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Sunday, June 18, 2017

Songwriting for Lazy IT People 2, Random Stuff, and More

Continuation from my other post:

- very obvious that better songwriters have a theme/emotion built into their creations. They flow from one part to another without necessarily sounding like they are discrete entities. Amateurs generally have a sound that is like a bunch of clips put together. Almost like the better musicians understand that music is almost like a different language?
- emotion is difficult but can be learned over time. Lyrics form only one component
- speed forms part of the core and seed for other aspects of song making. Keep the parts in sync time and emotional wise otherwise it sounds all over the place
- if you want a particular feel easiest way is to listen to stuff that you want to write like. Spend enough time doing this and you won't copy but instead gain inspiration from it
- sound obvious but start on simple stuff first then move up
- you'll notice that in the credits for many artists that the same producers and songwriters keep cropping up. There's a reason for this? It's a lot more difficult than you think to write stuff that will sell
- sounds obvious but if you spend enough time listening to less experienced musicians you'll discover that there are often flaws in the technique or just something lacking in an artist. It's just a profession just like anything else. Most of the 'better/less flawed artists' simply float to the top. With regards to learning composition this means you may have to spend a lot of time looking around to learn enough to be able to do something good on your own
- if you're interested in music production but not overly so Native Instrument's Maschine, Ableton Push, Akai MPC, M-Audio Trigger Finger Pro are definitely the way to go. You can literally get away with just re-ordering/tweaking a bunch of sounds until you can form a song. That said, finger drumming isn't as popular as you may think. I tried looking up details of finger drumming online and there's not as much as I'd thought there'd be. It's also a lot more difficult then you may imagine. It's not just 'pad banging'. There is a logic and technique to it if you watch and listen for long enough... 
Finger drumming lessons
Building Live Remixes With Maschine _ In The Studio With Mad Zach
How To Practice Finger Drumming and Controllerism with Mad Zach
Finger Drumming Demo Reel
Finger Drumming Song 'Use Your Fingers'
The Best Drum Machines For Finger Drumming
【 MPC ELEMENT meets KO-ney 】Playing New Sound
【KO-ney Presents】MPC2000XL feat.Maschine
Padbangers
finger drummer competition
finger drummer competitions
finger drummer battle
finger drummer battles
- the need for speed? Does anyone else think Japanese rap sounds really funny, strange, and entertaining at the same time?
Worlds Fastest Fingers - Best Bedroom Musician finger drummer
【MPC Player】KO-ney in the SHOWCASE Part 2.0
【MPC Player】KO-ney in the SHOWCASE
KO-ney MPC SHOWCASE  2016_9_10 ENTER THE STAGE JAM vol3
KO-ney _ ONE PLATE (MEGAMIX)
Mc ATOM × KO-ney LIVE
KO-ney _ Accel feat.FUNK-K,HI-SO,YURIKA
Finger Drumming Performance Battle 2015「ACHIEVEMENT」ISSEI meets KUMAI GORO
Trigger Finger pro feat.MPC ELEMENT meets KO-ney「Parallel Output-FINGER GROOVE MIX-」-
- at the back of my mind, I've been wondering whether it's possible to algorithmically create lyrics for songs as well (a bit like 'Band in a Box' for lyrics)? Would probably require time structuring data prior to getting something that would work though?
- either way you need to know sounds of a particular style before you can really translate it back into something that you want. Othersise, by the time you can translate a particular set of sounds back into software or hardware you've often lost track of the idea. The alterative is to sample sounds and then use this as the basis for further tweaking and work
Sample Free Sounds from the Internet and Build Unique Ableton Drum Racks
- plenty of groups out there looking to do the same thing. Just look around...
- certain plugins are really suitable for particular styles of music. Effectrix (as well as it's free counterpart Glitch from Illformed) is good for glitchy stuff 
- most people start from random though. My suggestion is to get a set of VSTs and presets, then percussion set, then start working by using scale and other type plugins. If you can't program this is your best bet to get things done quickly. Stack on top of this auto-chord/harmonisation/arpeggiator/generative music VSTs and and all you need is a core theme and the rest can be almost automatically be done?
scale vst plugin
cales midi scale
convert note to best closest chord
Can Chords Be Replaced By Single Notes?
- over time, you'll figure out that this setup does have a point to it. It contains many of the same patterns (in some way, shape, or form) that are present within modern music which ultimately means when you begin to layer other instruments and/or vocals on top of them you begin to have. It simply helps you to get you where you want to be faster
- in the modern world of crazy alternatives watch for software/hardware compability issues. From time to time I've had some really wierd ones. Understand how to debug problems. For instance, if nothing quite works out when looking through the logs and you can't seem to load a VST, use vsthost to figure out whether or not it is linked to the program/DAW that you are using and or the actual VST itself
- you don't need to be a great vocalist. Listen to the radio nowadays. A lot of it is often heavily auto-tuned, re-pitched, filtered, re-synthesised, etc...'
- understand how to use and distribute effects to be able to extract the most you can from the sample pack that you have created
- experiment with sound samples. Upload some for free. You may get lucky... Note that in the world of the Internet though things can be pretty hard to monetise sometimes though...
500 loop packs for about 5-10 each.
100 loop pack for about 1-5 each.
Sample pack
- have been continuing to look at alternative VST development platforms... Has been frustrating because of the variety and the general lack of maturity in this area...
jvstwrapper development
jVSTwRapper, anyone ?
How do I install jVSTwRapper?
Flowstone vs FL Synthmaker...what's the difference?
[Q] export does not generate valid vst plugin
free alternative synthedit
juce vst
DSP and Plug-in Development
Before learning how to code VST plugins you should check out:
- SynthEdit
- SynthMaker
- Reaktor
- Max/MSP
- PureData
- CSound
- SuperCollider
- Bidule
- Usine
These environments allow you to build something unique without the pain of writing low-level code. If you absolutely need to build a VST plugin, these environments may be useful for prototyping.
How To Create VST Plugins? Information for those just getting started
Step By Step How To Make A VST/AU Plug-in Using JUCE 
vst plugins development whith python?
vst host open source linux
sonicbirth
SonicBirth
synthedit alternative
synthedit
Synthedit is NOT dead
Why do people still code their synths with SynthEdit or Flowstone...
FlowStone, SynthEdit, Tassma, MaxMSP, PD, vvvv, Patchwork
max4live vs synthedit vst development
vst sourcecode github
vst development linux
SynthEdit Tutorials 
jVSTwRapper, anyone ?
- obviously, been looking at Max4Live as an alternative development platform? One of the great ironies is that Max4Live and Pluggo aren't compatible for VST export. Seems like an obvious outlet/option...
max4live arpeggiator github
max4live programming
max4live github
max for live github
- some more free tools for lazy music composers... Obviously, looking for more algorithms that I can work with. Irony is that I think spending more time coming up with my own stuff is bearing more fruit?
perl algorithmic music
generative music algorithms
vst free auto harmonise
perl algorithmic music composer
- have been thinking about ways of implementing my semi-random note generator into Max4Live. There seems to be plenty of options out there currently though...
random note generator max4live
Create MIDI With Random Tracks
- some online resources I recently came across...
Cajon Groove Guide

