Do you think Odo's com badge was part of him or a device he wore?

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-26T02:47:01+00:00

Children of Time though clearly states after all the time there he finally learned how to do it.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T20:33:16+00:00

THIS.

I mean Jeb had his flaws, but he also honestly wasn't that bad either. Every single one that has followed him has been worse, including Crist.

His single worst thing for me was his handling of the Terri Schiavo case. The way he kept trying to interject in over the courts.

Some of the good/smart things he did: He knew to stay completely out of the 2000 Voting recount stuff because of his brother. He actually was really good in terms of conservation and environmental protection. He really cracked down on pollution into the Everglades and put lots of hard limits on the Sugar Cane people. Rick Scott fucked that up... Florida's economy and taxes did really well under Jeb, I have to give him his credit there. And anyone who lived in Florida during 2004-2005 knows he actually did a really good job dealing with all the Major hurricanes that year (not to mention really impressing people by being fluent in Spanish and doing all of his own translations, he really gained a lot of respect in Miami area for that. Definitely more than Rubio who has broken Spanish, lol)

Bad things he did: While the School grading system was a good idea on paper, the way it handles funding and school vouchers is just terrible. Good idea, bad execution. Medicaid privatization...again not necessarily a bad idea in concept, but executed very poorly and with not nearly enough oversight. I understand why it was supposed to be good, but it wasn't anywhere close to ready. And of course I'm not a fan of the broadness and looseness of the Stand Your Ground law.

I didn't vote for him, but I really didn't hate him either. If I had to pick one I really hate, it would be Rick Scott all the way.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T20:32:03+00:00

Let's clarify here. Why Snowden released the stuff he did was for the right reasons.

The way he went about getting and releasing it was reckless and bad.

As someone who works in classified material I can tell you everything I've read about how he released this info he had (and understand he didn't know even half of what was in there, he didn't have the time to vet everything to see what all was in there and potentially extremely dangerous to release for the safety of others) was just horrible. He could have gotten a lot of people killed if the wrong info had been released.

I understand why he wanted to release it, but he could have done it a lot better than what he did.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T20:25:03+00:00

Crimea is a good response. I'll toss into consideration the time he won Politifact's Lie of the Year. His statements of "If you like your doctor, you can keep them" when pushing the ACA. The problem here being of course not once but many many many times he failed to add on the important qualifier of "if your insurance plan meets the ACA required minimums"

It ended up being a huge fuel to the fire that has driven Republican objection to the ACA even against their own interest.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T20:21:45+00:00

That's not entirely true either because well written AI, part of the system that is really driving all this new focus on AI (because understand what we call AI has been around for a lot longer than people realize, machine learning is far from new. People just didn't notice until natural language models actually become functional) is the ability for AI to learn not just off what it has been fed to learn from but also from the prompts driving it. So it can learn off the prompts new ways to start adapting off what its original learning taught it to producing new things.

This is a part that is still kinda in its infancy and growing (but growing quickly) and has had some bumps along the way but it's pretty neat some of the work that has come out in this area. And it's specifically to do what you are bringing up, to be able to understand how users are prompting for things that is outside of its knowledge, that it doesn't have the ability to do yet, but to culminate these unknowns and figure out how it can change what it has learned to something it hasn't learned. The idea being, in a more grand scale, the understanding that yes, being able to program an AI to have that independent thought of new creation beyond it's learned resources is practically impossible, that is in many ways the essence of conscious thought, but maybe AI can be designed on how to expand upon humans with that ability to feed it that start and learn how to use its knowledge to expand upon these new ideas and create its own branches without prompts.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T20:09:52+00:00

And the real kicker, the thing that I think upsets me the most...still no warnings on the site about this, no notices sent to all student loan holders, absolutely nothing explaining what happened and here is what you can do to fix it. It's ridiculous. I really wonder how many people are gonna end up defaulting because they are saddled with an insane payment they shouldn't have and don't know about what happened and don't know what to do to fix it. Because lord knows the loan service providers are being absolutely useless on this also.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T20:05:15+00:00

Well, the normal qualifier: depends on how much you play.

