Disclaimer: I don’t claim to be good, but people tell me I’m better than I think I am, and I am good.
What am I doing now. I usually play stringed instruments, guitars, basses and ukuleles, but I wanted to expand my horizons. And since I like EDM and Floyd, Jean Michel Jarre, and Pete Townsend’s Sequencing, I thought I would give it a whirl. Most of it it is live on the spot, no pre-recording, so the results are interesting.
Instruments. Harmor to M-audio keystation 88
Sawer (currently) to my Nectar Impact 25 LXi
Yard sale Yamaha through Lexicon mpx200
Behringer 502 preamps for each PC(2)
SR16 drum machine(sometimes)
Groove Machine on my Tablet
And a Moog werkstatt 01, with Arduino arpeggiators, sometimes.
Everything goes through a 1202 Behringer stand alone mixer.
Pyle 160 watt amp (driver only)
Old Kenwood 4 way speakers with old school Electronic bypasses.
I love mixing old and new tech, and this is a blast; much more fun than playing guitar in a rock band, been there, done that. For those interested, my channel has quite a few different styles, but my current thing is TEPME3, trivia question to follow.
I wrote this knowing there are many musicians here, and I thought we should share, Enjoy!
Dyson Sphere, and I’m the star in the middle 😉
I’ve got the pink oboe; does that count as an instrument?
Flauta de carne?
Piel.
Perhaps. The Peruvian dude I worked with when asked how to say skin flute in Spanish said flauta de carne. Who was I to argue? Flesh/skin, what’s the diff? Flesh flute is hard to say in english though. Say that five times fast.
I +had no Idea this was posted, Fuck!
(looks at wall-wart clusters)
I do acoustic instruments (guitar, flute), but would love some advice on setting up a MIDI keyboard, since that shit is mysterious to me. I have a keyboard (USB), and several computers with soundcards (all Windows PC), but never really got the keyboard to work with the free software that was bundled. Any recommendations for a total noob?
Get a Mac?
Ooooh, look at Mr. Moneybags there!
Steal a Mac?
That’s practical.
You outed yourself on Sat AM links as a rich one-percenter!
He uses 2-ply toilet paper?
I did? This will come as a great surprise to us.
You might want to mention that you have the worst lawyer in state bar history.
Like my ex, I was broke. Unlike my ex, I couldn’t find a lawyer to represent me in exchange for blowjobs.
You just weren’t trying hard enough.
If only I knew Jesse then. He would have taken one for Team OMWC.
“I have to declare a conflict-of-interest: this proposal will nearly double my federal tax burden.”
Only the rich itemize!
California divorce. Lifetime alimony, and now I get to pay her taxes for her, but at a much higher marginal rate.
Man that is fucked. Fuck CA
I got the whole story in person. It’s much worse than it sounds.
Just, whatever the fuck you do, don’t try to use Linux as a musician’s platform. I’m not a really ideologically driven OSF person, but I am actually one of the small number of people in the world still most comfortable in a non-Apple Unix environment, so of course I tried to use Linux for music at some point. It didn’t go well, not because I’m not technical enough (modesty aside I’m a moderately significant figure in a very niche (but related) branch of computer science,) but because the shit is broken. I know, I know… if something open source is borked you should just fix it, right? But this is a rabbit-hole I’m not willing to even approach.
Windows does MIDI OK. It should be pretty easy to get any MIDI controller working with its bundled software. But you need to provide more information about _how_ it’s not working to get help. “It doesn’t work” doesn’t give us a lot to work with.
I should add that all I’m trying to do is make all this sound like a piano- that fancy multitracking shit can come later.
How much do you want to spend, and how scrupulous are you about totally-not-ever-jacking-pirated software to test out before you buy?
If you want a great, simple, stand-alone piano 1-stop shop, try downloading a demo of Addictive Keys
it uses heavily-multisampled real keyboards, and the software is basically a streamlined, 1-purpose sampler-instrument. You can purchase different modules to have more than 1 core sound (i have the grand, upright, and Mark 1 rhodes modules)
It compares favorably to things like Kontakt (Native Instruments) sampled keys, but is far simpler for a noob type who isn’t using it with a DAW.
Sweetwater has their Grand available for $80, which i think is a great value compared to $300-500s for the next step up (Kontakt, or dedicated modules)
**recommendation: whatever machine you use it on? at least have 8gb. 16 is better. yeah, it can run fine on 4, but you’ll eventually want to expand, and RAM is cheap.
