Dude you just hate everything and have done for years. The smug thing is you look out, decide the whole world and everyone in it sucks, and then instead of thinking "huh, maybe this is a function of my well-earned chronic depression" you go "it must be because everything is terrible and I'm the only one who has cracked the code." You're literally sitting there going I wonder if I can bait anyone into fighting about... the existence of culture.

I'm not going to tell you to watch Ferris Bueller. I'm not going to tell you to watch Back to the Future. I am going to point out that you took a discussion of a movie you've decided to never watch and used it to shit on everyone who ever has just to give yourself that little edgelord troll-hit of endorphins so... yeah. Good talk. What else haven't you seen, read or heard that you need to pronounce condemnation on? We'll start a list and whenever you have the downzies we'll post something!

https://sci-hub.se/

Because America is the only country that matters in the world (HUGE fan of American Exceptionalism, myself), you've probably heard we just hit 1,000 infections. We're undoubtedly way behind in assessing and tracking the true number, despite a growth rate matching the rest of the non-China world closely (b ~ 1.2). Alotta this comment is for posterity, not Devac.

If we have identified 1k+ cases, and we have reportedly used perhaps, optimistically 8k testing kits to this day. Let's say there's a two-day test delay for specimen handling, testing, and reporting (again, pretty optimistic, I think). We might infer that somewhere around 1 in 5 people that get tested are testing positive, but this invests an unwise amount of faith into our testing and reporting system. Because, OHhh, that's right, we don't even fucking know for sure that the other 4 out of 5 aren't positive yet (per theAtlantic.com article above), or if the tests even always work. We can't infer a damn thing because of the botched response, which obviously needed to include accurate statistical reporting.

You want good statistics? The feds and states should've talked about how they would coordinate testing and coordination in like January. We knew this was more contagious than SARS or Ebola because of China's (relatively) swift and massive response, and then their transparency. We talk shit about China, and maybe for good reason sometimes (sorry), but they deferred to scientists, and now, the source country of the outbreak is on track to have less cases than the U.S. within a month or two. Thank goodness covid-19 didn't originate here in the U.S. under Trump, the rest of the entire world would be 10x more clueless about it. Not-America saved our asses by generating the statistics we need. This time, it's not just another instance of U.S. disregard of science on the world's stage, our naive response negatively impacts health at a global scale. An international organization may investigate Trump and his genius squad for criminal conduct in their response to covid-19. Or, at least, one may try.

K, back to strict math. Let's play nice for almost a few contiguous paragraphs, and assume that U.S. measurements are going OK. Here they are:

I'mma fit an exponential function, f(x, A) = A*(b)^x, to data between Feb. 23 to now. I'm just using A=50, and x={0, 17}, and I get a b value somewhere between 1.19 and 1.2 that satisfies f(x=17) = 1,000. That actually agrees with what is currently being observed in the larger dataset of all the non-China's right now (source: the YouTube video in my post far above, by 3Blue1Brown).

Fitting an exponential to this larger dataset (which has muuuuuuch better statistics) over roughly the same time interval as before also gives me b ~ 1.2. Pretty cool, but not necessarily indicative of accurate measurements in the 'States. Using the covid-19 tracking map and basic knowledge of population sizes, a comparison of population percentage diagnosed with covid shows that the United States is shockingly low compared to e.g. Europe (don't use the circles to do this, use the raw numbers in the sidebar). Perhaps it came to the U.S. last, or some initial quarantine efforts were not in vain, but we cannot make any statements with a high confidence when only a very small subset of folks presenting with symptoms are being tested. For whatever reason. The cloud of uncertainty regarding wtf is going on inside the Trump administration doesn't help, and casts further doubt on the veracity of the numbers they offer (or don't).

Ok, angry me, again, sorry not sorry. This absolute shit job of almost zero covid-19 testing preparation means we will, FOR A LONG TIME, continue to have much worse statistics compared to almost every other developed country. We have missed an opportunity to respond intelligently to this. It frankly doesn't much matter how many little hotspots you quarantine if you're not tracking the spread of the virus through the population. That's like simply ignoring a flaming bag o' poo on your doorstep, but your porch is wooden, and your house burns down. Shoulda sprung for a fire extinguisher.

