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For about 3-4 months now, when this song comes on the radio or my ipod scramble, the volume increases markedly. It's odd.

I think if you're going to have P2W - it should take place on a P2W server separate from those who are grinding the game. It's just one of the many reasons WoW isn't all that special anymore. Need a level 100 toon? Pay $30, get one instantly, on any sever ya like, you know with the people who put in 1000 hours of their real life.

I don't really care about loot boxes as long as they are cosmetic. In HOTS or Overwatch it's just like an added bonus, even though most of it is trash. Though, having loot boxes in HOTS is a little different than Overwatch which was an overrated/overpriced $60 game while HOTS (also made by Blizzard) is actually free to fucking play and even then I have most of the toons and never spent a cent and get plenty of loot boxes for free as well.

Keep this shit up though and the underground/indie devs are going to take over the gaming industry. Just like what happened with music, MTV not playing real music, the radio playing the same shit over and over again, major labels putting out garbage over and over again... and it eventually broke the mainstream music industry (thank fucking god).

Full version + radio edit + jungle mix please Next ibiza hit for sure.

Bert listens to Civil Defence Radio.

Exactly. I see a phrase all the time:

'If there are aliens in our galaxy, why haven't we detected evidence of them?'

Perhaps because they are so different from what we even recognize as life that we don't even know what we are looking for. Perhaps the use of radio waves to communicate is something they haven't done in so long, that using it to send a message in space is unfathomable. Or perhaps they never even used that technology in the first place. It's possible that their own physiology would make such technology pointless.

The point is, we're looking for them in very human ways and expecting something very human to come back. Perhaps a civilization at a stage similar to ours out there is asking the same question and using a technology to search that we ourselves have no understanding of. They could be our galactic neighbors and our differing biologies and technology could be so different, that wouldn't even recognize each other as life.

On the flip side of that coin, I once had a UFO experience that was anything but 'lights in the night sky' and the object did things our planes couldn't hope to do. So who knows, maybe they are already here.

On one hand it does perhaps lack imagination, but on the other it makes perfect sense that aliens we first find would be much like us since they'd be attracted by our radio waves, and to become a space traveling civilisation they'd likely have similar motivations and their brains/reasoning capabilities would have evolved in a similar way. Afterall the human brain seems to be hardwired to find other humans - we see faces in the clouds and random floor patterns etc.

That new movie Arrival (2016) (not the Charlie Sheen 90s one) did a great job of unique aliens.

I guess another reason why fiction makes aliens like us is so that it allows a story to be told without the story getting bogged down on the details (unless that is the focus of the story).

seems as though Canada is closed today, listening to the radio

Freedom of religion is independent of civilian armament.
History shows that religious persecution is normal for humanity, and in most cases it's perpetrated by the government. Sometimes to consolidate power (with government tie-ins to the main religion), and sometimes to pander to the grimace of a majority.

Ironically, in this country, freedom of religion only exists due to armed conflict, albeit merely as a side effect of independence from a religiously homogeneous ruling power.



It's true that Catalonians would likely have been shot at if they were armed.
However, likewise, the Spanish government will never grant the Catalans democracy so long as the Catalans are not armed - simply because it doesn't have to.
(*Barring self suicidal/sacrificial behavior on part of the Catalans that eventually [after much suffering] embarrasses the government into compliance - often under risk that 3rd parties will intervene if things continue)

When the government manufactures consent, it will be first in line to claim that people have democratic freedom. When the government fails to manufacture consent, it will crack down with force.

At the end of the day, in government, might makes right. Laws are only words on paper, the government's arms are what make the laws matter.

Likewise, democracy is no more than an idea. The people's force of arms (or threat thereof) is what assert's the people's dominance over the government.



You can say the police/military are stronger and it would never matter, however, the size of an [armed] population is orders of magnitude larger than the size of an army. Factor in the fact that the people need to cooperate with the government in order to support and supply the government's military. No government can withstand armed resistance of the population at large. This is one of the main lessons from The Prince.

Civilian armament is a bulwark against potentially colossal ills (albeit ills that come once every few generations).

Look at NK. The people get TV, radio, cell, from SK. They can look across the river and see massive cities on the Chinese side. They know they have to play along with the charade that their government demands. At the end of the day, without guns, things won't change.

Look at what happened during the Arab Spring. All these unarmed nations turned to external armed groups to fight for them to change their governments. All it accomplished was them becoming serfs to the invited 3rd parties. This is another lesson from The Prince : always take power by your own means, never rely on auxiliaries, because your auxiliaries will become your new rulers.






Below is general pontification. No longer a reply.
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Civilian armament does come with periodic tragedies. Those tragedies suck. But they're also much less significant than the risks of disarmament.
(Eg. School shootings, 7-11 robberies, etc -versus- Tamils vs Sri Lankan government, Rohingya vs Burmese government. etc.)

Regarding rifles specifically (all varieties combined), there is no point in arguing magnitudes (Around 400 lives per year - albeit taken in newsworthy large chunks). 'Falling out of bed' kills more people, same is true for 'Slip and fall'. No one fears their bed or a wet floor.

