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Home » Open thread 7/8/22

Open thread 7/8/22

The New Neo Posted on by

They’re around fifty years old and in fine voice here. I love love love these medleys:

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Open thread 7/8/22 — 27 Comments

  2. I have mentioned here before the two young westerners–one American, one South African—who lived in and traveled extensively around China by motorcycle for over ten years, learned to speak and read Chinese, married Chinese wives, and finally had to escape China because of their travel blogs, which showed truths about and aspects of China that the government didn’t want publicized.

    Now in the U.S. and still with a lot of contacts back in China, they both still blog about China and what’s happening there.

    One of them, who goes by Laowhy86, has an interesting recent video talking about how, beginning in around 2015 the Chinese government started to create an increasingly hostile climate for foreigners. This through more and more restrictive rules and regulations, surveillance, and a deliberate campaign of xenophobia, which blamed foreigners—especially those from Africa–for many of China’s problems, including Covid and it’s spread.

    One of the more recent major ways of pushing out foreigners was the government takeover of the hundreds of thousands of formerly private English language schools which used primarily foreign teachers.

    But China—according to Chinese government propaganda–supposedly a great place to work and live in–needed some explanation for this escalating mass exodus of foreigners.

    In the case of Europeans and especially Africans, see the Chinese propaganda video (towards the end of the linked video below) which characterized Africans—who the propaganda video says were used to just “picking fruit in the jungle, hunting for prey, and drinking from their rivers”—as being just “unable to cope with the fast pace of life” in more civilized and sophisticated China, and so these foreigners–Europeans and Africans–“escaped” back to their home countries. *

    * See “China is Getting Rid of All Foreigners” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyPPi3xRjuw

  3. Have you seen the news from Japan?

    Japan’s former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, has been SHOT DEAD in Japan, by an assassin.

    Meanwhile-

    1] it is nearly impossible for a civilian/Japanese citizen, to buy + own a gun in Japan,

    2] Japan is so nearly [gun free], that nearly all the regular police don’t carry guns, that’s right…cops with guns is a rarity in Japan,

    3] death by guns hardly ever happens, in Japan. Violence with guns, + gun crimes, almost never happen Japan as well.
    Last year- only 10 people in Japan died from, I believe- gunshots + gun accidents.

    Yet [somehow]- a man in Japan, possibly a Japanese civilian, managed to buy or make a gun, and get ammunition, and shoot one of the most important political people from Japan.

    Japan’s gun control laws didn’t work in this event.

    My opinion is- Most likely- you can’t stop violence and violence-with-guns, with large amounts of gun laws.

    Most likely- you have to stop violence and violence-with-guns, by people making a country of people…who don’t want to do violence, and don’t want to do violence-with-guns.

    ( By a country, I mean: The United States, Japan, or any other country that you would like to choose, for that idea.)

  4. there was a parliament member in the uk, shot with a homemade gun, they made a big deal about that, because she was a remainer, meanwhile cornyn is discovering the poison from the scorpion barb he inflicted on himself, in the declining polls from texas,

  8. According to the story I saw the assassin made the gun he used, and there is a picture included of what looks like a large, box like, L shaped object covered in black tape lying on the ground that looks like it might possibly be the homemade “gun.”

  9. In 2008 my Wife and I were part of a tour group to China. We found the people on the whole friendly and welcoming. We enjoyed our trip, but know that we can never go back. A shame really.

  11. Japan’s gun control laws didn’t work in this event.

    Japan does, however, have a history of disturbed individuals who used knives or samurai swords in rampage killings or political assassinations; see the 2016 incident in which an employee of a care facility for the disabled used a knife to kill 19 of the residents and injure 26 others: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36890655

    In 1960, a teenager with a samurai sword killed a Japanese politician on a public stage in front of TV cameras: https://allthatsinteresting.com/inejiro-asanuma-assassination

    So even if Japan (or any other country) could figure out a way to prevent the construction of homemade guns, would-be assassins will just turn to other weapons.

  12. Cornyn has been in the Senate since 2002. He not only predates Trump, he predates Obama and the disastrous collapse of Bush the Younger.

    Combine being completely out of touch with the modern political mood with assuming (likely correctly) he’ll never, ever, ever, EVER have to live a normal life among normal people again and that’s what makes you think giving the Democrats a gun control win is a great idea.

    Mike

  14. I freely acknowledge the exquisite harmonies, truly exceptional. Yet I’ve never been a big fan of the Bee Gees. In listening to this cut, I finally realized why. Some songs are rare exceptions but generally I can’t get past nasality in a singer’s voice enough to fully embrace them.

    Frankie Valli is another example.

