Subject: Stream of Consciousness: a thread that cannot be hijacked
Date: Mon Oct 19 10:13:08 2020
User: The_Interpreter
Message:The Democrats bear some responsibilities for this movement when they insisted every child's self-esteem was more important than critical thinking.
Date: Mon Oct 19 11:12:41 2020
User: BuzzClik
Message:... and the anti-vax movement was a gift from the left. My statement of us being a stupid people was not intended to draw lines other than a really big, inclusive circle.
Date: Mon Oct 19 11:24:50 2020
User: outskirts
Message:The really stupid are still a minority or lunatic fringe that get too much press. Yes we are dumbed down and it's scary but hey. None of us are stupi
Date: Tue Oct 20 10:41:50 2020
User: Snowguy
Message:The rampant ignorance, which is not necessarily stupidity, really has been getting me down.
Date: Tue Oct 20 11:07:30 2020
User: BuzzClik
Message:Good to see you again, Snowy. We have a common friend who preferred "willfully ignorant" to describe such folk. In this case she is quite correct: the information has been delivered to these people over and again, and they choose to ignore it. This is worse than being stupid because stupidity is a legitimate excuse for being ignorant.
Regardless, I am with you, Snowy. It's a real buzzkill. ;)
Date: Tue Oct 20 21:01:34 2020
User: Snowguy
Message:buzzkill? Please don't do it, Buzz. ;)
Date: Wed Oct 21 16:31:48 2020
User: BuzzClik
Message:This makes me laugh.
If you've been following the (tabloid) news, you that a certain former mayor of NYC has spent the past two or three years rubbing shoulders with an array of ... um ... criminals trying to get dirt on a political opponent. At long last, the dirt has arrived. But, oops. https://tinyurl.com/y6kgzwko
Sometimes I actually hope that this is some sort of sophisticated act. An intellectual farce like Cirque du Soleil rather than Bozo and company.
Anyway, now for a musical interlude:
Link: "A Message To You Rudy" by the Specials
Date: Thu Oct 22 15:46:13 2020
User: BuzzClik
Message:I want to see these guys in a class reunion reenactment in 25 years.
I'm guessing it will resemble this in basic physique:
Link: https://youtu.be/1-4Jr64sdAI
Date: Wed Oct 28 01:58:19 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:Another one for ix (and whoever likes cool stuff). There should be some other thread this would fit in, but I couldn't find one.
Standing waves, resonance, etc., have always fascinated me. This one is brand new.
Here's another older one:
https://www.facebook.com/phenomenalisms/videos/kenichi-kanazawa-colour-sound/1645796955725367/
Link: new art by Kanazawa Kenichi
Date: Wed Oct 28 05:57:24 2020
User: ix
Message:
Date: Wed Oct 28 14:23:09 2020
User: differentDay
Message:Immersive (figuratively) - eventually led me to Bose-Einstein condensates, at which point I had to take a bathroom break...
Date: Wed Oct 28 15:08:51 2020
User: Kumquat-of-Conciliation
Message:What would Pauli say, if he were still around, about those? The condensates, that is. Would be hard to reconcile, even for him. The universe is just an endlessly amazing place, is it not?
Date: Fri Nov 13 16:44:43 2020
User: BuzzClik
Message:Let's be very clear and very fair about this: not every football coach/player is ignorant about the function of the U.S. government or the recent history of the U.S. It would have been nice, however, if Tommy would have put in just one week's worth of football film study to learn the reason why his daddy joined the army at age 16 and to commit to memory the three branches of government.
Date: Fri Nov 13 16:51:28 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:One would assume, however, that there's likely more where that came from. Probably lots more. One doesn't achieve that level of ignorance without plugging away at it over the long haul.
Date: Fri Nov 13 21:39:08 2020
User: Oded789
Message:I wish I could say I'm surprised by that at this point in time.
Haven't seen much TV lately, but I'm really starting to like Mrs. Keilar.
Date: Sun Nov 15 06:43:34 2020
User: sgmsgmsgm
Message:Ackshually, he was technically correct to say that the US fought socialism in WW2. After all, the term "nazi" comes from the full name of National Socialist Workers Party. But of course it was a very particular kind of fascist.
Date: Mon Dec 7 15:02:15 2020
User: BuzzClik
Message:My phone decided to start playing a very long ad for a solar-rechargeable external power source for phones, tablets, etc. I started to shut it down, but I was curious to see if solar technology had reached the point of being able to recharge a big power source in a reasonable time. I ventured online to read some reviews, and the answer is no. The solar panel glued to the battery takes at least 40 hours of direct sunlight to charge the battery, and during that time, the solar cell will become warped and peel off.
I was curious what the Amazon reviews for this product might be, and I was amazed to see that it had an average of 4 out of 5 stars. 11% of the reviewers hated it (1-star), so I read those reviews first. They were nearly unanimously unhappy that the solar aspect of the batter was a scam, but acknowledged that it functioned fine as a typical external source. There were two 1-star reviews that I found highly amusing. One guy thought he was ordering a flashlight (also made by this same company), and he somehow blamed the company and the product for his error. Another disgruntled consumer was furious that the battery was "incompatible with an I phone." Now, even the biggest haters of this product said that it charged their phones (including iPhones) just fine. I'm assuming that an "I phone" is something altogether different -- maybe a phone directly connected to this guy's nervous system. (This gives me the inspiration to develop a phone wired into one's instinctual desires: the idPhone. But I digress).