I agree with you, but I think you don’t go far enough. 16 is kind of the minimum these days, unless you can get a _great_ deal on an older machine and are willing to go ghetto for a while. My best friend decided to become a DJ when he was like 40 (I suppose it was a natural extension of his retail X business, so there’s that…) and went cheap on an older MacBook and… you’re going to want the RAM. Unfortunately RAM is not that cheap when we talk about MacBooks.
I have an iMac from 2012 in my home office. 20 gigs of ram. and I moved the OS to an SSD drive.
OK, but you have 20 gigs of RAM, right?
Yep. You don’t need to go through Apple. They’ll charge you a 200% premium.
I did it myself.
How much do you want to spend
I’m a Jew.
But yes, no need to work with a DAW, I just want to be able to hit the middle C key and have a middle C sound come out.
There’s basically 2 ways that people go about live-instrument-recreation; either
a) sample (record) every individual note of a real piano with extreme precision, and at different velocities, then map it in a sampler which plays back the samples based on your inputs (and allows you to tune the responsiveness, add reverb/fx/eq, etc)
or
b) model the instrument in software, where you design a ‘synth’ type algorithm which produces tones which other layers can then progressively modify/shape to recreate the exact dynamics+sound of a real instrument
the former requires shitloads of RAM, the latter is more CPU intensive. The former tends to have the better “realism” in terms of sound, but sometimes is less responsive in terms of ‘playability’ from the POV of piano players; or is just a bit wonkier. Its really splitting hairs, and you’d have to be a super-pianist and have a golden ear to really notice most of the major differences.
If you’re just a hack who bashes out a few chords, then edits the midi and uses it in recordings (like me), the former is preferred. If you’re a ‘player’ who wants to jam live with your buddies, the latter (in theory) might have advantages.
here’s an example of a very high-quality modeled piano program
https://www.pianoteq.com
also affordable, compared to the sample-libraries at least.
Hmm.. I’m not going to argue with you here, because https://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/8902184360 is not a good look, and anyone who is serious will have to figure it out for themselves- entire forums are devoted to this subject. But it’s worth noting that it’s more complicated than that.
is the ‘more complicated’ explanation ‘more useful’ to anyone at the current moment?
I doubt i missed some 3rd way in my 30 years of fucking around with musical gizmonology
shorter: just get Addictive keys. Its awesome and sounds the tits. If you don’t have a very posh, fully-weighted midi keyboard, you’d never tell the difference with playing-response anyway.
I’m downloading it as we “speak.” Thanks for the tout!
“I’m a Jew.”
Kind of the worst of both worlds- not willing to spend, but also not willing to steal. I feel like you should pick one.
Addictive Keys demo worked perfectly. Had it going in minutes!
/spikes MIDI keyboard
Yeah, but what are you going to do when the trial runs out?
*Tap tap*
Speak directly into my shirt.
I’m not a fed, I promise.
NO TIME LIMIT – use it as long as you like
Jew smiles all around.
OK then- that’s some Jew approved software, I guess.
Though actually much of the software I’ve released is along the same lines. We turn it off after the trial, but we don’t work very hard to keep people from pirating it. I actually _want_ students to pirate it, because I want them to go get employed by studios and be like “We have to have this software.” If that means some small studios pirate it as well, well… how you gonna stop that?
I hope there’s a fire extinguisher just out of camera.
As long as he’s in a single-family structure, it’s not a violation of the NAP if he burns the place down.
There’s a beer next the keyboard. That’s liquid so it counts as an extinguisher, right?
Tough crowd. Where are the electrical engineers who could state amperage draw from a keyboard? I am thinking there is not much of a fire hazard there. It is not like Yusef is playing a gaggle of toaster ovens and deep fryers.
I’m pretty sure the actual EE guys would be like “Pshaw, I draw that from my testicles on a good Saturday night.” I work with an EE guy, and he has this little half-open plexiglass enclosure with some stuff in it on his desk. One day, after having worked a few feet away from it for months, I wandered over and started looking at it and he was like “Don’t touch that, btw. It probably wouldn’t kill you. but… well, actually I’m not sure.” EE guys…
Your Sunday death metal.
I tell you what, that’s a toe-tappin’ little number right there.
