@Mitch So they always say!

Like it's on a train schedule.

@Cerberus I've heard that in reality, under Mussolini the trains were more off-schedule than before

Ah, really!

The thought just occurred to me that I can't remember ever seeing a left-handed string player—violinist, violist, cellist or bassist—playing the instrument from a left-handed orientation.

I'm sure if I saw one I would have noticed.

So why do guitarists do that? And what's so damn hard about picking with your off-hand?

Reality perplexes me.

My latest masterpiece

@CowperKettle Not too bad!

Except I first read it as the Psalmistry of Mountains and was confused. :)

But that's my bug not yours.

And some classic

@CowperKettle I wonder if that’s before or after “When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes” . . . but I haven’t done my research, so I guess it’s not a fair question.

It's from "The Rape of Lucrece"

Hello everyone, I have issue which I want to discuss with you all.

Regarding my grammatical error, my English is poor since I was a kid, I make stupid grammatical error. And I do not know how to overcome by this. Actually I have no teacher who can check my work. So I am posting here, with hope that someone would help me. Thank you.

I am 18 now, soon I have to sit for a interview, and I do not know how do I overcome this error.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected, potentially bad keyword in answer, toxic answer detected (159): What does NOOT mean? by Ynve on english.SE

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported question (batch report: post 1 out of 2) (93): how should i wish belated birthday wishes? by Happy Birthday Wishes on english.SE

hi

@Cerberus Thanks!

@Robusto oh that's a great idea. I should fill my lazy Sundays with laziness. Except I won't because I'm way too lazy.

@Robusto it's not about the world though. It's what you do for yourself. Screw the world, write music just because you want to.

@Robusto I'd rather be moderately bad at all the things than moderately good at only one thing.

Life's too short and too full of things. You say who needs another mediocrity, I say who needs another idiot savant.

I could learn to play the accordion really really well. But why.

@Mitch yeah all your peasants were Chinese, that's why.

@Mitch six hits from 1994 to 2014.

> Though the coroner ruled Salazar's death a homicide, the deputy who fired the shot was never charged. 125 Paseo de La Plaza, on the second floor of the old Italian Hall in the Olvera Street district 1932 by famed Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros An 18-foot by 82-foot fresco depicting a Native American peasant tied to a double cross, on which an eagle sits.

> Findings were similar across Thai and Cambodian mountain villages, South American peasant communities, Navajo hunters and industrialized European workers.

> The creation of a Central American peasant association grew out of shared problems, but it nonetheless raised issues related to national particularities.

> In traditional Central American peasant politics, receiving a salaried position was often a payoff and a cause for envy.

> Given Central American peasant movements' long history of factionalism, ASOCODE's success in bringing together such a diverse and fractious collection of groups from seven different countries is nothing short of remarkable.

> in Latin American Peasant Movements, ed. Henry A. Landsberger (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969), 361, contends that factors other than the political changes during the revolutionary decade led to the weakening religious attendance witnessed during the period.

Well that's more like 0 rather than 6. But that only proves my point as much as yours.

@RegDwigнt Task Master! I've seen a couple of episodes. The big fella is a great comedian.

Yeah I know him from all the other panel shows.

If you're talking Greg Davies, I mean.

He's told quite some stories on WILTY. And also his reaction to Jedward on 8 out 10 cats was priceless.

Yeah :D I think he shot to being well recognised in the In Betweeners.

That I never watched. But I've heard it mentioned once when he was on some panel.

I think I first heard about him on the Edinburgh Fringe in ... "We Are Kang"?

Ah, "We Are Klang"

Like, I don't watch Mitchell and Webb either. Or whatever Bob Mortimer's in.

Basically I don't watch shows that are not panel.

@RegDwigнt yeah, not my kind of humour, but got a lot of attention

Anyway, the entire first season of Taskmaster is on YouTube now. And they've started uploading bits and pieces from later seasons literally this week. The whole channel is only a month old, like.

So this is the best opportunity to catch up, if you were ever planning to.