Random Stuff:
- the obvious way around this would be to have politicians as those who come up with policy, public service who check the claims, and then to ask the public a series of questions during ballot time over what they deem to be important to them. Based on their answers a political party is blindly chosen by the public. Also, don't allow flip flops on policy (or at least a limited number of them) otherwise that triggers a new election?
Political Chameleon - Theresa May accused of stealing other parties' ideas
- latest in our roundup of funny animals on the Internet... Wonder whether we can genuinely measure whether animals are happier in zoos or domestic environments versus the wild?
- like I said previously what's going on with all of the aircraft problems of late?
Incident: Egypt A332 at Cairo on May 15th 2017, rejected takeoff due to engine failure
- notice the the Saudi Air Force doesn't have any F-16 aircraft in their fleet?
Footage of Houthis and Yemeni army air defense shooting down Saudi F16 in Sana'a
- at times you wonder whether or not you should listen to the conspiracy theorists/analysts first?
CNN Admits Chemtrails Exist
How To Speak Globalist - Their Propaganda Explained
Should Alex Jones Accept Megyn Kelly Interview
The Koran Tells Muslims How To Use Deception To Take Over Other Countries
Should Alex Jones Accept Megyn Kelly Interview
- the US State Department can be a good source of fun from time to time...
- Alpine Linux is basically a minialistic secure distribution. Reminds me of a version of Linux From Scratch but in a more secure form...
- given he's singing in Arabic he doesn't sound too bad?
- latest in defense. Afghanistan is bizarre? There's good Taliban versus bad Taliban?
What can the Afghan government do to stop bomb attacks – Inside Story
‘It’s never too late’ - Serbia sues NATO over 1999 bombing
The Russians are coming! Hackers could disrupt US power grid, WaPo suggests in ‘solid investigation’
’When N. Korea feels threatened, they show military power' – US ex-diplomat on new missile launch
Baghdad - ISIL suicide bomber kills 13 at busy ice cream parlour
‘Do come’ - Russian team challenges NATO partners to Tank Biathlon
Military porn - Russian T-5000 rifle successfully tested in extreme condition
More Money - Pentagon big budget plans for ‘train & equip’ program in Syria, Iraq
'What did the Prime Minister Know' - John Pilger on terror in Britain
Pentagon confirms sending light weapons to Kurdish groups in Syria
What’s driving the ISIL attacks - UpFront
‘They’re not helping us, they’re killing us’ Afghans want US troops that shot their family punished
Russian Navy firing cruise missiles on ISIS positions near Palmyra
Will sanctions against North Korea work - Inside Story
Footage of Houthis and Yemeni army air defense shooting down Saudi F16 in Sana'a
Aftermath of US Navy destroyer collision off Japan (streamed live)
More troops or spending cuts - Choice for US over Kabul attack
Pro-Syrian Forces Attempt Strike on US Coalition
Missile Drag: US vs Russia
How vulnerable are US airbases to missile attack?
- don't you love fake media? LOL One of the funny things I've realised is if an independent media outlet appears 'too polished or connected' if you do further background there's often a connection to the security services which is often brought to light much eventually... 
[63] The Social Media Platform Facebook REALLY Doesn’t Want You To Know About
David Icke: The 'Fake News' Hoax - The System is Desperate
Google Covering Up Scandal
CrossTalk - Legitimizing Violence
Washington Post In No Position To Be Fake News Arbiter
Understanding Fake News
[141] Mainstream Media Sucks Hard, Walmart & Slave Labor, Gorsuch & More
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8sM3v6_VSU
Disinformation, Fake News & PSYOPS – With Ray McGovern - Ark Midnight #32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiMkJFUyTTk
- latest in science and technology
China cyber-security law worries foreign firms
The Listening Post - The Listening Post - Facebook's status - Tech or media company (Lead)
The Listening Post - Scrubbing the net - The content moderators (Feature)
Tight regulation and security around Australian medicinal cannabis
- you have to admit there is something bemusing about the whole anti-VPN movement amongst governments out there. Could you imagine if we had a world whereby everyone had to give a set of spare keys to their house in case something bad happened? It just feels like it's open to abuse at times?
This is the heart of the matter. Somehow we are expected to go along with the sophomoric sophism that “If we have nothing to hide then we have nothing to fear,” yet at the same time we are asked to believe that the government must keep all manner of information secret from the public in order to carry out its work of “protecting” that public. 

