I was raised agnostic and tend to remain ambiguous on theological matters.
-but my house has a porch on the second story that affords me a terrific view of my neighborhood and the Colorado Front Range and I was partaking of some peace before the 4th Of July Finger-Loss Festivities begin, and I have had a
~*Spiritual Experience*~
I just watched my neighbor try to unload an actual wooden pallet that had to have been forklifted into the back of his insecurity pickup worth of fireworks.
Except that he does not have a forklift in his garage.
He does have so much sports memorabilia and cardboard boxes of unsold MLM Merchandise and patriotically themed camping gear and posters of women in bikinis and flags of suspect political organizations in his garage that there is only
BARELY
enough space for the fireworks
and certainly none for his truck.
So he had to unload the individual boxes of recreational explosives from the back of his truck and stack them in the minimal space he had cleared by hand.
This is a tedious and time-consuming process as this neighbor has purchased a wide variety of recreational and locally illegal explosives instead of many of just a few types, so the individual boxes are rather small.
He begins,
and this is crucial to what happens next,
by cutting apart the industrial-grade saran wrap his explosives dealer had so carefully wrapped his merchandise in, and discarded it
unsecured
on his lawn.
Where Outdoor Conditions sometimes happen.
His process for unloading the fireworks is to
1. Climb up through the gate into the bed of his pickup truck (a feat made unusually difficult due to the slope of his driveway, and this man's fascinating decision to wear the world's Siffest and least Flexible Denim Overalls.
2. Once in the pickup bed, he selects ONE (1) box from the pile
He is apparently from a niche religious institution that doesn't believe in stacking things.
3. Carries it awkwardly around the palette that barely fits in the truck bed
4. His wife yells "Be careful!" when he nearly falls out of the pickup.
5. He Yells "SHADDUP!" back at her.
6. The Large German Shepherd barks from inside the house.
7. He yells "SHADDUP!" back at her too.
8. He sets the (1) box down on the gate
9. Slowly and awkwardly climbs out of the pickup bed
10. picks the box back up, and carries it into the garage.
Question: Aren't you going to help this poor man?
Answer: Absolutely Not.
There's four military veterans, MANY dogs, and several people with dementia in this neighborhood, all of whom are terrified by this chicanery every year and many neighbors have repeatedly asked him to maybe do the fireworks somewhere else.
(This is the Eighth Year Running he's held a major demolition event in his driveway, and for those of you who can do math, you may be able to guess the precipitating incident to this little ritual)
Additionally, I live in Colorado, a state marginally less prone to spontaneous and catastrophic conflagrations than a rotting grain silo, but only marginally.
Our recreational explosives laws are written accordingly.
I am in fact calling the Non Emergency line to report Fireworks violations, and reading off the brand labels to someone named Dorothy, who is gleefully totaling up a SPECTACULAR fine for my oblivious neighbor.
However, while I'm on the phone with Dorothy, I notice the wind begin to pick up.
and by "Notice" I mean "The Industrial Saran Wrap he left on his Lawn earlier is suddenly swept up about 100 feet into the air by an updraft intense enough to make my ears pop"
And by "Pick Up" I mean "I look up to see the sky has turned a fun and exciting shade of glass green, and the bottoms of the clouds are bumpy and rounded, and the overall effect is not unlike looking up through the bottom of the cup at God's Matcha Boba Tea."
For those of you who do not live in places with Inclement Weather, these conditions mean "You have about 30 seconds before a Major Meteorological Event Occurs."
I move under the eaves.
"Hang on Dorothy." I say, nose filling with Petrichor. "The show is about to be cancelled."
"Oh, that doesn't matter!" Dorothy cheerfully informs me. "It's illegal for him just to possess those, no matter if he actually gets to set them off or not."
"Terrific, because he's gotten maybe five boxes out of a hundred inside."
Sometimes,
the weather gods are Merciful and give you a verbal warning, typically in the kind of thunderclap that makes your ears ring.
The Gods were not merciful today.
It's not often that I am in the time, place, correct angle or in a properly observational frame of mind to see this,
But I got to see it today.
Huh. I thought. I've never seen a cloud just DIVE for the ground before.
Oh. I realized as it got closer.
That's RAIN.
