but if that doesn't work, there's always this and this and this and this ...and so on. That's cute. But Some Might Disagree EDIT: I appreciate the irony of your using the U.S. Census as an example of hostile government overreach. Given that the point of the census is to figure out how to allocate public moneys most equitably and efficiently. And that the government is constitutionally bound to conduct census- that is, beholden to the people. And that incentives and disincentives to behavior are cooked into just about every corporation, public or private. Were you being ironic?Walmart does not profit from Sears either, and how does Walmart destroy Sears? By providing customers with better prices and better service.
Walmart doesn’t bomb its enemies or threaten customers, it lets customers decide which retailer treats them best.
Man, bread and butter is the only right answer. I'd love to contribute. I'm down to just my phone as a recording rig, so it might sound janky.
Are we still acting like things are normal? Like this is a normal election with normal stakes? Are we still entertaining some bygone notion of red versus blue? The last three weeks. The last three weeks is why you vote for Biden. No, that's not fearmongering. Trump, and his supporters, and the sycophants he's surrounded himself with, have operated- always- under the notion that when it comes to governance, lack of experience is a virtue and those who are bureaucratically entrenched are THE ENEMY. The last three weeks have finally, maybe fatally, belied the strength of that philosophy. Do I have to enumerate the ways this administration has fucked up this response? I don't have the time or energy. Read the news. Do you want more of this? Because this administration isn't gonna get more nimble. There's nothing in our recent history suggesting that we're suddenly going to see a competent response. I can't wait to see how they respond to the economic depression that crashes down on us like a. Fucking. Tsunami. After the actual pandemic has receded. Joe Biden is old. Joe Biden is white. Joe Biden is entrenched. I get it. Although come to think of it, Bernie Sanders is all that shit too, and somehow he gets a pass. But you know what else Joe Biden is? Experienced. And you better bet your sweet ass he'll surround himself with experienced folks, as well. And THAT'S what we need right now. Experience. Competence. Bureaucracy. Know what we don't need? Yes-men. Plutocrats. Spin doctors. Xenophobes. Take a look at the current administration. This is no longer a choice of red versus blue, if it ever was. This is a choice between whatever we have now and an actual government. And you know what's sad? I, too, have flashbacks to 2016. I remember all these people whingeing about how if Bernie wasn't our man, then there was no point in voting because Trump and Hillary were the same package with different wrapping. And guess what, those people were fucking wrong. Hilariously, tragically wrong. Nobody seems to want to admit that Clinton probably wouldn't have thrown vital tax dollars at an honest-to-god wall between us and Mexico. She wouldn't have separated children from families. She wouldn't have enacted sweeping tax cuts for the wealthy at a time (hindsight twenty twenty, kiddos) when we probably needed to shrink our deficit in case of a national emergency. She probably wouldn't have seeded the courts with the most definitively conservative judges we've seen in our lifetime, thereby casting the future of, say, reproductive rights into doubt (you're calling that "fearmongering?" Really?). And she probably wouldn't have called the current pandemic a liberal hoax," a line which is still making the rounds in circles of conservatives who still resist efforts to flatten the curve. Among other things. So yeah, look back to 2016. But stop it with this "Bernie is the only viable option" shit. It's not helpful. And it's not true. And if I have to hear it one more time I swear I'm gonna go and lick a subway pole and be done with it. There are some sobering fucking reasons to vote for Joe Biden and they go far beyond red versus blue.
What are this guy's qualifications to speak with authority on this? His bio at the bottom indicates that he specializes in "cognitive architecture and AI." His articles prior to this one all address those subjects. Despite the addition of numbers, a lot of this article comes off as hand-wavey. Why does everybody get a say in this? How TF am I supposed to make any informed decision if every viewpoint on the internet is presented with equal ethos?
What I like about this model is that it discusses what "effective measures" means, and offers a number of variables that we might tweak. Maybe it says much of the same, but it at least acknowledges that this is a complex and developing situation that will inevitably buck all current models.
I like to play a game sometimes where I imagine going back in time ten or twenty years and just reading current headlines to people to see how they'd react. Here's an excerpt from today's NYT: And on Capitol Hill, Gordon D. Sondland, the president’s ambassador to the European Union and a wealthy donor to Mr. Trump’s campaign, was implicating the president in the Ukraine scandal by telling lawmakers that Mr. Trump had delegated Ukraine policy to his personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani. What would somebody from, say, 2002 make of this?Mr. Mulvaney’s performance headlined another extraordinary day in Mr. Trump’s presidency. Mr. Mulvaney made his remarks after he stepped before the cameras to announce that the leaders of the Group of 7 nations would meet in June at Mr. Trump’s golf resort in South Florida, even as he acknowledged the choice could be seen as self-enrichment. In Texas, Mr. Trump hailed a Middle East cease-fire that would cement Turkey’s goal of pushing Kurds from Northern Syria as “a great day for civilization.”
