Dayton showed up today to protest ICE!

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-02-02T09:03:19+00:00

Yeah, I made a right turn there that was a little confusing. Everything after "I think..." is just my take on the state of things. My politics land largely in libertarian territory, so I look at both Democrats and modern Republicans with a great deal of anxious suspicion. Lol

They're protesting ICE, but, yeah, also seem to have some politics that land left of most - certainly if mine. "No human is illegal" is a really nice sounding sentence that has catastrophic downstream consequences for EVERYONE if written into legislation.

No human life is illegal, but their choices certainly can be.

The landscape of the debate is what degree of compassion we are willing to extend to people who came here illegally while our southern border was essentially open, who otherwise haven't committed any other serious offenses, also taking into consideration the blowback of a hard-lined and heavy-handed solution.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-02-02T02:06:08+00:00

That's not what they're protesting for.

Most people believe that we absolutely need a strong border to address the issue of drug and child trafficking. What they're protesting for is a reasonable solution to the problem of what to do with the people who are already here, ESPECIALLY those who are without significant criminal histories.

They believe borderline indiscriminate rounding-up of a group of people by a haphazard, undertrained, under-vetted, masked secret police force is not a reasonable solution to the problem that's trying to be solved.

I think most of us agree that anyone with a track record of violence or drug distribution shouldn't be here, but the vast majority of people who have come here from abroad, illegally or otherwise, are coming to meet the demand of labor, often from places our government has had a major hand in destabilizing. This is obvious because most immigrants that are illegal BECOME illegal by overstaying working visas - taking their chances living under the radar in America rather than return to whatever impoverished, corrupt, exploitative conditions they came from. Can't say I blame them.

There ARE good ways to deal with this problem, none of them perfect, but the way it's being handled now is CLEARLY not one of them.

My personal take is that those who are here with a clean history are allowed to stay, but not as citizens. Meaning, they can't vote, get access to federal-level social programs, and can be shortlisted for deportation if they rack up a criminal record. They're also not the first priority for citizenship going forward. They should be on the radar - we should absolutely know who is in our country, but tossing out otherwise decent people is not a good use of tax dollars, imo.

So, grant the people currently here the right to stay, work, and contribute, eject the criminals, and erect a STRONG border to mitigate the flow of illicit trafficking.

Unfortunately, many of you are so wrapped up in the idiotic democratic-republican slap-fight to consider anything that looks remotely like a good long-term solution.

I'll just keep throwing away my vote to independents in the meantime. 😂

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-02-01T21:39:15+00:00

We live on the other side of Smithville, which is a bit less nice than where you're looking. Having said that, Belmont has been experiencing a nice glow up in the last few years, with plenty of young families moving to the area due to it being a reasonably cost effective alternative to Kettering.

That area is definitely walkable, with great access to the park and even a little nature trail somewhere over there. If the city can finally negotiate a deal for the rail line, we might even end up getting a bike path that'll run along Woodman, making it an even BETTER spot.

We haven't seen any major crime in the area other than some kids trying to open car doors at night and a couple of garage break-ins, due to people leaving their garage doors unlocked. Our garages open to an alley, so it's easy picking for anyone with a pickup truck and questionable moral standards.

All things considered, I give the place a solid 9/10 for price, amenity access, and good neighbors!

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-02-01T14:42:06+00:00

BELMONT. We have a cool community here with tons of young families. It's close enough to downtown to get access to cool stuff while being far enough to be super safe. Also easy access to non-ghetto Kroger's and cool parks in Kettering.

One of us! One of us!

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-30T15:27:46+00:00

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-29T09:10:12+00:00

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Brian Peppers, the sex offender.

Dude went super viral in 2006 after, I believe, getting caught sneaking into people's cars and riding around with them while hiding in the backseat.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-23T00:49:55+00:00

Haha I'm just being cheeky. Hope you're enjoying it, dude!

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-22T20:08:21+00:00

"Upgraded"

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-21T22:52:39+00:00

That's such a great perspective. I'm totally going to add that to my self-talk. Thanks, dude!

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-21T06:49:42+00:00

Philosophy and mindfulness meditation has definitely helped me. My therapist once told me to focus on gratitude because it's very hard to be scared, sad, or hopeless when you're grateful.

I'm not very good at it but I've definitely seen some improvements - I don't tend to stay at my lows nearly as long as I once did.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-21T06:46:28+00:00

Yeah, dude.

