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The English Channel
I heard someone talking about The English Channel?
Then I realized. My cable package does not include The English Channel!
Is there somewhere it is available streaming online? (for free, of course, because socialism, and/or entitlement)
If I lived in England and did not get The English Channel I would be so mad I would swim South all the way to France!
(for extra credit one could try swimming North all the way to France)
Things I Like - The Arkells
One of the gifts that Jasmine gave to me was introducing me to The Arkells. Her parents got her tickets to see them live and I was forunate enough to be invited to go see them with her.
I had never really listened to them before meeting Jasmine and she was a big fan of them. Initially I thought they were only so-so. I went to the concert and they blew me away. I started listening to them at work, and I freaking love them!
They are currently on tour for their Rally Cry album, which can be listened to here: YouTube.
I think these guys deserve to be the next Tragically Hip. They are great representitives for Canada and I think they make great music. Just putting this out here because I think they are underrated and awesome.
My favourite song at the moment: Show Me Don't Tell Me.
Check them out! You might like them too.
https://secure.link/dvM8Swrs
Well Wow, just noticed all the fine defintion on the "comments enabled"! I, of courese, will allow all and sundry, since I am the foremost proponent of free speech on SoylentNews, but the option to only allow Left-handed Friends of Particular Sexual Orientations was very, very tempting. On to business.
Janrinok. The editor has been with us for a long while, since the beginning? And yet he persists in rejecting aristarchus submissions with the admonition: "Journal please--JR " Now doubtless this is more helpful than the generic
The editors felt it inappropriate for them to correct the issue themselves. Please feel free to correct the issue yourself and resubmit.
with not even the slightest hint about what the errors might have been, other than being an aristarchus submission! But this is the point. Putting crucially important news items into a journal reduces them to the equivalent of Snow's sex life, John Miller's sucking of various parts of the Donald, or khallow's tenuous grasp of economics, in other words, the suggestion that I put my submissions into journal is an insult of the greatest magnitude.
I hereby challenge janrinok to a meeting on the Field of Honor, at dawn. Your choice of weapons, ground, and date. You have insulted me, janrinok, with your mendacious behavior, and it is now time to stand up to your calumny like a man. I await your seconds to call upon my seconds, so that the details of the resolution of our dispute can be resolved.
Yours, in honor and truth,
Aristarchus of Samos
And now, the janrinok does respond, in a rejection, by saying:
Can't see a STEM or specific topic of interest. Journal please.--JR
We are the descendants of the Slashdottoeri, the tech, the savvy, the ones who knew what news mattered; STEM does not become us. But evidently White supremacy does. Dawn, janirock! Your white skin will not protect you from my Social Warrior Justice!
The Democrats are going to lose in 2020
One part of it, and unfortunately the part with all the real power and money, is the corporate wing of the party, the ones who call themselves "moderates" and who, by the standards of any civilized nation, are a center-right, corporatist clusterfuck. These are the dynastic politicians, the Clintons and the Pelosis and so on. Notably, they are what the Republicans used to be until about the mid-90s, and Clinton's so-called "welfare reform" has done more to harm the poor than anything the GOP had done from the Depression up until that point. These people *are* Republicans, and modern Republicans are basically the Christian answer to the Taliban, except too weak and obese and low-testosterone to grow facial hair.
On the other side, we have the ones who are triggering all the RWNJs who infest this site like a bad case of bedbugs: Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and so on. You can tell they scare seven shades of shit out of our "friends" on the right wing (wrong wing) because of how much barely-disguised panic they elicit in the form of almost obsessive insults and smears. Make no mistake, the Fox crowd is shitting their Depends (well, more than usual I suppose...) at the idea of them taking over.
Now, because the corporate wing owns the Democratic party, and because they've been fighting the same election campaign battle (1972, if you're curious) for goddamn near half a century, they're going to miscalculate. They're going to run the "safe" choice, Biden. And they're gonna get fucking clobbered. Why? Because the data leading them to even consider Biden as "the safe choice" are massively skewed, ridiculously out of date, and not in line with reality.
The guy's a senile, creepy old ignoramus, and he does not resonate with most of the Democratic voters. I am not one to dump on someone due simply to low Charisma scores, if for no other reason than that I'd have to drag on myself all the damn time. But Biden is toxic. Not just because he's apparently a gross toucher, but he's like Bob Dole and post-Alzheimer's Reagan rolled into one and then given a good beating with the Schlemiel Stick. The corporate wing wants him in charge because he'll keep the gravy train going; he's essentially Dubya for the donkey team. He will obey his handlers, one of whom will likely be Hillary Clinton doing a damn good Dick Cheney impression. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
I predict this is going to come to a head in 2020 with a massive GOP win as the Democrat voter base splits along age and income lines. Honestly, this is nothing more than a reflection of the fact that the corporate Dems are, as I said before, basically Republicans, and this election season is going to make that quite clear. We may, assuming there's anything left to preside over, have a chance in 2024, but who knows what the country will look like by then? Who knows if there's even going to *be* one? This is karma.
All hail Sargon
Title should be:
"All hail Sargon of Swindon"
I have to say, just to start with, the guy has thousands of hours up and not only can you probably find a few minutes here and there that are not comfortable, but I *have* found many of those minutes myself. Despite that I think I'd actually be a *lot* more comfortable hanging out with him that with his enemies.
"I will not apologize for my crimes against political correctness. I hate political correctness."
He's a candidate for MEP in the UK, and so far this is his most consistent tagline.
Yes, he has occasionally told a 'racist' joke. I particularly liked his defense of that one.
