scoobdog

They want more playoff teams, not more playoff games.

This is all pretty dumb. Revelations is almost certainly a work of early mysticism, meaning what ever John was attempting to convey through the Book of Revelation was intended to be interpreted not taken literally. In fact, most of the “signs” were either totemic, emblematic, or based on historical people. Also, asceticism in the west predates Christianity, all of the Semitic societies ringing the Mediterranean had some form of it centuries before.

NY Post is porn for bigots and racists.

I still wonder how much blame can be put on NATO or the United States for escalating the situation. We can all agree that they both have a hand in creating the situation, particularly by meddling in the 2014 election. But, from the beginning, Biden was out front warning anyone who would listen what was about to happen, weeks before it happened. Furthermore, there was never any discussions about bringing Ukraine into NATO... the whole uprising in '14 was about them becoming closer to Europe economically which, in of itself, isn't escalatory unless you're dealing with an irrational person. All of the "escalation" was sequence of phantom red-lines Putin could use to scare off Western partners.

NY Post is fucking trash.

Well, everyone else already jumped on this, but I would point out that providing weapons isn’t the same as controlling a war. Yeah, it would shift the balance away from Ukraine; it had nothing to do with their desire to defend their own territory. About all it will do is let the weasel Putin off the hook when he flailing badly. He has no way of holding the territory he annexed, and he’s one mistake away from getting dragged out into the street and beaten to death.

It's not "DCs" war to stop.

Not at the federal level where they’re appointed. I don’t think there’s a mechanism for removing federal judges other than through the same onerous impeachment process.

Hendrix was playing the national anthem; sampling is taking parts of song to create a different song. Gangsters Paradise doesn’t sound like the Stevie Wonder original even though it uses the refrain, but it does "sample" key, distinguishable, parts of the music that are copyrighted parts of the original. The definition you're creating for "sampling" simply isn't correct. Jazz is a completely different beast. Riffs in jazz solos aren't just taking the theme, they're blending it in to the fabric of the overall piece in a different way. To look it in this way: a sample is like using an existing foundation on a demolished house to build a new house on while jazz riffs are like taking ornamental pieces off an old house and using them on a new one. None of this, of course, addresses the right to use someone else's music which is required regardless of what you call it.

I thought they were just waiting for Ian to clean up their mess. Sometime, thoughts and prayers just don't work.

Good article on how the "sampled" hook came to be: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/29/entertainment/coolio-stevie-wonder-gangstas-paradise/index.html

I should say, though, that there is more unity than you let on. Third parties still remain mostly sidelined, and, like it or not, Biden one with an extremely high turnout despite not being much more than a better-than-the-alternative option. The same principles should apply to both sides of the issue. If mainstream Republicans can stomach voting for openly bigoted, racist, and misogynistic candidates (well, any time besides now) than it stands to reason that Democrats can do the same with candidates they disagree with that are far less distasteful.

That isn't much of a basis for unity, either. There are many different approaches to achieving those goals.

Oh.

Don't play dumb. Sampling is a foundation for several music genres going all the way back to the '60s, and it involve making "sampled" hooks a central part of a remixed tune. A sample is any portion of music that is taken from another established tune, modified either in performance or through digital manipulation, and incorporated into a new piece. The earliest forms of sampling were utilized by the pioneers of electronic music where the sample was taken whole cloth and then manipulated. Hip Hop DJs added a wrinkle of sampling just the rhythm section of a tune and some of the lyrics into a (mostly) spoken word performance, keeping with a tradition in R&B to use relatively standard baselines as a foundation for original music.

It's not realistic to expect that kind of unity, though. Hating Republicans isn't going to be enough like it is for Republicans hating Democrats, and there are lot of groups on the left with vastly different agendas sharing the one common goal of not being erased out of existence by Republicans' destructive policy goals. Frankly, if more people did sign up for socialists groups, they might find that Socialists' agenda is more adaptable and inclusive than they might have been led to believe.

True, to an extent. Someone who "earns" that much money through, say, selling his startup isn't necessarily a more capable money manager than a struggling single mom with a winning $1 Billion ticket, but he (yes, its probably a white male) has an infrastructure in place to handle all the money. Self-control only gets you so far, as does good advice. What usually ends up doing these unlucky winners in is the inability to find someone trustworthy to help them manage an unmanageable amount of money.

Why do that when you can just have Russia move to you?

That doesn't really matter. Sampling is a form of appreciation in that context, especially since it boosted some lesser know tunes from the golden age or rock and roll, doo wop, and, Motown. It was also at least partially a response to the coopting of their music - stripping away a lot of the commercial pop overtones that made the music radio friendly to white ears for the culturally authentic rhythm "heartbeat." In that respect, what Weird Al did was mocking that deeply personal root, if unintentionally.

I saw your FB post. What happened?

Dude, @tsar4. It's called sampling, not "ripping off". The Hip Hop movement was based on local DJs ripping and remixing popular R&B music, often from the Motown era, into new rhythms. It was a spiritual "sibling" to the new wave movement: both sought to distill popular music to its most functional elements.

Oh, I know what you mean. Considering (1) most of the people who are capable and willing to fight the Russians have either evacuated or are linked up with the Ukrainian military in some capacity (2) most of the people who are pro Russian are either associated with or participating with local militias, and (3) the rest are likely underground or not in a position to fight (such as elderly) - there isn't a whole lot of people to conscript. The recent reports of possibly importation of "voters" from Crimea is anecdotal at best but nonetheless indicates that there aren't a large number of people to fill he conscription rolls. Furthermore, they don't even have enough weapons to arm their professional soldiers effectively. Compared to their elite soldiers, whomever they get from the occupied regions would fairly low risk.

Where did you see that?

So it was a good birthday.

Best I can do is summon the Bucket.