THIS IS NOT A TEST (4 Viewers)

boycotting companies [...] which leads to the companies stopping to deal with the object of your protests...
Yes, economic pressure is one of the only ways to really change anything.
In Romania [...] people took to the streets protesting it every day...
"Every day" being the difference. If they'd done a one day protest like the Women's Marches here, nothing would have changed.
 
Right, a one day protest does´nt accomplish much, but hopefully that was just the beginning. We´ll see...
 
I live here in Kill City, where the Snapchat meets the sea

https://thisisnotatest.com/i-live-here-in-kill-city-where-the-snapchat-meets-the-sea/

This episode is ostensibly about Snapchat taking over all the buildings in Venice, but it's really just an excuse for me to tell stories about living in Venice - where the debris meets the sea - a long time ago. You know, that and mucus, khakis, "Silicon Beach," wombats, sticky carpets, sleeping bags, Sanford and Son, empty beer cans and pizza crusts, pagodas, driving stick, failing to stay out of Los Angeles County Jail, heroin, radio knobs, Bentleys and Maseratis, Boyle Heights, Leimert Park, gentrification (yes, again), snowbirds and Publishers Clearinghouse.


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TV extravaganza: 46 reviews in 50 minutes!

https://thisisnotatest.com/tv-extravaganza-46-reviews-in-50-minutes/

46 reviews in 50 minutes? How is that even possible, you may be asking. No wonder they call it an extravaganza! Well, that's what this is. Maybe not an extravaganza, but 46 reviews in 50 minutes, as advertised. Though, honestly, it may be more of an opportunity for me to complain about what I don't like about TV. There's a lot to like these days, don't get me wrong, but you know how it goes.


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Jezuz, you sure watch a lot of TV shows, mjp! :) - I´ve watched some episodes about the guys who tries to survive on Vancouver island each on his own, which I believe you mentioned, and that one is´nt too bad.
 
you sure watch a lot of TV shows...
Someone's got to watch them. There are a lot of jobs at stake!

I would agree with you if we were living 10 or 20 years ago, back when seasons lasted half a year. When there were 24 or 26 episodes of a show over a six month period. But most of the shows I talked about run more like 8 episodes every 12 to 16 months, so it's not as many hours a week as it may seem.

And it turns out I left a bunch of shows off the list. Like Legion, Taboo, Westworld, Crashing, Dark Net...apparently it's a never ending list. So maybe you're right.

Though I should say that sometimes we'll see something that looks interesting but say, "Eh...no time for that." So I guess we have a limit. Sometimes I wonder how many shows there can be. Like, when does the universe of television hit critical mass?
 
Right, it's a dirty job but somebody got to do it. :p

It's a good thing many shows have short runs nowadays. I remember some that ran for years like The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire and Desperate Housewives, but I have to admit they were pretty good and I loved to watch them.
I guess the amount of TV we can watch has a build in limit since there's only 24 hours in a day and we got to eat, sleep and go to work too. How dare life interrupt our TV watching! :hmh:
 
Listened to most of it. V good. Holy hell. How do you have time to do anything other than tv, books and this site? All kidding aside. Very amusing and cool. Only the 2nd TINAT the wife's ever listened to. She's the tv junkie and knew most of the shows you mentioned. She liked it a lot.
 
Yeah, it's a lot when you break it down and list it out like that. I can see how someone might see or hear that list and think that's all we do is watch TV. Then again, when I calculated how much time I was spending in a car commuting to work 10 years ago (when we were down in San Pedro), I was horrified.

Anyway, like I said, a lot of those shows have very limited "seasons." As few as 6 episodes. You can watch them in a weekend.
 
A hot night with PJ Harvey

https://thisisnotatest.com/a-hot-night-with-pj-harvey/

I caught PJ Harvey's "The Hope Six Demolition Project" tour at the Greek Theater here in Los Angeles. Allow me to tell you about that, and about psychic space, outdoor music shows, croaking for dollars, staying relevant in the face of increasing waves of nostalgia, First Aid Kit and Fiona Apple, retiring from live shows, people putting on a groovy act, jalapeno nachos and spinach wraps, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, cannibalism, Cirque du Soleil, voicemails and chirping of many kinds.