Thanks for the post, Yusef.
My neighbor, an Music Dept. instructor at ISU, gave me a Roland Piano Plus 70, and I’m trying to motivate myself enough to learn. So far I’m up to adding lessons to my Amazon Prime watchlist, ordering a basic lesson book/keyboard stickers, and staring at the keyboard while I read Glibs.
Relevant
When I was teenager, my dad splurged and bought a really expensive Kurzweil keyboard/synthesizer. More than 20 years later, it’s still unused. Great piece of furniture, though.
Dunno if it makes you feel any better, but every dollar spent on a Kurzweil is a dollar spent promoting the singularity.
I thought, for quite a long time, that I would be a musician. Eventually I recognized that being a musician is a pretty hard life, and that even though I had some talent I didn’t have the kind of talent that _requires_ that you be a musician. I have other talents, and I eventually chose to pursue the more lucrative ones, the ones that led to an easier life. But I did spend a number of years practicing many hours every week, working shit jobs just to pay the rent and give myself time to practice, etc. As a result I know something about how to practice, and while it’s not entirely apposite for an adult who just wants to mess around on an instrument, that adult is going to have _some_ goal in terms of proficiency.
The first piece of advice I’d give you is to set aside some time for just having fun, playing songs, bashing your instrument around. Do that. Have fun.
The second piece of advice I’d give you is to set aside time, and a lot of time at first, for real practice. Practice is not about fun, though it can be fascinating. It’s about burning patterns into your fingers. You need to go slow, and make every movement perfect. I’m not a pianist, but if I wanted to learn Piano I’d start with one finger. I’d hit that key in a number of deliberate ways, learning how it responded. And then I’d add a finger- maybe I started with the index, but now I’d add the middle. I’d learn how great pianists alternate between those fingers and I’d try to emulate them, very slowly, very perfectly. And then I’d add more fingers, but at every step I would play slowly, deliberately, and perfectly.
That’s the real trick to practicing an instrument. You can’t be impatient. You have to be slow, deliberate, and perfect. If you get impatient you ruin your practice.
I’ve had lessons with some of the greats and… that’s what I learned from them, even if it wasn’t what they were trying to teach. Emily Remler spent quite a bit of time explaining Wes Montgomery’s approach to harmony to me once. I could have figured that out on my own, tbh, though it was helpful to have her lay it all out for me like that. But what I was really watching was her fingers. She had practiced a lot, and practiced well, and I learned more from watching the way she played than I did from listening to her explain why she played that way.
Have fun with the instrument, and decide what your goals with it are. But… go slow, and play perfectly when you practice. Even if you have to play a piece at glacial speed to play it perfectly, play at that speed. When you practice you should play perfectly.
I’m trying to learn the guitar and being slow is something I’m doing. I’ve been practicing the same five chords for about a month now (unfortunately not every day), trying to get the changes down faster and smoother. I’ve bought some pedals to change the sound from the basic guitar/amp combination so I’m not hearing the same thing over and over again. I might buy an additional guitar or two (I got the money) to maximize that sound difference so I don’t get bored.
Well, the pedals should get counted against the dicking around part of the day. Which you should have- gotta have some fun. But if you want to get better there should also be the practice part of the day, even if it’s just 20 minutes.
Something I did for a long time was practice smooth transitions between chord forms. You play one chord and then look very hard at your hand and visualize how the fingers will have to move to play the next chord, as efficiently as possible, for as long as it takes to really see that. Then, eventually in an instant, but at first as slowly as is necessary, you move your fingers so that they form the next chord. The goal is to hardly hear a gap between chords, but the work is in making each finger take the shortest path possible, even if you have to move them very slowly at first.
Basically the purpose of the pedals is to make sure I don’t get bored practicing. I’ll spend 10-20 minutes practicing the transition from one chord to another. And then I’ll turn on (or off) a pedal and the next 10-20 minutes practicing the same transition and because it sounds a little different practicing it some more doesn’t seem so bad.
I try to spend a little time each day practicing. I don’t always succeed but I try. Some days I’ll manage to spend an hour or two and it still seems like fun. I’ll never be any good but I hope to make some interesting sounds.
OT
Seems we have new NFL rules. If you tackle the quarter back it is roughing the passer. If a pass hits a receiver anywhere on his body and he gets his hands close to it as he tries to gain control in the end zone it is a TD, and if a receiver reaches his arm out toward the pylon when going out of bounds within three yards of the goal line it is a TD. I like it when we make up new rules as we go. It is awesome. Progressive if you will.