I took a quick glance at the 5-star ratings to see if they had any inkling that the solar function of the battery was garbage. They did not. However, one supertechie had dissected the battery into the individual cells and confirmed his suspicions that the battery did NOT deliver the promised 40,000 mAh; it was more like 18,000. He warned the readers about this egregious bait-and-switch, but gave a 5-star rating anyway. (WTH?).
I just love reading Amazon reviews of products that don't interest me.
Date: Wed Dec 16 22:14:12 2020
User: ix
Message:
Date: Wed Dec 16 22:54:39 2020
User: jamesblackburn-lynch
Message:Well, sound is produced by “oscillations” and that pretty much already screams trig. But any continuous function, on an interval, can be created using sums of trig functions, so I guess everything is a sum of sinusoids.
James
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:11:49 2020
User: ix
Message:
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:28:04 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:You're probably old enough to remember when *one* measure of the quality of an amplifier was how well it could reproduce a square wave. But that was really a complex mathematical/geometric combination of lots of sine waves put together to make an artificial "square wave". Just a technical trick, sort of.
But more recently, apparently peeps have been using synthesizers and such to make "music" that really is square wave forms. See hyperlink for just one example.
Link: square wave 'musicx
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:35:12 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:I'm using a borrowed tablet that's got a wonky streak, so my last post above got sent before it was supposed to.
I was trying to add this one which has more info. Hope this works.....
Link: sine vs. square
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:38:43 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:My posts were made before seeing the one from james. Seems like he'd be the ideal person to address this.
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:42:00 2020
User: jamesblackburn-lynch
Message:I have loads of GarageBand files with cymbal crashes I could show you. They are very clearly sinusoidal. That initial impulse is called a “transient” and is an important quality of lots of instruments. Definitely trig.
I did a quick google of audio waves of gunshots and am shocked by how much is quickly available. I shouldn’t have been because it is those real-life CSI types doing the research.
I’ve linked to an image with the waveforms of several different gunshots.
Link: What you can learn from the shape of a gunshot
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:44:40 2020
User: jamesblackburn-lynch
Message:TN,
It is one of my favorite topics for sure!
I’ve tried but can’t really hear the difference between the sine wave and the square wave, at least as Audacity does it.
James
Date: Wed Dec 16 23:46:14 2020
User: TNmountainman
Message:There's also weird square waves in the ocean, which of course are the result of interference.
Link: scary square waves
Date: Mon Jan 4 01:31:59 2021
User: ix
Message:
Date: Fri Jan 8 05:49:40 2021
User: ix
Message:
Date: Fri Jan 8 05:58:45 2021
User: Oded789
Message:Seems to be only available in the US.
I never understood the logic behind these youtube territorial restrictions.
Date: Fri Jan 8 09:31:11 2021
User: Kumquat-of-Conciliation
Message:Some copyrights are like that - country-specific.
Date: Fri Jan 8 11:31:24 2021
User: TitanicTony
Message:So it would seem!.... Even in Switzerland???
Video unavailable
The uploader has not made this video available in your country.
Date: Mon Jan 11 09:33:16 2021
User: BuzzClik
Message:"We state clearly that our products harmonise the fields. And the way to test this is to assess via biological testing."
Silly scientists.
Date: Fri Jan 22 10:36:50 2021
User: ix
Message:
Date: Fri Jan 22 10:40:15 2021
User: ix
Message:
Date: Fri Jan 22 11:09:50 2021
User: TNmountainman
Message:I don't even watch The Simpsons (well, rarely), but even I'm aware of the large number of seemingly absurd "predictions" that have made the show seem prescient. On the other hand.........with so many predictions over the long haul, it could also be like saying economic indicator X has predicted 9 out of the last 5 recessions. Just sayin'. But I favor the former interpretation. Spooky.
Date: Tue Jan 26 15:01:31 2021
User: Klepp
Message:On days like this, with shoveling imminent, FreeCell does well to fight the seasonal ennui.
Date: Tue Jan 26 16:31:42 2021
User: firenzes_mother
Message:It also helps with the blahs.
Date: Tue Jan 26 17:51:14 2021
User: FilthyMcNasty
Message:A trench coat and a police whistle: the perfect recipe for fighting boredom. Mother, that was a memorable day at the Phoenix Art Museum.
And the Musical Instrument Museum! The first time I'd ever received a standing ovation. They considered our performance to be a form of modern dance. I give you all the credit.
Date: Tue Jan 26 18:04:22 2021
User: firenzes_mother
Message:I think the extended angle side bend was the hit of show.
Date: Tue Feb 9 12:52:42 2021
User: TNmountainman
Message:Those of you who were maybe fans of hydroxychloroquine, drinking Clorox, using UV light, etc..........
"It don't move!"
(And who knew this came in a spray?!?)
Link: Bad, Bad, BAD idea
Date: Tue Feb 9 14:17:08 2021
User: Klepp
Message:The labeling change is already under way__do not use produce as etc. etc. etc....
Date: Tue Feb 9 14:26:11 2021
User: BuzzClik
Message:"Do not put in eye"
Date: Tue Feb 9 15:16:17 2021
User: TNmountainman
Message:Do NOT use for _____________________________, with _____________________, ______________________ , or ___________________. Or for _____________________ else.
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/money/2021/02/08/gorilla-glue-girl-cincinnati-company-offers-advice/4437578001/
Further................I did not know there are hair products called "Got2B Glued" and "Gorilla Snot". It makes me wonder if there are *other* things I don't know about.....
Link: Gorilla Glue responds
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