From what I understand from all the talking heads, "quid pro quo" seems to be a construct- the most convenient one at hand for the White House at the moment- and doesn't really need to be established to underscore the severity of what's already come to light. Based on the most current reading, there seems to be a consensus (from everybody not on the right side of the congressional aisle) that a sitting president pressuring a foreign head of state to dig up dirt on a political opponent is... pretty dang bad. As for Barr, at this point it's his word against the written transcript: Whether or not Barr ever followed up is maybe immaterial. As the head of the department that would have to work hand in glove with Congress on an investigation of this magnitude, Barr is demonstrably compromised.Mr. Giuliani is a highly respected man. He was the mayor of New York City, a great mayor, and I would like him to call you. I will ask him to call you along with the Attorney General. Rudy very much knows what's happening and he is a very capable guy. If you could speak to him that would be great.
I refer you to the Watergate impeachment proceedings.. File under "nothing new under the sun." Also bear in mind: we like to think of the Nixon situation as a slam dunk in terms of public opinion, but there was little public enthusiasm for impeachment or removal from office even then: -From today's Pew Research article. Another interesting tidbit from that article: Compare that to the present, when, as of August 5th- pre-all this shit- Trump's approval rating was 42%. Now, I'm not Mister Sunshine about this or really anything. But there's a glimmer here. The true turning point in the Watergate proceedings was the recordings. I'm inclined to agree with mk; the transcript is pretty damning in and of itself, but if the White House offered it up this quickly when they offer nothing up without a fight, what else is waiting in the wings in terms of recorded evidence? The minority leadership in the house has been conspicuously silent on the matter, as has the majority leadership in the Senate. Lindsey Graham being Lindsey Graham does not indicate that the President has the full support of his sucklings on this one. I'm very interested in the silence of Trump's minders-in-chief, and I'm curious to see how they respond after what these days counts as a stunningly long period of silence. Again. It's way too early to determine the true fallout of this one. And God knows the sides are even more entrenched now than they were during Watergate. But this has got a different smell to it than the Russia investigation, the weight of which I was always skeptical about. There's very little plausible deniability here. We'll see.Although many privately expressed doubts about Nixon’s innocence and criticized his handling of Watergate, congressional Republicans, with surprisingly few exceptions, publicly proclaimed Nixon’s innocence and opposed either his resignation or impeachment until nearly the end. Many congressional Republicans viewed Watergate as a political attack against Nixon and defended the president out of partisan considerations.
despite the increasingly negative views of Nixon at that time, most Americans continued to reject the notion that Nixon should leave office, according to Gallup. Just 26% thought he should be impeached and forced to resign, while 61% did not.
By April, a resounding 83% of the American public had heard or read about Watergate, as the president accepted the resignations of his top aides John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman. And in turn, Nixon’s approval ratings fell to 48%.
"I am": the shortest possible sentence, succeeded closely by "I was".
Get outta here with that shit. New tech is an unmitigated good.
So really this is just a rebranding of Pascal's wager. Which, fine, but do we really need to act like this is a radical enough concept that it could tear you mind apart?Roko’s Basilisk has told you that if you just take Box B, then it’s got Eternal Torment in it, because Roko’s Basilisk would really you rather take Box A and Box B. In that case, you’d best make sure you’re devoting your life to helping create Roko’s Basilisk! Because, should Roko’s Basilisk come to pass (or worse, if it’s already come to pass and is God of this particular instance of reality) and it sees that you chose not to help it out, you’re screwed.
Semantic hair splitting. Boo. The point at which one has to mine Google definitions of 'racism' and 'race' to examine whether or not the saying "go back to your own country" fits the bill is the point at which one loses the thread. When it comes to racism, and especially when it comes to "go back to your own country," it can be useful to apply the old Justice Potter Stewart test: I know it when I see it. As kingmudsy pointed out, sometimes a saying doesn't have to perfectly fit the technical definition of racism if the person uttering the phrase makes no distinction between race and ethnicity. Is it not racist to condemn a moneylending Jew rat? After all, that encompasses the Ashkenazi and the Sephardic, the religiously Jewish and culturally Jewish, the Israeli and the American. And if we ARE to lean on the dictionary definition, what descriptor would be more pleasing to the ear? Ethno-nationalism? Is that any nobler than racism? Any more acceptable? Is that where we want the national discourse to trend? I won't argue that there aren't shades of grey. But "go back to your own country" is a darker thing entirely.
I know those people. I work with them. The people that take that approach are despicable. Like, in every way.
