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Please give Fred my best.

245

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  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    I hope you're not just now figuring that out.
    I kinda forgot it.
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    So, are there any guitar vids you'd recommend?
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    Hey, you know what, I don't wanna learn Starway to Heaven.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    So, are there any guitar vids you'd recommend?
    You like Dave Burger, right?
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    I do!
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    edited March 2020
    That's who I'm using right now.
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    I'm sticking with acoustic guitar. I'd like to learn to play slide.
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    Maybe that's next. It would seem to fit in nicely with the whole fingerpicking thing.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    Ok, he has a bunch of lessons on all kinds of things in here: https://truefire.com/

    What I suggest you do, is become a member and then wait for their online sales. They often offer rebates of 30% and more. I figure there will a sales period around Easter. You can either buy DVDs or stream the courses. Streaming is much cheaper, and works pretty well if you download their app and have a fast connection.

    I've done a bunch of their courses, including a couple of David Hamburger's finger-style blues courses.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    I'm sticking with acoustic guitar. I'd like to learn to play slide.
    I don't like playing slide. I can do it, but I don't like the sound of it on guitar. Plus, in my opinion, to play slide properly, you need a guitar that has been adjusted for it: heavier strings (I like flat-wounds strings for slide, less noise), higher action and an open tuning... I used to have a telecaster just for that, but then, because I don't really care for slide, I would never play the damn thing, so I put it back to regular specs. Maybe if I get a lap steel?
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    I'm now a truefire member.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    Excelsior! They often do $5/course sales, look for those. Have fun!
  • moetownmoetown Posts: 3,276
    There’s some clickbait all about Billie Eilish showing her tits for body positivity or some such shit. I haven’t clicked.
  • matthewmatthew Posts: 419
    So, it didn't take long for the Dems to screw the pooch. The only thing between the U.S. and a second Trump term is now ...maybe... the economic uncertainty brought about the mismanaging of COVID-19.

    Elizabeth Warren's mask is almost all the way off now. Having watched her performances on both SNL and Maddow, i cannot help but be mystified as to how anyone could have possibly believed she was going to endorse or support Bernie in any way. She deserved all of those snake emojis.

    I understanding HOPING or WANTING that good side to her that we were assured she had kicking in all of a sudden, but it was always clear where she stood, which was a little to the regulatory left of the establishment center-right 'centrists' and 'moderates' (but in defense of capitalism).

    The reason I mention SNL is that I realized how at ease she is performing as the kindly old grandma who is nevertheless hip to the vapid millennials who adore her. She's performing just as much when she sits with Maddow and 'casually chats' about the menace of Bernie Bros. She is signaling that her allegiance is to capital not progressive values. The movement that grew around Bernie is bigger than an individual. Everyone knew that this was going to be his last ride and that it was as much a long shot as it was probably the last chance to BEGIN to turn things around. And still, this rat-fucking will only further radicalize the youth that supported Sanders. The values that the campaign stood for will not fade away. The Warren crowd, however, had no values and will dutifully go back to voting for whatever neoliberal candidate goes on Jimmy Fallon enough times and does pantsuit flashmobs and does the was-already-stale-in-2015 (but always hilarious, amiright?) white person dance to hip-hop viral campaign video.

    Because Warren was never leading a movement, it was always about her ego and her magical 'plans' to save capitalism. The uber-woke white feminists who were slavishly following her are mostly going to fall behind the very un-woke and unfeminist desegregation-fighting, Iraq Warcheerleading, Anita Hill-betraying, George W. Bush-supporting, anti-M4A, anti-Social Security, reproductive rights-curtailing, anti-gay marriage, Crime Bill of 1994-writing, Joe Biden while she does her narcissistic tour of media and jokes with Kate McKinnon about taking some time to herself for "self-care". Nothing could better distill how much her campaign was about Elizabeth Warren and nothing else. Honestly, fuck her and fuck her vapid lib followers and their goofy personality cult. People are going to continue to die in large numbers in Trump's second term in part because of her willingness to put herself above any sort of principle.

    Also, her cynical and blatant lie about Sanders telling her that a woman couldn't win and her adding fuel to the Bernie Bros fire is all a part of the same smokescreen created to give liberals an excuse as to why they were betraying a genuine chance at creating a social movement that might be able to begin dismantling the capitalist establishment or at least wresting some control that has been lost since the 1990s Third Way DLC took over the Democratic Party. Anyone who votes for Biden because someone claiming to be a Bernie supporter was "mean" to them on Twitter should be stripped of their right to vote.
  • matthewmatthew Posts: 419
    I mean, I knew this was coming and never thought Sanders would be given the nomination, but I kept hoping I was wrong.