It's somewhere in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfRffGdeXDg
Which is, btw, a viciously cut publication. Full audio here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq_7-cQvisI&t=36s
If I was pretending to be a journalist and I just published a chop job like that, I am pretty sure I would ingest all drugs in the vicinity and then go KIA ASAP.
But anyhow.
He told a joke that used the word 'chink' in reference to chinese people.
Yes he did. He admits it, he is not ashamed.
Isn't that racist? She asks.
That depends on the context, he points out. In France, recently, a poll showed over 20% of french folk would not want to share a rental with a foreigner. I wouldn't tell that joke there, he says, there's some real prejudice, it wouldn't be funny. But here in the UK, where the polls indicate virtually no one cares at all of the national origin of their rental share, yes, it's funny, chinese folk found it funny, it was supposed to be funny, why should I apologize?
Why indeed?
Help to not overflow our landfills
When the vacuum cleaner bag becomes full, attach it to a leaf blower, with a filter so that only the fine dust can be evenly distributed throughout the living space. The larger vacuumed up bits and crumbs will remain in the vacuum bag. If the vacuum bag is mostly empty, it can simply be re-attached to the vacuum cleaner. If the vacuum bag is too full after blowing out all of the fine dust, then its remaining contents can be:
* added to fireplace
* used as pillow stuffing
* added to garden soil
* leaf-blower disbursed into back yard
* mixed with used chewing gum as new form of play doh
* ingredient in cigarettes
* food additive, using a suitably complex ingredient name
Trump called Carter
Original source for this seems to be NPR member station WABE but I found it via antiwar.com.
I'll excerpt a bit but do read the whole thing.
President Donald Trump called former President Jimmy Carter for the first time this weekend.
Just that initial sentence was enough to brighten my day. I'm not a big fan of living Presidents, but Carter is the exception. If anyone can give Trump some good advice it will be Carter - and the fact Trump made the call indicates he just might listen to that advice.
So what kind of advice was given? Let me skip ahead a little.
(Carter) said Trump said he is particularly concerned about how China is “getting ahead of us.”
Carter agreed that’s true.
“And do you know why? I normalized diplomatic relations with China in 1979. Since 1979 do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war,” he said.
The U.S., Carter said, has been at war for all but 16 years of its 242-year history. (China and Vietnam actually fought a brief border war in early 1979, weeks after normalization of U.S.-China relations.)
The last two sentence probably got reversed in an editorial mistake, because that reads quite awkwardly as is, but that's how my source has it.
He called the United States “the most warlike nation in the history of the world,” because of a tendency to try to force others to “adopt our American principles.”
And this is where, unfortunately, many of us obey our training, cover our eyes, stuff our fingers in our ears, and start saying something like 'hates America.'
No. This has nothing to do with hating anyone or anything. It has to do with the ability to set aside tribal sentiment and look at things objectively. What are the facts? As laid out above, China has been at peace since right about 1980, and focused single-mindedly on improving their economy, on building their originally pathetic industrial base until they are now the word leader. Over the same period, we've been at war virtually every year, and our military spending, already much larger than that of any other nation (or several put together) just keeps expanding.
We have to be able to acknowledge what that means, or we live in a dream, disconnected from reality, unable to understand the context of events we're therefore unable to respond appropriately.
Carter suggested that instead of war, China has been investing in its own infrastructure, mentioning that China has 18,000 miles of high-speed railroad.
“How many miles of high-speed railroad do we have in this country?”
It's definitely worth the click. Carter knows of what he speaks.
Bernie's Fox "News" Town Hall
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) went where the Democratic Party is unwilling to tread on Monday, participating in a lengthy town hall interview on Fox News. The questions posed by Fox anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum aimed at poking holes in Sanders’s political rhetoric, but, by the time the event had ended, it was Fox News’s bubble that had been pierced.
Rest assured: The damage was quickly repaired as the network’s programming continued over the course of the evening.
Bernie Sanders pierces the Fox News bubble — but for only a flickering moment (opinion)
Personally, I think this was a great move by Sanders. I've been leaning towards Warren but this might've put him at the top in my book. I like Warren's policy positions better, still, but that's not all that makes a good candidate or president.
Relationship Hacking: Part 22 - Dumped again.
Last night Jasmine dumped me. That's two in a week, and a new personal best.
I had felt some distance between us over the last month or so. The biggest sign was slower responses to text messages I would send to her. Normally she would respond within minutes, but it started dragging out to hours, then days. She said she had some busy weeks (and I'm sure she did).
Last time I saw her, I asked her what she wanted in our relationship. I asked if she wanted me to integrate her more into my life. Things like meeting my wife and coming over for dinners every once and a while. She said she didn't know, and that she would think about it.
I guess she thought about it, and decided it was time to move on. I think that she is seeing someone else, and I'm guessing that it's going well and she wants to see where that goes. I understand that. Our relationship was never going to be permanent. I knew I was just a transition between her ex-husband and her getting another 'real' relationship.
We started dating sometime in September, so we dated for 6-7 months. She was a good person and I will miss her. I appreciate the memories we made together, and I will remember her with fondness. I hope she finds what she is looking for. She deserves someone that can offer more than I.
All in all, I would say our relationship was a success, even if the ending hurt a bit. I wish her well.
Godspeed Jasmine. Godspeed.
Our politicians need to evolve and learn
Chants like "Lock Her Up" look childish.
Political candidates need to learn and evolve.
Act more like adults.
Instead of each candidate promising, if elected, to lock up their opponent, they need to start labeling their opponents as terrorists and their campaign organizations as terrorist organizations. Then promise to use the full force of government against these terrorists.
