Thank you for the rescue, I loved mp3.com for discovering new artists and genres. I created an artist account and they sent me stickers and a tote bag, I thought those records were long lost, but finally just found them here!
I believe this site helped post hardcore emo break into the mainstream in the very early 2000s. Bands like Thursday and Taking Back Sunday rose on the mp3 charts with their Demos before they were signed. At least that’s how I remember it.
During my college undergrad CS series we had a practicum with a real engineer from HP or somewhere. Our project was to help the world find and download printer drivers over the web. The project was to make a Java web service send XML that conformed to a schema, which would be turned into a webpage by a transform aka XSLT. It seemed convoluted at the time. The teacher showed us “the how” but I guess “the why” was left as an exercise for the reader. I never understood the big picture- at the time it seemed rather complex. But now I realize this probably would have scaled quite well on turn of the century hardware.
While not the uranium phones and tee shirts, in the real world just last year we got Operation Grim Beeper, where Mossad remotely detonated thousands of custom made pagers with a few grams of plastic explosive, followed by two way radios the next day. AFAIK they didn’t make tee shirts but they did go on 60 minutes, in disguise, to brag about the operation. Just saying, it seems pretty on brand.
It’s voluntary, and many of us are happy to contribute our livers if we are in the unlikely scenario of being in a vegetative state so that it can help a recipient. I don’t think the recipients estate is financially enriched by the procedure- in fact the opposite. I’m no Christian but isn’t that something Jesus would do? He’d give his earthy body obviously, and certainly not for financial incentive.
OP doesn’t say why they are against free cloud backup, and it doesn’t matter, but (like everything else in Windows) there’s a registry setting you could change to disable the notification. I think it is
Oh so Linux is hard because you have to sometimes use the command line. Then people suggest registry hacks to make Windows work properly. Then Microsoft will just flip your registry setting back anyways. Stockholm syndrome is crazy.
Author here. I'm not against against free cloud back up. I was a Ubuntu One user before it shutdown. The problem isn't even that you can disable it via the registry.
The problem is that looking at the presented options, you can basically choose "Yes" or "OK".
I like windows 11 family settings. I can let my kids play Minecraft on old corporate castaway Dells, which I setup from bios/pe to do a clean reinstall. Then I can manage screen time limits and content restrictions from an app on my phone. All free.
Those are standard equipment on many big rigs for backing up in the dark. I had the same experience as you when I forgot to dim my brights coming up on a trucker on the interstate at night!
Enjoyed reading the crude observation that we eat cat turds for work. I like the author who watches the graffiti on the train ride rather than a phone screen. Was the “Spirograph butthole”meant to be a reference to a React app default favicon?
Honestly, if we're speaking of most graffiti (generally just tags in the same boring fashion) visible from a train, I'd rather to be looking at a phone screen.
At least the phone screen could be displaying something interesting but most graffitis are pseudo-artistic "I was here" tags. I wish more of that paint was used to actually make a place nicer rather than worse. And don't get me wrong, I'm totally ok with guerilla, technically illegal actions taken by citizens to improve their surroundings but most graffiti are far from that.
The graffiti on the MTA from CT to NY is pretty nice, a lot of puffy colored tags, I think it's best not to have too many tags, keeps the good ones front-of-mind. Don't get me wrong, the less-is-more ones are nice too, VEO, anyone?
"According to data from Nielsen, Fox News — from the period spanning June 20 through Sept. 1 — finished as the no. 1 network in all of broadcast television during the primetime hours of 8-11 PM. During those hours, Fox News averaged 2.43 million total nightly viewers in primetime — topping ABC at 2.38 million, NBC at 2.21 million, and CBS at 2.03 million. It is the second time in the network’s history they accomplished that feat — with the other coming in the summer of 2020."
Whlie it sounds accurate that maybe 1-2% of the population watches it live, it is also the most highly rated and influencing "news" outlet in the US. Their reach is far deeper than 1-2%. It gets retweeted, talked about, and trickles down. It sure seems like at least 1/3rd of the population has a FOX brainworm infection. I've seen in on 24/7 in hotels and some sport bars or restaurants too.
"It sure seems like at least 1/3rd of the population has a FOX brainworm infection" - you had me right until you pulled this completely out of thin air.
All the main news outlets totalling less than 9 million viewers? That's not compelling at all.
Appreciate it- thanks for the feedback. I was admittedly being inflammatory, much in the spirit of the network we are discussing. In my perception it was not always this way and when it first came out I remember liking it. It was generally "fair and balanced" as their slogan was (they dropped it around 2017 when Obama left the WH). I have only been paying attention the last 30 years or so, and what started with AM radio on the fringe seems to have become mainstream in the last 25 years since 9/11 basically and has accelerated to the point we are at now in the US.
