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Breaking breaking news: Politics: Canadian Federal Election!
We have an election coming in October.
The main choices are (I'm not going into Quebec's BQ party: it is just provincial to Quebec)
1. Conservatives: like the Republicans in the US
2. Liberals: like Democrats
3. NDP: historically a workers/union party (more liberal than the Liberals)
4. Greens: you know them (more or less the new kids on the block)
Current polls, with a month and a half-ish to go show Liberals winning, possible majority.
Conservatives a close second and NDP and Greens close third and fourth.
The NDP and conservatives are sliding down in support, the Liberals and Greens going up.
The Conservatives are sliding, the rumour is, because of the Doug Ford effect. Remember his brother Rob Ford who went down to the States and did the talk show route and entertained everyone with his goofiness/salesmanship, etc? He was then mayor of Toronto and coke user (if memory serves....errrr...it probably doesn't).
Doug is just as goofy: he has a way of pissing off his own party members with his silliness.... And he has pissed off enough people in Ontario (with his Conservative cuts and buffoonery) that it is making people across Canada wary of voting Conservative.
The NDP have a leader who seems oddly not really a leader: he doesn't seem to be making much of an impression and his party is declining in popularity.
The Greens have been on the rise for the last, say 15ish years?, slowly supplanting the NDP as the third party of choice. They seem to have great momentum, probably as the other parties have been ignoring the environment.
Both the conservatives and the liberals have been pandering to the oil industry (and I totally get the need for oil, but not while ignoring green alternatives) and the Liberals have tried to help Alberta get their oil to market but not successfully and at great cost.
I can't say that the Liberal leader, Justin Trudeau, fills me with confidence, but the Conservatives....
Just to own up (can't think of the proper phrase): I will, unless something weird happens, be voting Green AGAIN. I'm voting for the future (and a chance to have political upheaval): I think my daughter is in a good relationship and we will probably be having grand kids. I'm voting for THEIR future...and HOPEFULLY a change in the electoral process.
Breaking news:
Pierre Nantel has just crossed the floor from the NDP to join the Green party.
Good news? Who knows,but could mean the momentum is with the Greens.
WOW!
The Greens just picked up ANOTHER 14 candidates from the NDP (all from New Brunswick). 14 people crossed the floor. Democracy in action!
They are now the #3 party for the number of candidates running for office.
The NDP now we only had the candidates they SHOULD be running.
A coup in the works?
[Politics] Strategic voting. Despair.
I will likely register Democrat if the Honorable Tulsi Gabbard is still in the race at the point when the registration deadline in my state comes near.
Otherwise; I'm extremely unlikely to vote at all.
Trump probably has a lock on the 'publican nomination. Ergo no point whatsoever in registering R again. Plus, having done it precisely once, in 2012, I'm extraordinarily unlikely to ever do it again.
But if she gets shut out? What's the best the D's have?
Andrew Yang. I would definitely vote for him for mayor. Who am I kidding? I'd vote for him up to Rep against the incumbent in virtually any district in the country.
Not completely convinced he's ready to be Pres though. If there's no one better, G_d help us all.
And Marianne Williamson. Lord and Lady help me, I'd wind up writing her in. If Tulsi is assassinated.
She's a little kooky but she's still arguably the sanest candidate on the table at that point.
Lord and Lady help us all.
Rick Sanchez has to work for RT to speak freely.
Tis a bit long but worth the time if you have it.
By request, The HU.
Please, anyone, contribute something better than I can cobble together from online dictionaries.
Instrumentally, the bass is a two string, they're fairly low tension for their size, and they are not fretted. The fingernails are used like a slide.
The treble version of the instrument is played a bit differently.
Perdurabo.
I've had skeptical replies, but little concrete justification for the skepticism. I try to provide it for you. It's odd to contemplate music created without involving any musicians.
I'm not at all wedded to the conclusion, it's an impression, nothing more.
So I want to issue a challenge. Show me a blues song, a heavy metal song, a country song, or a punk song from 2018 or 2019 that's as topical, clever, and creative as this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9F_xQW8ego&list=RDy9F_xQW8ego
I'm not saying it's perfect, or even noteworthy in a jazz or classical context mind you, look above for the adjectives I actually used.
Random Moderation Queries
A couple of queries on the moderatorlog table. Make of them what you will.
Most upmods received:
+--------------------+-----------------+
| nickname | upmods received |
+--------------------+-----------------+
| Anonymous Coward | 160701 |
| Runaway1956 | 10069 |
| takyon | 8339 |
| frojack | 7302 |
| c0lo | 7062 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 6845 |
| Thexalon | 6787 |
| VLM | 6682 |
| bob_super | 5399 |
| aristarchus | 5051 |
| Azuma Hazuki | 4661 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 4615 |
| Phoenix666 | 4160 |
| khallow | 3978 |
| DeathMonkey | 3916 |
| jmorris | 3810 |
| DannyB | 3733 |
| maxwell demon | 3340 |
| edIII | 3271 |
| bradley13 | 3262 |
+--------------------+-----------------+
Most upmods performed:
+----------------+------------------+
| nickname | upmods performed |
+----------------+------------------+
| AnonTechie | 10712 |
| HiThere | 9504 |
| anubi | 7578 |
| turgid | 6837 |
| rts008 | 6564 |
| jelizondo | 6275 |
| takyon | 5764 |
| aristarchus | 5724 |
| Freeman | 5228 |
| Unixnut | 5018 |
| DeathMonkey | 4943 |
| acid andy | 4782 |
| Sulla | 4746 |
| Bloopie | 4680 |
| PartTimeZombie | 4456 |
| canopic jug | 4161 |
| dg | 3987 |
| SomeGuy | 3818 |
| Geezer | 3798 |
| tonyPick | 3775 |
+----------------+------------------+
Politics: Has Joe Biden got a brain? Who's he kidding?