Also, though this went in without a lot of fanfare, next season there will be a rule that if anyone on the field yells “Cool it, it’s the fuzz” both teams have to take a knee, and are only allowed to rise in order of their intersectionality. This might seem like a strange rule at first, but it opens up the possibility of the first crippled black Jewish lesbian NFL star.
Seven games in progress; three are absolute ass-beatings, and Jags-Bungles isn’t nearly as close as the score. And one of the close games involves the Colts, so who wants to watch it anyhow?
You are NOT going to dampen my complete hype right now about the Eagles.
I hate The Eagles man
………..Just turn it off
why? They don’t have a cheating Tom Brady or any other player that likely has pissed off anyone lately.
It is a slaughter in spite of the bull shit calls. I just turned it off. I can’t watch anymore. Bronco fans are use to them sucking ass for a few years at a time. Seems this is one of those years.
I may be cheering for your Eagles in the super bowl.
Not if you’re Anthony Barr.
/mad
Very OT. Something bad happened in Texas. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5052163/Up-27-shot-Texas-church-gunman-opens-fire.html
That sucks
Is it bad that this immediately came to mind?
Now reporting 20-24 dead.
How long until Chuck Schumer climbs up on the dead bodies despite bitching about Trump’s doing the same thing after the truck attack?
Not Chuck but here you go.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/358868-democrats-renew-calls-for-gun-control-in-wake-of-texas-church-shooting
Heh.
Ya, that is not good. A town of 400 people? Very weird that happening in a community that size.
You wouldnt get that many shots off in my church.
I don’t have that problem either since I don’t go to church.
@NonWhiteHat (Popehat’s right-hand man and the originator of the DPRK News twitter account) says it well:
Guns are an illness? They’re inanimate objects. They have no agency.
I struggled to parse that. Even after filling in an obviously missing word.
What was the missing word?
That is the question.
[gets up to see the actress playing Queen Gertrude]
Be
I still think Cooke’s ‘come at me bro’ column was the best, where he openly challenged anti-gun people to actually go through the process to try to repeal the 2nd Amendment.
OT: The jokes about Brazile’s upcoming mysterious suicide were apparently not lost on her.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/donna-brazile-says-haunted-murder-seth-rich-feared-life/
That’s very weird. I don’t mean to be conspiratorial here, but doesn’t that mean that a former chair of the DNC is suggesting that the Democrats have hired snipers to take out their own people? I mean, I don’t know how else to read that. Either Brazile has gone completely buts (by far the most likely scenario) or there are some things we don’t know about how the Democratic party operates.
From what I gathered she’s claiming she’s afraid of the Russians.
Why would the Russians take out a useless partisan hack?
I didn’t say I believed her.
The Russians killed Seth Rich? Why would they do that?
If Seth Rich was killed for political reasons, as opposed to just walking around in D.C. at night reasons, that ought to be a story right? Maybe the biggest story ever. Brazile basically says that she thinks it might have been an assassination.
I believe she intervened in the investigation. What happened there we will probably never know for sure. DC police and a top Dem? Ya. No stink there. Smells like roses. Justice will prevail. HA!
I don’t think it is nuts/buts at all to think that Seth Rich was the one who passed on the emails that wikileaks published. I also do not think it is unlikely that the Russians hacked the servers that the emails were taken from. The fact the Russkies hacked the server does not mean they gave the info to wikileaks. This is the one thing that seems to escape the, “OMG THE RUSSIANS” crowd. Both can be reality. If I was Donna, I would fear for my life as well.
Nice, kia!
Russia considers ban on Armando Iannucci’s film The Death of Stalin
***
Russian authorities are considering a ban on a black comedy about the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s death over fears that the film could lead to violent protests, a high-ranking adviser to the culture ministry has said.
Pavel Pozhigailo said The Death of Stalin, directed by Armando Iannucci – the man behind the political satires Veep and The Thick Of It – was a “planned provocation” aimed at angering Russia’s communists.
He speculated that the British-French production could be part of a western plot to destabilise Russia by causing rifts in society. Pozhigailo, a senior official with the state-appointed public chamber, said the culture ministry would refuse to allow the film to be screened in Russia if officials decided it had the potential to “incite hatred”.
