grasshopperpurp

Unfortunately, it's the slavers who HO for efficiency and the people who suffer

>It's no coincidence that the countries with the least free speech also tend to be the most regressive on civil rights and some of the worst places to be an ethnic minority.

Feels like this is an attempt to simplify something complex. Most Western European countries have more restrictions on speech than the US, but many of them do a better job of upholding civil rights. Just today someone posted a thread about the broken bail system in the US - for example.

>All those things I said stop them from fleeing? I'm not sure I understand the question. Yes, you can flee, but you're going to spend the rest of your life as a wanted criminal. It's not exactly easy.

But, this is true with or without bail.

I'm no expert on RBG, but I always pegged her as a Neo-Lib, rather than a Leftist.

>Feeney seems like an awesome guy but sadly in 100 years nobody will know his name!

I'm 99.9999999% certain that no one cares about their name when they're dead.

Was listening to Rick Rubin interview Andre Benjamin on Broken Record, and they briefly touched on this and agreed that constant touring creates a bubble that is terrible for writers.

In another part of the interview, Andre Benjamin said he loved going to the laundromat, and his biggest musical aspiration (at the time of the interview) was to play the bass clarinet well enough to be able to play along with anything/anyone at the park or beach (condensing/paraphrasing).

I think it's a combination of things, the career of a pop musician appears to be terrible for their art - probably bad for most of them as people, too.

I enjoyed the Switched on Pop episode on Lo-Fi. I don't listen to it a lot, and I didn't know much about its origins, but I'm a big fan of J Dilla and Madlib, who they cite as major influences on the genre.

Strong rec for J Dilla's album, Donuts.

https://switchedonpop.com/episodes/why-lo-fi-is-the-perfect-...

For myself, I have two main creative outlets that take up most of my personal free time, and I alternate between the two depending on how I feel. I find them both rewarding and never regret the time spent on either - even when I don't produce anything of any value. I understand going in that there will be fruitless sessions (in terms of quantifiable output), so I count them as a price to get to the stuff of value, which is subjective anyway.

>By the time this is all over and society resumes I will be pretty far past the cutoff point for fixing my social life and still managing to be relatively "normal"

It's like anything else you want. Put the work in; enjoy the process; and don't get frustrated when progress isn't linear. The more you get in your head, the harder the work will seem, the less you'll enjoy it, and the further what you want will seem.

Quote would have been better if he said "and can" after "and want." But, as general advice, I think it's still pretty good.

In that spirit, the self-titled album, The Great Speckled Bird, is worth checking out. The songwriters and vocalists are Ian and Sylvia, probably most famous for Four Strong Winds.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Speckled_Bird_(album)

Lots of good examples in sports, where wasted movements lead to failure, particularly at the higher levels

At the other end of the spectrum, his acoustic album, Folk Singer, with Buddy Guy is some of my absolute favorite Muddy.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folk_Singer_(album)

>Meanwhile in US/Western Europe riots are for some reason seem to be directed not at government and police but at uninvolved car/store owners.

Makes it seem like those rioters have different - maybe opposite - motivations than the protesters.

This highlights our inability as a society to properly value things. Things like education, the environment, mental health, and just creating a place that does right by as many people as possible are improperly weighted. I'm not saying it's easy to put proper valuations on any of this, but it's easy to do a lot better than we - at least in the US - are.

Good example of how the US is hurting itself by picking petty fights with friends instead of unifying against China.

I like Bandlab. I wish the mobile version let you mess with sound effects, but otherwise, it works great.

>This isn't true unless you're talking the bling Era of the late 90s.

You lived in a different 90s than I did then.

>Now who deviates? Danny brown? He's like 40. RtJ? They're like 40 too. Kendrick tends to always be the modern exception to every hip hop criticism. So I consider him the exception that proves the rule.

Who deviates from what?

>And they're treated the same as Rhymesayers or DefJux rappers, Saul Williams or immortal tech were during the bling and Crunk eras. It's all "white" even if black, nerdy, back packing shit thats not considered part of the "culture". Thats the way most lyrical rappers are treated today. They're talked about like Atmosphere was in 2004.

Not my experience. During that time, and a little before it, you had Blackstar, Common, Dead Prez, and a bunch of other underground acts who were respected - to the point Jay Z name dropped Talib Kweli and Common in the early 2000s. Freddie Gibbs and Big Krit both operate primarily outside the scope of Trap, are very talented, and respected. I don't like J Cole, but he's another one who is liked and respected.

Andre 3000 is a big fan of Future fwiw.

>Same beats. Same cadence. Same flow. Voices indistinguishableffrom each other.

This is how people used to talk about Hip Hop in the 90s. People familiar with Trap can easily distinguish between the different rappers and producers - just like people familiar with 90's Hip Hop could distinguish between Nas and Ghostface or DJ Premier and Pete Rock.

And, that's only Trap. There are still popular MC's and producers who operate outside of Trap.

I often think of Yeats' lines from Adam's Curse:

I said, ‘A line will take us hours maybe; Yet if it does not seem a moment’s thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been naught.

* I believe there are exceptions, but in general writing should feel like casual conversation. The author can do all kinds of tricks while making it feel like casual conversation, but if they deviate from the feel of spontaneity, they should have good reasons to do so.

The only album that comes to mind is Exile on Main Street, but I'm not particularly into back stories. Were a lot of people doing this in the 70s?