I have yet to see any documentation or explanation regarding why the Trump admin. refused testing kits offered to the U.S. from the WHO (probably not the band, in this instance):

But neither the CDC nor the coronavirus task force chaired by Vice President Mike Pence would say who made the decision to forgo the W[orld] H[ealth] O[rganization] test and instead begin a protracted process of producing an American test, one that got delayed by manufacturing problems, possible lab contamination and logistical delays.

Again, the theme: You need good science, president dipshit. Good science needs data. You've ensured that we won't get it in time to help choke this thing early, and compared to the rest of the developed world, we're fucked. You've endangered the entire world. Great job.

Prediction: The U.S. will lead the developed world in covid-19 cases within a month or two, surpassing China. Italy's condition is unfortunate, and a reminder that luck is always on the playing field during an epidemic.

To offer a slightly different perspective...I obviously don't believe that "Muslim" is a race, but to many white-supremacist and Islamophobic groups it may as well be.

Islamophobic prejudices don't get applied to White or Asian Muslims in the same way as for Muslims from the Middle East, because people seem to be assessing whether they look like the guys they saw on the news. I want to, for example, bring up the case of an Indian software engineer from Kansas who was killed two years ago:

The suspect in the shooting, Adam Purinton, was drinking at the bar in Olathe, Kansas, at about 7:15PM that night, the Kansas City Star reported. A witness said he yelled “get out of my country” to two of the victims, reportedly saying the men, believed to originally be from India, were “Middle Eastern.”

I'd also like to cite Wikipedia's article on Islamophobia, and the section about the relationship of Islamophobia and Racism:

Some scholars view Islamophobia and racism as partially overlapping phenomena. Diane Frost defines Islamophobia as anti-Muslim feeling and violence based on "race" or religion. Islamophobia may also target people who have Muslim names, or have a look that is associated with Muslims. According to Alan Johnson, Islamophobia sometimes can be nothing more than xenophobia or racism "wrapped in religious terms." Sociologists Yasmin Hussain and Paul Bagguley stated that racism and Islamophobia are "analytically distinct," but "empirically inter-related"

SO, the argument I'm putting forth here is this:

Muslim people do not constitute a race, but the people who are prejudiced against them (and those who physically attack them) often believe that they do. Using the word 'Muslim' as a weird synecdoche for 'Appears Middle Eastern' is common enough, and I believe that people who hate the nebulous group of 'Muslims' are holding racist beliefs against a race that they have misnamed, and largely imagine to exist.

In the case of Roseanna and Amy, I would guess that they have learned Ilhan Omar's name and may be vaguely aware of her nationality, but probably subconsciously conceptualize her religion as her race and act with according prejudice towards the congresswoman.

...Or that's how I think about it, anyway. Do you think I'm maybe not being fair? Honestly, there's a chance I'm assuming too much about Roseanna and Amy. Idk. The idea's out there, I'm curious what you think about it!

Legally, due to copyright, none of us really own the movies, books, games, etc. that we buy. But when we buy it on physical media, we have more control over access. Even then, there's attempts to limit our control. Blu-Ray and DVD both have region coding, Blu-Ray has DRM built in to the system, and if those seem a bit much, I'd like to at least be thankful DIVX crashed and burned.

One of the things we need to think about, when we think about ownership, accessibility, etc., is that physical formats don't last forever. Everything from magnetic tape and magnetic drives to optical disks to paper all have a limited life span. Similarly, in regards to electric media, the devices that can run these formats also have a limited life span. So while we might own a physical game or movie, copy isn't going to last forever and I think it's important to consider if, how, and when we might be able to access it again down the road.

As an aside, there are some great YouTube Channels like Techmoan that go over all sorts of obscure formats and their history.

Recently, due to the merger of AT&T and Time Warner, Filmstruck was closed down and with it, people lost easy access to classic, rare, unique, and fringe cinema. Many of those films are hard to find and if and when they'll be easily accessible again is anyone's guess. In some ways, it reminds me of how the majority of silent films were lost just because studios didn't perceive them as valuable and as a result, thought it was more prudent to destroy their copies than to store and preserve them. I'm not saying that AT&T is going to destroy all of their copies of various films, just that businesses tend to worry more about what makes business sense first and cultural value is often an after thought.