Pistols could go away and not matter much.
They have minimal militia utility, and they represent almost the entirety of firearms used in violent crime. (Albeit used to take lives in a non newsworthy 1 at a time manner)

(In the U.S.) If tragedy was the only way to die (otherwise infinite lifespan), you would live on average 9000 years. Guns, car crashes, drownings, etc. ~All tragedies included. (http://service.prerender.io/http://polstats.com/?_escaped_fragment_=/life#!/life)






A computer learning example I was taught:

Boy walking with his mom&dad down a path.
Lion #1 jumps out, eats his dad.
(Data : Specifically lion #1 eats his father.)
The boy and mom keep walking
Lion #2 jumps out, eats his mother.
(Data : Specifically lion #2 eats his mother)
The boy keeps walking
He comes across Lion #3.

Question : Should he be worried?

If you are going to generalize [the first two] lions and people, then yes, he should be worried.

In reality, lions may be very unlikely to eat people (versus say, a gazelle). But if you generalized from the prior two events, you will think they are dangerous.

(The relevance to computer learning is that : Computers learn racism, too. If you include racial data along with other data in a learning algorithm, that algorithm can and will be able to make decisions based on race. Not because the software cares - but because it can analyze and correlate.)

(Note : This is also why arguing religion is likely futile. If a child is raised being told that everything is as it is because God did it, then that becomes their basis for reality. Telling them that their belief in god is wrong, is like telling the boy in the example that lions are statistically quite safe to people. It challenges what they've learned.)



I mentioned this example, because it illustrates learning and perception. And it segways into my following analogy.



Here's a weird analogy, but it goes like this :

(I'm sure SJW minded people will shit themselves over it, but whatever)

"Gun ownership in today's urban society" is like "Black people in 80's white bred society".

2/3 of the population today has no contact with firearms (mostly urban folk)
They only see them on movies used to shoot people, and on the news used to shoot people.
If you are part of that 2/3, you see guns as murder tools.
If you are part of the remaining 1/3, you see guns like shoes or telephones - absolutely mundane daily items that harm nobody.

In the 80's, if you were in a white bred community, your only understanding of black people would be from movies where they are gangsters and shoot people, and from the nightly news where you heard about some black person who shot people.
If you were part of an 80's white bred community, you saw black people as dangerous likely killers.
If you were part of an 80's black/mixed community, you saw black people as regular people living the same mundane lives as anyone else.

In either case, you can analytically know better. But your gut feelings come from your experience.



Basically, I know guns look bad to 2/3 of the population. That won't change. People's beliefs are what they are.
I also know that the likelihood of being in a shooting is essentially zero.
I also know that history repeats itself, and -just in case- I'd rather live in an armed society than an unarmed society. Even if I don't carry a gun.

-scheherazade

http://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/worldtoday/british-colonialism-impact-india-shashi-tharoor/8863792

That is what I thought the fade out was for, it allowed better overlap of going from song A to song B on the radio. I also figured it might have to do with physical records, making it easier to go from song A to song B, but couldn't figure out a really reasonable reason on why they'd have to do that, so figured most of it was for radio reasons.

It does sound very odd to have a hard stop and start to a song, and without the fade out, you manually have to move the volume of the songs on the mixer... of course most sons on the radio are done via digital methods, so they can setup an automatic fade, and automatic gain if needed. That or you add a second of silence between tracks.

Fade-outs are (were) done for radio play (when not for artistic reasons), so that songs can overlap or someone can start speaking over the end. Youtube videos have a defined beginning and an end so it makes sense the music should go that way too.

The nice thing about fade-outs is they sometimes hold easter eggs, but mostly I find them annoying. For in-car listening I either make them louder or cut them short or both.

What I took away from all this is that a long version of "Life during wartime" is available sans fade-out, scratching a 30 year itch.

Also made me remember 70s singles which skipped on the last groove of the record - except I dont remember which ones those were...

The conversation here has been interesting, as usual, but is no one going to mention that most radio programming is scripted? Any of those bits where they call someone and offer to send flowers to a person of their choosing - all scripted / actors, or at least that's my understanding. If that's the case, this call easily could just be a bit.

We all get the duality of this. I had a bad feeling, but then an even worse feeling kicked in... I should do a cost-benefit analysis. I already hate myself for sinking into management-speak. But...

Guy on phone: only obvious benefit is lording this over his bully. It feels really good, especially when broadcast. Maybe some residual guilt. Got to take into account that, whatever his original intention, his reaction was from the gut.

Bully: unknown. Depends on what kind of person he is now, years after. Probably angry. Possibly feels bad about what just happened to his mother.

Mother: no benefit. Probably feels raped. Possibly was raped, depending on your definition. Possible shame over what her son did. Comment of "you probably deserved it" could be genuine, or could be severe defensiveness.

Radio station:
OK, I can't be objective here. It's possibly mostly live, they maybe feel an obligation to entertain, they have little control, but fuck those guys. I just hope they apologised afterwards.

Personal analysis: doing the deed isn't cool, given the innocent victim. Laughing about it on the air is understandable, but fucked up. Broadcasting it, laughing, and celebrating the outcome - whoever you are - is disgusting.

Not ftw, and not a victim anymore imo. Now he's just an asshole. He had to make it public by calling a radio station. Stupid as fuck. I'm guessing karma will bite him in the ass. No one wants someone like that working for them.

(edit) oops i had skipped the first part. Still a douchebag.