My god. I forgot, I would play guitar so much more if I didn't hate guitars and amplifiers so much.
Unfortunately, none of the other instruments are depraved enough.
I believe in humanity. One day we'll invent a guitar that doesn't fall the fuck apart when you play some enthusiastic doom metal and/or country music on it. One day we'll make an amp that doesn't sound like a little fuckin toy from Mcdonald's when you crank it up.
One of my favorite professors in college said "The difference between intellectuals and the general population is that intellectuals always read the introduction/foreword and acknowledgements to any book they come into contact with. And that's pretty much the only difference, don't let it go to your heads."
@CorvidCrone Yes but unfortunately not nearly well enough to translate a book 😅 I can read like street signs and introduce myself, that’s about it haha. I used to be a little better but it’s been a looong time since college
I will say, learning to write in Arabic dramatically improved my handwriting in English and especially my cursive. I actually have a pet theory that Latin cursive was developed by European scribes in Outremer who learned Arabic after the Crusades.
Prime Minister of Poland on using the word "war:" "I know it sounds devastating, especially to people of the younger generation, but we have to mentally get used to the arrival of a new era. The pre-war era."
Why would young people be uncomfortable with the word war? For Gen Z, there has been constant war for their entire life. Peace was something that happened back in the 90's.
@vfrmedia@sidereal I think that’s it, stateside the wars have seriously curtailed our rights but the main thing people point to is the TSA, there haven’t been many material consequences to our lives. You don’t hear about not being able to build a house because steel is going to build jets, or eggs need to be rationed for the troops, etc
@cam@vfrmedia There's also been the militarization/arming of police as a material consequence but otherwise you're absolutely right. This is interesting to think about. I hadn't even thought about what would happen if the contemporary USA & Europe shat the bed on total war the way we've shat the bed on covid
Look. I know picking up dog shit isn't particularly fun. But if you have a dog in the city, you just have to do it. Don't be a toxic individualist, be a real community member and bag that shit 💰💩
There is no excuse not to! Some people walk to work and might not be able to change their shoes. Some people have medically-needed mobility devices they would prefer to not get shit on. Please. Get your shit together. I love your dog but I hate you.
@HappyHeathen Yeah I love cats but outdoor cats were definitely a mistake. For many reasons. Including the cats themselves’ own safety from cars and coyotes and shit
@sidereal I think the bigger issue came with the VC exit to IPO. I don’t have an issue paying for the work (and did!) but they’re skimping on quality a lot, it has really declined a lot in recent years.
“not every company needs to be public”, I yell into the void at the center of founders’ egos
@sidereal I thought their Haitian creole course was easy to follow and interesting, but too short and I don’t think they’re going to invest more time in it.
French is where I’ve seen the most deterioration in quality, but I’m a fairly fluent French speaker so I can’t really speak to how well it teaches a new learner
And that concludes my unsolicited Duolingo reviews
I just realized that I've been using adblock so consistently, for so long, that I have basically no idea what the average person's experience of the internet is like.
Every now and then I use someone else's device that isn't so locked down. And I'm floored by how useless and annoying the internet is. IDK how people do this.
@sidereal It's gotten to the point where every time I have to interact with a device I haven't set up personally I just look at the owner and go "You live like this?"
@sidereal Every employment agreement that I've seen since the early 1990s said that even things unrelated to the company's current products and invented while off duty belonged to the employer. I've always struck it out and dared them to not hire me for doing it, but none ever did. One CEO said to me that he wondered why anyone ever accepted it.
HR people always freak out when you take your red pen to their pretty papers. 😆
Martin Scorsese's advice to new filmmakers: "Make your own industry."
There's a consistent pattern where whenever young people are like "hey it seems like you completely ruined the economy for short term gains" the people who are responsible are like "Nahhh what if you just invent something completely new?"
No need for mentorship, no need to prepare things for the next generation. Just tell them to invent something completely new with no context, experience, or resources. Reasonable.
Literally the people who invented cinema did not make their own industry. They expanded opportunities within the theater industry by using new technology to achieve new levels of recursivity. To me, this is a meaningless statement from a man not particularly interested in the future of films.
@sidereal Also contributes to that destructive myth of individual genius. No wonder the guys who advocate these positions make fascist films. #auteur is fantasy.
Gotta love using archive dot org to access websites about the history of cryptography and informatics which have been domain squatted and replaced with ads for online poker
Seriously archive dot org may be the most important thing to come out of the 90's, 00's, or 10's internet because without it we wouldn't have access to the vast majority of that old stuff anymore
@sidereal already older posts (even just 5-10 years old) on forums for repair/maintenance of vehicles and electronics are rendered useless as the admins didn't want to swallow the cost of image hosting so images were hosted off site and many companies doing this have simply walked away from the market and deleted all the "free" hosted images..