  15. tiana is the next iteration of ocasio cortez, abandon all hope, if she gets elected,

  16. Geoffrey Britain:

    I think one either loves the Bee Gees voices or one doesn’t. I love their voices, especially their natural non-falsetto voices, which I don’t hear as “nasal” at all. Their falsetto voices – especially Barry’s – could be nasal at times. That is true of all falsetto voices, as far as I can tell. Frankie Valli’s was particularly nasal in falsetto, and although I’m a Four Seasons fan I’m not all that fond of his actual voice and it is nothing like as beautiful as the Bee Gees’, especially when they sang in their natural voices.

    There is an interview with the Bee Gees where they talk about the nasality of their singing voices and say the Beatles also had nasal singing voices (John Lennon definitely did, and Maurice could do a perfect imitation of him). I think the Bee Gees also had exceptionally beautiful speaking voices, almost hypnotic, particularly Maurice.

    Also see this.

  18. Musk buying Twitter has never made any financial sense from his end. It always felt like a grandstanding move by a billionaire provocateur.

  19. I think that Musk has accomplished what he wanted to do, which was to force the market to re-evaluate the worth of Twitter’s business model. Quite a bit has been revealed about Twitter’s internal machinery in the course of this negotiation, as well as its clientele, real or imaginary.

    Trying to manage a company like Twitter into equanimity after such a takeover would essentially be a continual weeding exercise, with Roundup not allowed.

  20. Musk’s buy offer was for $54.20 a share. Twitter closed today at $36.91.

    Lot of seriously bummed shareholders.

  22. The real value of all the internet social media reminds me of the saying about strip clubs, in the old days about 40 years ago I went to a few with friends after work, before on heading home, and my take on them at the time was $20 cover charge and all the music you can eat. Overpriced beer and sad young women and just a bit of entertainment value for a short time, as Molly Ivans used to say men paying money to look at women they can’t touch, that’s about it. I never did the Twitter thing, I occasionally follow a click into it and the only person who really seemed to thrive on it was Trump but what do I know I am an old man and have fond memories of the good old days.

  23. My latest musical adventure … I was sitting in a new cafe when I heard what sounded like The Band singing a Bruce Springsteen song from his deep, dark, solo album “Nebraska” (1982). I was boggled.

    I looked it up and it was The Band covering “Atlantic City,” the most striking song from “Nebraska” and they took it to a whole ‘nother foot-stompin’ place.

    –The Band, “Atlantic City” (1993)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFxXTO1t5yo

    As far as I’m concerned, The Band owned that song as surely as Jimi Hendrix took “All Along the Watchtower” away from Bob Dylan. It’s a gangster story, which starts with the grabber lines:
    _________________________

    Well, they blew up the Chicken Man in Philly last night
    And they blew up his house, too
    Down on the boardwalk they’re ready for a fight
    Gonna see what them racket boys can do
    _________________________

    I thought the Chicken Man was a colorful Springsteen urban character like Scooter or the Magic Rat from his “Born to Run” album. But no, the Chicken Man was a real Philly mob boss, Philip Testa, who had been assassinated at his home with a nail bomb and Springsteen was reporting the news hot off the press.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Testa

    Of course, Springsteen doesn’t stop there. He’s just setting the table. It morphs into the story of a foot soldier in that war, who hopes to redeem his luck and his love by “doing a favor,” which sure sounds like murder to me. After which he and his love will ride off into some kind of sunset.
    _________________________

    Everything dies, baby, that’s a fact
    But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
    Put your makeup on, fix your hair up pretty
    And meet me tonight in Atlantic City
    _________________________

    I don’t claim it’s morally edifying. As often the case in early Springsteen, it’s about a flawed Everyman caught between a terrible rock and a terrible hard place, but still fighting for love and respect.

    In The Band’s hands the song becomes one of timeless Americana, which no one could do better, even though The Band was 80% Canadian. We do love our gangsters.

  24. Pingback:Strange Daze: Masters of Masonry to Masters of War

  26. huxley,
    I like that cut a lot too. In case you are not aware, that was the post- Robbie Robertson Band, with Levon, Garth and Rick Danko the only original members. It’s on the Jericho album. I am a huge fan, saw the original group in concert a number of times. The Best of The Band is a good collection.

    I have RR’s most recent CD, Sinematic, which is OK but too many of the songs are about gangsters. He seems to be obsessed with them, maybe because his father was one. His autobiography Testimony is quite interesting. I love his old music but think he’s not a very nice person.

  27. Here is an extremely important video report from Tucker Carlson with evidence for the Wuhan lab origin of Covid, the coverup of this fact, and the Biden Administration/Federal government’s refusal to pressure China to reveal what was going on at the Lab in Wuhan, or to conduct a real investigation to find where Covid came from.

    See the clip of when he was asked about this, and Biden just smiles and walks away.

    Plus, at the end of the video Carlson points out that the Wuhan lab is now working on Monkeypox.

    Gee, what a coinkeydink.

    See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MJrUew2Kyg (skip past the embedded commercial at the beginning)

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