Sometimes, a thunderstorm will form in such a way that the rain that would normally be distributed over an area of say,
five to tent square miles,
is instead concentrated into an area of say,
my neighborhood exactly.
So today, I was granted the rare privilege of being able to actually see the literal wall of water descend from On High and DIRECTLY onto my porch, my street, and my neighbor's truck, and his pile of unwrapped fireworks.
The sheer impact force of the downpour immediately scatters the teetering pile of fireworks boxes in the back of the truck, like the wrath of God striking down the tower of Babel.
Boxes tumble, then are washed out of the bed of the truck by the deluge.
Smaller Boxes are carried down the road in a little line by the stream forming in the gutter, like little impotent explosive ducklings.
My neighbor was definitely yelling something, but I could not hear what over the DEAFENING noise several million gallons of water makes upon high-speed contact with the earth's surface, but there was a lot of arm-waving and faces turning red as he went looking for the saran wrap that had probably blown to Nebraska by now, while his wife started disassembling the complex three-dimensional puzzle of interlocking material goods in search of a tarp.
They do not have a tarp.
They have one of those wretched Thin Blue Line flags though, and my neighbor jogs out in a futile effort to cover what's left in the truck.
Which is when the hail begins.
"HELLO?" Yelled Dorothy.
"HI!" I shouted. "WE'RE HAVING SOME WEATHER!"
"OH GOOD!" she shouts back. "WE NEED THE MOISTURE!"
I watch for a minute longer, but the loss was immediate and catastrophic- the hail is the size of marbles and dense and cares not for your pitiful cardboard and cellophane, ripping the boxes asunder and punching holes in the few things covered in plastic.
The colors on the Thin Blue Line Flag are seeping all over the remains of that it was supposed to protect in a particularly apt visual metaphor.
Not even the few boxes that made it into the garage are spared, as the German Shepherd escapes from indoors, and in an attempt to assist her humans, jumps directly into the small stack of not-yet-ruined boxes, scattering them into the driveway and deluge. She even picks one up so her humans will chase her around the yard, before dropping it in the gutter to be swept away.
So.
I was raised Agnostic
-but even I can recognize when God slaps someone upside the head and shouts "NO!" at them.
---
(If you laughed, please consider supporting my Ko-fi or preordering my book of Strange Stories on Patreon)
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Buonasera, uno dei pochi Tumblr musici che seguo. Intanto in bocca al lupo per la serata e buon divertimento 😁
Se poi a tempo perso hai voglia di ascoltare qualche pezzo del progetto che ha preso forma in cantina con tre crucchi (questo mi tocca...):
glasvater.bandcamp.com
Io ci ho messo il basso e un outro strumentale (con una copia del Bass VI) . Prima esperienza a registrare originali, ogni commento è apprezzato. Soprattutto perché manco mi conosci, puoi andarci giù duro 😁
Sennò son tutti sempre troppo buoni, mi servono critiche (possibilmente costruttive!)
P
Buongiorno a te! E grazie mille di avere condiviso la tua musica con me, è una cosa fin troppo rara e che io apprezzo tantissimo!
E infatti, stamattina, letto il tuo ask (dopo essermi svegliato tardissimo e aver dormito male) mi sono messo ad ascoltare i vostri pezzi.
Mi hai chiesto di essere sincero, e non mi risparmierò: ti prego quindi di considerare quanto segue come un commento totalmente senza filtri (e ti do ragione, quando si tratta di far sentire / far vedere la propria arte, i complimenti servono a poco, così come gli insulti gratuiti: quello che serve, invece, sono le critiche costruttive).
Doverosa premessa: il vostro pop-rock con cantato in tedesco non è un genere che ascolto molto, però ti devo dire che i testi sono molto ben coordinati al pezzo, quasi al punto da essere catchy come se fossero in inglese. Il che significa che chi li ha scritti e musicati sapeva quello che stava facendo, specie essendo alle prese con le consonanti germaniche.
Veniamo a quello che va:
Avete un cantante molto bravo, con un tono di voce piacevole e una buona espressività. E' metà del lavoro, nel genere che fate, quindi siete sulla strada giusta.
Il lavoro di basso è preciso e presente nel modo giusto, complimenti!