Exactly. Come to the Midwest and you'll see Fox News on in bars, oil change waiting rooms, dentist offices, etc. The other thing to keep in mind is that thanks to the electoral college, that percentage of viewers translates to a higher percentage of electoral votes.
> The other thing to keep in mind is that thanks to the electoral college, that percentage of viewers translates to a higher percentage of electoral votes.
Except that it's the opposite. The Dakotas are over-represented in the electoral college but getting them from 60% Republican to even 99% Republican wouldn't gain them a single electoral college vote. Meanwhile states like Michigan and Ohio where changing minds could change outcomes are under-represented in terms of electoral college votes.
But the vote allocations are the least impactful part of the electoral college. If you got rid of the +2 electoral college votes for each state independent of its population, votes in Arizona would still matter more than California. The primary thing the electoral college does isn't to give red states slightly more power than blue states, it's to give swing states dramatically more power than safe states.
> If you got rid of the +2 electoral college votes for each state independent of its population, votes in Arizona would still matter more than California.
There's a bit more to it than the +2 electoral votes from the senate, because even within the House the representations are skewed due to the strange decision to cap the size of the House at 435 seats while guaranteeing each state at least one seat. Thus California has 52 times as many reps as Wyoming although its population is about 67 times greater.
> The primary thing the electoral college does isn't to give red states slightly more power than blue states, it's to give swing states dramatically more power than safe states.
Strictly speaking this too could be changed to some extent without changing the electoral college itself, namely by states switching to allocate their electoral votes in proportion to the popular vote, instead of winner-take all. That is entirely possible now and two states already do it, but it has minimal effect because those states are tiny. But if, for instance, you could win 20 EVs in CA by winning ~40% of the popular vote, you can bet that some campaign dollars would shift to CA from, say, Ohio, because Ohio doesn't even have a total of 20 EVs. You could win more EVs in California while losing the election than you could by winning in Ohio! But most states will not do this because usually the party that wins all the EVs is also the party that controls the state government, and they don't want to give away half their EVs to the other party.
> There's a bit more to it than the +2 electoral votes from the senate, because even within the House the representations are skewed due to the strange decision to cap the size of the House at 435 seats while guaranteeing each state at least one seat.
Capping the number of seats is dumb but the way they're apportioned doesn't give any major advantage to small states because the size of the average district and the size of the smallest state aren't very far apart, to the point that some of the districts in states with more than one district have lower populations than some of the states with a single district. Out of the 50 smallest districts, two are state-wide districts; out of the 50 largest districts, two are state-wide districts. The largest district is less than twice the size of the smallest district.
And there is no partisan divide in which states are over or under-represented because of this. Some of the most over-represented districts are currently in Rhode Island and Vermont. Some of the most under-represented districts are currently in Idaho, West Virginia, Utah and Texas. It's basically random because it depends on how evenly the state's population divides the national population, so the only consistent thing is that districts in the biggest states will tend to be of average size and districts in smaller states will tend to be either over-represented or under-represented.
Or to put it another way, California has 52 reps but its population is 71 times the population of the average district in Rhode Island. Except that these are both blue states.
> But most states will not do this because usually the party that wins all the EVs is also the party that controls the state government, and they don't want to give away half their EVs to the other party.
In some sense this is strong evidence that the government is bad at representing the constituents, i.e. the principal-agent problem is real. Constituents in safe states like California would be better off if candidates actually had to care about their votes. Even if you're in the state's majority, it's better for you that candidates from both parties have to address your issues rather than taking you for granted. It might even cause a shift in national priorities towards those of the state because both parties would have to do more to appease them. But then the state's representatives have more loyalty to the national party than their local constituents.
If states like California wanted to be clever they would allocate their electoral college votes something like "if a candidate gets more than 50% of the state's popular vote, they get 50% of its electoral votes plus 5% for each 1% over 50%, with the remainder going to the second place candidate". Which means that in the typical case where the Democrats get >=60% of the state's popular vote, they still get all of the electoral college votes -- 50% + 5x10%. But then that 10% difference between 50% and 60% becomes important to both parties, because each vote in that range is worth five times its weight in electoral votes.
And meanwhile if the Democratic candidate was going to get less than 60% of the vote in California they were very likely to lose the electoral college regardless.
Those are interesting ideas. I still tend to think though that such fiddling is only necessary if we insist on single-member districts with first-past-the-post systems. A proportional system essentially forces each party to pay attention everywhere because every vote everywhere counts. Having districts where the overall result is an aggregate of mini-elections in each district encourages various forms of gaming the system (like gerrymandering). The states themselves are another case of such districts.