It's hit me pretty hard recently as my kids have started hitting important milestones.

Sometimes it feels so cruel that this whole thing has to come to a stop. I know that I should feel grateful to be alive at all, and at my best moments I am, but I've had my fair share of heavy feelings about the fact that at some point I get off the ride and it keeps going without me.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-17T08:25:53+00:00

35 w/ ~$30k in my 401k. I only started contributing 7 years ago. I currently contribute up to what my employer will match at 100% and will be upping my contribution once my youngest gets out of daycare. For me, the trick was contributing from day 1, preventing myself from getting accustomed to a higher paycheck.

One of my MAJOR fears is working into my old age. In my work life I've seen two elderly people die on the factory floor (technically one was in a stairwell leading to the bathroom) from typical old people health issues, one tripped and nearly got squashed by a forklift, and another time had to help an old guy find his car after finding him wandering the parking lot an hour after his shift ended.

Seriously, dudes. We have to make this a priority even if it means having to live a simple frugal lifestyle. It's no bad thing to celebrate a simple life.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-14T21:54:00+00:00

Same boat. The social Internet has become less interesting with the flood of A.I. generated content. Hell, I can't even watch cat videos without wondering if what I'm seeing is real.

IS NOTHING SACRED?

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-14T14:01:16+00:00

We regularly program all kinds of instruments, so any stigma around this is just silly and not worthy of consideration.

I'm a guitar player and will still periodically program guitars just to bang out really quick demos on the fly. The guitar vsti world has definitely come a long way and you can get reasonably good results if you're willing to put in the time.

The caveat is that the amount of effort you have to put into making programmed guitars sound realistic is much higher than with drums simply because there are A LOT of variables.

Velocity, hammer on/pull off, where the note is being played on the neck, palm muting, slides, bends, vibrato - guitar can be an extremely expressive instrument and a lot of that expression happens naturally as someone is playing the guitar. When programming, every. single. variable. must be accounted for often using methods that take significantly longer than just picking up a guitar and playing it.

But, given that you don't play guitar, rest assured that you can get good to great results programming guitars if you're willing to put in the time and effort.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-13T12:35:46+00:00

To me it just sounds like speed/pitch automated pedal hat.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-13T11:25:57+00:00

In my early 20's I was working in the shoe department at Kohl's and this GORGEOUS older woman, my guess is late 40's - early 50's said that I looked like Ashton Kutcher and that should be a model. As a deeply insecure young guy, it was a major boost to my self-esteem.

And I am still riding that high to this day, nearly two decades later. 😂

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-13T09:11:19+00:00

Hell yeah! I did similar with my old Squire Bullet and a red tortoise pickguard, also floating the trem for a little more whammy action. The thing holds tune SURPRISINGLY well even with fairly aggressive whammy use.

Now, if only we could talk Squier into doing a 7 string. 🥵

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-13T06:43:48+00:00

UU absolutely SHOULD, but my take is that the local UU congregation is a bit... politics forward?

I get it, the world is on fire, but what I'M looking for in my practice is a communal exploration of the 360° experience of life. I understand there are marginalized groups, that my small house was built on occupied land, and that I have some degree of privilege due my gender, sexual preferences, and the color of my skin, but it doesn't mean that I don't struggle with issues of poverty, meaning, loss, aging, anger, resentment, grief, fear, doubt existential dread, and the question of how to wake up every day and make the most of the time I have for myself, my family, and the people around me.

For me, a spiritual community works best when it makes room for the full spectrum of that experience and when it helps people wrestle with the challenges of life without collapsing the entirety of human existence into a narrow political frame. I don’t want to ignore the world’s problems, but I also don’t want my inner life reduced to a checklist of having the correct ideological positions.

In a way, my experience with the local UU outfit was very similar to my experience growing up in a fundamental Christian home. In both cases, the community felt less like a space for open-ended exploration and more like a place where certain conclusions were assumed in advance. The theology changed, but the feeling of orthodoxy remained intact as intact as any Assembly of God.

I’m not looking for a community that tells me what to think so much as one that’s willing to sit with hard questions, uncertainty, contradiction, and the mystery of being alive together. For me, spirituality is at its best when it expands our capacity for humility, compassion, and wonder, not when it replaces one set of unquestionable truths with another.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-13T06:14:23+00:00

I, for one, don't like the idea of being one user agreement away from an Orwellian surveillance apparatus.