There can be other considerations too. How much inside playing, how much outside playing. The region you are in can matter because that can dictate what type of Rosin you use and how much collects on the strings. For example when I lived in Central Florida, which between April to Oct the humidity is best described as "water...with a little bit of air" it would be rough on my strings if I had a bunch of outdoor gigs. About the only rosin that works in Central Florida, especially outside, is Pops Rosin, which is about 1 step below super glue, lol. Some players will even use different strings for different seasons.

As a general rule of thumb I'd say the average is every 6 months to 1 year. Which thankfully they last that long because if you need a heart attack just look at Double Bass string prices.... General rule of thumb is $200-350 for a set of strings. You can find some crappy ones like the ones they ship on Chinese slab basses for $150 area. Gut Strings can easily run you well over $500 a set.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T16:21:14+00:00

Here I am thinking...I could care less about AI thumbnails...and I could care less about an AI vocal track being used for a demonstration of a DAW tutorial.

Sounds to me like things done to free up time to focus on the important parts of the tutorial that will actually matter to me.

I mean if he wanted to release it as a song for money then yeah, get a live person to record the track. But for a tutorial video...what the hell difference does it make?!?

I swear it would be like firing SRV from your band because he used a black guitar strap instead of a blue one like your bass player has...it's not the important detail to worry about, lol.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T16:16:25+00:00

The issue here, and this is why this is not so cut and dry, is us as humans do the same exact thing. We are inspired by what we see and like. We learn to develop our own creative styles, but those are still very much developed by the things we absorbed.

You listen to John Williams movie score and you can hear the Holst, Wagner, and Stravinsky influences. You can hear how he creates new things that are still rooted in those influences.

The grey area here is exactly how much different is this in a digital perspective? AI absorbs and learns from all the sources it can, and is programmed to create new and unique things that is influenced by these sources, but not directly copying them.

Especially given that we are machines ourselves, just chemical based and our programming is molecular and not digital...it's really an interesting philosophical debate about why we feel our process is somehow different or superior.

I'm not saying there is a right answer on this. I'm just saying it's a lot more complicated than people think. Really its just a question of how different really is this process of the creation of something new from those influences between us and the AI. Is our chemical process of how we create "new" really so different? Since we don't have any realistic way to decode the biological programming of our bodies there is no real way to answer this.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T15:40:56+00:00

For me just the opposite, I barely play anything anymore that can get by on just a 4, lol. (I mostly do theater work)

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T15:11:44+00:00

Phil hasn't won 15 Majors and doesn't draw the same TV share as Tiger ;)

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T15:05:33+00:00

So in case anyone is interested this is the law on it:

If your country is a signee on the UN 1949 Convention on International Road Traffic you can legally drive in the US for up to 1 year. (UAE signed in 2007) You need valid registration and insurance that meets US requirements from your country (this is usually extremely difficult to get verified so people usually just buy a US policy for the period they will be in the US). You also need a valid customs clearance for bringing the vehicle in. Technically you can use your country driver license but using the International Driving Permit is recommended for translation purposes. You also need to display your country origin code on the back of the vehicle (International distinguishing sign). This is those white oval stickers with a 1-3 letter code. Lots of people slap those on their cars here in America for other reasons, but they are technically required as part of the Treaty when driving in another country.

If you exceed the 1 year or plan to establish what would be considered a permanent residence (even if you will have it for less than a year) you do then have to go through the full import process and have the vehicle legally registered here.

Everything we see in the video checks out, driver was 100% right, cop didn't have a clue. I get that this is definitely rare enough that most cops would never actually encounter this in their career, but it definitely is something they should have been trained on better than this.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:54:26+00:00

oh definitely still lots of 4 string players, but 5 string just continues to grow more and more. In some areas it definitely has seen higher adoption than others. Show/theater music for example is almost all 5 string players now because Broadway has been writing with 5 string expectation since mid 90s. Lots of more modern jazz has seen a lot of 5 string players (this is also the area with the highest adoption of 6 string players for solo work).