If the government has nothing to hide, then why doesn’t it release the notes, memoranda and findings of the 9/11 Commission in full and unredacted?

Why doesn’t it release the records of the JFK assassination investigation instead of arguing, as it is, that those records should once again be removed from a declassification review that is to take place in 2013, 50 years after the assassination itself took place?

Why doesn’t it release the full audit trail of what banks received the emergency TARP funds and in what amounts?

Is it because, after all, the government does have something to hide from the public that are its ostensible masters? Is it because the old maxim that “Knowledge is power” is more true than we could ever know, and that the government’s one-way insistence on transparency for the citizens and opacity for itself is a reflection of the power that it holds over us?
- technically, a world order that is partly driven by Russia (given it's vast natural resources (which therefore means it doesn't have to attack and de-stabilise other countries to get what it needs and/or wants) and which is able to keep it's greed in check) should be more peaceful? By engaging in non-standard hybrid warfare style tactics it can at least be a thorn in the current world order. Their style of diplomacy, statecraft, etc... reminds me of North Korea in a way. Do everything to get what they want short of outright war? For them to take a more assertive role on the world stage all they need to do is to simply show that things will be better if they simply have a greater say
Keiser Report - Germany vs USA in era of deglobalization (E1078)
Putin - We don't protect Assad, we protect Syria from becoming Libya
No Russian Trace - MSM suddenly goes quiet after no evidence of Moscow hacking Macron found
Megyn Kelly brings out ‘fiery’ in Putin as he slams Western media coverage of Russia
- latest in finance and politics
Veterans Are Now Training To Defend US Citizens Against Our Own State Violence
Diplomatic Spat - Several Gulf States cut ties with Qatar for allegedly ‘supporting terrorism’
Hackers leak emails from UAE ambassador to US
Germany, Austria warn US against imposing new sanctions on Russia
India-Russia cooperation not about arms trade, but about trust – Narendra Modi
CrossTalk - 'Seth Rich'
CrossTalk - Transatlantic Divorce
CrossTalk Bullhorns - ENOUGH!
CrossTalk - Bullhorns deliberating (EXTENDED VERSION)
Keiser Report - Bitcoin Stealing Gold's Thunder (E 1076)
Keiser Report -  ‘NIRP Refugees’ (E1077)
Keiser Report - Germany vs USA in era of deglobalization (E1078)
Keiser Report - Dotcom Bubble 2.0 (E1079)
Keiser Report - Is There a Tech Bubble (E1080)
Keiser Report - Everything in Bubble (E1083)
Keiser Report - Trump’s Potemkin trade deals (E1084)
Cenk Uygur's Argument At The Oxford Union Debate On Money In Politics
Jeremy Corbyn Shocks The World
Insane McCain Insists Russian Narrative Real At Comey Hearing
Leaked UAE emails - Yousef al-Otaiba criticises Trump
UAE email leak - 'On what planet can Trump be president'
Inside Story - Why was Saif al-Islam Gaddafi released from prison – Inside Story
Painful Silence - State Dept stumped over why US criticizes Iran on democracy, but not Saudis
Trump TV - How US President turns politics into reality show (feat. #covfefe)
Putin meets with heads of intl news agencies at SPIEF (streamed live)
Putin recommends US stop lecturing Russia on how to live