I'm increasingly skeptical of the idea that the composition of government organs whose authority extends over a large jurisdiction should be determined by mini-elections in sub-jurisdictions. It makes sense to have sub-jurisdictions insofar as they can set local policy, but if a legislative body is going to make laws for the whole US it should, as a whole, be accountable to the whole US. Especially in the modern age, the relevant constituencies are defined as much by beliefs as by geographical location.
> I still tend to think though that such fiddling is only necessary if we insist on single-member districts with first-past-the-post systems.
You can solve this using a cardinal voting system (e.g. STAR voting) even with single member districts, because FPTP is what produces a two-party system and if there are multiple parties then there are no safe seats because e.g. a left-leaning district would still have a race between the Democrats and the Green Party.
Which also thwarts gerrymandering because if an extremist party draws the lines to try to give themselves more seats, they dilute their base and lose them all to a moderate party, but if they try to concentrate their base they don't get many seats.
And you can also implement that in the US without major constitutional changes.
> It makes sense to have sub-jurisdictions insofar as they can set local policy, but if a legislative body is going to make laws for the whole US it should, as a whole, be accountable to the whole US.
The premise of this stuff is supposed to be checks and balances. Single member districts in the House would be fine if we used STAR/score/approval voting instead of FPTP.
The original purpose of the Senate was to represent the states in the federal government; Senators were originally elected by state legislatures. The idea being that the state legislators would send people inclined to temper populist federal overreach. And it worked pretty well until the people who wanted to do a big round of populist federal overreach changed it to cause Senators to be directly elected.
And that's what messed up the US Presidency. The original design was to have an extremely limited federal government and have the states do most everything, and then if the federal government doesn't do much, having only a single elected position in the executive branch makes sense. Meanwhile states have elected positions for everything from sheriffs to comptrollers to dogcatchers. There wasn't supposed to be a federal-level SEC or FDA -- that's state stuff -- so the US Constitution doesn't establish any elected position to be the head of it even though there ought to be if it's going to exist.
> And you can also implement that in the US without major constitutional changes.
In theory yes, but in practice I think we cannot. That is, the system you describe is allowable under the current constitution, but the path to realize it is not achievable under the current constitution, because the current constitution has led us into a dead-end which I don't think can be unblocked without wholesale reform.
> The original purpose of the Senate was to represent the states in the federal government
That was a bad idea. There is no reason for organs of government to be represented in other organs of government. That is the dead-end we've gotten into now, because the constitution does not actually give anyone any full-fledged rights (only restrictions on government action) and instead sets up a procedural game which has now reached a stable stalemate end-state characterized by gerrymandering, corporate money, etc. There is no way out because the constitution, in all its checks and balances, provides no direct mechanism for the citizenry to check or balance the legislature. This has enabled the creation of a nonrepresentative government with no way out.
> That is, the system you describe is allowable under the current constitution, but the path to realize it is not achievable under the current constitution, because the current constitution has led us into a dead-end which I don't think can be unblocked without wholesale reform.
The change to STAR is something the states can do themselves and some states -- notably California with its large population -- have referendums. Put it on the ballot until it passes.
> There is no reason for organs of government to be represented in other organs of government.
Well sure there is. Elected officials are subject to the principal-agent problem, but different agents have different sets of misaligned incentives. Notably each one will try to usurp the intended powers of the others. And if you don't want the federal legislature to usurp the role of the state legislatures then you give the state legislatures representation in the federal one.
> There is no way out because the constitution, in all its checks and balances, provides no direct mechanism for the citizenry to check or balance the legislature.
I mean, you're supposed to vote the bums out.
The real enemy here is partisanship. Forget about the parties, vote against the incumbents until someone runs a candidate willing to actually fix it.
> The change to STAR is something the states can do themselves and some states -- notably California with its large population -- have referendums. Put it on the ballot until it passes.
And then what? California already passed the citizen's redistricting thing to combat gerrymandering, and now it's being undone because it doesn't work (and in fact can be harmful) unless everyone does it. That's basically my point. Such reforms are ineffective unless they reach a tipping point, but the current system is designed mostly to preserve the status quo and prevent any such tipping point from being reached.
If I gather right-wing propaganda retweets, what fraction do you think will be retweets of FOX clips versus retweets of a right-wing propaganda twitter account? I don't have a methodology in mind, but I'm curious and will come up with something if you think substantially higher than me (<10%). I don't see why anyone would center FOX in the current media landscape. Musk alone has more than an order of magnitude more reach.
My understanding is that Nielsen does track what people encounter at hotels etc. (though only recently), so that should be included (?)
I believe this site helped post hardcore emo break into the mainstream in the very early 2000s. Bands like Thursday and Taking Back Sunday rose on the mp3 charts with their Demos before they were signed. At least that’s how I remember it.