SubGenius

> While Crime and Punishment (1866) is frequently cited as the “quintessential Russian novel,” Dostoevsky’s final novel, The Brothers Karamazov (1880), is widely acknowledged as his greatest literary achievement.

I have to agree. It's unparalleled. Notes from Underground is really good too.

Speaking of Russian literature, I finally managed to finish rereading War and Peace recently after a decade+. It was long and slow, but easier this time around. I listened to The Cossacks on audiobook as well, and liked it quite a bit.

> “It was really disgusting to read they ask me to accept their EFF Pioneer award ‘on behalf of Sci-Hub’,” Elbakyan said in response two weeks before the awards were officially announced.

> “Why did not they want to give the award to me directly? Sci-Hub is my sole creation; it is not an organization and never had any team. In 1998 they awarded Torvalds, not Linux,” she added.

Definitely understandable, especially considering that the DOJ/FBI were investigating her directly.

Mostly classical music. Nothing in particular, I'll usually look up spotify-curated playlists like "Baroque classics" or "French Composers" etc.

Music with singing is too distracting when I'm working, and so is music that I'm overly attached to or get excited by - for instance jazz.

Spotify has a ton of ambient playlists too. I feel like ambient tracks strike a good balance for me when working.

Lucky you! Considering that the likelihood of Necro putting out a new record or playing live is almost zero. One can hope though!

Their album Epitaph is what I like to call a "perfect" record, in the way that Aja by Steely Dan is a perfect record.

Great read. Despite being into death metal for ages, I've never really paid attention to the lyrics. I tend to be overwhelmed by the intensity of the music itself, in a good way.

I did look up the lyrics to Necrophagist many years ago, and they seemed to be really goofy. There's only so many words about mutilated stillborn babies that I want to hear. Perhaps there's also a fair amount of tongue-in-cheek involved, writing these lyrics. Anyway, amazing band.

Santana's Woodstock version of Soul Sacrifice[0] must be one of the greatest live performances ever. The band is locked in, Santana's overdriven tone is excellent and just right. It's my favorite.

Apparently they'd all dropped acid right before going on stage, so that probably helped a bit. :)

[0] - https://youtu.be/JaaT_HRb4GU

Perhaps you're looking for Kinopio.club?

https://kinopio.club

Steely Dan has had a lot of great drums on their records! Guitars and bass too. Their song FM is just brilliant...

Impressions is a great track. My personal fave is a rendition by Pat Martino. Guitar nerds will like it.

[0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrrdbS2spkQ

I use arch btw.

Sound aside, the Strat is probably the most comfortable shape to play, for me anyway. I've found Les Pauls to feel heavier despite the actual weight of the guitar. My picking hand feels awkward on an LP body/bridge too.

Of course, this is all subjective. Some people love their Les Pauls, and I respect their preference.

Both shapes have helped write some of the most amazing music ever put on record.

Not everyday you see Coltrane on HN. ;)

One of the greats. I've always liked his tone, expression and the brilliant use of the whammy bar.

His version of Nadia is the electric guitar played in perfection. [0]

[0] - https://youtu.be/drAv2FoYji8

- A House for Mr Biswas by VS Naipaul: explores themes of belonging, ownership, home, independence, escape, freedom.

- Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez: explores love in it's many forms.

- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry: about love, the absurdity of life, beginnings and ends.

- Miles by Miles Davis, Quincy Troupe: about jazz and the life of it's greatest creator.

- Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson: ramblings of a pope.

Martino was amazing. He had some of the wildest "lines". You can think of an improvised guitar solo as a series of small blocks/lines with breaks in between to think, or just rest your fingers. Martino's lines just keep going on and on, similar to John Coltrane. Or Allan Holdsworth.

Here's Martino playing John Coltrane's Impressions. It's so tastefully played.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrrdbS2spkQ

My personal favorite is his record Baiyina. It's very trippy, full of odd-time signatures, sitar-like drones, tabla etc. Recorded quite early in the fusion era too.

The Live at Yoshi's record with Billy Hart and Joey DeFrancesco is fantastic as well. Pat Martino at the top of his game playing with a very tight rhythm section.

You're right about that bassline! I love the full, round but tight tone.

You might like Richard Bona and Linley Marthe, both of whom played with Joe Zawinul's Syndicate project. They both have that similar kind of solid tone.