Random Quotes:
- According to Gen. Joseph Votel, head of U.S. Central Command, for instance, the country that poses “the greatest long-term threat to stability” in the Middle East is Iran, a sentiment seconded by retired general James Mattis, the secretary of defense.

You might excuse the Iranians, as well as the Russians and the Chinese, for thinking differently. To them, the United States is clearly the most destabilizing entity in the world. If you were Chinese or Russian or Shia Muslim, how might U.S. military activities appear to you?

* Expansionist? Check.

* Dedicated to dominance via colossal military spending and global interventionism? Check.

* Committed to economic and ideological hegemony via powerful banking and financial interests that seek to control world markets in the name of keeping them “free”? Check.

Wouldn’t that be a logical, if unsavory, assessment? To many outsiders, U.S. leaders seem like the world’s leading armed meddlers, a perception supported by soaring military action and sinking diplomacy under Trump. Serious cuts in funding loom at the State Department, even as the Pentagon budget is being boosted yet again.

To outside observers, Washington’s ambitions seem clear: global dominance, achieved and enforced by that “very, very strong” military that candidate Trump claimed he’d never have to use, but is already employing with gusto, if not abandon.
...
Candidate Trump may have complained about the United States wasting trillions of dollars in its recent foreign conflicts, invasions and occupations, but plenty of American corporations profited from those “regime changes.” After you flatten political states like Iraq, you can rearm them.  When not selling weapons to them or rebuilding the infrastructure you blew up, you can exploit them for resources.

Seemingly never-ending wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are an illustration of what happens when corporate interests merge with military imperatives.
...
As Americans continue to enjoy a consumption-driven lifestyle that gobbles up roughly 25 percent of the world’s production of fossil fuels (while representing only 4.4 percent of the world’s population), the smart money in the White House is working feverishly to open ever more fuel taps globally. Trillions of dollars are at stake.
...
Accelerated domestic production, along with cooperation from the Saudis—Trump’s recent Muslim bans carefully skipped targeting the one country that provided 15 of the 19 terrorists in the 9/11 attacks—should keep fuel flowing, profits growing and world sea levels rising.

One data point here: The U.S. military alone guzzles more fossil fuel than the entire country of Sweden. When it comes to energy consumption, our armed forces are truly second to none.
- The US embassy in London has become the butt of internet jokes after staff there interviewed a three-month-old baby on suspicion of terrorism.

Young Harvey Kenyon-Cairns had been due to fly to Orlando, Florida with his parents and grandparents. His grandfather Paul Kenyon filled out his ESTA visa waiver application form, but made a mistake. 

When he got the question of the form which asks, "Do you seek to engage in or have you ever engaged in terrorist activities, espionage, sabotage, or genocide?" Kenyon ticked yes instead of no.

As a result, Harvey, his mother Kaye and his grandfather Paul traveled with him on a ten-hour round trip from their home in Poynton, Cheshire, to the embassy in London's Grosvenor Square. 

Rome has begun a traffic ban to protect ancient glories from modern perils, allowing only buses, taxis, bicycles and pedestrians to go down the boulevard that runs between the Roman forums and curves around the Colosseum.

Harvey, who isn't talking yet, passed the interview and was eventually given permission to travel to the US. However, he wasn't given the all-clear in time to travel with the rest of the family and Kenyon ended up having to pay an extra £3,000 ($3,767) to re-book tickets for Harvey and his parents.