Though the first season was hands down the best in terms of chemistry between the contestants.

I tried that link but it's banned in the UK :eye roll:

Haha wut

yeah

So Boris Johnson is Hitler.

He certainly has the build for it

Not quite the haircut.

:D

@CowperKettle thanks.

Are you an Indian.

Not until Putin annexes India.

I might be able to see it on 4OD I think

They'll be showing the annexation live?

Someone's been quick on their feet to secure the rights.

OD = on demand. supply and demand. you supply and annexation, people demand to watch it

I see. I've only heard of OCD so far. I'm guessing that must be Australian English? On cunting demand.

@RegDwigнt So I've definitely tried it. I've written music for various video projects, etc., and done well enough. I've even liked some of those things, and they did serve the purpose. But I long ago sold all my synths and samplers and my mixing board, all that. And in truth, I really don't want to write music. I'm happy to listen to music written by talented people.

The most fun I had when I was in advertising was producing music written and played by really talented people. That I can do. I seem to know when a phrase is right, or what would help a melody shine, etc. But in truth that is a bit like standing on a ladder to dunk a basketball. The hard part is already done for you.

@Robusto It's the hoop that's way too high.

I've always thought so.

@Robusto Seems that they were wrong about the snow. Dramatically wrong. There's already about 28" out there right now, the drifts are up to my waist, and it's still snowing heavily and not to stop till tonight. They're calling for 40-70 mph winds. And it is of course trash day, and I'm supposed to have a contractor coming over for some repairs. We'll see how that all goes down, because even public buses are getting stranded. They don't plow residential streets here.

@tchrist Yikes!

Even in Massachusetts they plowed the residential streets.

Good luck.

@RegDwigнt Yeah, well, I'm already a jack of all trades. And at various points in my life I've been really good at this or that.

The only thing I'm reliably a genius at is ars magna ... er, I mean anagrams.

@Robusto The policy is that there has to be more than like a foot (or two?) of snow lingering for more than a week before they'll plow residential streets.

So days like this the roads are effectively impassable for most vehicles. The winds make blowing and drifting a real problem, and there's often zero visibility.

@tchrist So in the meantime if you need an ambulance you just ... die?

No shovelling allowed if you're over 30.

I did more shoveling when I was over 30 than under it.

BYO snow-blower. Dunno how the garbage and recycling trucks can hope to manage today.

That is zero to one storm in Mass.

That was Rocky Mountain National Park, this past spring I believe.

You win.

Except that's probably a whole winter's worth of snow in your pic.

Quite so. Eventually they need construction equipment to remove the snow even down here sometimes.

We're supposed to get a bit of snow down here over Thanksgiving.

All that means is I won't be able to ride my bike for a day or two.

But I wasn't going to ride on Thanksgiving anyway.

It's not like you can push three or five feet of snow off the roads and put it anywhere on its own, and for some reason residential areas don't like the kind of "removal" the military-grade snow blowers used at RMNP perform.

Well, it must cover their houses.

I'm supposed to drive two miles for Thanksgiving. Today it might not even be possible, but 36 more hours should be enough to get some of it cleared off. The temperature is plunging right now, diving into single digits over night, and the wind is starting to make a joke of any casual removal attempt.

I always hated when the snowplows would come and plow the end of my driveway in after I just cleared it. But that's what always happened.

Oh look there's a troop of high school boys going door to door with shovels. It's not like the squeegee sharks who do your windshields at NYC; this is totally worth it.

That's my mailbox in Mass.

Yeah, that happens. They just rebuilt all our mailboxes this summer.

@tchrist What do they charge? Like, $50?

Close; usually $40.

Driveway and paths.

And decks.

Cheap.

A neighbor with a plow has done one lane of my street. The garbage bins are now buried.

Man, do I not miss snow. At all.

Can't open the back door right now. Drifted up too high.

@tchrist Single-story house?

@Robusto No, and there's an upstairs exit. :)

I'm gonna me go carpe puerum.

Out the attic?

@Mitch plot twist: the hoop is only that high because someone else put it there.

