“Without PoolCounter, all of Wikimedia’s MediaWiki servers would have been tied up with the work of displaying and processing the Prince article,” he explains. “It would have been impossible to view or edit the majority of all other content on Wikimedia.”
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
Just found out that the severely underappreciated guitarist Lonnie Mack died on the same day as Prince. Yes, 2016 can indeed go blow a dead bull.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
It's understandable. For 2016, it's been a long time since a celebrity died. We're all probably expecting the next one any second.
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"freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order."
- Justice Robert Jackson, West Virginia State Board of Ed. v. Barnette
She wasn't famous, but Patton Oswalt's wife Michelle McNamara passed on April 21st. He wrote a eulogy for Time that was nice. What's most touching, and worth posting, is their daughter's words:
Quote:
“When your mom dies you’re the best memory of her. Everything you do and say is a memory of her.”
The trouble with our state
was not civil disobedience
which in any case was hesitant and rare
Civil disobedience was rare as kidney stone
No, rarer; it was disappearing like immigrants' disease
You've heard of a war on cancer?
There is no war like the plague of media
There is no war like routine
There is no war like 3 square meals
There is no war like a prevailing wind
It blows softly; whispers don't rock the boat!
the sails obey, the ship of state rolls on.
The trouble with our state
—we learned it only afterward
when the dead resembled the living who resembled the dead
and civil virtue shone like paint on tin
and tin citizens and tin soldiers marched to the common whip
—our trouble
the trouble with our state
with our state of soul
our state of siege—
was
Civil
obedience
The last surviving actor from Casablanca, that her real-life experience of having fled from the Nazis in 1940 so closely mirrors the plight of the fugitives milling in the background of the Bogart/Bergman/Henreid love triangle at the centre of the story adds a poignancy to her scenes that has been lost on me till now.
Quote:
Originally Posted in wikipedia
In June 1940, LeBeau and Dalio (who was Jewish; born Israel Moshe Blauschild) fled Paris ahead of the invading German Army and reached Lisbon. They are presumed to have received transit visas from Aristides de Sousa Mendes, allowing them to enter Spain and journey on to Portugal. It took them two months to obtain visas to Chile.
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... it's just an idea
Last edited by mickthinks; 05-15-2016 at 03:23 PM.
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"We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both." ~ Louis D. Brandeis
"Psychos do not explode when sunlight hits them, I don't give a fuck how crazy they are." ~ S. Gecko
R.I.P. to erstwhile Megadeth drummer Nick Menza, who collapsed on stage from heart failure during a performance with his band Ohm yesterday, aged 51.
Megadeth's material over the last 20+ years has descended into self-parody due in part to Dave Mustaine's conspiracy theories, homophobia, and general asshattery, but there was once a time when Megadeth were one of the best metal bands in the world. Rust in Peace, the first album on which Menza played, was, if not the greatest thrash metal album ever recorded, then certainly one of the top five. This is in no small part due to the instrumental performances of the group, which are as tight as the genre of thrash ever produced. The album remains one of the last universally acknowledged classics of the genre, and it actually borders on progressive metal for much of its running time due to the complexity of the compositions and the instrumental interplay between the members. It proved almost as huge an influence on the then-nascent genre of prog metal as the first four albums of Megadeth's rivals Metallica did. Here's the track "Tornado of Souls", often regarded as a highlight:
Menza's drumming, I would say, is among the very best the genre of thrash had to offer. He certainly makes Metallica's Lars Ulrich look like a complete amateur, and I honestly have no problem placing Menza in the same league as other thrash metal greats like Gene Hoglan and Dave Lombardo. It's no coincidence that, while they never topped the quality of Rust in Peace, Menza played on all of Megadeth's most commercially successful recordings; he was an essential part of the band's sound. I've spent most of the day with Rust in Peace cranked up to 11. He will certainly be missed.
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Cēterum cēnseō factiōnem Rēpūblicānam dēlendam esse īgnī ferrōque.
“All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.” -Adam Smith