I'm D'Angelo is as good as it gets. Voodoo and Black Messiah are two of my absolute favorite albums, and they're the only two albums he's put out in the last 20 years. Other than it being a long process, I don't know a lot about the Black Messiah recording process, but Voodoo was multiple years of jamming with super-talented musicians then condensing that material into an album. They'd listen to classics like There's a Riot Going On then use that inspiration to guide the jam sessions. I think this approach is pretty similar to what you're referring to. On the other hand, look at how quickly acts like The Beatles, Bob Dylan, and the Stones put out music in the 60s. The Beatles released two albums in '67 then a double-album in '68; Dylan released two albums in '65 then a double-album in '66 - then recorded all the Basement Tapes material in '67 and released another album that same year.

Most low-paying jobs can't be done from home. They require the person to show up at McDonald's or Walmart, etc., so I don't see how this applies.

Except for bailouts - like the one currently being proposed - USPS is self-funded and does not receive money from taxes. One problem is that USPS is meant to be a service (congress has to approve rate increases), but it's treated like a business. This wouldn't be such an issue if people weren't trying to sabotage it so that they could privatize it.

I've heard the deal with Amazon is bad, and the new Postmaster General is trying to renegotiate it.

In my experience, no Priority or First Class packages were delayed in favor of Amazon packages, but the flood of Amazon packages did overburden the system causing some delays. From what I understand, USPS is receiving more Amazon, because more people are shopping online (Covid) and because Amazon is (was?) dealing with a labor dispute. A couple weeks back my station got absolutely hammered - received about triple the typical Amazon volume on back-to-back days. The clerks have to sort each package to the appropriate routes, and then the carriers have to deliver all those packages. As they're out delivering, they're picking up packages to bring back to the station, and those are the packages that were subject to delays.

In general, everything goes out every day, and even if one package is left behind, someone has to drive that package to the plant. From a business standpoint, this doesn't make a lot of sense, but it's part of the service culture at USPS, and clerks and carriers are horrified and mortified to hold up mail, which is why you see complaints like the one from the carrier in the article.

At the same time, USPS was rolling out some new policies, and they're missing a lot of people due to Covid, so a lot of factors converged to make the situation difficult. But, at my station, no mail has been delayed for weeks. I can't speak for the plants, but the vast majority of Amazon packages are delivered to the stations as drop shipments, so if the plants are having issues with volume, it's not because of Amazon.

During Covid, letters and flats had been down in volume (businesses being closed = less advertising) by somewhere between 25% and 40%, but they appear to be back to normal, and parcels had been up something like 60% overall.

I think that's most of the pertinent information. But, I'll say that this is typically the time of year where many USPS employees exhale a bit. The overtime dwindles, and the pace slows. Instead, much of this has felt like Christmas - anyone on the OT list and any non-career employees are working lots of hours to keep up with demand, and sometimes they're even compelling people not on the OT list to work OT. So, it feels like the holiday season never stopped, and we're all pretty exhausted. Of course, we feel lucky to have been able to work through the pandemic, but it's taken its toll, as well.

The main problem with the way most people look at meritocracy occurs on the fringes. Billionaires deserve that much more because they earned it; if they didn't, it'd mean the system is broken, corrupt, or both. The destitute deserve it, because they earned it; if they didn't "".

Irl some people deserve more than others, but the gap is made up and silly, and everyone is better off when everyone is taken care of. You don't want people who have nothing to lose, but notions of meritocracy make people think it's unfair to take care of everyone.

Fake it 'til you make it applies. When you're in the habit of stressing/overthinking, it's temporarily built into the way you process things. To overcome it, you have to practice controlling your mind. Sometimes starting with, "What is the worst way I could do this?" is helpful, because there's nowhere to go but up, and sometimes you trick your brain into producing solutions that seemed too ridiculous to consider - my own experience, anyway.

These pants look fine. When I think of cargo pants, I think of ridiculously large pockets that really only work in the context of the baggy style of the late 90s/early 00s. It's not my favorite look (though it was when I was a kid), but you can make it work on some level. Anyway, when most people are criticizing cargo pants, I believe they have the jumbo pockets in mind. Another poster correctly noted that they ruin a silhouette. The pants you linked don't have this issue as far as I can tell.

Note, this is just my impression. Maybe there are people out there who just really hate extra pockets.

I believe you, and I didn't mean for my parenthetical question to minimize the suffering of those who do experience it. It seems like it's more prevalent in some circles than others, but I could be wrong. Either way, I don't want anyone lose their job when it isn't warranted.

This is a real solution to a real (maybe exaggerated?) problem, but I'm curious to see how people in general would accept it, because the solution is associated with the Left, and the problem is associated with the Right. It's clever framing, and the benefits would reach far beyond the issue of cancel culture, but I doubt D's or R's as groups would seriously consider it. Hope I'm wrong.

>Anyone who suspects they might have regrets or will be giving things up... I don’t know if they should go through with it.

That's where we're at. We're open to changing our minds depending on our situation, which is about as good as we could hope for (not rich but relatively secure and very happy). Since things are good and we feel fulfilled, it's hard to justify significant compromises. We're really clear that if either of us changes our mind, we'll talk about it, and we check in with each other from time to time just to make sure, but we already have more interests than we have time to properly nurture.

You shouldn't feel any guilt about existing, though.