It would be lying flat on the ground otherwise.

On that note, I'm coming here straight from a MuseScore discussion where someone asked people to rate their skill level on a scale between 1 and 5.

Absolutely everyone rated themselves 4 or higher.

I said, not even Daniel Barenboim would rate himself a 4+, left a link to the Dunning-Krueger effect, and left the scene.

Fucking asshats.

Absolutely nobody on MuseScore is a 4. If they were, they wouldn't be on MuseScore.

I'm a solid 1. And I can play way better than most people I know. Indeed, in point of fact, I can play way better than most people, period.

But that alone does not make me a 4+. Jesus Christ.

I clicked on some of those 4+ jokers at random, and not a single one of them had a single recording of themselves playing.

That's how good they are. They are so good they never record themselves, lest we be shocked to death by their brilliance.

</rant>

Hello.

@Færd Okay, that is kind of cute and funny.

How are things?

Glad to have put a smile on one of your faces.

@Cerberus Back to tolerable.

And you?

@Færd Hmm.

Same here, actually.

Though most probably for different reasons.

Hmm. What intolerable phases did you go through while we blacked out?

@Mitch Ah, Americans are anti-pleonasts?

@Færd Oh, only a private one.

We did miss all of you.

Aw. Thanks.

Glad it's over for you too.

Not quite over for me.

Nor for you, probably.

One wonders what your country will look like in thirty years.

Only the intolerable parts, for a while.

I have no idea.

Probably a lot more like how young people are now.

I'm not sure.

Say there's an attempt to overthrow the regime. Or a civil war. Or a war. Or somthing.

Nothing can be predicted after that. And that's the most torturous thing. I can't really decide what specific course of action to take.

War is the worst thing; civil war is even worse.

I would rather expect the conservatives to die out gradually.

Also in the R. G.

So the social norms espoused (or enforced) by the government will match the current youth's more.

@Cerberus That would take a long time. But it's not just conservatism. It's transforming into its own brand of militarism, imperialism, combined with neoliberalism.

Yeah, I know.

That part is less likely to change of its own accord.

But the social norms should?

@Cerberus Yes. And it's not looking up, as the conservatism part does, for example.

Yeah.

@Cerberus Well, social norms need a sensible medium to interact and develop in. This medium is under constant attack.

There's talk of killing the internet forever.

Haven't those norms already changed among young people?

They've started to call it "the international internet", as opposed to the "national internet".

Heh.

They're trying to imitate Russia.

Worse.

Which, in turn, is trying to imitate China.

This kind of limitation has only been tried in North Korea, I think.

Yeah.

This extent.

But is that realistic?

They're not as crazy as NK.

I don't know. It'd enormously impede the economy. Like crazy.

But they are crazy.

Many more people would need to approve of such a decision than in NK.

Yeah, they would seem sensible enough to know that it would damage the economy very badly.

@Cerberus That hurdle is also being remedied.

Oh?

The vestige of people's presence in the government is under attack now.

(I don't even want to call it democracy)

There's rumors of a constitutional overhaul.

That replaces the president with a puppet parliament.

Not directly elected by people.

I see.

That would be terrible.

Indeed. And one would wonder how our social norms would develop in such a terrible political environment.

Still, even in a complete dictatorship, various important politicians would need to approve of a total Internet cut-off, many of whom no doubt run organisations that would suffer a great deal financially and possibly existentially?

Yeah, they could probably get their own privileged access to the internet. Like some universities, businesses, approved journalists, etc.

It'd still be a sever loss for the public.

Hmm.

That is the NK model.

Most internet is still blocked as we speak. I'm using an ADSL service at home. My mobile data is out, as I believe is everyone else's.

But a large organisation would need a lot of access points across the country.

But don't let me bring you down man.

You've had your plateful.

No, I understand, it's terrible.

I can only hope with you that things will settle down.

And that gradual change will happen.

It's just that it takes so long...

I don't know. I'm lost. I'm generally hopeful, but can cling to nothing specific.

Many people have put their lives on the line in the protests. It may be time.