All of that said, the more I tend to think about this subject and similar subjects, the more I see the value in concepts like public domain and creative commons, creating our own culture through crafts and hobbies instead of relying on corporations and businesses to provide us culture, and most importantly, enjoying and appreciating what we have while we have it, because for one reason or another, what's here today isn't in any way guaranteed to be here tomorrow.

More like the L. Ron Hubbard

OH FUCK MUTHERFUCKER NOW YOU'RE WINDING ME UP

Because beer fucking sucks right now.

You know it, you just don't want to admit it - beer is straight-up bullshit at the moment. Yeah, sure there's a million tiny shitty little breweries out there but they're all being bought up one by one by AB InBev or SAB Miller and they all make fucking IPA. You know what IPA is? It's the beer you make when you don't have the room to make beer - IPA requires no refrigeration to make. It's that shit you made in your dorm room when the RA wasn't watching. It's that swill that tastes the same whether it's turned or not because they sell it to you pre-turned. It's that shit you drink because hefeweizens are too heavy - you know, the beer that they've convinced you to put an orange slice in it so it doesn't taste quite so much like pruno.

Fortunately for the beer companies, your tiny shitty little IPA from bumblesquatch colorado can be sold for fuckin' $2.50 a bottle because it says you need a lumberbeard to drink it or some shit, as opposed to $1.25 a bottle for pilsners that you're shipping from Canada or Copenhagen (or brewing down the street, but as we all know your dad's macrobrews have been fucking terrible for decades, that's why we started down this road). Unfortunately for the beer companies, nobody wants to spend fucking $9 for a sixer of Fat Tire anymore and the alternative you're offering them is fucking Michelob Ultra Organic or some shit which tastes about the same as Zima without the sugar, assuming you remember what Zima is. Fortunately nobody remembers Zima or Bartles & Jaymes so let's try selling them "summer shandy" or "radler" because a wine cooler by any other name would taste as cloyingly sweet.

LOOK AT THIS PICTURE.

LOOK AT IT.

Bud. Light. Lime. STRAW ber RITA. "Try it over ice!" What. The Actual. Fuck. This is AB InBev throwing their hands in the goddamn air and saying "we never knew why they liked our swill in the first place, mix a Kool-Aid packet in there and see if they buy it." Meanwhile the beer that everyone drank forever is fucking gone, yo. When was the last time you saw an Anchor Steam? I mean, I live 150 miles from the brewery and I have a hard time finding Weinhard's.

I used to drink Kirin Light. Now I can't even find Kirin.

I used to drink Amstel Light. I haven't seen it at the market in three years.

I'm drinking Sam Adams Light - and that'll work - but it is literally the only drinkable light beer left at my supermarket. They generally have three cases of Sam Adams, two cases of Sam Adams Light, five cases of Heineken, two cases of Heineken light, and an entire aisle of various and sundry IPAs.

And those fucking "summer shandys."

You know what I drink down here in LA?

They've got me drinking Russian beer, yo. I live in goddamn America, home of the macrowbrew and because the industry is pushing trasherita premix I'm drinkin' shit that's been shipped from SAINT FUCKING PETERSBERG.

Let's drive a stake through the heart of the whole goddamn industry. I'm so completely fucking over the direction it's taken. Kill this bitch so we can bury it and move the fuck on.

There are five possible use cases for crypto that I see.

1. A black market currency

2. A low-fee, decentralized international payment system

3. An investment

4. A general-purpose currency

5. A secure, trustless information ledger

As A Black Market Currency

For use in the black market, we're going to want a way to hold the currency anonymously, and a way to send private transactions.

- BTC wallet anonymity is possible with a few hoop jumps, but private transactions are impossible. If address X has a transaction with a known black market address, this is public knowledge, and address X is forever associated with this shady exchange.

- XRP has the same problems as BTC, with the added risk of validators simply rejecting transactions with known shady addresses.

- ETH is currently no better than BTC, but they plan to implement technology borrowed from ZCash to allow private transactions, so ETH will be more private in the future.