…
Russia’s Communist party, the second largest party in parliament, has previously called the film “revolting”.
Alexander Yushchenko, a spokesman for the party, said the film, which is based on a graphic novel of the same name, was an attempt to spark discontent.
Vzglyad, a pro-Kremlin newspaper, called the film “a nasty send-up by outsiders who know nothing of our history … Should it be screened in Russia? Of course not.”
Stalin’s popularity has risen in Russia in recent years, amid the Kremlin’s confrontation with the west over Ukraine and Syria. In June, the Soviet tyrant topped a poll carried out by the Moscow-based Levada Centre to find “the most outstanding person” in world history.
***
Stalin’s popularity never really dropped. They’ve run those ‘greatest Russian polls’ multiple times since the late 90s and Stalin always manages to end up in the top five.
Imagine if the National Socialists were the second largest party in the Bundestag and you know who was voted Most Outstanding Person in a poll. Yet the goddam commies with millions of deaths on their hands continue to march along.
In a similar way, it is interesting how strenuously US progs will denounce Confederate statues or the Iraq invasion while being utterly indifferent to the atrocities of Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot or the ongoing socialist clusterfucks in Venezuela and Zimbabwe.
You don’t have to imagine, because the 3rd largest party in Russia are the ‘Liberal Democrats’, and they’re basically fascists.
Bear in mind, being 2nd and 3rd largest party looks like this in the Duma, United Russia still dominates overall.
The way European political parties name themselves is incomprehensible to me. It’s like they just string together nice sounding words together without considering their meaning.
Yeah. I was watching a European parliament circle jerk one time and all the parties were the alliance of this and the coalition of that.
Group MEPs
Group of the European People’s Party (PPE)
273
Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats (S&D)
190
The Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)
89
The European Free Alliance Greens (Verts/ALE)
58
The European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR)
56
European United Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL)
36
Non-Attached Members 31
Europe of Freedom and Democracy (EFD)
29
Total 762
file under: some animals are more equal than others
***
Russia’s Communist party, the second largest party in parliament, has previously called the film “revolting”.
Alexander Yushchenko, a spokesman for the party, said the film, which is based on a graphic novel of the same name, was an attempt to spark discontent.
Vzglyad, a pro-Kremlin newspaper, called the film “a nasty send-up by outsiders who know nothing of our history … Should it be screened in Russia? Of course not.”
Stalin’s popularity has risen in Russia in recent years, amid the Kremlin’s confrontation with the west over Ukraine and Syria. In June, the Soviet tyrant topped a poll carried out by the Moscow-based Levada Centre to find “the most outstanding person” in world history.
***
Thesis – the left’s psychological obsession with the alt-right, Nazis, and white supremacy is a result of the fact that over the last 8 years, they’ve pretty much publicly become what the alt-right/Nazi/white supremacists always criticized them as.
Mass shooting at a Baptist church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.
Early reports say more than 20 dead.
The urge to speculate will be huge.
A google image scan suggests the church isn’t a black congregation, so I’d rule out white supremacists.
I’d say it must be lefties, ISIS fanboys, or nutjobs, but anybody who does this is a nutjob.
Heartbreaking.
Nutjobs is a pretty broad category, but when churches are attacked it’s usually someone with a personal vendetta and connection to the location. My guess is white guy who was pissed at his wife/girlfriend and snapped.
So, this is likely one that fits the narratives in some sense, but which the laws proposed will have no relevance.
How many minutes passed before someone blamed Texas’ gun laws for this?
I saw a tweet that said “We don’t need your prayers, we need legislation” LITERALLY THREE MINUTES after I saw the first report of the shooting.
About the only good thing is a couple of local citizens engaged him in a gun fight before the police got there. I have not heard who actually killed him.
The most interesting thing about the Sargon video posted earlier on the whole “Being white is ok” sign broo-ha-ha is that he had an article at ~29 minutes where a progressive addressing the question of whether being white is actually ok actually describes it as a original sin. I mean, the left is actually taking the arguments I (and not just me, I know) have made against their absurd social justice arguments and co-opting them as the official dogma.
I heard an NPR story about a play last week where the theme was that if you are born white you are a racist. Written by some Asian Doctor of some shit chic. You can’t help it if you are white. White=racist I find that very fucking offensive. I happen to be any number of disturbing repulsive things, but racist is not one of them and that shit pisses me off to no end.
