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scottyboy

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Posts posted by scottyboy

  4. Celebrity Dead Pool 2017 - "Surprise! You're Dead!"

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by scottyboy

    Ayad al-Jumaili (Daesh no. 2) is dead (air strike); albeit with some outlets using the caveat "reportedly".

    Slight problem in that his age is not known :S From pics I'd hazard (bloody huge beards) mid-30s to mid-40s.

    Edit: checked the rules and saw 30-49 is a whole points band, so I think that's a safe call unless we have to have exact DoBs...

  5. Ghosts / Paranormal thread

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    15 hours ago, Soda Jerk said:

     Towards the end of living there, she claims to have been shaken at the shoulders by something during the night for a few nights in a row, which then disappears as she wakes up. Ghosts? Or sleep paralysis?
     

    Dunno about the other stuff, but that sounds precisely like sleep paralysis.

  7. Celebrity Dead Pool 2017 - "Surprise! You're Dead!"

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/kim-jong-un-assassination-female-agents-poisoned-needles-north-korea-killed-dead-death-malaysia-a7579336.html

    Amazing. This guy would've probably been the current leader of North Korea, but for getting caught visiting Tokyo Disneyland (anything more stereotypically capitalist?) with a fake/passport name. And now his (half, although I hadn't previously known that) brother has apparently had him assassinated in a foreign country.

    • Upvote 1

  17. Aberdeen-Music Jukebox Jury

    in Music Discussion

    Posted

    I propose:

    10 days duration. Some people said 1 week was too short; 2 was too long. So, 10 days? Or 1 week is cool for me.

    1-3 albums (or EPs). 3 are nominated, but on the understanding that people review 1, or 2, or 3, dependant on their time/tastes/inclination.

    So each round someone picks 3 of his/her top 10, and preferably a variety of styles from not so famous bands, and off we go.

    Who's with me?

  19. Best of 2016

    in Music Discussion

    Posted

    Friends in Theory - Friends in Theory

    This list is in no order, but I put this one at the top as I think it's something am-mus posters might like. It's an indie-rock EP, sometimes twangy, lush, or techy-tinged (I stumbled it on a math rock channel, but, only slightly). It's female-fronted, I think a break-up album and sounds kind of like an adult Taylor Swift (although turns out it's Swedish).

    Elephant Gym - Work

    Another EP. Nice jams which alternate between indie rock and funky jazz. Mix of instrumentals and female vocals.

    Intervals - The Shape of Colour

    This was Dec 2015*, but since everyone is/was putting these together in December... Even if you can't stomach an album of INSTRUMENTAL SHRED, but like fist-pumping power metal/rawk, you should do yourself a favour and give these two tracks a bash:

     

    Plini (featured on the above track) - Handmade Cities

    Posted about this guy in the favourite musos thread, and this is his first full length. I prefer his EPs tbh, but that's a very high bar and this is still great.

    Animals as Leaders - The Madness of Many

    A bigger name instrumental band I've never managed to get into before but... This one is not as arresting as the Intervals and Plini records; it's more rambling and noodly (or wanky, if you prefer). On The other hand, still loads of nice sounds and it really builds steam in the latter half.

    Radwimps - Your Name. [and] Human Bloom [i.e. 2 albums[

    The first of these is an OST for some anime, so it's a grab bag of piano OST stuff, jazz and their more signature indie rock. The latter is more their signature sound (although bear with the ill-advised opening English strains, which sound like non-vintage Feeder, or something, and the faux-rap number)

    Here's a highlight which is on both albums:

     

    Meshuggah - The Violent Sleep of Reason

    It's a Meshuggah album, which probably tells you all you need to now about how it sounds and whether you like it.

    Hiromi Uehara - Spark

    Posted about her in the best musos thread too, and this is her 2016 offering. Like planting your face in a massive jazz cake. If you are not entertained by jazz, the highlight of the album (for me) is a very pretty OST/classical piece:

    Cartoon Theory - Planet Geisha

    A deliberately wacky/genre-bending thing ("ambidjent") which maybe doesn't come off 100% of the time, but some very nice moments. (and Plini is on this too).

