"The Russians are Animals"
Well, you're gonna hate the actual modern versions, they're fucking wild.
]]>Oh, and Ms. May putting Hotel California into a speech is really not a good sign.
That's brutal. That's Animal-Land.
p.s.
Grief.
We know.
]]>That is, humanity is not good, or bad, it is mostly just what it is made by its environment, the information it acts on and its upbringing.
]]>It's just our evolution as a social species means we developed empathy and ethics. It's even there in some monkeys, AFAIR.
Nature doesn't care about good and evil, we do. And I think emulating nature is not the way to go. But how much evil we do in the name of god.
Err, sorry, pseudodeep thoughts detected, excursion contained. The old cynic is again in place.
The usual religion thread coming up next door makes me remember a line from "Labyrinth Index", "The worst curse you can inflict on a monster is an excess of empathy."
And I remember a line from Lem's Solaris about robots not sharing original sin, thus not knowing good from evil and being able to inflict a nuclear holocaust without moral qualms. Somewhat funny quite a part of my exposure to Catholic theology stems from a guy who was a life-long atheist/agnostic and who had to hide his Jewish ancestry during WW2...
]]>Cross-contamination from the other thread, I knew about Freud even in high school. Which makes said girl/woman who knew me from school using bad psychoanalysis she learned when in her middle twenties on me even more ironic...
Pulse at about 100, I guess I'll do some physical work. It calms me down somewhat.
]]>And if I sound more than slightly fucking pissed off, we had a meeting at work, and the asshole head of the Center has decided that our entire office, which has been around under one name or another for 30 or more years, is going to be broken up and pushed off to other Institutes, or they'll just go away, because she never had any concept of what we do, didn't care to learn, and it's not in her idea of "Wonderful IT Service Dept"....
We're funded at least for three months, probably until the end of the fiscal year, so I'm probably good until mid-Aug, which is when I've been planning to retire anyway, but for all the work we've done over the years, that was valuable (tell y'all more when I retire)....
]]>Sometimes it may be for the best. My mom passed away at 92. She was not sick for very long and she did not suffer. She was the last of her generation. I think she was ready to go.
She had a regular wellness checkup with her doctor and when I visited the following weekend she told me her doctor said she'd probably live to be 100. Wednesday my sister called to ask if I'd noticed Mom was severely jaundiced. She hadn't been when I saw her on Sunday.
My sister took Mom back to see her doctor the next day and the diagnosis was some kind of pancreatic cancer. Terminal. It had manifested in less than a week.
Mom chose not to attempt any extreme intervention, choosing instead home hospice (palliative) care. She passed on without undue pain about two weeks from the date of the diagnosis.
It happened that quickly. It's been six years. I have mom's cat. She's at least 21 years old and about ready to go as well. She's stopped eating. I don't know if the cat is going to last the week.
]]>Blocked in the U.S. It's a shame really. I'm one of the few who doesn't hate the Eagles and I actually like that song.
]]>I noticed last night that "Hotel California" Brexit dates back to July 2018 in the UK press, probably earlier. I can't read May's face so don't know if she had heard this. Away from link collection, but e.g. A Hotel California Brexit? (clunky video is ok) And this in 2016: Yanis Varoufakis says Brexit is like Hotel California: 'You can check out any time you like but you can't really leave' - Varoufakis compared the UK relations with the EU bloc with a well-known song by the Eagles and this in 2015 Yanis Varoufakis: In his own words And that's just what google found; probably bar/pub chatter earlier.
Unrelated, parsing these (raw, sorry, on road): https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/mar/11/solar-geoengineering-climate-change-new-study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-019-0398-8 (paywalled)
and because consequences (in an optimistic scenario tree): NOAA Ocean Acidification Program: taking stock and looking forward, a summary of the 2017 Principal Investigators' Meeting
Somebody needs to get a major journalist to point out the consequences of ocean acification are not well modeled and may well be (probably are) pretty bad.
]]>I noticed last night that "Hotel California" Brexit dates back to July 2018 in the UK press, probably earlier. I can't read May's face so don't know if she had heard this. Away from link collection, but e.g. A Hotel California Brexit? (clunky video is ok)
The "Hotel California Brexit" bit is cool.
I have plenty of other YouTube links to various versions of Hotel California, but the one I'm missing now is the one from Hell Freezes Over with the pseudo-Spanish guitar intro and the extended dueling guitars solo at the end. And I think that might be the one that's blocked here in the U.S.
]]>Also that, dang, they were doing so well until so recently. It does seem to run in my family that we get robust good health, a relatively brief decline, and a quick exit. That doesn't make it any easier.
Thank you for your sympathies, everyone. I'll be a while moving through the grieving process but I'm mostly presentable to be back in public. I doubt anyone else on this blog ever met Walter or Steven and your thoughts are appreciated. You missed some cool people.
]]>SS @ 1351 Don't I'm already wondering if I'm going to be the last one left standing & is it a blessing or a curse?
]]>https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLns7jxlzZ5_kwLylXRaQqkWJw8ebxSjcf
There is some overlap with songs in OGH's work, but then, what got me hooked on "Halting State" was the "Your mom wears army boots" line alluding to NMA. Yes, they are in there, though not "51st State", the song played at the parties I frequented in my late teens.
No warranty for bad taste, and new suggestions welcome.
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