It may have been a local CPR interview when the play went to Denver and I do not care enough to search out a link. The racial divide has reached new ground in my life time thanks to these people.
The fact the instigator of that print project got that many kids to post those signs on their campuses shows a bunch of kids are not going to put up with that shit. My hope is they start printing MLK quotes about content of character.
You’re old enough, I guess, to have grown up in a time when you _weren’t_ supposed to define yourself mostly through your racial identity (as am I.) The new rules take some getting used to.
I’ve said it before, but… I’m not saying we’re raising a generation of white supremacists, but I’m not sure what we’d do differently if we wanted just that. Tell kids that the central fact of their existence is that they are white, and thus guilty, and you’re likely to wind up with people who believe the former, and are not very concerned with the latter.
I FOUND MY PASSPORT MUTHAFUCKAS! IT’S TITTY TIME!
http://i3.fuskator.com/large/nlC0JIzWJCD/Busty-Oiled-Babe-Erica-Campbell-with-Big-Tits-Wearing-Bikini-4.jpg
http://titerest.com/images/pins/big-tits-in-a-bikini.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/78/1b/93/781b93bf874d32f315898cafd1fb8146.jpg
https://orig00.deviantart.net/d503/f/2014/092/9/6/big_boobs_girl_with_a_hourglass_waist_in_a_bikini_by_hipslie-d7cu3cw.png
Are you using “passport” euphemistically?
Actually no. I have a business trip to India on Friday and I was having a crisis of not being able to find it last week, just found it.
That was a poor attempt at humor – I saw you posts earlier this week. Passport always reminds of the movie Sneakers – I’ve been saying “My Voice is My Passport” all week!
This place has too many secrets.
+1 setec astronomy
I have the blu-ray…..probably will review some day.
I have a rather different view of the movie, only because the news announcer at the end was one of the anchors in my local TV market, so immediately recognized him.
Maybe the most prescient movie of the past 30 years.
What a fucking cast. Great flick.
“And give him head whenever he wants.”
“Give him….guidance. Be a beacon!….”
“Give him head?….”
“Be a beacon?!”
*childish laughter*
Do real Americans own passports? The answer is obviously, laughably no.
He’s going overseas to report back to Vladamir himself.
WAKE UP SHEEPTARIANS!
So where was it?
So where was it?
In the last place he looked.
Surprise… millienials are ruining Broadway.
Love this though:
Many actors object to the drinking, but they have no power over theater owners, who enjoy the fat profits that come from $20 glasses of wine.
Then start your own theater, you whiny, entitled POS.
interesting
***
Plan Totality was a nuclear plan established by U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower in August 1945 on the direction of President Harry S. Truman, after the end of the Potsdam Conference.
The plan envisioned a nuclear attack on the Soviet Union with 20 to 30 atomic bombs. It earmarked 20 Soviet cities for obliteration in a first strike: Moscow, Gorky, Kuybyshev, Sverdlovsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Saratov, Kazan, Leningrad, Baku, Tashkent, Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Magnitogorsk, Molotov, Tbilisi, Stalinsk, Grozny, Irkutsk, and Yaroslavl.[1] However this plan was actually a disinformation ploy; it was only in 1946 the United States could boast even nine atomic bombs in its inventory, along with twenty-seven B-29s capable of delivering them.[2] Plan Totality was part of Truman’s ‘giant atomic bluff’ aimed primarily (and unsuccessfully) at the Soviet Union.
***
Huh. And then a few years later, Truman fired McArthur for advocating the use of nukes during the Korean War.
One thing the military does, especially in peace time, is make plans. It keeps their planners working and helps drive changes to strategy and technology.
There’s a difference between having a plan to nuke the shit out of everybody if need be and proposing that we actually start nuking them. Maybe, in retrospect, we should have been firmer about the Korean war, but using nukes would have set a bad precedent, IMHO.
***
During the A-bomb programme, Kurchatov swore he would not cut his beard until the program succeeded, and he continued to wear a large beard (often cut into eccentric styles) for the remainder of his life, earning him the nickname “The Beard”. Two towns bear his name: Kurchatov Township, the headquarters of the STS, and Kurchatov near Kursk (the site of a nuclear power station), the Kurchatov Institute is named in his honour, and bears a large monument dedicated to him at the entrance. The crater Kurchatov on the Moon and the asteroid 2352 Kurchatov are also named after him. Many of his students also enjoyed distinguished careers, among them Andrei Sakharov, Victor Adamski, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trutnev and Yuri Smirnov.