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Twin Peaks and David Lynch, Non-album B-sides, Orange Is the New Black and Kathy Griffin

https://thisisnotatest.com/twin-pea...es-orange-is-the-new-black-and-kathy-griffin/

I have the best of intentions when I record these, but sometimes things just get away from me. So I'm not sure what this one is "about," but aside from what's listed in the title you'll also hear about PJ Harvey again (including never-before heard audio from an interview I did with her 10 years ago), discographies, demo versions of songs, why the last song on the side of an LP sounds worse than the first, obsession, Eraserhead, why everyone on the Internet is an asshole, I'll say "the N-word" (twice) without spontaneously bursting into flame, heads on pikes, Richard Pryor, George Carlin, N.W.A. and Apple. Not the fruit, the company that rules your world.


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that was a great one! I've learned many things, b-sides and TwinPeaks #8 which I never ever watched. Loved your rant about Fuckhead the Great and the internet crazies with their pitchforks. Great photo!
 
Great rant about Kathy Griffin, the severed head, comedians right to be offensive and the fake outrage the severed head caused in the media and on the net (too bad, Griffin gave in to it)!
 
too bad, Griffin gave in to it
It didn't take her very long to cave. I don't think she expected any "outrage." She probably thought most people would like it, and most people probably did (or more accurately, most people never saw it). They just didn't say anything in her defense. Who wants to be the only person arguing with an angry mob of villagers while they're running toward the castle?
 
Memoirs, overturned food carts and new stereo gear

https://thisisnotatest.com/memoirs-overturned-food-carts-and-new-stereo-gear/

Amble down the path with me, if you will, toward finishing the writing of books, promoting and getting reviewers to read said books, plastic and metal, pushing birds out of nests, motors with moxie, selling window fans, oral histories, Roger Steffens and Bob Marley, faulty and fragile memories, tipping over a street vendor's cart because you're an asshole, Slash, doxing, lynching and the Sony HAP S1/B as lord and savior.


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Chirpwatch. Just caught that as i was about to turn of the pod and pour another cup of morning joe. Ha! It's just a fact of (your) life apparently. Things, especially cool things, can help make life better. And not a fan of GnR?

You hit the podcast outta the park again with a short tight set of concise oral history of what's on your mind today....

Oh, and are you a Kinks fan & did you read the Ray Davies X-Ray: The Unauthorized Autobiography? I did and enjoyed how it wasnt radically different but still different, compelling and unique, at least a bit.
 
why the last song on the side of an LP sounds worse than the first,
I heard that refered to as album fatigue. Also, it makes the fist song on the other side sound better. But i am willing to go out on a limb to say this because i haven't listened to the test with the dynamite woman yet. Here goes nothin.
 
not a fan of GnR?
Not not a fan, just...never cared. There was nothing new about them, so I didn't really take notice. I was on the other side of town most of the time anyway, at reggae joints like Kingston 12. A different kind of vibe than what was happening on Sunset, you might say.

Never really got in to the Kinks either, but I'll read that book.
 
Happy for you with the Sony thing. I have about 500 cds around the house. Some are in the I Tune memory on my computer. I let things go. My computer will expire in the next couple of years if I am lucky. Where do I start to have them all together? what gadget, not necessarily with the Sony thing? :confused:
 
Where do I start to have them all together?
That depends on how you want to use them once they're all together. Like I mentioned in the podcast, I've been looking for something that works for me, that does what I want it to do, for years. But there may be something out there that would do everything you need it to do without being as costly as the Sony thing.