Gli arrangiamenti sono ben costruiti, si percepisce che i pezzi non sono stati buttati lì come una jam-session ma architettati nelle loro parti (strofe, ritornelli e bridges, intro e finali). A livello di songwriting non vi manca niente.
I testi non sono banali (si, li ho tradotti!) e rispondono molto bene al mood dei brani.
Su quello che va un po' meno:
Le registrazioni risentono di una qualità non da studio, ma questo lo avevi detto, e ci sta. Sono degli ottimi demo, io vi consiglierei di seglierne un paio e investire in una registrazione professionale con mixing e mastering il prima possibile. Non costa così tanto come potrebbe sembrare.
Ai pezzi, infatti, manca un po' il tocco del produttore, che limi le asperità presenti in particolare nel suono della batteria (è elettronica? Sono dei samples, o c'è un batterista?) sul charleston, troppo alto (ma calcola che sto ascoltando dal PC), e anche su qualche fruscio di troppo.
Il lavoro sulla chitarra è formalmente ben fatto, ma alla chitarra mancano le vitamine: effetti, ambiente, dinamiche, tutte cose che in produzione possono essere facilmente sistemate. Non è una critica al chitarrista, assolutamente: i pezzi sono ben suonati e tutto è al suo posto, ci manca giusto la spinta della produzione. Sono molto curioso degli strumenti che avete utilizzato, se vorrai parlarmene.
Se immagino i vostri pezzi con un suono più definito di chitarra, i volumi al punto giusto, e la produzione suoni necessaria, penso possano "sbocciare" in tutto il loro potenziale.
Fammi sapere se ci provate! E grazie ancora per la fiducia e per la condivisione.
Lol, io volevo mandare un DM. Vabbè pubblicità extra, per quel che vale.
Grazie per la risposta, molto apprezzata. Più contesto: non abbiamo grandi ambizioni, le registrazioni ci servono (principalmente, ma non solo) per darci una struttura e avere un riferimento di chi ha suonato cosa e come - le prove insieme non sono esattamente frequentissime 😅
Siamo in quattro con figli piccoli, le energie e i tempi sono limitati. Anche il nome, nato come gioco di parole dalla storpiatura di Glasfaser (fibra ottica), è un programma: glas = vetro + vater= padre
Ampi spazi e tecnologia spaziale...
Il batterista/cantante/songwriter ha il suo kit acustico in cantina, non ci staremmo tutti, registra lì. Per strada abbiamo raccolto anche un tastierista, purtroppo malato per il primo, quasi casuale, open stage
Col cantante nell'angolo al buio in castigo 😆
Abbiamo due (o son diventati tre?) pezzi in cantiere da finire, poi dovremo decidere cosa farne esattamente... Ma con calma, che devo andare a cambiare un pannolone
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After a 2-year siege El-Fashir, the capital of Darfur, has fallen to the terroristic UAE-funded RSF militias who now carry out ethnic killings against Black Sudanese with impunity.
Silence is complicity! To help with relief efforts, please spread the word and donate to the orgs listed under ‘urgent causes’ below:
soooooo does anyone know of any good programs for yoinking music from spotify with metadata included (one way or another idc if it matches it to youtube videos or not) or am i gonna hgave to manually go through all 2.7k songs myself
Should mention you may want to learn port forwarding for using soulseek/nicotine+ to share your own files, some people wont share their files to people that aren't sharing themselves.
Soulseek
Graphical client for the Soulseek peer-to-peer network
And for editing tags in bulk:
Mp3tag is a powerful and easy-to-use tool to edit metadata of audio files.
Official website for MusicBrainz Picard, a cross-platform music tagger written in Python.
Finding album covers in high res:
Search for high quality album covers from various online streaming services, music stores and databases.
Also gonna include some music players I like:
https://getmusicbee.com/
Install via EXE, Flatpak or the Arch User Repository.
So far as iOS goes, this is the only one that supports replaygain and doesn't have in-app purchases, no lastfm support tho:
foobar2000 mobile is an advanced audio player for mobile devices.
Main features:
* Supported audio formats: MP3, MP4, AAC, Vorbis, Opus, F
I'm not too familiar with android but the best one I found during a time I was planning to swap to android (still am eventually) is this:
Musicolet is a small yet powerful offline Music Player for Android, which organizes and plays local audio-files stored on your device.
