yonderbarn

Mamdani also has built a substantial war chest – with $4.4 million cash on hand

In all, more than 8,000 people contributed to Mamdani in roughly five weeks. And about half of his money came from donors who live outside the city

When Taylor Swift’s releases her new album, “Life of a Showgirl,” in October, it can be heard on the usual places, including streaming, vinyl and…cassette tape?

The cassette tape was once one of the most common ways to listen to music, overtaking vinyl in the 1980s before being surpassed by CDs. But the physical audio format has become an artifact of a bygone era, giving way to the convenience of streaming.

Or, that’s what many thought.

In 2023, 436,400 cassettes were sold in the United States, according to the most recent data available from Luminate, an entertainment data firm. Although that’s a far cry from the 440 million cassettes sold in the 1980s, it’s a sharp increase from the 80,720 cassettes sold in 2015 and a notable revival for a format that had been all but written off.

Cassettes might not be experiencing the resurgence of vinyls or even CDs, but they are making a bit of a comeback, spurred by fans wanting an intimate experience with music and nostalgia, said Charlie Kaplan, owner of online store Tapehead City.

“People just like having something you can hold and keep, especially now when everything’s just a rented file on your phone,” Kaplan told CNN.

“Tapes provide a different type of listening experience — not perfect, but that’s part of it. Flip it over, look at the art and listen all the way through. You connect with the music with more of your senses,” he said.

Completely disingenuous article claiming at first that Mamdani is unpopular outside of NYC followed by stats that show that many Americans don't even have an opinion on him.

Guess what?! Not many people in Missouri or California are going to give a damn about a local election in another state!

For starters, Mamdani is clearly not popular outside of New York City.

A Siena College poll this week showed statewide New York voters disliked him 37%-28% – and that’s in a left-leaning state.

A recent Yahoo News-YouGov poll, meanwhile, showed a relatively similar verdict among Americans nationwide: 31%-22% negative.

While those aren’t good numbers, they don’t exactly suggest he’s a pariah who could be used effectively as a bogeyman on the national stage – at least yet. In the national survey, 46% didn’t even have an opinion of the Democratic mayoral nominee, underscoring the room that exists for him to define himself — or be defined by others. (Even in New York, 34% of voters didn’t have an opinion about him.)