For his part in establishing the Soviet nuclear program, in accordance with state decree 627-258, Kurchatov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, the Stalin Prize First Class, the sum of 500,000 rubles (besides the earlier results of (50%) premium in the amount of 500,000 rubles and a ZIS-110 car, a private house and cottage furnished by the state, a doubling of his salary and “the right (for life for him and his wife) to free travel by rail, water and air transport in the USSR”.
***
more random wiki
***
Operation Dropshot was the United States Department of Defense codename for a contingency plan for a possible nuclear and conventional war with the Soviet Union and its allies in order to counter the anticipated Soviet takeover of Western Europe, the Near East and parts of Eastern Asia expected to start around 1957. The plan was prepared in 1949 during the early stages of the Cold War and declassified in 1977. Although the scenario did make use of nuclear weapons, they were not expected to play a decisive role.
At the time the US nuclear arsenal was limited in size, based mostly in the United States, and depended on bombers for delivery. Dropshot included mission profiles that would have used 300 nuclear bombs and 29,000 high-explosive bombs on 200 targets in 100 cities and towns to wipe out 85 percent of the Soviet Union’s industrial potential at a single stroke. Between 75 and 100 of the 300 nuclear weapons were targeted to destroy Soviet combat aircraft on the ground.
The scenario was devised prior to the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and even included the note that the entire plan would be invalidated if rocketry became a cheap and effective means of delivering a nuclear weapon. These documents were later declassified and published as Dropshot: The American Plan for World War III Against Russia in 1957 (ISBN 080372148X).
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Ok, stream of consciousness… The other day JATNAS commented on the weakness of contemporary rock vocals. So I’m working (and drinking) at home and there’s this string of modern rock songs that comes on that just feels like so much whining, with nothing of the rebellion of rock that I know. But the sound, the texture, the overall vibe… It’s the fucking Lion King soundtrack!!! These millennial weak-shoes are making rock n roll to that. And that brought to mind this study I read about how the current generation feels more like success is linked to birthright and privilege rather than effort, and THAT is the fucking message of The Lion King, too. Ok, back to work (and drink)…
You guys always make me have to break this meme out.
So, if every generation feels this way about the up-and-coming generation, does that mean we get weaker by the generation, or is this simply generational narcissism?
I’ll posit that each generation is strong in a *new* way, as we *progress* and that the current generation analyzes the new generation in terms of its survivablilty under the conditions we grew up in (regressively for the Y2K types back to the paleolithic) and hence we get the feeling that yutes are *weak.*
I think there needs to be a distinction between Millennials in general and Millennials that actually have some degree of influence, because environment matters a lot. The Millennials people complain about are primarily the middle and upper class university educated urbanites, while poorer and/or more rural Millennials are nowhere near as ‘weak’ as their more influential counterparts.
So in my environment, my millenial son listens to classic rock and contemporary rap. I’m pretty confident he avoids the misogynistic rap and listens to the anti-*man* rap. …which is cool with me. I don’t care where he gets it, as long as he’s anti-gubmint.
I listened to a montage of the top US song for the years 1940 to 2016. About half I had never heard before, and the ones I recognized, I didn’t like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAb7YyU_2E4
In short, crappy music is as old as cave paintings.
Sturgeons’s Law: “90% of everything is crap.” This applies to every category of every thing.
Old men complaining about how modern music isn’t rebellious enough is pretty funny.
Who’re you calling old? And get off my lawn!!!
Can you feel the hate tonight?
I roll my eyes whenever I read someone worship old Rock Music. I mean we are supposed to love it because it was rebellious and new yute music but now it is the music of old men complaining about lazy the yutes are. The irony is lost on them.
Also I hate when some band/genre/singer is used for tribal purposes. Reminds of the interminable rockist/poptimist debate. Real “how many angels Can dance on a pin?” Stuff.
By tribal stuff I mean the whole “my favorite genre/band proves that I am awesome whereas bands/genres I hate are only listened to by people I hate.”