Once upon a time there was a woman named Patricia, who worked in a bank. And one day a frog came in, a person-sized one. It wasn't the first time that dear Patty had seen or heard of a frog that big - she remembered the incident in the news: There had been a witch living in the woods, in a gingerbread house. Not a nice, helpful kind of witch or even a decent one who'd mind her own business, but one who hated everyone and everything and frequetly went out of her way to hurt people who couldn't defend themselves. So one day due to her supreme antisemitism God sent the frog that once plagued Egypt to fuck up her house. This, however, was not that frog.
When Patricia asked what the frog was after, he said he wanted a loan. When she asked what he wanted it for, the frog would not say. In return, the frog asked her whether she knows who he is. She could not say that she would, she had never seen this frog before. The frog asked her whether she knows who his father was. She said that she didn't. Turns out that this is the son of the giant frog sent by God. Pat is still not sure what to do with this information.
The frog digs into his suitcase and pulls out a tiny wooden figure, of a crudely carved dragon, and asks whether this is sufficient. Patricia is baffled, and asks the frog whether he could wait while she goes to see her boss and ask her opinion. The frog nods, stating that he was frankly hoping that she would. And to take the figurine with her.
So Patricia goes to her boss, showing her the figurine and explaining the situation, asking whether her boss knows what the wood dragon is or what to do with all of this. As Patricia speaks, her boss calmly picks up a newspaper from her desk and starts rolling it, soon wielding the rolled-up newspaper as a weapon as she addresses Patricia.
"It's a knick-knack, Patty [whack], give the frog a loan. His old man ate Rowling's home."
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people often talk about how d&d 5e is a horrible starting point that makes players struggle with other systems and that's true but it also does this for GMs. so many people i know had their first exposure to ttrpgs through d&d 5e and so view any GM or facilitator role with absolute dread assuming that it is an unpaid game design role that requires not only hours of prep every session but also to carefully micromanage every aspect of the game to singlehandedly balance it for the specific outcome of 'the party wins, but, like, it feels difficult' while simultaneously remembering everyone's rules for them & being treated like a substitute teacher
Stewpot: Tales from a Fantasy Tavern, by Takuma Okada, is a collection of slice-of-life mini-games all about running a fantasy tavern together. It's got varying level of difficulty, with some games that work well for introducing yourself to the game, and others that are basically just excuses to roleplay! The game uses a deck of cards to introduce random elements, like ingredients for your dishes or elements of your tavern's atmosphere. If you like cozy fantasy stories with plenty of chances to dive into character moments, you'll love this game.
Faux Claw, by beccamay, is a game about cyberpunk criminal cats, with escalating consequences every time you fail. When you fail a roll, place your failing dice in a stack. The stack grows and grows until it falls, causing a big cat-astrophe! If you want goofy antics and big moments with cartoon-style action, you might like Faux Claw.
Against the Gloom, by Scryptid Games, is a game about fantastical musicians sailing across The Gloom, a dangerous void.It uses a d6 system inspired by Yahtzee! You "harmonize" your dice to get closer to success, and use musical magic to power your ship. If you want dramatic scenes that feel a little bit Saturday-morning-cartoon, you might want to check out this game.
Monster Guts 2e, by Wheels Within Wheels Publishing, is a game about killing monsters in order to defend your village and improve your own weapons and armor. If you're a fan of Breath of the Wild or the Monster Hunter franchise, you might find the cycle of play in this game really rewarding.
Atomic Powered Mutant Girls, by Cilindro Cubico, is a simple magical girls ttrpg inspired by Powerpuff Girls and similar Saturday morning cartoons. When you build your character, you roll 2d6 to randomly determine your girls' mutant magic powers, allowing for really kooky and interesting characters that might create some neat combos! If you like powerful characters and a little bit of creepy to go along with the cute, you might like this game.
Not sure if anything here fits your vibe? That's what the rest of my blog is for. <3
i love how Gandalf invested in Hobbits in year one and has been pushing them ever since. Thorin, i hear you need help with a breaking and entering. Can I recommend one of these little cunts? Silent as fuck, trust me. Elrond my dude i know you're skeptical but these four chucklefucks just transported a weapon of mass destruction all the way here. Theoden, you've gotta get yourself a hobbit man, I've got a spare one here. Denathor you big prick, take a hobbit - literally this is the bottom of the range but listen to him sing. Beautiful little bastard.