Just keeping your music files in one place is easy, you can do it on your computer (but you shouldn't) or a separate "outboard" hard drive that hooks up to your computer. You can get a 3 terabyte hard drive for less than $100 now, and one of those will hold roughly 9,000 albums. So storage space isn't really an issue these days (I have two 3TB hard drives in a cheap dock hooked up to my computer, one is my backup drive and the other is a copy of that backup drive - a backup of my backup). None of what I just said applies to Apple computers, of course. I'd guess you'd have to multiply the cost 3 or 4 times to get Apple prices.

The problem comes when you've got your music files all in one place and then you want to play them. That was my problem anyway. Well, that and I wanted some kind of hardware that could sit next to my other stereo components. But wherever they are, you need some kind of program to organize them that makes it easy to find and play things. Sounds like you use iTunes. I don't really know how that works, but I assume you can just say, okay iTunes, all my music is over here now, go index it. But again, I don't know how it works, and it's probably not that simple.

But the user interface is was what sold me on the Sony - the fact that it had the audio hardware, did storage, and had a user interface that I really liked. That user interface is what's important, and what's "good" as far as that goes is different for everyone.

So there are a lot of words that don't really answer your question...

Here's an answer: if you're going to keep using iTunes and listening on your computer, just get a big hard drive (or two) and hook them up to your computer.

If you are listening on your stereo, you need to find some kind of stereo-like box to plug in to it. Some of those connect (wirelessly) to your computer, some store the files on the box itself.

Well, that's still not much of an answer, but it's all I've got in me right now.
 
Each cd needs to be played or recorded on your computer first, then stored on an external hard drive alphabeticaly or by style.I suppose that the computer organizes that for you.
I dont know what i was hoping to find. Something that you put your disc in and that does everything for you as you play it. Cover, art work and all tracks, a-z. I need to look at my computer again and its functions. Maybe you can come down for a week or two. :)
 
alphabeticaly or by style.I suppose that the computer organizes that for you.
Your computer will organize alphabetically, but the style/genre thing is all in the metadata, and you control the metadata when you copy the CD.

Most music organizing/playing software relies heavily on metadata, so you kind of have to come to grips with it if you want your music to be cataloged properly (or the way you want it to be).
i was hoping to find. Something that you put your disc in and that does everything for you as you play it. Cover, art work and all tracks, a-z.
I'm sure there are things out there that will do that. A piece of hardware that just "does everything." I had one of those for transferring cassettes to CDs and it worked pretty well.

Maybe someone else has used one and can make a recommendation...
 
It's just you. :)

What happens when you hit the link?

I'm always surprised that those transcript pages get visitors. The transcripts are just there for Google, I don't usually spend a lot of time making sure they make for good reading. In fact, these things would be much different if they were written for reading, but there you go. Everyone flies in their own direction.

PJ Harvey: "Um"
It was a bitch to cut that together. About five minutes into it I was regretting the idea, but I'm glad you liked it.
 
I get "Website not found" with Opera and Chrome, a blank page with Firefox. Not that important, just noticed.

I like to flip through the text (too) because I'm a nerd that way, dunno. Always enjoy written down text.

Probably most of the visits are from me, then :D
 
Enjoyed it, especially the street vendor/fight/doxing part. Haven't seen the video but agree with all you said.

The internet, social media and smartphones/cameras in everyones pocket do for the most part not create phenomena out of thin air so much I believe but simply amplify shit that has been in the human psyche forever, probably since the dawn of mankind. To publicly shame and humiliate someone has been an inclination of humanity forever. Also finding out private stuff about another and make it public has been an oldfashioned power-tool of the ages.

Yet I'm not so sure our minds have kept up with our technical capabilities in 2017. You could literally become wordlwide news by tripping in the street in a funny way tomorrow. Not even to speak of having a moment of self-forgetting anger in public or simply being an assholish dick, as all of us are at times. Or one line of "misunderstood humor", written publicly. And so on, and so on.

I recommended it before I believe; I find this book to be very well written on these topics

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Yeah, it's easy to feel a hot streak of wrath when you see shaky phone video of some injustice, and I understand people's outrage at the cart-tipping guy. But like you said, we're all assholes sometimes. And while we should be called out for that, I think you cross the line into mob mentality when you start pressuring someone's employer to fire them just because you feel some indignation, righteous or not.

