I don't wanna jump into this mudpit

but

"we should aspire to be harder to offend" sounds like the rallying cry of a group of people who've enjoyed the benefit of generally not having a bunch of bad shit dumped on them.

I don't particularly think we should try to be more offended, but not responding to shitty behavior is its own sort of poison. We're beyond an age (if ever there was one) where you can just ignore it 'till it goes away. Think it's more constructive to aspire to be as decent a people as we can. That involves not cheerleading intentionally offensive rhetoric (no matter how facetious) AND calling people out when they do so

Oh, I'm sure there's a list of liberal operatives totally unknown to me that any conservative could spout off like an Old Testament lineage. That I could halfway understand. It's when "FLYNN RESIGNS" is (rightfully) front page news on WaPo and co., but it doesn't show up until halfway down the Fox feed and then only in small print and then only in the context of it underscoring the threat of leakers within the inner circle. That's not even counter-propaganda, that's ignoring really really big stuff that should matter to everyone.

Not to be a party pooper, but this happened in way back in the golden era of 2013. Old news. Round the same time that Ikea had the same issue. Aldi corrected it pretty fast. Anyhow, their prices? I'd still hit it. What's so bad about horse, anyway?

booze eases studies,

but come tomorrow morning:

what's the brain, again?

I kind of assume that most apps on my phone do this these days. Are we really surprised anymore?

If I sound like I'm saying something along the lines of "if you say anything to the contrary, you are simply trying to exuse away your own thefts," it's because within this particular framework, that's a valid response to the question as posed. In the arena of filesharing, "can we refute stealing is stealing?" In short, no. But here's what you can do: you can re-frame the debate.

Every argument that the side against copyright has seems to be perpetually bogged down in definitions and assumptions and challenging paradigms

There's a reason for this. Me? It's in my marked interest, as it is for anybody who works within and stands to benefit from the current system, to keep the debate firmly on grounds of morality. Because, barring a change to the system, it's not only an extremely easy argument to make, but it represents the last available appeal to people who would otherwise bypass that system entirely at the expense of a few distant actors. You can get this by means that lie outside of my preferred marketplace, but if you do, you are effecting my bottom line. That's an easy and potentially powerful argument.

You're going to have a hard time refuting it, too. On the other hand, if you as a file-sharer take up the argument on practical grounds, your job becomes easier: "whether or not my actions are moral is moot; available technology allows me to assign lower monetary value to the stuff I want. The onus doesn't fall on me to ignore available tools, it falls on the market to correct for the presence of those tools."

Then again, I can counter (and already have) with the argument others have taken up in other IP arenas. Sure, you can leverage available tools to take my IP, and there's nothing I can do about it. But if there's no money in it for me, I'll stop producing. That's a market correction.

Anyhow, the question about "how to counter the morality argument" seems a bit off the mark, as you're looking to fight a very uneven fight. Which is why you as a consumer are better off reverting to practical arguments, as others have done. But then I'm not sure that road takes you anywhere you necessarily want to go, either.

Youngest kids' 1st birthday(s) yesterday, next Tuesday will be my oldest's 4th. All these warm and fuzzy feelings are... expensive. Included: obligatory birthday photo. I've kept it as a link because I know not everybody here appreciates kid pictures shoved in their faces.

http://imgur.com/O1Qpy34

No right to feel old, but I do. Some consolation in the fact that I look better now than I did at 24. If my dad is anything to go by, I've got about five more good years left in me and then I'll look like a goblin for the rest of my life. No offense, dad

From last night: grilled fish in teriyaki glaze over rice.

If the vague, MRE-sounding title leaves you cold, it's because to do this right, you should use top-notch ingredients, specifically good salmon. But the season is more or less over, and I don't have the cheddar for that kind of opulence, so instead you get GRILLED FISH OVER RICE instead of something sexier sounding.

Step 1: ingredients. For sauce mirin, sake (you can do without if you're looking to cut cost further), sugar, soy sauce, fresh grated ginger. For fish if you have money, buy good fish, wild king salmon is best. If you're me, stumble over to the Fred Meyer across the street, find the cheapest, least questionable fish you can, wish you had more money, cry a little bit. I ended up with rock cod. The sign said "wild," and I had no choice but to believe it. It was less than $5 a pound. I don't want to know why. For pickled veggies bunch of radishes, rice vinegar, sugar, salt.

Rock cod: not sexy at all.

Step 2: pickled radish. Slice radish up, dump a bunch of unseasoned rice vinegar over the pieces in a tupperware container. Add salt (2 t), sugar (2 T). Let it sit refrigerated for a long time.

Step 3: sauce. Mix 1/2 c mirin with 1/4 c sake. Gently heat, add 1/4 c soy sauce, 2 T sugar, a generous helping of grated ginger. Stir, reduce for about a half an hour give or take.

Step 4: rice. If you have good rice, rinse under cold water in the sink for a few minutes until water runs clear. Then, with water running, "polish" the rice for a long-ass time. Ten minutes, maybe? Throw in rice cooker, forget about it until it's done. KB, I'd be lying if I said I didn't covet your stainless steel rice cooker. Fine looking machine.