Chief Justice John Robert's, 2013 following the Supreme Court's decision dismantling the core of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Thank god overt racism is a thing of the past, hey, Roberts? The only thing that changed this week is that Trump discarded any last semblance of subtlety in his appeal to a racist base. He was dog whistling before, and that was despicable, but it still gave everybody a moral back door- the ability so say "you're reading too far into this." What now? Why have we met the past three days with anything less than unanimous outrage? What has happened to us?Our country has changed,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “While any racial discrimination in voting is too much, Congress must ensure that the legislation it passes to remedy that problem speaks to current conditions.
This new album by Black Midi is pretty neat. Favorite song:
Every time I revisit this story I find another vein of irony that heads straight down towards the bedrock. I kind of don't even know how to process it.One of the few American experts in lost-wax casting—a 6,000-year-old art form that involves a two-mold, 10-step process—Visbal had created a similar work, Girl Chasing Butterflies, for Merrill Lynch’s corporate headquarters during Women’s History Month years earlier.
Read Raven Rock followed directly by Fear by Bob Woodward. That was an unintentionally v. stressful progression. Woordward's book was poorly written, which surprised me. Also: don't like the idea of current president clenching dick with one fist, nuclear briefcase with other. You're welcome for imagery. Cleansed palette with Lincoln in the Bardo by Saunders. Pretty, but will have to give a few more reads to get the full effect. Then I needed some trash so I read Children of Time. Play a stupid game, win a stupid prize. Terrible book. Dialled back the schlock, now reading The Alienist which is nice because it's trash but written in a poorly-conceived 19th c. vernacular, so you can pretend it's highbrow. Next: Killers of the Flower Moon before I give up and revert to something by Stephen King.
Thoughts are with you, TNG. She sounds like she was an amazing, lovely person. What a life.
Daughters new album is really great. They have a way of mixing visceral noise with unexpectedly beautiful, plaintive sounds. Great contrast. Ariel Pink's last album has been on repeat since it came out. That guy is a songwriting/production genius. Would love to know what his setup is.
Amen to that. We lived in a 1930's shitbox. 1050 square feet. Baseboard heating, insulation decimated by rats, single-pane windows, non-euclidean floor plan. No curb appeal even if our street had sidewalks, which it didn't. No quick access to any charm. Regularly found needles on the street outside. Had to contend with semis unloading stock at 3am into the back of the Fred Meyer that abutted the property. Damn skippy we were priced out, and happy to be so. Within six months of us leaving, the landlord slapped some new paint on the wall and sold it for 650K. Fucking absurd.
That was pretty much the gist of my contribution to the original conversation. Apparently we're old souls.
Now that I saw this tweet, I can't unread it as Pence. It kind of reads like future campaign fodder in that light.
Meanwhile, on Fox News and Breitbart I guess I expected them to spin it? I honestly didn't expect them to not even mention it in favor of a dog-whistle non-story. I don't know why I'm surprised. EDIT I guess one of Breitbart's most popular stories is Manafort, but I defy you to try and find it on their trainwreck layout
Dude, the Northeast suxxx. You ever been anywhere in the Northeast where you didn't think, "this'd be great if it weren't for the traffic and the accent and the racism and winters that made you want to kill yourself"? Is any job worth the Northeast gawddamn
This article made me feel like I've been relying on some reductive-ass thinking re. Hearts and Minds for a long time. Kinda took it as gospel that of course we have to win over the community leaders in Kandahar if we want to get anywhere in Afghanistan. Never tried to apply that kind of logic to my own city. What are community leaders? How big is a community? How do we win people over? What's the timetable? Whut? I don't like to think that I reduce other cultures to a bunch of airy-fairy sociological precepts... but hell yeah I do
Hm. You and I, I think we're working with different definitions. Moving goalposts, for instance: ME: Assault-style weapons seem to be defined primarily by their effective marketing, which is baked into gun design and promotes a militaristic approach to gun ownership and operation. YOU: I have NEVER SEEN this marketing of which you speak. ME: here it is on the gun, as explicitly advertised on the manufacturer's website. YOU: I have NEVER TAKEN such claims from the website or features of those guns seriously. Also, try to define assault-style weapons, but in a way that's different than how you've already defined them. Motte and Bailey? ME: Assault rifles are becoming the weapon of choice for mass shooters. YOU: prove that AR15s are the weapon of choice for mass shooters. ME: I didn't say that, as such a claim would be unsupportable. You changed what I said to make your position defensible. YOU: I win! It's not that I WON'T engage with your arguments, it's that I CAN'T because you haven't yet leveled any. "I disagree" isn't an argument, it's a basic opinion. "people who don't own guns obviously don't know anything about guns, and thus are unqualified to contribute to the national debate" is kind of like saying "only gun owners should be allowed to speak to and shape policy on gun restrictions," which isn't so much of an argument as it is an absurdity. You're acting as though my inability to map out the differences in firing mechanisms between rifles renders me unfit for debate on policy, which is semantic bullshittery and you know it. Which brings me to our biggest gulf in definitions: debate. You seem to think that it's sufficient just to lean on all the old semantic talking points that I always see trotted out in these discussions: "assault style can mean anything! you don't know the difference between a clip and a mag! those guns don't even work the same way!" Because it's easier to tout your mechanical knowledge of the tool than to defend the nature or necessity of the tool. You also seem content to constantly call me out as "naive," and then when I repeatedly invite you to develop your argument, start pouting about how I characterize gun owners as "brainwashed psychos," which I never did or even came close to doing. Ever. Explicitly or implicitly. At this point, my best guess is that you've had this argument so many times that you're responding to what you think I'm saying rather than actually examining my argument...? And FWIW, I never addressed your "prove that previous policy has changed public perception" retort because that's a way larger discussion than just guns, and requires nuance, and this exchange has left me with little faith that we can speak to each other in the language of nuance, or even mutual respect. Which is a basic prerequisite for complex discussions. Sorry you got bent out of shape over this topic. I do appreciate a lot of what you contribute on this site. I don't believe the above exchange represents the best of what you have to offer.