Unless the asshole behavior is job related. Like the guy who was fired from Google this week. That was 100% called for, because his dickhead proclamations aren't just his opinion. At Google how much you get paid and how far you advance are heavily influenced by peer review. If your success is determined in large part by your peers, and your peers are right-wing knuckle draggers, as a woman or anyone "other," you're screwed, and you're in an unfair and untenable position in your place of employment. In cases like that, yeah, the outrage was well-founded and that guy's kicking to the curb well deserved.
 
Well, he appears to be a hipster and a douche-bag. That's a redundancy I know but he acted upon his douche-bag-ery. What did Buk say about doing things with style?
 
I recommended it before I believe; I find this book to be very well written on these topics [So You've Been Publicly Shamed]
Just finished that, a really great look at modern day lynch mobs.

Particularly relevant this week, as at least one person "outed" on Twitter for taking part in that Nazi rally in Charlottesville was incorrectly identified. Oops, sorry we ruined your life, bro...


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I understand the emotional response that makes people do these things (much more so now after reading the book), but it's not like you can retract the Twitter avalanche when you get something wrong. Like publicly pointing the Nazi finger at someone when they're (probably) not a Nazi...
 
I like that the book is not black/white like shaming is bad you horrible monsters bla bla but that the author cites cases where he himself has shamed someone in the past or cases where the shaming might even have had positive outcomes. Also the Max Mosley orgy story is hilarious, wasn't aware of it before. And, like in this case, very interesting whose cases have "survived" the shaming and why.

I really think our minds haven't adapted yet to our technical possibilities. Maybe they won't at all. It's to easy to hit a like or share button or to angrily type "I hate this fucker he should die!!!11" when something enrages you without ever thinking of the consequences. Or if you even attack the person you mean to attack, like with the Nazi rally guy.

It's insane.
 
It's funny, because not more than 2 days after finishing that book, I ran head first into the Twitter lynch mob at work when they named us as the host of a site that was raising money for some of the neo-Nazi types.

The first post was good, "Hey, just wanted to make you aware..." but then they immediately went off the rails, and we were getting email threats (most of which said, "this isn't a threat, but...") and phone calls and a Twitter call for anonymous to get involved (and DDoS us, I suppose) and someone on Twitter saying, "watch out for <my company>, they support fascists and they will hand over your information to them." That particular weird and completely incorrect post came less than 2 hours after I said, "Thanks, we're looking in to it," and I was actively working to get the site moved away from our service.

And now, the site is down, but those people who were so angry are nowhere to be found. Not a peep from them. They've moved on to the next outrage. I'm tempted to tag them all in a Tweet that just says, "You're welcome." But they never really cared in the first place, it was just a dogpile. Bloodlust.
 
Everywhere is war

https://thisisnotatest.com/everywhere-is-war/

We may as well talk about modern day lynch mobs and public shaming, that Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Twitter, getting "good PR" by piggybacking on a tragedy, censorship, Godwin's law, Trump bulldozing people into mass graves, remembering the days of the free exchange of ideas with no governing body, Nazis having trouble finding online homes, riding in shopping carts, the price of freedom, the fact that Scientology is a dangerous and toxic mind control cult, Xenu and body thetans, cute Aryan chicks, realizing that everything you're doing is wrong, squishy dead brain tissue, the Westboro Baptist Church, Jewliciousness, the veins in your forehead bursting, the Civil War solution, Bob Marley, David Letterman and Peter Tosh, war and peace.


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Great rant on the Nazis, Westboro Baptist Church, Scientology, etc. I´m now less confused than a hillbilly in a bathtub. :p
 
Everywhere is war, my favorite pod cast yet. Insightful, funny (as usual), smart, and thought provoking. That being said I think I'm still gonna cyber-hurl insults at Nazis. I guess it's like screaming into a deaf ear. I don't know. You've definitely given me food for thought.
 

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