If you don't have good rice, rinse but don't polish. With good rice, polishing makes for a more tender, well-defined grain after cooking. With bad rice, it makes for mush.

Step 4.5: drink, watch The Wire.

Step 5: fish. Rinse off your cheap-ass fish and pat dry. Brush with home-made teriyaki sauce. If not for the nature of the challenge, I would have oven-baked at a high temp to get a good glaze, but in order to follow the rules, I just threw it on the grill. Grill at moderately high temp for five minutes per side. Careful not to overcook.

Dear KB: thanks for picking the coldest, darkest week of the YTD to throw up a grilling challenge. Not pictured: me shaking my fist at the frigid, formless void above, cursing.

Step 6: plating. Throw hot fish over rice, add a side of pickled veggies, drizzle with some reserved sauce. Crumble some dried seaweed over it if you've got some handy. Enjoy.

Given how cheapo the fish was, tasted real good. Want to try again with good salmon when I'm wealthy.

Yeah, it's a stretch. Everybody's already raised the "why". That's a biggie. If you're gonna be party to conspiracy, you'd better have a damn good reason to go to the trouble and risk the consequences. Given that 9/11 has proven to be our biggest nat'l security black eye since Pearl Harbor, and resulted in not much more than overextension of resources, involvement in two intractable and costly wars, social and political polarization, alienation from several strategic allies... man, this list goes on. Anyhow, that'd make for piss-poor conspiracy. Basically did more than any other wartime act in post-WW2 history to call our world primacy into question.

Then there's the fact that UBL wrote and published a manifesto against the United States expressing his intent to orchestrate an attack on American soil, and then he claimed responsibility for 9/11. Then there's all the evidence in favor of that.

Beyond all that, yeah, I find the initial NIST report way more plausible on a technical level than the hypotheses put forth by your guy. Especially given that the original report was conducted in concert with a host of independent engineering organizations, and is supported by careful analysis of one of the most widely-documented and well-witnessed disasters of our time.

Look, 9/11 was one of those things that was so bad on so many levels that digging through the rubble for conspiracy seems way extraneous. You want to mistrust the government in the face of what happened, fine- look no further than their failure to stop what happened in light of oodles of poorly-shared intel (again, read 9/11 report); their focus on totally pointless military incursion (Iraq) when they should have reserved resources for the important front (Afghanistan); the resulting destabilization of an entire region of the world- the consequences of which me may just be realizing; and their disproportionately draconian national security response, which all but cemented UBL's legacy and absolutely supported his goals. Be mad and mistrustful in light of that. Don't waste your time on the fringe stuff, it's so much less titillating.

Good question for thenewgreen, the most prolific songwriter on Hubski or anywhere. ButterflyEffect has been posting covers as he makes them on his home setup, as well. Maybe he has some words?

Curious- what exactly is your setup?

If you hate clicks, you might think of procuring some sequencing software/hardware. Live is expensive, but could probably be snagged by less reputable means (I don't endorse this personally, I like paying for the stuff that I value. But I know people who sidestep that philosophy when it comes to self-actualization). I bought an SP-555 a few years ago- great for shaping beats, although now I wish I'd gone the way of the MPC. Either way, good way to mess with rhythm/tempo until you establish the right space for your song.

Tempo, in my mind, is one of the most vital ingredients to a song. If you have a great melody/chord structure, but it drags or else leaves you jogging to catch up, it can ruin the tone of the song. Likewise, finding the right tempo has in the past afforded me the necessary motivation to get going on the actual recording process. So there's that.

Another trick that's worked for me in the past has been to take a song that I've already set up in my head, pick up an instrument I'm unfamiliar with, and record the song with that instrument as the basis. Each instrument forces kind of its own modal structure/theoretical rules upon the player. Furthermore, instruments with which we're too comfortable provide their own limitations re. how we approach song structure, cadence, emotion. Unfamiliar instruments help break you out of that funk, and maybe reintroduce a certain passion to the songcrafting/recording process.

What kind of stuff have you done in the past? Any recordings to share?

Ah, if only suits were actually a reliable male analogue to yoga pants. Yoga pants fit. I always want/expect to look like this in a suit; I always end up looking like this. And that's after the tailoring. I'm going to a wedding at the end of August, and this is already proving a major source of anxiety for me. Wish I could just wear my formal yoga pants.

This is why I can no longer be active in the Hubski Book Club, as well. Theoretically, I can see the benefit of muting, and don't even object to my being muted. Practically speaking though, there's massive potential for mis-application.

Hah, I definitely know some robotic humans. Think I remember reading somewhere that 50% is about the best you can hope for, because that essentially means you're flipping a coin to determine your decision. You're not gonna get 100% in this test, right, because the point is to trick the audience. If everybody knows you're human, there's something wrong with, what, the other contenders, the test? That's why the 30 something percent standard is actually pretty impressive. As soon as you approach that 50% spot, you're getting into world domination territory. To be fair, the creators of this robot kind of fudged it a little bit by masking the robot as a 13 year old boy, which could explain all sorts of pointless thought processes, shitty grammar, etc. More of a psychological trick than a technical accomplishment. Maybe this is more of a sign that the test standards have to be further specified...