scottyboy

Woah, woah, I didn't get to post my shitholes... Wiki informs me this is known in India as "Pump City". Sounds like a great place to visit, wahey lads. I never actually liked London much back when I'd only visited as opposed to living there; though either way the expense is its huge downside. 1. Gua Musang (Malaysia) 2. Hat Yai (Thailand) 3. Ipoh (Malaysia) 4. A particular village (or string of villages along a motorway) in buttfuck (Vietnamese) Poland. 5. Dunno - maybe a toss-up between Nagoya and Beijing (the latter has plenty of reasons to visit, nevertheless; but just for the smog, constant people in uniform yelling at you, apparent dearth of English bookshops). Phnom Penh is all right, but pretty shit if one is stuck there for more than a day or two and/or without someone to just drink with.

I've realised I didn't even name my number 2 muso (Guthrie Govan). Top 5 cities is a tough one, again, to name just 5 (top 3 I think I'm pretty sure about). But I think: 1. Tokyo 2. Saigon 3. London 4. Shanghai 5. Bangkok

Was trying to fix my typos, when I got sidetracked trying to wax lyrical on Haake, and now I can't edit it, but: the whole (Meshuggah) albums are assembled via programming and putting individual ideas together piecemeal, much like no-record-deal-no-full-band millennial musos (like Plini above) with the band never jamming as a whole whilst writing (though there is eventual live rehearsal and recording). Which again, makes the drummer being the main composer a bit special, I think. Anyway.

Here's mine, I think. There's no one I really like for being in a million great projects, and my favourite bands I think are great bands, particularly (i.e. Janes Addiction and not the Panic Channel or One Hot Minute) and Tool (and not Puscifer, which I had to Google). There would easily be a half-dozen or more guitarists if this were a top 10, but which I can't pick one over the other for a top 5. 1. Shawn Lane. My bestest of bestest guitarists. I'm actually just a huge fan of 1 of his 2 solo albums; and, it being my favourite solo ever, which needs to be time-capsuled and blasted into space, an off-the-cuff solo he did on a Beatles cover with Paul Gilbert, at some trade show. His other album and the out-there Indian fusion stuff he did with Jonas Hellborg (though whose name I still have to google) later on I enjoy when I do check it out. He was also in some middleweight Southern rawk band which opened for a lot of prog dinosaurs when he was 14, and there's youtube footage of him doing disgusting shredporn which makes Eddie Van Halen look slow and tasteful, when Lane was 16 and about a year after Van Halen came out. Which is kinda cool. 2. My other bestest guitarist (though if I have to pick one, I pick lane). Again for his only solo album. He's also a (somewhat) famous-from-youtube guy who has some outrageous bits and pieces that someone captured while he was being paid to try and flog some gear or whatever. He does have a few albums out with a prog-fusion Zappa-worship super-muso-group which, if not one of my favourite bands ever, for the records, tbh, is pretty incredible live. 3. Plini (nope, don't think even the internets has his real full name). My new favourite guitarist. Just getting into his brand new debut "full length" record, but he has a trio of sublime, perfect EPs. I've seen him about the internet doing split EPs, guest appearances etc. with other bedroom musos/producers and he seems to have a midas touch for making the music of skilled but uninspiring shredders into massive tunefests. 4. Tomas Haake. The drummer in Meshuggah, one of my favourite bands. Not like I'm a big follower of him personally, him being a drummer; but Meshuggah having a new album out soon, he's being interviews about the writing (on his own, without the rest of the band) and I realised that, if not being the auteur, he's a huge driving force behind the whole band. Does the drums obviously, but also the lyrics, kinda the vocal lines (them being pretty all rhythmic too) and often the general idea for the riffage. 5. Hiromi Uehara. Pianist. Not someone to whom I've necessarily listened a huge amount, or owned a load of albums; but whatever she's doing will have one's jaw on the floor. Incredibly skilled and unique, plainly even to a cloth-eared guitar fan such as I. While I like jazz, I think it's perversely hard for musicians, great though they may be, to really stand out because of the genre's ALL THE NOTES ALL THE TIME FOR HOURS nature (and the whole standards addiction). And, anyway, she does.