I’m guessing your handle is based on the 1984 lead… I don’t worship old rock music. I’m just concerned that there isn’t a mainstream rebellion out there, especially with the trend toward the honoring of victims as opposed to the honoring those who rise above, who find new ways. Mayer’s, “we’re just waiting for the world to change” infuriates me. Why wait? Get the fuck on it and make the change.
The people who led the “mainstream rebellion” are in power now so they don’t want to overthrow themselves now do they?
Also the only way to be a real rebel today would be to be a an ISIS or better yet a neo-Nazi. Not something a lot of people want to do.
Point taken, but I’m not advocating for rebelling for rebellion’s sake, but to fight for freedom, for a principle.
Alternately, there’s always not getting tatted up and pierced.
Here is the theme song of an anti-SJW channel popular with millennials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=etDon1LH1vA
I think you will like it.
Here is another song made by a millennial that I think you will like:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmeSGwVBoao
Yep, that ‘mainstream rebellion’ turned out so well.
Also I think many old ideas about Rock music are based on what turns out to be ephemeral circumstances. Until the 1950s music industry was focused on sheet sales. And until the rise of the Internet the only to listen to your favorite bands was to hope the radio station played their music or the record store had their albums. The notion of the music industry being focused on physically owning recordings of music was the dominant part of the music industry for only a brief and quite recent period.
Hm. I still prefer owning my music, over paying for it every month and having some guardian take it away from me on a whim anyway. Clouds, yelling, etc.
Apparently misdemeanor 4th degree assault against Rand Paul = 5 broken ribs.
Edit fairy note: Changed from Paul Ryan to Rand Paul
Ken has a real boner now.
That means he got stomped on the ground
^This man knows.
You do not get fractured ribs from a jap-tackle unless the fucker was swinging a 2×4. I broke 7 ribs last year, most if not all displaced fractures. I had to fall 8 feet and land on my side to achieve that. It pissed me off beyond cussing words. I made words up that I do not remember..
5 broken ribs including dislocations which are life threatening ?
Misdemeanor 4th degree assault ?
That doesn’t add up.
Somebody beat up Paul Ryan? Fuckin A. where do I contribute to his defense fund?
5 broken ribs (including displaced fractures) don’t sound like minor bodily injury.
I broke seven ribs in May and I’m still recovering. It’s not a trivial injury.
… Hobbit
Dammit – I meant Rand Paul. Sad I know – always get those two names mixed up (I know house v senate but the names throw me off). My bad.
We wish Boucher had mixed them up, too.
I have always done this, too. I mostly have the straight now but I occasionally slip up still.
*them, not the
From the article:
“Police arrested 59-year-old Rene Boucher on Saturday and charged him with misdemeanor fourth-degree assault with a minor injury.”
No, five broken ribs is NOT a minor injury. One broken rib; maybe. Five of them is a pretty big deal. I don’t think you can hit someone once and break five ribs.
It sounds like he got hit by a lawnmower and got pregnant.
Paul Ryan?
Boucher is an anesthesioligst apparently.
And his next door neighbor.
Somebody beat up Paul Ryan?
Krugabe better have an airtight alibi.
A non-politically-correct millenial tune
Is it just my imagination, or are the rules about down players and possession of the ball completely inconsistent?
I had no Idea this would be posted, hope it was fun
/frown
This fucking sucks, i wanted to be around for this, so I could add to the mix, but no one told me this would be posted, so i missed my own article,
damn, ah well,
Bob
I’ll spank Riven for you. It’s all part of our service.
Mmmm…..continue…..
Late to my own game, just go here,https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=robert+lozonne
i play lot’s of atmosphere, and a Shitload of Telecasters, right now I’m delving into Keys and synths,YMMV
Play the purest of pure instruments and start playing the drums. 🙂
It is one of my favorite parts of my instrument. I’ve probably played 100+ shows and countless practices. I think I’ve been amplified for maybe 5 or maaaaaaybe 10 of those. Gotta be louder? Hit harder. Definitely fun and also frustrating dealing with the dynamics of it all. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
I also like the tradeoffs that come with it. A lot of practices are just sitting on your hands while everyone else figures out what chord/key changes they need to make. And it’s very hard or at least takes a lot of trust for the other musicians to trust your input on the song and it’s structure. But I also get carte blanche pretty much to do whatever I want.
Drummers and everyone else live in very separate musical worlds. I like it.
Sigh. How do you know when a drummer is at the door?….