In "Unfinished Tales" there's a section where the Fellowship gets Gandalf to tell his side of the story about how he recommended Bilbo to Thorin's company and this is literally how it went down:
answering a couple questions i got on this post since i realized ppl genuinely wanna know:
tl;dr:
israel lets very, very little aid get into gaza. even the UN can't get in as much as they want to. funding individual families, gazan led initiatives, and mutual aid collectives operating out of gaza ensures gazans can provide for themselves and pay for the extremely expensive aid that is available.
with all the civil infrastructure destroyed by israel, the situation on the ground has devolved into unrestricted capitalism, driving up the price of aid (that should be free!). this makes it more urgent for people to have funding for daily survival.
the post linked above has examples of how donating to individual families can help a lot. if you want to help more than one family at a time, there are many gazan-led initiatives focusing on rebuilding their infrastructure and distributing aid fairly that are worth donating to instead of large charities that already get the majority of donations.
as i mentioned in the last post: @/careforgaza on twitter is a nonprofit started by gazans, it's been endorsed by multiple palestinian journalists.
the sameer project is a collective organized by diaspora palestinians offering emergency shelter to gazans.
ele elna elak is a project aiming to bring water, food, shelter, etc. to gazans and has been promoted by bisan owda.
and the municipality of gaza itself is fundraising to rebuild water infrastructure.
all of these organizations are active inside gaza right now and are being run by gazans. if anyone knows of other gazan-led mutual aid projects, nonprofits or charities feel free to link them in the notes! hope this helped!
long answers under the cut!
if you wanna donate to a charity that's absolutely fine, but the thing is most charities (and even the UN!) are unable to make it into gaza in the first place, leaving aid rotting at the egyptian side of the border or subject to israeli settler attacks
not to mention, charities and nonprofits also maintain a paternalistic colonial relationship with the indigenous people they are trying to help, determining what aid they need for them instead of returning power to them and letting them make their own choices
i'm not here to say that one option is better than the other, just that they achieve different things and are equally legitimate. there's an attitude among people who question the legitimacy of these gofundme campaigns that somehow the people promoting them are telling them not to donate to charities. nobody is stopping you from donating to charities. we are just asking that you do not dehumanize the very real gazans in your inbox just because their method of asking for aid is more direct and risky.
unfortunately that's exactly what has happened. because israel destroyed all of gaza's more formalized infrastructure, it seems that organized crime and rampant inflation has taken its place. aid is supposed to be free, but in order to save for evacuation or the cost of living, people have started selling them at an inflated price. and aid that is truly free attracts intense, large crowds that are dangerous to navigate.
this was posted on abc a few days ago
it's pure, unrestrained capitalism. i've had multiple palestinians describe this situation to me confidence. that's why everything's so expensive now. why people have to rent out tiny plots of land for their tents to sit on, why my friend @siraj2024 still has to buy tarps to cover the broken windows of the overpriced bombed out apartment he rented, and why a bag of flour can cost a thousand bucks in the north.
even before israel closed and then bombed the rafah crossing, the egyptian hala travel agency was only allowing people to cross the border if they paid a hefty $5000 USD per adult / $2500 USD per child bribe. it denies doing this, but the hundreds of stories from palestinians say otherwise.
with regard to the economy, here in america we saw something similar happen in the wake of hurricane helene and milton. the podcaster margaret killjoy describes how she saw dual economies rise after asheville was fully cut off from the rest of the country - some people offered each other supplies for free in a sort of mutual aid honor system, and some people required payment when they lent supplies because they themselves needed to buy stuff for their families. these dual economies exist in gaza too. and this means they all still need money to survive.
plugging gaza soup kitchen for those with the means to donate! it's another gazan-led initiative currently providing food, water, classes for children, and medical care across the north and south. you can donate through their website or their gofundme, or follow them on instagram for news about their projects
please also consider taking a look at dahnoun mutual aid (instagram link), another ghazzawi-run initiative doing great work using very little funds! they're currently distributing winter clothes for young children, as well as food and water, infant formula, tents, and cash. they've also got a chuffed
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