Citation provided Newtown: Bushmaster Aurora: M&P15 Las Vegas: FOURTEEN .223 AR15 rifles; EIGHT .308 AR10 rifles Pulse: SIG MCX San Bernardino: DPMS Panther; M&P15 Those are the shootings I remember off the top of my head. In the last couple years. I'm talking about marketing you've never seen? Go to Bushmaster's website and peruse their tac rifles- say, their Patrolman's Carbine. All components mil spec! How very tactical. Or maybe you're in the mood for something more high end? How about the ACR enhanced (ACR, of course, stands for Adaptive Combat Rifle... perfect for hunting, right?) whose blackout flash hider provides exceptional signature reduction. You know, so you don't give your position away to the deer. Not in the mood for Bushmaster? Yeah, maybe you have an icky taste in your mouth popping off rounds at the range ever since a guy murdered a bunch of six year olds with one of those. Bad for branding. Let's go over to Colt and check out their classic AR (again... Assault Rifle) series, which are "based on the same military standards and specifications as the United States issue Colt M16 and M4 carbine." You know, for sportsmen and hunters alike! Their Combat Unit carbine would be perfect for an idyllic day out duckhunting with your kid. Too flashy? The AR15A4 is no-frills and mimics the line that provides "our armed forces the confidence required to accomplish any mission." All models function with 30 round clips; the pricier models can adapt to all of your ammunition needs. I'd call it dog-whistling, but the frequencies are low enough to pick up even from my inferior station as a non-gun owner. This is marketing. It speaks to the most militaristic aspects of gun ownership, with an obligatory nod and wink towards "hunters and sportsmen." You're smart- do you really not see a particular flavor to these descriptions? What I liked about your posted article is that it fairly illustrated the anti-gun crowd's general stance without ever denigrating or belittling it, and offered an option presumably acceptable to both sides. There's something for everybody to learn there. I'm happy to talk out viewpoints with you, but I have little patience for condescension. My POV isn't "naive" just because you don't like it.
Right back atcha.
HACKTYUALLY... maintaining ownership of a birth certificate is just part of being a young to middle aged urban adult. Rural folks? Older rural folks? Black older rural folks? Not so much. Obligatory NPR transcript I just tried to find an account I read one time of an older black lady from the rural south trying to get an ID when she'd been born in her childhood home and never obtained a birth cert. I couldn't. I don't even remember the source. Coulda been here. But in looking I did find an interesting paper suggesting that not only was that account not special per se, but actually pretty common for folks of a certain age. I'm posting it separately for you to peruse. TL:DR; not everybody has a birth certificate, and it's not their fault, and painting their lack of ownership as somehow irresponsible or not "grown up" is misguided. Even discounting the whole birth certificate issue, getting an ID isn't necessarily the easiest thing in the world. Oh god in the two seconds I took to give you some evidence I found this other article looky har Bottom line: ID laws absolutely tilt the scales against certain populations. Not populations that you might readily identify in YouTube videos polling youth in NYC.A YouTube view I liked recently was a couple people walking around NYC asking black people what they thought of that argument that forcing a driver's license/ID requirement meant to disenfranchise black voters. The responses were mostly, I have an ID, why would that be hard because I'm black? Maintaining ownership of a birth certificate is just part of being an adult.
Love those Dean Markley pickups. I'm surprised that you didn't run into more phase issues mixing the mic with the pickup that way- these guitars sound crystal clear. On a related note- the fact that "And Became Invisible" has 200 tracks and still sounds as focused and coherent as it does speaks volumes of your production chops. Gaddamn. Never worked with Reaper- how's the learning curve? More importantly, is it affordable?