Hearing about Harvey's story, users of social networks were astonished that the embassy required him to visit in person for the interview, despite being aware that he is just three months old and obviously incapable of terrorism.
- The study found that changes in workplaces had led to new ways of working. But it found the following gaps that hindered collaborative and productive outcomes:

Too many face-to-face meetings taking up productive time (24%);
Teams are too rigid and not open to new ways of work (23%);
Company-wide meetings are too impersonal in communicating organisational goals (20%);
Teams are taking too long to respond to internal issues (20%); and
Team members are not accommodating with flexi-work schedules (16%).
Building more collaborative teams was thought to be possible, provided there was support from managers (41%), strong leadership and vision (38%) and diverse team members (31%).

The study also found that respondents wanted better devices to improve productivity. Beyond hardware, 27% hoped to have mobile access to information and data and 25% wanted access to cloud-based productivity tools.

Regarding emerging technologies that could help build better work environments by 2020:

26% looked forward to real-time intelligence that would help them make informed decisions at work;
25% thought artificial intelligence would help perform tasks independently; and
24% would like virtual workspaces that support instant messaging and document-sharing.
- Syrian forces shot down an ISIS drone that was targeting civilians in eastern Syria on Wednesday, according to multiple reports. 

The drone was allegedly carrying a NATO-Bulgarian GLV-HEF projectile.

How did Islamic State acquire NATO munitions? Probably craigslist. 
- The NSC document states “we have signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence” showing Syrian complicity. However, it added that “we cannot publicly release all available intelligence on this attack due to the need to protect sources and methods.”

As veteran journalist Robert Parry points out, in the past presidents have released sensitive intelligence to back up US government claims, including John F. Kennedy’s disclosure of U-2 spy flights in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis and Ronald Reagan revealing electronic intercepts after the Soviet shoot-down of Korean Airlines Flight 007 in 1983.

“Yet, in this current case, as U.S.-Russian relations spiral downward into what is potentially an extermination event for the human species, Trump’s White House insists that the world must trust it despite its record of consistently misstating facts,” notes Parry.

If corporate media polls can be believed, fifty-seven percent of Americans support the attack. A CBS commissioned poll adds that while more than half of Americans support the attack, 70 percent think Trump should gain congressional authorization for any future action.

The dubious poll results demonstrate the ability of the corporate media to build consensus for war based on unverified government assertions and lies, the notable example being the Bush administration’s fabrications about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that ultimately resulted in the death of around one million people after the US invaded in 2003. The Obama administration and the State Department led by Hillary Clinton used unsubstantiated claims about Libya and its leader, Muammar Gaddafi, to launch an attack in collaboration with NATO, the end result being the destruction of that country and the death of 30,000 Libyans.

The support offered by Democrats for Trump’s attack should not come as a surprise. Most wars and military actions undertaken by the United States in the 20th century were initiated by Democrats.

Following the invasion of Mexico by the United States in 1914 and gunboat diplomacy used against Nicaragua the same year to protect corporate interests, the Democrat President Woodrow Wilson organized an effort at the behest of J.P. Morgan and the bankers to get the nation involved in the First World War. Wilson exploited the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania by German U-boats on May 7, 1915 to set US involvement in the war in motion. It was later discovered the ship was loaded with munitions destined for England.

Wilson’s “unholy and unrighteous war” became one the deadliest conflicts in human history. The total number of military and civilian casualties was over 38 million. Britain’s starvation policy imposed on Germany in contravention of international law (designed in part by Winston Churchill, who declared the purpose was to “starve the whole population—men, women, and children, old and young, wounded and sound—into submission”) resulted in the death of 523,000 civilians.
- Clearly, war has become a huge money-making venture, and the U.S. government, with its vast military empire, is one of its best buyers and sellers.

Yet what most Americans—brainwashed into believing that patriotism means supporting the war machine—fail to recognize is that these ongoing wars have little to do with keeping the country safe and everything to do with enriching the military industrial complex at taxpayer expense.

The rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and now Syria. However, the one that remains constant is that those who run the government—including the current president—are feeding the appetite of the military industrial complex and fattening the bank accounts of its investors.

Case in point: President Trump plans to “beef up” military spending while slashing funding for the environment, civil rights protections, the arts, minority-owned businesses, public broadcasting, Amtrak, rural airports and interstates.

In other words, in order to fund this burgeoning military empire that polices the globe, the U.S. government is prepared to bankrupt the nation, jeopardize our servicemen and women, increase the chances of terrorism and blowback domestically, and push the nation that much closer to eventual collapse.

Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.

As Los Angeles Times reporter Steve Lopez rightly asks:

Why throw money at defense when everything is falling down around us? Do we need to spend more money on our military (about $600 billion this year) than the next seven countries combined? Do we need 1.4 million active military personnel and 850,000 reserves when the enemy at the moment — ISIS — numbers in the low tens of thousands? If so, it seems there's something radically wrong with our strategy. Should 55% of the federal government's discretionary spending go to the military and only 3% to transportation when the toll in American lives is far greater from failing infrastructure than from terrorism? Does California need nearly as many active military bases (31, according to militarybases.com) as it has UC and state university campuses (33)? And does the state need more active duty military personnel (168,000, according to Governing magazine) than public elementary school teachers (139,000)?

Obviously, there are much better uses for your taxpayer funds than trillions of dollars being wasted on war. The following are just a few ways those hard-earned dollars could be used:

    $270 billion to repair U.S. public schools, and twice that much to modernize them.

    $120 billion a year to fix the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. With 32% of the nation’s major roadways in poor or mediocre condition, it’s estimated that improving the nation’s roads and bridges would require $120 billion a year through 2020, although it will take “many trillions ... to fix the country's web of roads, bridges, railways, subways and bus stations.”

    $251 million for safety improvements and construction for Amtrak.

    $690 million to care for America’s 70,000 aging veterans.

    $11 billion wasted or lost in Iraq in just one year could have paid 220,000 teachers’ salaries.

    The yearly cost of stationing just one soldier in Iraq could have fed 60 American families.

    $30 billion per year to end starvation and hunger around the world.

    $11 billion per year to provide the world—including our own failing cities—with clean drinking water.

    Use the $10 billion spent every year to provide arms, equipment, training and advice internationally to more than 180 countries to start paying down the overwhelming $19 trillion national debt. This figure doesn’t include the hundreds of billions spent each year on maintaining the U.S. military presence around the globe.

As long as “we the people” continue to allow the government to wage its costly, meaningless, endless wars abroad, the American homeland will continue to suffer: our roads will crumble, our bridges will fail, our schools will fall into disrepair, our drinking water will become undrinkable, our communities will destabilize, and crime will rise.

Here’s the kicker, though: if the American economy collapses—and with it the last vestiges of our constitutional republic—it will be the government and its trillion-dollar war budgets that are to blame.

Of course, the government has already anticipated this breakdown.

That’s why the government has transformed America into a war zone, turned the nation into a surveillance state, and labelled “we the people” as enemy combatants.

For years now, the government has worked with the military to prepare for widespread civil unrest brought about by “economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

Having spent more than half a century exporting war to foreign lands, profiting from war, and creating a national economy seemingly dependent on the spoils of war, the war hawks long ago turned their profit-driven appetites on us, bringing home the spoils of war—the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.—and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield.

This is how the police state wins and “we the people” lose.

Eventually, however, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, all military empires fail.
- The backbone proves crucial to the power this big cat generates. Bending and extending its spine enables the cheetah to move efficiently, run exceptionally fast and make huge leaps.
"The main difference between existing walking robots and the cheetah robot is therefore the backbone," Folkertsma said.
"The trick was to imitate it without complicating matters unnecessarily. Instead of vertebrae and intervertebral discs, we worked with a cleverly placed spring which delivers approximately the same effect," he said.
- In general, the idea of local causality is usually taken for granted: objects can influence other objects only when they are physically close together, and any correlations between distant objects must have originated in the past when they were closer together. But in the quantum world, distant particles can be correlated in ways that are impossible for classical objects, unless these distant particles can somehow influence each other.

To determine whether local causality has been violated, physicists perform Bell tests, which attempt to violate Bell inequalities. If a Bell inequality is violated, then either locality or realism (or simply "local realism") has also been violated.

There are dozens of different versions of Bell inequalities, but currently they all make the same assumption: that the correlations between particles all originate from a single common source. In real experiments, however, particles and their correlations can come from many different sources.
- Bangkok: Several times customs officials noticed a man carrying a strange-looking case across the border from north-eastern Thailand to Laos, a known smuggling route.

When they confronted 25-year-old Nithinon Srithaniyanan and asked him to open the case they found six tubes of human semen in a nitrogen tank.
- About one in six (16 percent) Americans correctly located Ukraine, clicking somewhere within its borders. Most thought that Ukraine was located somewhere in Europe or Asia, but the median respondent was about 1,800 miles off — roughly the distance from Chicago to Los Angeles — locating Ukraine somewhere in an area bordered by Portugal on the west, Sudan on the south, Kazakhstan on the east, and Finland on the north.

