"America is the opposite: it acts before it has consensus. One administration invades Afghanistan; the next one pulls out."
From my perspective, the US has a remarkably consistent foreign policy despite some occasional initial wobbles when a new president comes in (which usually ends up being all or mostly talk). Obama talked about closing Guantanamo Bay and pulling out of Iraq, but he didn't do that, did he? And it was obvious for a long time that Afghanistan was a quagmire. Ultimately, the US only pulled out of Afghanistan two presidents later... conveniently freeing up resources for the big war in Ukraine that had been threatening to start for years, but only somehow really got going once Afghanistan was no longer a major drain on resources.
No, it seems to me that even a president as volatile as Trump is unable to just do what he wishes. I remember how often in his first term he announced and even ordered that the US would leave Iraq, but ultimately that didn't happen, and everyone who buys Iraqi oil still has to pay the US Treasury for it, which then sends some percentage of the money to Iraq, higher or lower depending on how happy they are with the Iraqi government.
The people who run US foreign policy long term seem pretty good at persuading the temporary occupants of the US White House not to do anything "too rash". As for what the methods of persuasion are, who knows? Perhaps they're just very good at making the political case, or maybe there's more to it.
At least in the case of the recent Iran War, there might be "more to it".
Maybe they should focus on putting their own house in order first by not making constant self-sabotaging decisions that hurt themselves, benefit the United States, and alienate their other neighbors. The European Union has declined from 30% to 17% percent of world GDP from 2008-2025, three times faster than China's analogous decline at the beginning of its "Century of Humiliation", which took it 50 years from 1820-1870:
https://xcancel.com/RnaudBertrand/status/2062096610239082912
But I fear the worst is yet to come, because what's happening has not sunk in yet.
So, despite liking various countries in the EU as places to visit, I have to ask what benefit would Canada get from joining such a structure at this point?
This seems a decent introduction. The only thing mentioned that I wasn't really aware of is the effect of the tongue in addition to the lips on the embouchure of higher notes. Can anyone recommend some more info on that?
For embouchure mechanics, I'd highly recommend Dave Wilken's blog. That was his doctoral research focus and he's got a good intro to brass embouchures on his blog [0]. The tongue is usually not as much of a focus when it comes to embouchure, but he does have a post discussing his thoughts about the so-called Tongue Controlled Embouchure [1] which you might find interesting.
Dave has been building on the work Donald Reinhardt started in methodically categorizing embouchure types and figuring out how each type best functions. They seem to be part of a minority in the brass community who actually care to approach things scientifically - I could go on about my own experiences of brass teachers who aren't interested in furthering their understanding of embouchure mechanics, but Dave covers that topic pretty well already [2]. Reinhardt's stuff can also be worth reading, but Dave simplified some of the categories that seemed unnecessarily complicated.
Yes, it is surprisingly polished. I tried playing the first three Phantasy Star games, but each time was put off by one annoying design flaw or another (such as the camera not being centred in II, so that you can't see very far ahead when exploring). In the fourth game, everything just works.
Just about the only annoying flaw still left is that it's not obvious what items do, and you kinda will need to memorize lots of random names... (Well, or have a reference near you while you play) This is actually mentioned in the interview as them not wanting to be too explicit about what things do (not saying "attack +20" etc.) - unfortunately, it's one of those design decisions that does create friction for the player.
I agree, I found it hard and frustrating to read on my (small) phone because the text is just too big. I usually skim long articles to some extent to focus on reading the parts I'm most interested in, but this format makes that impossible. I can't skim anything because barely a sentence is on my screen at one time.
Quite interesting, seems like something I would find useful.
However, is there documentation or even an "About" page anywhere? Some info on which sites are supported and how to add them, as well as user limits? At least on mobile (which seems surprisingly nice, from what I can see), I don't see it.
I do like the overall design and the customizability.
EDIT: I found some info in the miniscule "Terms of Use" link at the bottom of the page when I clicked on the link to create a new account:
https://aggly.com/terms
And then I guessed at the url for pricing information by typing in aggly.com/pricing, which redirected me to:
https://aggly.com/account
(I don't know how to get there from the home page, though)
I haven't found info on what "API access" is good for, though. Is there a description?
Also, would there be any way to integrate paid SubStack subscriptions? (I admittedly haven't looked into this much)
EDIT 2: also, is there an option for a more compact view of a feed, with just the titles and no images? Also, is there a way to filter a feed (or a whole bunch of feeds) by date range? Otherwise, I can see it becoming pretty hard to find something older, eventually, having to click "load more" over and over again...
Winhance for removing things like OneDrive and the option to KEEP them removed even if a future Windows Update tries to reinstall them. You can also save your configuration to easily get all your preferences back on a fresh Windows install. I use this instead of WinUtil (which I haven't tried yet... is there any way in which it is better?).
Windhawk for quality of life improvements if you don't like some of Windows's defaults. For example, I use it to have two rows on my taskbar and smaller icons (which was disabled in Windows 11), always open Classic Notepad instead of the new one (it loads much faster), and add multi-step "undo" to the Classic Notepad (the only thing I didn't like about it), among other things.
It's just so crazy that we are living in times where a notepad can be too slow. Wtf has happened?? How can they mess up a fucking Notepad App?
Luckily I switched to MacOS mostly some time ago. Also has its issue but nothing compared to winslop
I often find that using Google Search (the Video tab, with "site:youtube.com") allows me to find videos that don't show up in the YouTube search... or sometimes vice versa!
Also, would adding any of the following be possible?
1) Search for specific video quality (standard YouTube search already does this - you can ask for "HD", but would it be possible to search for more specific qualities such as 480p, 720p, etc?)
2) Search for videos only in a specific language
3) Search only for videos that have subtitles in a specific language
4) more detailed length search for the "over 20 minutes" category (e.g. over 40 minutes, over 60 minutes, etc)
All of these are things that I have desperately wished existed over the past few years, and which would have sometimes saved me a lot of time.
I'd like to second that I wish a lot of those existed.
For 1), 60fps is another good one.
It seems Youtube also removed "sort by upload date" if I'm not mistaken. The closest we can get now is the "uploaded today" filter but it's not the same since it still seems to prioritize popularity over recency, surfacing mostly second-hand sources or popular "reactions" to the primary-source videos (that also exist on Youtube!) I'm actually looking for.
Edit: IIRC they even used to have an "uploaded in last hour" filter, but I'm not sure. Can anyone confirm this?
From my perspective, the US has a remarkably consistent foreign policy despite some occasional initial wobbles when a new president comes in (which usually ends up being all or mostly talk). Obama talked about closing Guantanamo Bay and pulling out of Iraq, but he didn't do that, did he? And it was obvious for a long time that Afghanistan was a quagmire. Ultimately, the US only pulled out of Afghanistan two presidents later... conveniently freeing up resources for the big war in Ukraine that had been threatening to start for years, but only somehow really got going once Afghanistan was no longer a major drain on resources.
No, it seems to me that even a president as volatile as Trump is unable to just do what he wishes. I remember how often in his first term he announced and even ordered that the US would leave Iraq, but ultimately that didn't happen, and everyone who buys Iraqi oil still has to pay the US Treasury for it, which then sends some percentage of the money to Iraq, higher or lower depending on how happy they are with the Iraqi government.
The people who run US foreign policy long term seem pretty good at persuading the temporary occupants of the US White House not to do anything "too rash". As for what the methods of persuasion are, who knows? Perhaps they're just very good at making the political case, or maybe there's more to it.
At least in the case of the recent Iran War, there might be "more to it".