ceoln @ceoln@social.cleverlibre.org

When the story of the Iran-Contra affair broke in November 1986, government officials continued to break the law, shredding documents that Congress had subpoenaed. After fourteen administration officials were indicted and eleven convicted, the next president, George H. W. Bush, who had been Reagan’s vice president, pardoned them on the advice of his attorney general William Barr. (Yes, that William Barr.)
#USPolitics

https://open.substack.com/pub/heathercoxrichardson/p/august-9-2023

The #BLUG #RFC1149 implementation project page is back! https://blug.linux.no/project/rfc1149/

Miles Davis made the best-selling jazz album of all time, Kind of Blue, under the influence of George Russell's 'Lydian chromatic concept' of harmony. But what's that?

Miles, a man of few but well-chosen words, summarized it by saying “F should be where C is on the piano”.

Huh? You have to unpack that.

If you play the white notes on the piano, going up, you get 7 different scales depending on where you start. If you start at C you get the familiar major scale - also called the Ionian mode. But if you start at F you get the Lydian mode. And there's an objective sense in which Lydian is unique among all the 7 modes. Check out the chart!

What's going on here?

We can get all 7 modes, now all starting at the same note, by taking Lydian and lowering more and more notes by a half-tone following the pattern in this chart. The notes become 'flat'.

Each time we lower another half-tone, the scale becomes 'darker' - not exactly more sad, but something sort of like that. So Lydian is the 'brightest' scale, and Ionian - our friend the major scale - is just the second brightest.

There's a lot more to say about this! I started here:

https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2023/08/08/modes-part-6/

In this article I point out *two* objectively special features of the Lydian mode! But I leave as a puzzle for you to figure out how they're connected. I'll give the answer in my next article.

When @mdreid told me about this connection, and I saw the consequences, my mind was blown. All of a sudden harmony theory seemed a lot less arbitrary - more mathematically beautiful! WHY HAD NOBODY TOLD ME THIS STUFF SOONER?

Today is Boomtime, the 3rd day of Bureaucracy in the YOLD 3189.

#PrincipiaDiscordia

Bronze Age Pyramidal Structure Discovered in the Eurasian Steppe

A hexagonal pyramid that goes back to the early Bronze Age around 2000 BCE, a pyramid-shaped structure at the Kyrykungir archaeological site in Kazakhstan.

https://greekreporter.com/2023/08/10/bronze-age-pyramidal-structure-eurasian-steppe/

#Garfield #music #HeyYa
#bot #lyrics

If you are enjoying my #folklore posts, be sure to check out @independentpen , one of the two people behind the @mythologymonday account (follow that one too, while you are at it)!

She also has a Patreon, which you can follow here: https://www.patreon.com/independentpen

Take the hot new online quiz “Right-Leaning News Telling Us Everything is Okay or Onion Article”

I want to use my files with whatever program makes sense for the job I'm trying to do at the time.

I want to share my files with whomever I want to whenever I want to, with no mediator in the way directing me down some rabbit hole of symmetry-breaking mediocrity.

I could once do that. I really could. It wasn't perfect but it was vastly better than the dystopian technocrap I need to put up with today.

About once every ten years there's a huge scandal where it turns out the NSA has been spying on basically everyone on earth without a warrant, and there's a big angry blowup and Congressional hearings, and there's an agreement not to prosecute if the NSA agrees not to do it again. And then ten years later it turns out they kept doing it, or rather, shut down the old program and started up a new program doing the same thing in a new way. (1/2)

We're starting to see a divide in the left that's quite clear: The ableist phony left of many pretend persuasions, who gather maskless in bars to sing "Solidarity Forever", and the actual left, who understand that "we keep us safe" means #BringBackMasks. #COVIDisAirborne #CovidIsNotOver #LongCOVID https://socialismconference.org/why-masks-2023/

Corey Doctorow: "Mastodon is far from perfect. But I only have so many hours in the day, and only so many days left in my life. I would much rather spend those precious hours making a open service better than using a temporarily superior closed one. I have seen that movie. I know how it ends"
https://doctorow.medium.com/fool-me-twice-we-dont-get-fooled-again-20074e311f1f

Oil painting of a penguin, god rays, bloom

#StableDiffusion #AIArt #AIGenerated #AI #GenerativeAI #GenerativeArt

Ron DeSantis disenfranchises Florida voters from their freely chosen elected State Attorney General: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/08/09/desantis-suspends-elected-florida-state-attorney-monique-worrell.html

I get to post here now! #introduction

I'm Jatea, I dabble in various TTRPG systems (most recently GURPS, various D&D editions and some retroclones, and the works of Will Uhl at Merry Mancer Games)!

I also play video games sometimes (currently early on in the Yakuza / Like a Dragon series, sometimes play Splatoon 3, occasionally play on a niche Neverwinter Nights server "Knights of Noromath").

Stephen King and Terry Pratchett are also neat authors!

I also know Spanish too, so there's that!

It’s been ten years since the premiere of Barbie. The public has endured a steady onslaught of movies about major brands.

Swedish actor Bill Skarsgård is starring in a movie. He’s playing the man in the IKEA manuals.

Critics say it could be Oscar worthy. It might even outperform last year’s hit psychological thriller ‘Mr. Peanut’ starring Joaquin Phoenix. #movies #barbie

Has Mike Pence ever pumped his own gas?

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/9/2186260/-Mike-Pence-s-new-ad-seems-to-be-about-how-Mike-Pence-can-t-pump-his-own-gas

FOUND SOMEWHERE:

#photography #blackcat #catsofmastodon
BlackCatEvening🌚

Whenever I spend time in retail spaces, I like to talk up the idea of a general strike.

Most people are so fucking tired of this shit.