- https://youtu.be/c4zNb01nA_A - https://youtu.be/ppNFJbMrOHw

They all sound like imitators(not really) because most of them played on the Bitches Brew record. At least Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin. :)

That does make sense to an extent. The average listener today is more likely to think of cheesy 80s synthy jazz fusion when they hear of the term, rather than something like Bitches Brew.

Miles Davis had the greatest set of ears too. His thoughts on his contemporaries in these blind tests are very interesting, and hilarious.

"For a long time, Miles Davis and I had been trying to get together for a blindfold session. I was determined that when the interview did take place, it would be something out of the ordinary run of blindfold tests; and that's just the way it turned out.

Every record selected was one that featured at least two trumpet players. As you will see, this selection of material did not faze Miles.

Miles was given no information whatever, either before or during the test, about the records played for him."

- http://www.forghieri.net/jazz/blind/Davis_1.html

- http://www.forghieri.net/jazz/blind/Davis_2.html

- http://www.forghieri.net/jazz/blind/Davis_3.html

- http://www.forghieri.net/jazz/blind/Davis_4.html

There's an excellent autobiography called Miles, by Quincy Troupe. I highly recommend it. I've read it a few times over the years.

As for racism, Miles faced significant racism himself, being arrested, assaulted by police etc. I don't recall the details right now but he did say some angry and not-so-nice things about white people, perhaps born out of his own experiences.

Nobody can fault him for any kind of discrimination in his music though, as he's helped shape the careers of many jazz artists over the years, from all backgrounds.

In any case, Miles was a fascinating character. A master at his craft.

I had an accident that left me with some pretty nasty nerve damage on my left hand. It's essentially a non-stop tingling/buzzing sensation with intermittent electric-shock like pinching.

I switched to a Keynesian Advantage 2 late last year and it's been a tremendous help for dealing with pain. It took a while to get used to though. It was probably a good thing too because I always knew how to touch-type but I don't think I'd ever learnt it in a systematic way, just sort of pickedi up as a kid in the 90s. This time around I put in a lot more thought about finger placement etc.

The Kinesis has key remapping, macros and a whole lot of features I'm probably not using. It's great.

I still need a daily stretching session and stress-ball use to keep my hands feeling lose and healthy, but the Keynesis has reduced my hand pains quite significantly.

I started Gurlic a while back which has an environment community with regular posts, although discussions are non-existent since the site is unknown. https://gurlic.com/environment

I've also started a new project called Hummingbard, which lets you build decentralized communities on top of Matrix. Hummingbard has an environment community too, but it's empty at the moment. Hopefully it'll pick up steam soon as people start to host their own instances of Hummingbard. https://hummingbard.com/environment

Hey, my post clearly says to either sign up or use a throwaway Matrix account, and even asks to avoid using your main Matrix account.

As for the password, Hummingbard needs it for the same reason that a server-hosted webmail client like Roundcube needs your email password to log in.

Hey, it's not integrated into a server, it just requires Dendrite (a beta Matrix server implementation) for certain features (like threading) that have not been implemented in the reference server (Synapse).

Hey, I can't comment about Matrix's P2P implementation as I haven't played with it yet. It's still a heavy work-in-progress I believe.

Regular Matrix is pretty straight-forward - you join rooms and send events. Events get propagated to all participating/federated servers that are in the room. You watch for incoming events.

The Matrix devs should be able to say more about their P2P implementation. :)

No but in the next couple days. I actually wanted to go with the strictest copyleft license, but there was a discussion earlier about dual-licensing, which left me quite confused. I'm not very knowledgeable at all in these matters and am taking my time to decide.

Well, Discord is proprietary.

I'm not super interested in the chat/IM aspects of Matrix. What I really like is the protocol and the built-in federation and pub/sub mechanism that you can use to build cool decentralized apps that pass events around.

Unfortunately I'm running a very minimal arch + i3 setup now, I wonder if I can install Neochat without pulling in a whole lot of KDE dependencies?

Neochat looks great by the way!

Matrix is not only an exciting ecosystem to build on top off, the overall community is pretty amazing too. Fossdem went great and I liked a lot of the talks.

I'm beginning to build a couple of projects on matrix and am really hopeful for its long-term success.

No!

I was just watching him with Dave Weckl and John Patitucci, and hour ago.

:(