The further our respondents thought that Ukraine was from its actual location, the more they wanted the U.S. to intervene militarily. 
- Tamil Nadu farmers at Jantar Mantar did not go ahead with their plan to drink urine as announced on Friday. The farmers, who were advised by the police not to go ahead with the protest as planned, said they will meet Tamil Nadu chief minister on Sunday to discuss their demands.

The farmers, who have come to be known for their bizarre protests in the Capital, were unusually calm on Saturday morning. Camped at their protest site, with the skulls and urine bottles, the farmers looked clouded with uncertainty. Their leader, P Ayyakkannu, had been called in by the deputy commissioner of police, to discuss their proposed protest idea. Ayyakkannu later said that the DCP had advised them against drinking their own urine.

However, he said that they will collect the urine in a bucket and send it back to Tamil Nadu with a representative.
...
The farmers earlier promised to go a step further by eating faeces on Sunday if the government continued to ignore their demands. They now maintain that they will decide the future course of action after meeting with Tamil Nadu chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami, who is expected to visit the farmers on Sunday morning.
- In rough figures, for the sake of simplicity, in 2014/15 we had a population of around 24 million. Just over 13 million of them paid tax. The other 11 million didn't. They might be children or pensioners ... it just doesn't matter. The simple point is that 13 million are paying tax to keep the show on the road for all 24 million of us. All those earning under $37,000 (more than 5½ million of us) – that is, about 42 per cent of people who did pay some tax – contributed together just 2.5 per cent of the personal tax revenue.

The nearly 5 million earning between $37,000 and $80,000, about 37 per cent of taxpayers, pay just over 28 per cent of the tax. A quick adding of these two and you can see that about 10½ million taxpayers, about 80 per cent of taxpayers, who each earn less than $80,000, pay about 30 per cent of the personal income tax take. That's right: 80 per cent of taxpayers pay 30 per cent of the tax.

That leaves the remaining 20 per cent of taxpayers to pay 70 per cent of all personal income tax. That's a decent contribution in anyone's language. The 17 per cent of taxpayers who earn between $80,000 and $180,000 pay about 39 per cent. If you're a sole income earner with a few kids and earning $80,000 or thereabouts you don't feel rich. Tax transfers and welfare would be a great help.

That leaves the 3 per cent of taxpayers who earn more than $180,000 and they pay a whopping 30 per cent of the tax bill. In raw numbers there were just under 400,000 of them – paying 30 per cent of the income tax bill in a country of 24 million, with 13 million taxpayers.

Personal income tax made up about 51 per cent of revenue, followed by company tax at nearly 20 per cent. That's why Bill Shorten's ideas are just so yesterday. We need more companies to come here to provide jobs and pay tax, not fewer. Instead of working to make the rich poorer, Shorten should develop policies that will allow many, many more people to get jobs, get ahead and pay tax.
- Over the past 35 years, the American ruling class, represented by Democratic as well as Republican governments, has dismantled much of the industrial infrastructure of the country. It has shifted its money-making activities increasingly to parasitic and non-productive forms of financial speculation.

The financialization of the US economy—its increasing domination by a handful of Wall Street banks and hedge funds—has been dramatic. In 1980, the financial industry accounted for only 6 percent of corporate profits. Today it accounts for close to 50 percent.

As manufacturing was dismantled and economic activity shifted more and more to financial manipulation, the enrichment of the financial-corporate elite was increasingly separated from the creation of real value through the process of production.

The TPP would be the final death blow to American manufacturing
- In 1928, a Doctor had great success treating women on their deathbed with severe bacterial infections due to abortions by exposing their blood to UVC rays.

By the mid 1940s, UltraViolet Light Therapy had really begun to roll. Dr. Miley reported that using UV Blood Therapy on viral pneumonia (still a big killer today) would cure this condition rather quickly.

UV Blood Therapy effectively (with absolutely no side effects) treats bacterial, viral and fungal infections, including things like HIV, shingles, pneumonia, e-coli, measles, mumps, polio, herpes, yeast, tetanus, malaria, typhoid, gangrene, etc.
It can also treat auto-immune diseases such as MS, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, etc. Respiratory problems such as COPD, Emphysema are easily addressed. Conditions like arthritis, nephritis, circulation problems, hepatitis, some cancers, etc. also respond to UV Light Therapy.

