The Evening Blues - 7-4-18

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 3:10pm


eb1pt12

No news roundup + tonight's musical feature: Fourth of July music

Hey! Good Evening!

This evening's music features Fourth of July music. Enjoy!

Leonard Cohen - Democracy Is Coming To The USA

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it."

-- William Faulkner

No News and only a little Opinion

Ok, if you need something to read...

Here are some articles of interest

The Dilemma of the Fourth of July

Fredrick Douglass' Fourth of July speech

A Little Night Music

Gil Scott Heron - Winter In America

James Brown - Living in America

Alice Cooper - I Love America

X - 4th of July

The Grateful Dead - US Blues

Ray Manzarek - Love It Or Leave It

The Byrds - Chimes of Freedom

John Mellencamp - Our Country

Rhiannon Giddens - We Could Fly

Los Lobos/Grateful Dead - This Land is Your Land


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The Evening Blues
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Fourth of July
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Submitted by JekyllnHyde on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 3:54pm
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For a different take on Independence Day, see my essay - George Orwell and Howard Zinn on Patriotism and Nationalism.

Thanks, and Happy 4th!

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 7:12pm
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@JekyllnHyde

yep. i am pursuing happiness today. today, happiness is a cold drink and a delicious crabcake. soon, there will be fireworks, too. Smile

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Submitted by JekyllnHyde on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 4:03pm
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This haunting version comes from Strike a Deep Chord: Blues Guitars for the Homeless, featuring Dr. John.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lj4wDqVLoHQ]

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A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 7:24pm
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@JekyllnHyde

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Submitted by detroitmechworks on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 4:20pm
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Of course, one of the coolest covers of the song most folks missed.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNhB-K2IoCc]

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I do not pretend I know what I do not know.

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 7:32pm
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@detroitmechworks

great stuff, thanks!

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Submitted by mimi on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 4:49pm
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singing this song way back in 2008 I think it was and how I believed in the message of the song then.

Have given up believing in it today. Now your post makes me think about it again and I ask myself if I should. You believe Democracy is coming to the USA today? Are you that much of a stubborn believer? Smile

All I know is that it has to come back.

Thanks for the memories.

Have a Happy 4rth of July.

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Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 7:39pm
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@mimi

frankly, i think that the prospects for democracy coming to america are much better now than they were in 2008. it seems to me that trump by breaking the government may be creating the demand (the kind of demand that drives people to do the sorts of things that happen when they can no longer consent to being governed by a failed institution) for real change, rather than a change of figureheads or parties.

on the other hand, the prospects for a full-on fascist evolution of the current governing factions are pretty large, too.

Are you that much of a stubborn believer?

no, i'm just plain stubborn. Smile

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Submitted by mimi on Thu, 07/05/2018 - 1:19am
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@joe shikspack @JekyllnHyde
I am reading now JnH fantastic essay. As you know I am underread. I am stubbornly hoping I will become a reader of all the great books I know are out there and are still not read.

hmm, both, yours and JnH's essays and comments, made me a bit more optimistic today. How is that for a success on the 4th of July?

Thanks to you and JnH.

PS: Did you read this article by Tim Berner-Lee? The Creator of the World Wide Web Is ‘Devastated’ by What It Has Become. That article makes me feel a bit better about my previous rants about me hating the internet and getting a slap on my head from someone here to 'become real'. So, when the inventor himself somehow tells me that he can't stand his invention anymore, I ask myself who has to get real ?... I am going to read the original article in Vanity Fair in a bit.

I Was Devastated: Tim Berners-Lee, the Man Who Created the World Wide Web, Has Some Regrets - Berners-Lee has seen his creation debased by everything from fake news to mass surveillance. But he’s got a plan to fix it.

Now I wait for the analysis by this community to hear what they say about his solutions to fix the internet... heh I am always happy to see so many intelligent folks here commenting and teach me a lesson.

I miss the fireworks and going down to the Mall in DC to celebrate there. Hope you had some nice local fireworks on your streets. I remember they had pretty good ones in my former local neighborhood in Greenbelt. At least some nice memories... sigh.

Good Night for you over there.