     

    * Speaking of 2015, I'm sure everyone will recall I only had a top 2. So I'd like to add For Giants- You are the Universe (also my top personal discovery of 2016) to my 2015 list. Which rounds it out to a top 3 (everyone will doubtless be relieved), and totally all guitar, all the time (which everyone will thus be stoked to go back and listen to...).

    • Upvote 2

  20. The Return of the Fifty Book Challenge

    in Books

    Posted

    (copy-pasted from Google Docs; the formatting is all messed up and the website won't let me fix it).

     

    I finished 48. Like I posted earlier, I think at least 34 of them were in the latter 6 months, and I thought I'd hit 50; but I also took it upon myself to read the Wealth of fucking Nations. Anyway, I'm calling it a moral victory. I obviously went on A Very Short Introduction binge (they're very addictive; and the one on the History of Life is one of the best books I've read this year), but I don't think they're really all that short compared to your Gatsbys, Catcher in the Ryes, etc. And between the Wealth of Nations and that book on food security, I think there are probably a dozen decent sized novels. The one marked x2 at the top of fiction I read twice, in English and Polish respectively.

     

    Non-fiction

     

    1. Peter Boomgaard (ed.)            A World of Water (SE Asian history essays)

    2. Charles Darwin                          The Voyage of the Beagle

    3. Carlo Rovelli                               Seven Brief Lessons on Physics

    4. Friedrich Nietzsche                    Beyond Good and Evil

    5. Niall Ferguson                            Empire [British]

    6. Zhao Ziyang                               Prisoner of the State

    7. David B. Norman                        Dinosaurs: A Very Short Introduction

    8. Philip W. Sutton                          Nature, Environment and Society

    9. Michael J. Benton                       The History of Life: A Very Short Introduction

    10. Rachel Carson                           Silent Spring

    11. Harry Sidebottom                     Ancient Warfare: A Very Short Introduction

    12. Mungo Park                              Travels in the Interior of Africa

    13. John Parker, Richard Rathbone        African History: A Very Short Introduction

    14. Michel Foucault                        The Birth of Biopolitics

    15. Ian Shaw                                     Ancient Egypt: : A Very Short Introduction

    16. Nico Stehr, Hans von Storch        Climate and Society

    17. Philip Ball                                    Elements: A Very Short Introduction

    18. Michel Foucault                          On the Government of the Living

    19. William Easterly                         The Elusive Quest for Growth

    20. Jeffrey Sachs                             The Age of Sustainable Development

    21. Gary Gutting                               Foucault: A Very Short Introduction

    22. Mike Jeffries, Derek Mills            Freshwater Ecology

    23. Aristotle                                        The Nicomachean Ethics

    24. Shunji Matsuoka (ed)             Effective Environmental Management in Developing Countries                     

    25. Charles Darwin                          The Origin of Species

    26. D. John Shaw                            World Food Security: A History Since 1945

    27. Rab Houston                               Scotland: A Very Short Introduction

    28. Joseph Stiglitz                              Globalization and its Discontents

    29. Diana Rosemary Sharpe            New Horizons in Asian Management

         Harukiyo Hasegawa (eds.)   

    30. Eric Hobsbawm                           Industry and Empire

    31.  Michel Foucault                         Security, Territory, Population

    32. J. C. Polkinghorne                       Quantum Theory: A Very Short Introduction

    33. Frank Close                                  Particle Physics: A Very Short Introduction

    34. Adam Smith                                 Wealth of Nations

    35. Vũ Trọng Phụng                         Lục Xì: Prostitution and Venereal Disease in Colonial Hanoi                                 

    36 Dan Senor; Saul Singer            Start-Up Nation [Israel]

    37. Kunio Yanagita                          The Legends of Tono

     

    Fiction

     

    1/2. Nguyễn Ngọc Thuận            Open the Window, Eyes Open (x2)

    3. Wei Hui                                       Shanghai Baby

    4. Rudyard Kipling                        Just So Stories

    5. Trần Đăng Khoa                        Garden and Sky

    6. Nguyễn Huy Thiệp                   The General Retires

    7. Chuck Palahniuk                       Damned

    8. Guy de Maupassant                   The Best Short Stories

    9. Ray Bradbury                            Fahrenheit 451

    10 Jonas Jonasson                    The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden

    11. F. Scott Fitzgerald                The Great Gatsby

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