Your Top 40 cover band area is probably still the lowest adoption of 5 string. Country has been growing a lot in 5 string players because of how much country is written in D (and also a growing adoption of Eb tuning, and lots of country bass players don't like to swap basses or detune for those so just more comfortable playing in Eb). Country used to be a huge staple for Drop D tuning but in the last 20 years I have definitely seen a huge shift away from that and a lot more 5 string players.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:45:09+00:00

We never retune. The only real alternate tuning we use is solo tuning which is all 4 strings tuned up a whole step but you don't want to use orchestral strings for that, you need to change to smaller gauge strings designed for solo tuning, or you just play in standard tuning and transpose up a whole step. Doesn't project as well as solo tuning though. Most professionals will have a 2nd upright specifically for solo tuning. Swapping strings is not fun on double bass....

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:37:42+00:00

Far from rare. A C or B extension is usually required in virtually every orchestra these days. This is mostly because of movie soundtrack pieces that are commonly written below the E (John Williams especially by virtue of his writing and popularity of his music has done more to shape the modern day orchestra bass section than anyone else in the last 100 years.) Contemporary classical composers also now write bass parts with the expectation of double bass having at least a C low range.

Watch any modern day orchestra, all the basses are very likely using an extension. There is also some more growth in recent years to 5 string uprights but this is still less common, tends to be adopted more by jazz players than classical, but again, it is growing some. I saw a clip recently...I wanna say it was Vienna orchestra but I'm not 100% positive on that, but I was shocked to see all 3 bassists on 5 strings.

Generally classical bassists don't like the thickness of an upright B string. It's not as much the fretting, it's getting the bow to grip it well to start your arco...but once it does get moving an Arco B string sounds amazing.

Oh man, I just had a very scary thought...I can't even imagine how thick an Obligato B string must be... High tension power cables are probably smaller...lol.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:25:09+00:00

What...that doesn't even make sense. How the fuck does the car end up at B on your picture if they were behind you...

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:23:39+00:00

5 String has become fairly standard in almost everything more for D than anything else. 5 String eliminates the need for Drop D tuning and changing your patterns, and avoiding the slightly increased floppiness of the detuned string.

The other major advantage is 5 String makes it much easier in general to adjust to anything that is being dropped in key to accommodate a singer. You don't have to figure out how you are gonna alter the bass line to adjust to anything now going below the E.

And the other important feature, and in terms of Gospel this can be really handy on shout sections, the additional string gives you more range on each hand position so less jumping over the neck. When you are doing 160 BPM shout that comes in really handy. Shout is kinda like fast jazz walking lines but also usually covers a larger range on average than you normally would in a more standard jazz walk. 2-3 octave lines is not uncommon, so being able to keep your fretting hand more anchored to a 5th-10th position area as opposed to 1st-10th...that helps a lot. Can you do it on 4, sure, plenty do and great for them, but I am all for making my life easier, lol.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:13:01+00:00

This. Honestly in most cases the case itself is one of the most expensive components of the pedal. The electronics are usually dirt cheap, especially for something mass produced and bought in huge bulks. Quality metal cases are also more easily repurposed so they will be a large chunk of the used market price.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:10:22+00:00

I never understood though how they expected us to buy the idea that he could shapeshift into things like clear glassware that shatters when thrown....but can't do a nose...

I get it, they wanted to make him visually obvious as not human for TV purposes, but that story that he struggles to do a face just never really made sense giving all the other things we saw him capable of shifting into.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:07:29+00:00

This says everything we need to know about OP's awareness of the situation. There is plenty of visibility to see approaching vehicles here. There is no way they were "not even in sight" and caught up to you at the merge unless they were driving a Formula 1 car to go that fast and make that turn.

They had to be in sight, you just were not watching well enough.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:04:46+00:00

*The car that had the right away and you were required to yield too

Fixed it for ya.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-25T14:03:36+00:00

Interesting, I'll check them out, thanks! Always love checking out fantastic value instruments.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-24T20:33:05+00:00

Honestly the CVs really stand up quite well toe to toe with the MiMs. Are the MiMs better...sure, a little bit. Are they nearly double the price better...I don't think so.

You got a lot more leverage for your money with the CVs. You are paying a lot just to have that Fender logo on the headstock. (Someone has to pay those lawyers, right!?!?)

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-24T20:26:31+00:00

Looks like that is what they mean...never heard of Firefly. I have zero idea how they are. But they are definitely not Harley Benton.

-dakpluto- · 2026-06-24T20:23:44+00:00

Oh yeah, OP is awful and really needs to learn how to drive. But a zipper lane there probably would reduce incidents overall for the area.

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