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Submitted by joe shikspack on Thu, 07/05/2018 - 8:48pm
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@mimi

i skimmed the berners-lee article. i hope that his solid software turns out to be a tipping point in returning power to the people. however, i think that it is likely to only be a temporary fix.

governments/corporations/elites are doing what they have always done, which is to use the tools at hand to oppress, commoditize and extract profits from humans. in the past brutal methods have been used (e.g. - the enclosures, slavery) and have been refined over centuries to hide the brutality of the methods.

the internet as it stands has been a remarkable tool for the powerful elites to simplify and even automate in some cases their processes.

if berners-lee and a band of renegade techies manages to set back the elites, taking away a tool from them, they will do what they have done for centuries by other means, and they will use their virtually unlimited resources to crack, hack or destroy whatever the renegade techies have done to diminish the ease and efficiency that they have experienced.

as always, it is up to the great masses of people to put a stop to the oppression of the elites.

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Submitted by mimi on Fri, 07/06/2018 - 1:40pm
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@joe shikspack @joe shikspack
because of this paragraph, which summarized it for me.

“While the problems facing the web are complex and large, I think we should see them as bugs: problems with existing code and software systems that have been created by people—and can be fixed by people.”

To which I say any code that fixes the perceived problems by coders, can be messed up by the next coder. I just don't believe in it. Wasn't the original idea of free code that everyone could see it, change it to make it better or fix some flaws that one didn't see in the beginning. Unix, Linux, free open source code was thought to be the 'solution' against all the ills of corporate overpowering of the internet with 'closed' code. So, it didn't work, I don't think a change of open source code will fix anything, because whatever 'good' it may do, it won't prevent that other coders code will do exactly the opposite.

The internet has been a powerful tool for the elites to push their agenda, profits and manipulation of the masses. A thousand blogs with critical analysis of everything around in our lives won't change that. Even not for the subborn among us... :-).

So, I guess we are on the same wavelength. My first gut reaction: I don't believe that to be a fix.

But stubborn as some of us are, we don't let them get away with it either ...
Thanks for reading the article. (I was once a non-code writing fan of open source code and believed in its power. Berners-Lee was a hero back in the days ...).

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Submitted by OLinda on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 5:01pm
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My travel plan for this Independence Day is to walk outside to the front porch! Smile

The city puts on a show every year about 10 blocks from here. Pretty good view from the porch. I'm putting off eating the watermelon, to eat it with the fireworks and make the big outing more festive!

Happy 4th all you Bluesters!

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Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 7:41pm
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@OLinda

sounds pretty great. i'm about to head out to check out the fireworks down the street pretty soon, too.

enjoy that watermelon!

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Submitted by The Aspie Corner on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 6:42pm
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[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NjbK664_3c]

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Modern education is little more than toeing the line for the capitalist pigs.

Guerrilla Liberalism won't liberate the US or the world from the iron fist of capital.

Submitted by joe shikspack on Wed, 07/04/2018 - 7:45pm
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@The Aspie Corner

well, there's a shocker!

when i want reasonably good information about venezuela, i go here.

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Submitted by travelerxxx on Thu, 07/05/2018 - 4:51am
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Spent my Fourth on duty (at time-and-a-half) in the tiny town of Cameron, Louisiana. No stoplights in little Cameron; in fact, there's only one in all of massive Cameron Parrish. I'd wager that half the population lives in pull-behind travel trailers, partly due to certain hurricanes nearly succeeding in wiping little Cameron off the map. What's left isn't much. What's left in people's pockets is less. Some of the trailers are crowned with the ubiquitous government-supplied blue tarps, the better to stop leaks with. Some have no electricity, although most do. Sometimes there are several trailers at one address; one of them might be livable.

In the entire evening, I saw two cheesy fireworks explode. Too far away to hear them, I heard no firecrackers whatsoever. None - all day, all night. Not many can afford to waste money on such a trifling extravagance. Doubtless, Trump took the Parrish by a wide margin...

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Submitted by divineorder on Thu, 07/05/2018 - 4:56am
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We have spent the night there either in our camper or in a cheap hotel there a couple of times on trips to Lake Powell from Santa Fe. Always find it interesting to be among the people there.

Here at Plitvice Lakes National Park area in Croatia we met some younger tourist from Romania staying at the same guesthouse. They offered us a ride to the national park and we ended up hiking around and having interesting discussions, answering questions about each others' countries and discussing a wide range of topics.

They asked about the 4th of July, and we explained we really personally did not celebrate it. Thinking about sending them that article link

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A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.