rubken

New blog post: Are Country Bassists Worth Listening To?

I recently came across a question on the r/Bass subreddit asking simply, “Any [country] bassists worth listening to?” There were a few responses disparaging bass playing within the genre, and there certainly weren’t a lot of people coming forward with names of players. I wanted to chime in and defend a genre I have come to like (from an initial position of complete disdain), but I didn’t have…

I started seriously pursuing music in my mid-teens. I was lucky to find myself in an environment where I had support and guidance to do this. I have not ended up quite where I expected to. There are lots of reasons for this. In my case one of those reasons is my mental health and how long it has taken me to begin to understand the role that has played (and is playing) in my life. In the 2013 UK…

Prosecutors are the reason that so many Americans were put behind bars on the basis of flimsy forensic evidence based on pseudoscience. Prosecutors are the ones who make the call not to prosecute cops who gun down unarmed black people.

But things may be changing. This article is about a law review article on how some “hard line” prosecutors are being voted out of office and why.

Products posted to Kickstarter are being copied by firms in China before the Kickstarter window even closes. This raises some interesting issues about the intersection of different viewpoints on commerce.

Kickstarter is a feel good platform for both the fundraiser and the supporter, but for commercial products it exposes them to wider attention at a vulnerable time. Many will not be patented yet and even if they are the company is unlikely to have enough capital to fight a claim.

Adults, we seek out new experiences. Children couldn’t give a fuck. All children care about is mastery. It makes total sense. Put yourself in their position. You spend every single waking second being told what to eat, what to wear, where to go and when to sleep.

Then you get this video game. All of a sudden you are the master of your own destiny, you are the king of this digital domain. The sheer power Children must feel in these universes, with their clear rulesets, and comforting, unchanging worlds. The more they play, the more sense it makes, the more fun it becomes.

(via Press Release: New court judgment finds UK surveillance agencies collected everyone’s… – Privacy International – Medium)

In a highly significant judgment released today, The Investigatory Powers Tribunal has found that the UK’s intelligence agencies were secretly and unlawfully collecting bulk data on people in the UK without adequate safeguards or supervision for over a decade.

(via Figuring out what to do with Trump's base means admitting they are racist / Boing Boing)

[I]n order to heal the great divide in the United States we're going to have to admit what Trump's popularity is all about: a fading, racist white majority is struggling to maintain primacy.

(via xkcd: Work)

(via Just Trust the A.I. [Comic])

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFeG9CeeH88)

This is a really interesting phenomenon. If you watch to the end of the video Mr Tokieda discusses how each individual ball is still behaving as you would expect it to if it were in isolation, but the balls together create an aggregate behaviour that is the opposite of that.