I think that some hardcore religious folks view people who don’t believe in their religion as fundamentally bad, unenlightened or flawed. Evil, in some cases.
I personally think that non-religious people are just as moral, ethical and kind as everyone else. They simply don’t subscribe to an organized, official group or way of thinking. They are open-minded to the possibility that what they currently believe isn’t the end all, be all of life and reality.
How I feel when I apply for 47 jobs online in which I have 27 years of industry experience, and the receptionist acts like I’m an idiot for calling to follow up and talk to someone in person:
Is there any room in the world for a determined, passionate human being that truly wants to change the world for the better? All I want is enough money to support my family, I couldn’t care less about being rich.
Child porn isn’t a technology problem. It’s a people problem.
Mass shootings isn’t a gun control problem. It’s a people problem.
“Far right”, Neo-Nazism and MAGA isn’t a politics problem. It’s a people problem.
Human beings need to come together, now more than ever. We’ve been divided and conquered by the ones who seek power and control over liberty and freedom. No longer is Free Speech an honorable virtue, but largely demonized as a haven for the scum of the Earth to spread hate, fear, uncertainty and doubt to those they wish to oppress.
And for what, ultimately? The satisfaction in believing that they’re better than those they don’t agree with, that they’re threatened by? Fear is a hell of a drug. And it’s cutting our collective nose off to spite our face. I think that’s what gets me the most—it’s like a bad, slow motion dream where I can’t speak, but am seeing these things unfold in a mutually destructive manner. It’s like the Scorpion and the Frog.
What a pity that we’ve gotten to this point. I hope we can still dig ourselves out before it’s too late. Otherwise, I fear it’s going to be a hell of a bloodbath. Is that really what we want?
I was going to post this track here and talk about how much it has meant to me over the years. I was going to say how it’s my go-to track for when I’m feeling like some old school 90’s electronic. How I downloaded it from some unknown place, maybe a LAN party, maybe an FTP site, I don’t honestly remember. But I always loved this track especially, and have listened to it over the years many times, up until (at least) 2024.
I was exporting the .XM music format it was in to one digestible by most browsers and some hidden (to me) metadata appeared on the export screen. I had *never* seen this before!! It’s like this really cool easter egg, to find this almost 30 years later. So I’ll post it and post the track as well for you, hopefully D.R.van der Velden doesn’t mind.
“I Still Have a Dream by Bert [Kosmic FreeMusic Foundation]
This song was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr. (1920-1968) Prior to his fatal shooting, MLK toured annualy, denouncing the hardships of African-Americans. “I have a dream”, one of his most stirring national adresses, was delivered on August 28, 1963 before 250,000 people at the Lincoln Memorial…………
Sample Origin: -bassdrum, hihat & claps: tr909 ftp site -percussion: krystall -bass: tx16w ftp site -piano: basehead -synth: sampled from my psr500 keyboard -speech: sampled from ‘America’s greatest speeches’ audio CD
-bells: maz sound ftp
-female voc: krystall
Feedback & Info: -kosmic.nfo file or email -d.r.vandervelden@wbmt.tudelft.nl Berts Music Department -www.dsdelft.nl
/~vdvelden/
Copyright 1996 D.R.van der Velden
All Rights Reserved”
EDIT 1: Tried e-mailing the address and visit website above, but both are out of commission =(
We’re all fucking apes. We think we’re so smart, so evolved… go fuck yourself.
We’re animals, feeding off of the umbilical residue of generations before us…
In the end, all we really are is energy manifested into an extremely slow vibration, colliding with matter and fucking reality with our existential dicks in the air.
Yeah, you fucking heard me. Go fucking talk yourself into a coma, this is all that really matters.
I know I’ve written about Mudvayne before, and the song “Nothing to Gain” (from L.D. 50) has always stuck out to me with its eccentric time signatures. I was just listening to it again after some time. Parts of the song, including the outro, are in 17/8.
Yeah, you read that right. And it fucking flows *so* well. It’s pretty damn amazing.
I’m caught between my irritation of my neighbor’s kids going outside every day to play, screaming/yelling everything for hours outside my office window… and my jealousy of them enjoying being outside so much.
I think the social media space needs weighted upvoting.
What I mean by this is that you can upvote *more* than your ‘single-vote’ count, depending on your current allotment of…oh I don’t know.. “vote currency” ? Hopefully you know what I mean. Maybe you’d get a certain amount for how much time you spend on the platform.
Anyway, some stuff I want to upvote MORE. But I don’t want to buy coins, I don’t want to pull out my credit card. Whatever. *toke*
(straight from the stickynote..please forgive the run-on sentences, it was a very ‘stream-of-consciousness’ thing)
A cartoon musical number where Donald Trump and Eric/Don Jr/etc. are there as kids asking what they should do since they won’t be able to afford some extravagant thing if the bank loan rate is that high, and Donald burst out into song – “Well, kids…”
(musical theatre type up-beat music)
“All you ever need to do is lie Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie All you ever need to do is lie Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie lie
All you ev-er need to do Is lie and hope they don’t see through (all together) ALL YOU EV-ER NEED TO DO IS LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEE!!!”
My grandparents on my mother’s side had a hearing aid business/office when I was little. I remember my parents dropping me off there on occasion to “work”, my grandparents assigning me some duties such as sorting the small glossy brochures for different products. I remember sorting through them as quickly and efficiently as possible, to see how fast the big pile of paper could be organized into smaller specific piles of each type. I felt proud of myself for the work I did there, even if it was partly pretend and to keep me busy while I was there.
I feel like this memory has really stuck with me throughout my life, in the context of optimizing tasks. It comes up frequently still. Pretty funny how the brain can assign visuals and memories to mundane everyday life, to be recalled each time you do a thing.
I’m glad to have had grandparents that did things like this with me. They really cared, even if we were a big family with many siblings and cousins, about all of us. They were always so selfless and nurturing, hardly ever a bad or tense moment with them that I can recall.
It’s really sad to see somebody who has done so much for scientific progress stoop so low in his public interactions. I’m honestly ashamed I ever looked up to him as an entrepreneur and cheered my son on years back to write a school report on of his achievements and all of the good he was (at the time) doing in the world. I mean, nobody’s perfect but there’s been something really wrong with him since Covid and 45.
These are my predictions of Musk – his recent actions tell me he’s likely to do one of the following:
Drive Wikipedia into the ground like he did Twitter
Run for (R) POTUS
Blow the rest of his money on stupid shit he has no business with, for the lulz
Continue to covertly build an army of his enemies, unbeknownst to them, and ultimately direct them all off a cliff Lemmings style