Best alternatives right now for this use case: Monero, ZCash

As An International Money Transfer System

For this, any low-fee system will work. The lower the fees, the better. Right now this means everything but BTC, but what would the fees look like in the future, assuming widespread adoption?

- BTC "on-chain" transactions will only get worse, but they are working to implement Lightning Network. This will end up sort of like a "real" BTC wallet that you treat like a savings account, and a Lightning BTC wallet that you treat like a checking account that has low fees and fast transactions. The catch is that you have to pay the on-chain tx fee to transfer from your BTC wallet to your Lightning wallet.

- Same story for ETH, really. Widespread adoption of ETH will result in high transaction fees. Not as high as BTC, but high. Ethereum is working on several scaling strategies in parallel, but realistically they're a year or two away.

- XRP was built for this use case. It will scale, be low fee, and in the future, it may even be possible to use it through your bank. It's not super decentralized, but it's fast and low fee.

As An Investment

At this point I have no idea. I don't understand why the market caps on these coins are so high. Let's be honest, they don't do anything cool yet. As a general rule I'd say don't put in anything you can't afford to lose 100% of.

In the long term, I think any cryptocurrency that has a capped supply and a plan for scaling is a decent choice. I personally like the smart contract ones: Ethereum, Zilliqa, Eos, Cardano, RChain. Raiblocks is cool too. There are also some interesting ERC20 tokens. But those are all just opinions.

As A General Purpose Currency

For this use, we want widespread adoption, stable value, low transaction fees, and transaction verifiability. For this space, my favorite is USD.

Seriously though, a deflationary general purpose currency makes a bad currency, and so does a volatile one. Imagine buying something on credit and owing waaay more than you thought you would, or buying something when you could have bought two of it a month later. Deflation and volatility decrease the money velocity of a given cryptocurrency to the point that any economy based on it is much smaller that it would be otherwise. It makes the currency hard to spend and discourages its use. We already see the effects of this: Very very few businesses accept BTC directly because its value is so unstable. And it's a vicious cycle; less businesses accept it, so its utility is less, so less businesses accept it.

In the long term, I think something like Dai or OmiseGO has a chance of being useful. But it's not ready yet.

As A Secure, Trustless Information Ledger

This is the space that I think has been explored the least, and which I think has the post potential. It could disrupt a lot of industries, including certificate authorities, DNS, and, maybe someday, thinks like deeds, titles, stock ownership, and land registries. But all of this is years off.

- BTC and XRP cannot be used well for this purpose.

- ETH was built for this use case. Maybe in a few decades we'll see corruption in some countries being combated by registering things in an Ethereum or Ethereum-style blockchain.

Hi, here I am. How can I claim this?

In the final panel of that, in the background of the street scene, they have the Led Zeppelin icons as a sign. I dig that. That was a cool comic also! Learned a lot.

[badged]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_of_the_Abyss

a coup would be so exciting

I don't wanna beat up Star Wars too much. The original film was a seismic disruption to the entire industry. It came out like 9 months after Logan's Run - you want some cognitive dissonance, watch Box and the Star Filters in the Disco Cave and then sit down to Alderan. Star Wars broke the mold, shattered the industry and remade it.

And honestly, it borrowed from good sources. It's just that once Star Wars and Empire were done, nobody was ever going to tell George Lucas what to do ever again so we kind of get Ewoks all the time now.

I have no point. I'm listening to Vas and wondering if Azam Ali bailed on the US like she threatened to in 2007.

She moved to Montreal.

Test.

The NY State Athletic Commission is orders of magnitude better than the athletic commissions in some other states. This is not a defense of what happened that night, it's inexcusable. The things that go on in other states are just deplorable. Fighters that would never be allowed to fight in New York due to existing injuries are given no significant pre-fight medical exam and matched up against significantly more skilled opponents. Boxing needs a national over site board. Fighters need more education about the risks they face when they go in the ring and the risks of having anything but a brief career. There needs to be a unified sanctioning body and greater over site of the relations between managers, promoters, referees, sanctioning bodies and athletic commissions for conflicts of interest and ethical lapses. Many places that have enacted laws governing the over site of boxing often don't enforce their laws.

Democrats and the tea party differ only on the surface.

done.