Well I'll be damned, I just bought a copy of Fahrenheit 451 in a bookshop in the Socialist Republic of Poland...

i think there was a whole best games ever thread (maybe even top 5; pretty sure I posted 5 anyway). Anyway, here's mine in chronological-ish order: 1. ICO (PS2; and way ahead at no. 1) 2. Baldur's Gate (PC) 3. G-Police (PS, OG) 4. Toejam & Earl (Mega Drive) 5. Mutant League Football (Mega Drive; never even liked American handball) On the subject of emulators, I used "Gens" (or something like that; mentioned further up) for several years until pretty recently, for Mega Drive games (and on laptops and desktops). I had working ones for SNES and (with a bit of coaxing) Amiga, too; but can't remember the names.

Haha, I have a Polish American colleague, who, having heard the word a few times, had assumed it was "Moor-ish". Like something to do with the Moors. Eventually it was explained.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-37260375 Karimovski

I saw this one, but nope, not one of mine (all the ones I picked have bin got, I think, with the exception of the group's head honcho). Ivan Karimov, mega-famous president of Uzbekistan, made it onto my transfer target list a few days ago, but looks like he may well have already died.

I saw this poll on the BBC site. Depressing, though some of the highlighted examples scream sociopathy rather than just misogyny.

I had a bash at the first blacklist one (one of those I could find on Soundcloud; it seems to force you to itunes, which isn't great for my Linux PC --> dumb phone setup). I got about 15m in... are they all just monologues? Unrelated but The guardian's Science Weekly and Costing the Earth (Radio 4; environmental stuff, natch) are pretty great.

35 degrees, eh? That's just lunchtime.

There are loads of Skyscanner-esque sites (although Skyscanner has seemed to me the cheapest). But if I'm thinking of the same post as you, I think whoever it was said that he uses Skyscanner to find flights, but then goes directly to the airline's website, searches for that flight/day, and tends to find it even cheaper.

No. Well, yes... eventually. Assuming nothing has changed recently: one can create a page/article without anyone checking it (if you have an account; if for some insane reason you don't want to sign up for a free login, you then have to submit it for someone else to create). Sooner rather than later (probably) someone will in practice check it, and if it's plainly bullshit it'll probably be quickly deleted. Anything above plain bullshit (for topics like bands), it can actually be rather more messy to get something deleted. They are significantly stricter about biographies (of living people), though, since this: (I was going to explain it, but let's just link the - irony! - wiki article) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Seigenthaler_biography_incident . So maybe new articles on real people get checked; but I think all they've done is that edits to existing articles only go live immediately if it's someone with a 1 month old+ account (otherwise they have to be checked... by anyone with a 1 month+ old account), and that's it. Maybe I could've just googled the answer; either way I think Wiki is probably best, with some kind of length-of-time caveat.

I think if it's a Wiki page then it needs to have been there for some agreed amount of time. It's easy to create a bogus Wiki page about anyone or anything, but not having it deleted is another thing. On the other hand, a Wiki page being allowed to stay up is usually just based on news coverage (for people; academic research for srs biz subjects) so again obituaries/media gloating might do essentially the same thing, without the same (small) possibility of manipulation.

I think they are at least as credible celebrities as dinosaur B-list wrestlers and country singers and 50s TV actors. If that's a serious question: my personal yardstick is whether there is a (long-standing) Wiki article and/or whether there is an obituary or news coverage in a major and/or respected media outlet. And they pass that by some way, One of those two was the second-in-command of the whole organisation/"state", not really just personnel. The other was a provincial leader and more like the Kim Kardashian of jihad; but again, seems he got more (UK certainly) press coverage than the other guy. I did some quick arithmetic and I think those 2 almost equalled Bigsby's whole score this year thus far (one those was either 29 or 30, only his year of birth is known, so on the boundary of two points bands); and the first (I think?) unnatural causes (other than Winehouse) bonuses; and finally some big multiple points payoff from, again, something other than terminal cancer victims. What's not to like?

