I expected right wing gangs to be roaming the streets shooting people during the next four years. I did not expect that they'd be doing so with the open approval of the Administration, just a year after the inauguration.
most people are incapable of assessing risk properly because "common sense" does not suffice where data are required
if risk = severity * probability, then the failure usually lies in high severity low probability events that are still going to occur because low != zero
I had no idea that I've ever owned a bagpipe practice chanter, but when I was looking for something else I found this one.
I may finally understand what is so damnably difficult about playing bagpipes in tune. - The pitch of the note is very sensitive to the pressure with which it is played. - Blowing so weakly it barely makes a sound is about a quarter tone flat. - Blowing it hard enough to be at maximum volume is about a quarter tone sharp. - Blowing it with the correct pressure to be in tune with other instruments is difficult to maintain without losing consciousness.
This photo looks a little funny because it was taken with a very wide angle lens setting.
@Neil E. Hodges Compare the situation with a streetcar. Everyone is behind the Führer (aka driver), and everyone not standing sits (in jail or worse) Jump off the car in movement is forbidden. And every 30sec comes the cashier...
If you compare the Third Reich with a streetcar, that's all the same.
When the cold air that we're experiencing is the result of the North Pole not being able to hold onto its air mass because of Arctic melting, Trump looks particularly stupid. The polar air belongs at the pole! It's not rocket science. It's climate change!
I wonder what would frighten the Trumpster enough to prefer confessing to all of his misdeeds to comitting something even more outrageous as a distraction.
oh geez i don’t understand that yet but am looking forward to when I do. Will share with my more informed North Carolina mesh people for their consideration. TY!
..."For decades, we avoided the difficult reckonings: the conversations about white supremacy that needed to happen after the civil rights movement, the economic inequality that kept growing unchecked, the civic institutions that needed reimagining, and all the truths about our genocidal and colonialist history that needed to be faced and integrated.
We suppressed the small fires. We chose comfort over confrontation, incremental reform over transformation, and politeness over justice. We let the undergrowth accumulate, including the resentments, the unaddressed grievances, and all the broken systems we kept patching instead of rebuilding.
And now the fire has come. The Trumpocalypse isn’t just one man or one administration. It’s the accumulated fuel of everything we refused to burn away when the fires were smaller and more manageable. It’s what happens when a society postpones its reckonings until they become unavoidable.
... To any thinking and caring person, the current landscape looks apocalyptic. We can reasonably conclude that our republic is being destroyed. And no other event better symbolizes the cluster-fuck of hideous atrocities than the barbaric, execution-style murder of Renee Nicole Good, mother of three, by a masked thug hired by ICE. ... What if the current American catastrophe is also cracking open what was sealed shut in our collective consciousness? What if the seeds of a genuinely multiracial democracy, an actually equitable economy, and a truly inclusive society were already here, locked tight, and this fire is what finally releases them?
The version of America that carried those sealed seeds is dying. The parent tree doesn’t get to survive its own regeneration. These are all burning: the country we thought we were, the stories we told ourselves about our exceptionalism and inevitable progress, and the comfortable illusions about how democracy works. Major parts of our national identity are dying, turning to ash.
The fire hurts! America is undeniably burning. Real people are fleeing. Immigrants are terrorized. Trans people are under assault. Women’s bodily autonomy has been stripped away. The most vulnerable are bearing the worst of the decimation and devastation.
But here’s what the lodgepole pines know: The fire burns away what was choking out new growth. ... Sometimes terrible things happen because hideous bullies ans thugs seize power and cause immense harm. The Trumpocalypse is real. The cruelty is real. The evil is real.
But it’s also true that human societies, like lodgepole forests, sometimes have a mysterious capacity to metabolize catastrophe into fertility. We wouldn’t be the first to take the ash of what burned and grow new life from it. Not because the fire is good, but because we are built to regenerate both individually and collectively.
The question isn’t whether we will face this fire. We are facing it. The question is: Will we let it and help it it do its work? Will we allow what needs to burn to burn—the systems that were never going to save us, the stories that were never true, and the institutions that served power instead of people?"...
I have found what I will call a Eunich Horn, although it was known as "La flûte de l'eunuque" in France during the 16th and 17th century. It has a vibrating diaphragm in the ball chamber that is activated by speaking or whistling at the hole in the side, somewhat like a kazoo or didgeridoo. The diaphragm is made of "goldbeater's skin". It seems possible that scrotum skin may have been used in the making some instruments, and therefore influenced the name. https://mimo-international.com/MIMO/doc/IFD/OAI_CIMU_ALOES_0159298/flute-eunuque
Becca
in reply to Neil E. Hodges • • •most people are incapable of assessing risk properly because "common sense" does not suffice where data are required
if risk = severity * probability, then the failure usually lies in high severity low probability events that are still going to occur because low != zero
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