Thanks again. And hey - I'll still buy you a beer or whatever on Friday.

And mk? He makes me pay with sexual favors whenever I see him. HEYO!

minimum_wage

I chopped some of the URL embellishment and it seems to display now; sorry about that.

Energy requirements are not at all the speed-limiting factor in the REX device. It's a combination of the non-natural gait of the device, and the requirement to never injure the user (the two are intimately related). The battery pack can drive the device for over two hours continuously, so there's plenty of juice.

A primary design constraint is that the device must not fall - not in the event of system crash, or even in response to user movement (and wheelchair users often have quite violent muscle spasms). Its gait is entirely inhuman, because when taking a step, the device shifts to balance on one leg, then moves the lifted leg, then transfers centre-of-weight to balance on the other leg. In contrast, human walking is a controlled fall - if you were to 'freeze' in mid-step, you will topple over, and that's just not acceptable for this machine. Some other exoskeletons are meant to augment human movement, but that is a very different problem.

Its purpose is not to walk fast, but simply to walk (this machine can do stairs as well, though). Sitting all day is unhealthy for a walking person - so imagine the problem caused if you literally have to sit all day, every day. Most wheelchair users are given a "standing frame" that they are told to use for an hour or so every day for this very reason, but few people use them as much as they should. So the reason for this is primarily health benefits from walking and leg movement, and also for rehabilitation after injury.

It was amazing to be a part of this organisation in the early days - we literally worked in a warehouse the first two years, cold in winter and hot in summer; and we were not allowed to talk about what we were working on in public forums (until the company went public). Just a great group of people, and if they still had work for me to do, I'd be there still. The only stress was concern that we'd run out of funding and all have to find new jobs (which actually happened to me, but fortunately the company was able to survive).

I agree that medium's font should be larger.

Well, I'm willing to wager your ears are even bigger than mine, so I'll throw in a few things that aren't necessarily my cup of tea, but you might find interesting.

Shostakovich: Complete String Quartets - Emerson String Quartet

Starts out as tonal as Shostakovich ever gets (with Number 1), and end up going to some pretty crazy and dark places. Nothing like Stalinist Russia to bring out the sarcasm in someone.

No. 8 is the most Famous - here's the second movement.

Honorable mention goes to Sonata for Contrabass Solo by Mieczyslaw Weinberg, Op. 108 . A student and colleague of Shostakovich. I'm playing this piece for my master's recital, and there's a great recording on Spotify by Joel Quarrington (also probably available on itunes).

Charles Ives - Piano Sonata no.2 "Concord, Mass. 1840-60"

I have no idea why I like Ives' music. It is WAY out of my wheelhouse in a lot of respects. However, his chamber music is amazing, and the Concord Sonata is no exception.

Honorable mention goes to His Violin Sonatas, which Hilary Hahn recorded a while back. Fantastic recording, available on itunes etc.

Gyorgi Ligeti - Artikulation

One of many electronic pieces by this composer. Tried to find an album, but this stuff in't often sold in stores:

Honorable mention:

Schoenberg: Five Pieces for Orchestra - London Symphony Orchestra with Fred Sherry

Most of the music you're listening to on this list probably wouldn't have been made until much later if not for this guy. He solidified Serial atonal music from a theoretical standpoint, and was one of the first people to use it as a technique to write music.

Honorable mention: Webern - Six orchestral pieces

Student of Schoenberg, well respected in his own right. His opera, Wozzek, is probably one of the most commonly performed modern operas.

Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau Sans Maître

I hate this man. He is, however, well known for his advancement of multiple serialism, in which not just he notes, but rhythms, dynamics, etc. are all set up in serial patterns, derivatives of which are used to compose.

Honorable Mention:

Stravinsky: Rite of Spring (with the ballet if you can for the first listen)

I'm gonna be straight with you, while i love this piece, I legit can't listen to it after dark - it scares the shit out of me. This ballet's production (which is using the original choreography, i think)... doesn't help me with that.

Karlheinz Stockhausen: Elektronische Musik 1952-1960

My friend, you are going to dig the shit out of this.

Honorable mention:

Well, hopefully that will give you some stuff you like, and some composers to look more into.