Um, after Al-Shishani I thought to check up on the others. Abu Waheeb was killed in May: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/09/key-islamic-state-leader-killed-in-coalition-air-strike-in-iraqs/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Waheeb And Abu Ali al-Anbari (former 2nd-in-command) probably in March, May at the latest: http://www.vocativ.com/314411/isis-confirms-the-death-of-its-deputy-leader/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ali_al-Anbari

Daesh have confirmed Al-Shishani dead, FWIW. http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/07/14/tbilisi-says-fight-will-go-on-after-slaying-of-georgian-isis-commander/?utm_content=buffer72807&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer

(I'm guessing you know this but) sadly not true http://www.snopes.com/noahs-ark-park-flooded/ The thing just opened

The protagonist from the Smack My Bitch Up video no less?

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-36754206

That Icelandic Girl?

Some Icelandic girl.

Ca_gere touched on some of the vast scope. I think the central thing is that the EU (maybe depending on who is running the numbers) is the world's biggest economy, and is, as Ca_gere said, the UK's biggest trading partner. And there is unprecedented economic freedom for those within it, and tariffs and outright barriers for those without. So lower growth and/or recessions await. The UK has a large deficit, and it is able to borrow because it trades a lot; it won't be able to afford all this borrowing without all the $$$ it makes trading (again, with the EU being the biggest partner). Moody's has just downgraded the UK's credit rating as I'm typing this. Loads of direct funding and subsidies from the EU to various sectors. Farming is the big one, as Ca_gere said (this is one thing I won't miss, amusingly; wonder how many farmers voted Leave, too). More exotically, I've seen an article or two wondering about HBO's reaction: GoT is partially filmed in N. Ireland, and apparently the whole film industry there takes funding from the EU. And so on. London in particular is a global hub for all kinds of sectors, most notably finance (and then IT and all kinds of other industries and entrepreneurs on the back of that). So many (in particular, but hardly solely) multinational firms will move their HQs and regional hubs, because it just doesn't make sense to stay in a non-EU country when they can be an hour away and within the EU. On a more mundane level, just look at all the fucking coffee shops in London and how many Eastern Europeans staff them. Both the reactionaries whine "d-took-r-jobs" and the economists gloat that they out-competed locals who can't get up in the morning to do minimum wage work; but if you go up to, say, Glasgow, the pubs, hotels and coffee shops are largely staffed by locals. I can't see there being any other real reason than London needs a hell of a lot of people and can't find them locally. (Maybe they won't need to if the London gravy train goes down the toilet). Sure, current residents who came from the EU won't get booted out, but they will get older and move on; and they're not going to breed some kind of self-perpetuating low-wage barrista caste. (all of this is London-centric, but if the capital's economy is bombing, I can't see the hinterlands magically turning round, either). From there, it depends on what sector one is looking at. Ca_gere mentioned fisheries. Fisherman were the one group (in Scotland) I unfailing saw pushing Leave when I was back in Scotland recently. It's just fucking sad, tbh. Their narrative is that the EU is restricting the amount they can catch in order to reserve it for fishers of other EU countries. And, surprise, they want to be like Norway, because Norway is again utopia. What no one ever seems to grasp is that Norway has run its fisheries into the ground at least a couple of times, and no one was allowed to catch anything until stocks recovered. That's what's behind the "sustainable management" of Norway fisheries - just by default, because there was nothing to catch. Even the restrictive EU fisheries policies haven't been sustainable - go read the science. If Scottish fisherman can still sell their catch (tariffs), if they get their way they'll likely still fish their way out of a job.

Got the news in pretty early over here in Poland; already spent my witty barbs on facebook. North/Midlands England (and... Wales!?) have just dug a much deeper pit of misery for themselves; pity they won't sleep in it themselves. Another independence referendum seems a cert now (I remember bitching in that megathread that having the first one before the EU referendum made no sense). I feel for London though (actually I've spent the day on fb inviting London to become an appendage of an independent Scotland, but srsly) - it has the most to lose, and the city (/phenomenal powerhouse) just can't continue to function the way it currently does, without the EU (as I see it). So much will depend on the details of the negotiated exit, though: if the real "Norway Option" actually occurs, it might actually be fine, and worse for the leave voters (as they'd see it, sigh) than the status quo. Still in the single market, still paying the EU, still freedom of movement (and in the Schengen Zone, which is not even currently the case) and Farange and every other UK MEP out on his ear. ...Or it could be a total shitfest. Corbyn looks in trouble too.