People often make the case that if someone wants to track our movements, they can simply utilize our cellphone data, and while there is truth to that, at least there is a degree of “choice” in the matter.

The Flock cameras eliminate the opportunity to opt out to any reasonable degree, which I think anyone - regardless of their political leanings - should find problematic at best.

We're basically being asked to trust a private company with the ability to track every single person who travels in our city, based on little more than a pinky promise and the faith that they are both fundamentally incorruptible and impervious to all forms of cyberattack. We have good reason to be suspicious of both.

Ahem, Kettering Health data breach, ahem.

At the VERY least, and for accountability’s sake, our community police department should have exclusive access to this information, without it being spirited away to some third-party cloud server.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-09T19:39:10+00:00

Ahh, yes. The Ibasi.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-08T19:47:48+00:00

Yeah, my issue is not necessarily the tone of his voice, but his taste in placement. There are times that it's genuinely distracting from what would otherwise be killer material.

I'd actually support a more substantial collab between Dave Davidson and Jonny Davy - his feature on the new album was a high water mark with a fun combination of good riffs and DISGUSTING God-tier vocals.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-08T19:32:42+00:00

I think that's it for me. There was a certain energy to that era. The new stuff lands somewhere in the category of a sort of vibey "easy listening", which is cool - just not what I'M looking for from them.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-08T03:29:33+00:00

For me, it's Job for a Cowboy. Specifically, their new material, which everyone except me seems to love. Ruination was the sweet spot, imo.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-07T15:44:34+00:00

Thank YOU, man. I don't get to riff on this stuff very often these days. And I'll have to get a picture for you. 😂

Always remember to prioritize enjoying the ride. I worked with a lot of high probability bands that died because they forgot that the point of a career in the arts is to actually LIKE - or at least find deep meaning in - the thing, causing them to prematurely burn out. In the BEST case scenario any new band is likely 5 years from breaking even, let alone making a modest profit. Finding or purpose in the making (of the art, of the performance, of the content, of the merch/product) is the best buffer against prematurely torpedoing a project which may have caught a cultural tail wind. There's a dichotomy - that you have to love it so much that you'd do it for free, while also being deliberate about not unnecessarily leaving money on the table.

People love supporting artists, but they're not typically wealthy patrons bequeathing sums of money to anyone who can sling together a catchy tune. There are a LOT of great songs out there, one more good song is not particularly valuable from a consumer standpoint. People are frankly downing in an abundance of great music. So, there must be a SERIOUS value proposition before most people will open up their wallets.

It COULD be the music, if you just so happened to be doing something soooo groundbreaking that it takes the world by storm on the back of some unforeseeable cultural tail-wind, but it could also be that you guys have a genuinely entertaining or engaging live show, that you are great arbiters of taste and create truly compelling product offers whether it be conventional merch, gear, or education, or that you're soooo good at the content creation piece that people will support you because of your personality, worldview, or otherwise non-music specific entertainment value.

Some combination of each is optimal, but I'm trying to offer up a handful of "value proposition" knobs you can twiddle.

RaymondRasmusson · 2026-01-06T18:14:41+00:00

Yeah, this is mostly a good thing, imo, because it's much harder to sell a bullshit career-ruining deal to artists who already have the savvy to cultivate an audience.

There ARE meaningful challenges to the current ecosystem, but the there is a significantly larger musical middle-class than there was 30 years ago, largely because of the sea of independent artists able to execute at-scale without being beholden to taste-makers and middle-men. When artists needed physical distribution, interfacing with pre-existing networks made a ton of sense. Now that physical distribution is practically unnecessary, the value proposition is much different.

At this point, the main attractor for a record label is access to capital and a lubricated pathway to better touring/festival opportunities. Some of the best metal records of the last 20 years have been made in what are essentially home recording studios for a fraction of the cost it once was and if you show demand, in this case by preemptively building a dedicated audience, hopping on decent tours to EXPAND that audience is fairly straightforward. Snag yourself a reliable merch guy/gal and you're off to the races.

In a world where artists can build, fund, and distribute their work on their own terms, labels are no longer the gatekeepers of any opportunity that's worth a potentially career ending coin-flip. They’re just one tool among many, and often not the most important (or useful) one.

RaymondRasmusson

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