    And no matter how much I knew it was coming, I am still pissed to see it happening in front of me.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    There’s some clickbait all about Billie Eilish showing her tits for body positivity or some such shit. I haven’t clicked.
    Ah, the internets... Where would we be without them?
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    Wait, has Warren backed Biden? Why so much vitriol, Matt? I mean, she's out! If she backs Biden before the next primaries, I'll join you in maligning her.

    If she has any brains, and if she wants to keep being a democratic senator working in DC, she'll stay out of it for now and then back the winner when things become clear.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    More dumb shit that made me laugh:
    85029570_2651524205107548_7449147490990817280_n.jpg
    960 x 480 - 22K
  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    edited March 2020
    The Billie Eilish thing is that she always dresses to hide her body because she says she's not about selling sex.

    Then at a concert last night, she showed a video of her saying that she owned her body and whether she hid it showed it was her choice, not a reaction to other people. Then she took off the super baggy stuff and had a tank top on.

    It wasn't that she was anywhere near naked, only that it was (unusually for her) actually possible to see what anything beyond her head and hands look like.
  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    edited March 2020
    I liked Warren. But never in that cult of personality way. It was not a big thing for me to change to Bernie when the writing was on the wall (which for me was maybe January.)

    I am baffled by the people who would go from Warren to Biden over personality though, both because it's a betrayal of platform and because holy shit, have you seen Uncle Joe?

    There's a study going around on Salon I think with a quantitative analysis showing that Sanders supporters aren't any meaner than supporters for any other candidate and the worst of them aren't any worse than the worst of supporters for the other candidates.

    The thing is, Sanders supporters are just markedly more likely to be active on Twitter than those of any other Dem candidate.

    So people who say they're seeing asshole Sanders supporters more often than asshole supporters of any other candidate are correct. The error is in thinking the camps are sampled evenly on Twitter.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    Who cares? Warren's out, and her supporters are up for grabs. And Matt, if you want Warren's supporters to back team Sanders, dissing Warren might not be the best approach, know what I mean?
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    The thing is, Sanders supporters are just markedly more likely to be active on Twitter than those of any other Dem candidate.
    Assholes of every stripe are more likely to be active on twitter, period.
  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    edited March 2020
    Us: Warren really needs to endorse Sanders now so we can consolidate progressive support and put Biden away.
    Aggrieved Warren supporters: Warren doesn't owe Bernie anything. And some of the Bernie people are so rude!
    3/10 Primary Results: Biden takes commanding lead!
    Progressives: Wait, are we stuck with Biden now? We're not going to get anything from the progressive agenda.
    Us: Yes. Pity no one had any ideas how to help.
  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    Man, that new Strokes song ("Bad Decisions") really wants to stop the world and melt with you, doesn't it?

  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    oh boy. Here we go. They are setting us up with remote access laptops. I think they're about to implement working from home.
    Likely, yeah. A Tried and True corp is open to us working from home but resistant to the idea of declaring an emergency, likely for the trickle down effects to departments that cannot work from home so easily.

    They had a case in one perfectly enormous southern office and closed it briefly to disinfect the entire skyscraper then reopened.

    I will say I've noticed the commuter trains have fewer cars on them suddenly. Not as many people headed downtown.
  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    edited March 2020
    I'm feeling uneasy about people constantly reassuring me that the only people who die are older or immunocompromised.

    Those people are expendable, you mean?

    I've got a 74 year old MiL, a 70 year old mom, a preemie nephew... My sisters-in-law each have a parent at high risk. Not ready to lose any of those folks.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    The word hypernormalization was coined by Alexei Yurchak, a professor of anthropology who was born in Leningrad and later went to teach in the United States.
    Yurchak coined the term "hypernormalization" in his 2005 book Everything was Forever, Until it was No More: The Last Soviet Generation. The book focused on the political, social and cultural conditions during what he terms "late socialism" (the period after Stalin but before Perestroika, mid-1950s - mid-1980s) which lead to the ultimate collapse of the Soviet state in 1991.[2][3] Yurchak argues that everyone knew the system was failing, but as no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, politicians and citizens were resigned to maintaining a pretence of a functioning society.[4] Over time, this delusion became a self-fulfilling prophecy and the "fakeness" was accepted by everyone as real, an effect that Yurchak termed "hypernormalization".
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Yurchak
  • Jurf_WurburJurf_Wurbur Posts: 5,475
    I will tell you that T____'s enduring cynicism and pessimism about positively everything related to society/government seems a lot less like an aftereffect of growing up under late period communism. It feels more and more like sober pragmatism.
  • LefunesteLefuneste Posts: 7,989
    edited March 2020
    I'm feeling uneasy about people constantly reassuring me that the only people who die are older or immunocompromised.

    Those people are expendable, you mean?

    I've got a 74 year old MiL, a 70 year old mom, a preemie nephew... My younger brothers each have an inlaw at high risk. Not ready to lose any of those folks.
    Who knows, maybe a certain 73 year old will catch it and die. If we're lucky.
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