Just Saying -- the soapbox thread

[alanp]

My all time favourite Ministry song is _Lava_, from _Filthpig_.

It's not often you come across songs with that kind of implacable bass /grind/.

[alanp]

In re Chernobyl: I haven't watched the miniseries, but I absolutely recommend Svetlana Alexievich's Voices from Chernobyl for anyone interested. It's a phenomenal oral history. Actually, I'd recommend anything she's written.

Haven't seen the HBO series, or even played S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but this video was fascinating -- a doctor who was one of the medical responders to the disaster, going through some of the series' inaccuracies.

[Muadzin]

Inaccuracies in movies or TV series based on 'real' events? Say it ain't so.

[alanp]

I don't look at it as picking apart the series, so much as a learning experience from someone who lived through that in real life, if that makes sense.

[matmosphere]

A few days ago a friend was telling me about watching buses come into Kyiv after the disaster. Bus after bus full of people with no explanation why. She was only 8-9, she remembers thinking something was wrong but said the government didn't tell anyone what had happened for at least a week.

Fascinating and bone chilling story. I cannot imagine what living through that would have been like.

[alanp]

The part that sticks in my mind is the doctor saying that the Soviets really, really downplayed everything to the residents of Pripyat and so, when the buses to take them away (for only three days, they were told), everyone waited out in the street, irradiated particles sleeting down on them, kiddies playing in the irradiated dirt... and then the busses were late, this being the Soviet Union...

[Muadzin]

Yeah, the good old USSR wasn't that much interested in individuals. Which seems ironic considering it was set up to improve the lives of 'the workers'. I reckon that's what happens when you think in groups rather then people. As long as it benefits the most it becomes acceptable to sacrifice a few. The end justifying the means. Even worse when 'benefiting the most' becomes synonymous with for the good of the state. That's when you get the coverups like they tried to do with Chernobyl.

[alanp]

Work does hearing tests for everyone every year or so. The nurses hut even has an isolated little room with headphones and a button for testing. (Why it's called the nurses hut when it's a few rooms inside an existing building, I don't know.)

Apparently I have very good hearing, despite working next to noisy-ass machinery all day, every day I chalk it up to always wearing my ear protectors.

[Willybomb]

My local music shop has a TS-10 in the window for AUD$690, based on it having a japanese 4580 in it. 

I picked one up for my brother in 93 for AUD$75.  We swapped some gear around years ago and I ended up with it, and I lent it to the guitarist in my band.  Long story short, he sold it on ebay around 2007 after I asked for it back.  Bit bloody annoyed about that, seeing you couldn't give them away in the 90s.

[Muadzin]

My local music shop has a TS-10 in the window for AUD$690, based on it having a japanese 4580 in it. 

I picked one up for my brother in 93 for AUD$75.  We swapped some gear around years ago and I ended up with it, and I lent it to the guitarist in my band.  Long story short, he sold it on ebay around 2007 after I asked for it back.  Bit bloody annoyed about that, seeing you couldn't give them away in the 90s.

I'd be more annoyed that he sold something that wasn't his to begin with. That's theft. He owes you an original TS-10.

[lars]

My local music shop has a TS-10 in the window for AUD$690, based on it having a japanese 4580 in it. 

I think the real reason for the massively inflated price is that Internet lore says SRV used/touched/breathed on a TS-10 at some point. So naturally, if you get a TS-10...you will become SRV.

[Muadzin]

I think the real reason for the massively inflated price is that Internet lore says SRV used/touched/breathed on a TS-10 at some point. So naturally, if you get a TS-10...you will become SRV.

That's the unwritten internet law of tone chasing. Only if you get the exact same gear as your idol will you sound like your idol.

[Willybomb]

He also sold my Crybaby wah...

[alanp]

What a crappy friend.

My sister's younger cat likes drinking falling water from running taps, so she bought a cat water bowl with a built in fountain. (It runs off USB, which I guess dodges the whole international power supply issue.)

Fill the reservoir, plug it in, off the water gurgles. And the cat?

Intense suspicion.

I come back an hour later and the cat has a dry face, a wet tail, and there is water all around the lino around the new water bowl fountain.

Cats...

[EBK]

Cats put a lot of effort into training humans to obey them.  No wonder the cat was pissed.