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/05/politics/joe-biden-el-paso-shooting-cnntv/index.html
"We've always brought the country together. 'We the people, we hold these truths to be self-evident.' (Trump) flies in the face of all the basic things that we've never really met the standard (of, but) we've never abandoned it before," Biden said. "He looks like he's just flat abandoned the theory that we are one people."
Riiiiiight. Never really met...or tried to meet. Why try to meet it when you can have the rich on one side and the French fry servers on the other. We're one people, 'cept some of us are more 'one' than others. Moooooo.
"Biden on Monday also doubled down on his support for a new assault weapons ban and suggested his administration would try to create a buyback program to get those weapons off the street."
Riiiiiight. That'll work. The crazies will be ALL over that.
"Biden was clear that he would not seek to confiscate privately owned or purchased guns, instead advocating for "a national buyback program" intended to get the weapons "off the street."
You can vote for me because the laws I make won't matter.
"The fact of the matter is (assault weapons) should be illegal. Period," Biden said. "The Second Amendment doesn't say you can't restrict the kinds of weapons people can own. You can't buy a bazooka. You can't have a flame-thrower."
The 2nd amendment ALSO says you can't restrict hand guns either: clubs are arms. Ban ALL hand guns too!
Good ol' creepy Uncle Joe: it's safe to vote for him cos he'll do nothing to piss you off, really.... except feel your daughter's boob and sniff your wife's hair.
This guy is same old same old ( but creepier).
So.......the parties SAFE choice, I guess.
Best album of 2018
That aside, I'll make a nomination.
I swear I don't even listen to hip hop that much; I'm much more into a dozen other genres. But I don't know off the top of my head of anyone making great *new* stuff in those genres in 2018. Some good new stuff, some wonderful reinterpretations of old standards, but there's not much rebellious young blood left in the genres I'm more tuned to anymore.
Enter Tiny Jag. To my old ear it sounds like KRS One and Little Debbie had a love child.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvvizwrhRAc&list=OLAK5uy_k0nNTgdnAcsgK8x-yTF0AK24Gz91M75Cs
Feel free to post responses.
I didn't know Joe Biden was SUCH a swamp monster!
Interesting info on how big a scum Biden is, and why maybe Trump may win again.
If they don't dump Biden, Trump will ROAST HIS ASS and win. Again.
Are they THAT STUPID to push him forward?
https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/marc-thiessen-joe-bidens-electability
Does anyone really like maple boards? [StringGeek]
But every guitar I've owned had rosewood, and I'm very familiar with the qualities and care and maintenance. They are pretty stable and predictable and unless grossly mistreated they do their job, for me they have become the baseline, the MINIMUM I EXPECT from a fretboard.
I've briefly played a few instruments with maple fretboards. My small sample falls easily into three categories; new looking and sounds good; new looking and sounds bad; or beat the hell out of and sounds GREAT.
Based on this rough and too small to be representative sample, I'll advance a hypothesis, probably wrong but either way let's try to advance.
The ones that look good and sound bad are just shit and likely to wind up in a dumpster, or stuck in craigslist limbo until the zombie apocalypse. Or maybe fixed with a setup, but that possibility is not what you bring up when you're trying to buy of course.
The ones that look good and sound good are the ones where things went as they should.
The ones that look beat the living bejezebelus out of and sound absurd, they always sounded good. Because they sounded good, they got played. Because they got played ridiculously, and maple is a nonsense material for a fretboard, they half disintegrated. Which amounts to a scallop job, as a bonus for playing all those years.
So, I'll happily pick up a maple fretboard in a store or private buyer in my locale, or in the area where I vacation, etc. after falling in love with it.
But otherwise I'm not interested. Rosewood ships bare and stands up well to extended use with nothing more than a clean and juice each time you change the strings, for decades. Maple comes covered in lacquer because it can't stand to be exposed unfinished, which means you need to refinish it every 3 months or so, which no one does, or you just wear the thing away until it finally plays perfectly?
I'm cheap as Josh believe me, but if I'm not misunderstanding something, I should just pay for the scallop on the rosewood if we're talking about a new instrument no?
Any maple fans please respond, reasonably or as flames, I'll read it for several weeks at least.
I'm planning another installment to this yawnfest of a square-brackets-don't-pound-me-too-tag if there's interest. A multi-stringed instrument with far more strings than any of us could possibly contain physically, without the use of levers or stuff. Conveniently, the design includes some sorts of levers or stuffs, a lagom amount of them.
Feel free also to comment which instruments I might be thinking about (I'll be honest, albeit possibly with a slight delay, about what I meant here, but I'm also shamelessly mining for future ideas of course.)