In the 1950’s, use of UV Light Therapy fell to the wayside as vaccines and pharmaceuticals took center stage.
There is no profit incentive for pharmaceutical companies to promote UV Light Therapy.

History and website on UV Light Therapy
- YouTube with History, scientific studies and FAQ’s

Ozone Blood Therapy and Ultraviolet Blood Therapy are often used together at the same time. Ozone (Prolozone) can be inserted into joints, cartilage and bones in order to regenerate them.
- It is impossible to deny that Facebook, Google and Amazon have stymied innovation on a broad scale. To begin with, the platforms of Google and Facebook are the point of access to all media for the majority of Americans. While profits at Google, Facebook and Amazon have soared, revenues in media businesses like newspaper publishing or the music business have, since 2001, fallen by 70 percent.
Opinion Today

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, newspaper publishers lost over half their employees between 2001 and 2016. Billions of dollars have been reallocated from creators of content to owners of monopoly platforms. All content creators dependent on advertising must negotiate with Google or Facebook as aggregator, the sole lifeline between themselves and the vast internet cloud.

It’s not just newspapers that are hurting. In 2015 two Obama economic advisers, Peter Orszag and Jason Furman, published a paper arguing that the rise in “supernormal returns on capital” at firms with limited competition is leading to a rise in economic inequality. The M.I.T. economists Scott Stern and Jorge Guzman explained that in the presence of these giant firms, “it has become increasingly advantageous to be an incumbent, and less advantageous to be a new entrant.”
- The third alternative is to remove the “safe harbor” clause in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which allows companies like Facebook and Google’s YouTube to free ride on the content produced by others. The reason there are 40,000 Islamic State videos on YouTube, many with ads that yield revenue for those who posted them, is that YouTube does not have to take responsibility for the content on its network. Facebook, Google and Twitter claim that policing their networks would be too onerous. But that’s preposterous: They already police their networks for pornography, and quite well.

Removing the safe harbor provision would also force social networks to pay for the content posted on their sites. A simple example: One million downloads of a song on iTunes would yield the performer and his record label about $900,000. One million streams of that same song on YouTube would earn them about $900.

I’m under no delusion that, with libertarian tech moguls like Peter Thiel in President Trump’s inner circle, antitrust regulation of the internet monopolies will be a priority. Ultimately we may have to wait four years, at which time the monopolies will be so dominant that the only remedy will be to break them up. Force Google to sell DoubleClick. Force Facebook to sell WhatsApp and Instagram.

Woodrow Wilson was right when he said in 1913, “If monopoly persists, monopoly will always sit at the helm of the government.” We ignore his words at our peril.
- "Glug, glug, glug" - that's the sound a sinking battleship makes, according to Paul Keating, who deployed the sound effect to devastating effect on Wednesday to underline his argument that the United States could not expect to dominate China in the South China Sea.

"I always say to these American admirals that every great battleship went down in the first week at sea in the Second World War," the former prime minister told the Lowy Institute in Sydney.

"Just like these American carriers are going to be going down when the nasty fight starts. And I said to this [admiral] they all sound the same you know ... glug, glug, glug"', he added, to slightly startled laughter from an audience dominated by foreign policy wonks.

Mr Keating was launching a book, Fear of Abandonment, written by his former foreign policy adviser and one-time head of the Office of National Assessments, Allan Gyngell.

The former Labor leader said he was not arguing against a US presence in east Asia because Washington was an important "balancer and conciliator" in the region. "Nor do we want China to be the dominant state in east Asia, [because] we need the US here as the floating good guys, floating their boats around."

But he said the idea that "China is going to be a strategic client of the United States is nonsense. What [China] is doing in the South China Sea, they are marking out space like a tiger does, you know, a tiger rubs itself against the trees to let any other ones that turn up know this is our space."

"Great states need strategic space and if you don't give it to them, they will take it ..."

"The central stabilising force in east Asia is China, not Japan and I think this will dawn on the Americans.
- Veteran analytics company SAS has already stated that the term Artificial Intelligence is wrong – its Algorithmic Intelligence, at least for the present anyway. Its CTO, Oliver Schabenberger said the term Artificial Intelligence is trendy but it is nothing more than an illusion of human intelligence.

“AI is something that performs a specific set of tasks in a human-like way. Human intelligence has creativity, innovation, sentience, morals, gut feel, is situation aware, bias, feelings, and has learned from its mistakes. AI like this is not going to happen for a while,” he said.
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Saving Money (without Sacrificing), Random Stuff, and More

- use price matching when you can to get an extra discount. Note, a lot of companies advertise low prices just to get you through the door. ...