishing scientific articles as well, so there is a currently a moratorium on federally-sponsored research/knowledge being open source (which is like…the whole point of having federally-sponsored research)

I am at one of these agencies. This includes a pause on scientific publications to journals

Far more concerning is the fact that anybody (or country, company, etc) on the planet with enough money can now directly bribe the us president through crypto

Same! It is definitively unconstitutional and the us gov just pushed it through anyway (with even supreme court backing it up?!) Shit is crazy, and yet I see a lot of ‘no big loss’ type comments on it.

I imagine merch sales are not insignificant, maybe? I see some artists selling special items on occasion like vinyl presses. Do musicians on tiktok with lots of views make money? I’m not sure how that works but it seems popular