I prefer an e-reader, but I used my phone before I got one. It is nice to always have my books on me with the phone, but the e-reader is much more comfortable for long sessions.

It blows my mind that some people on my team were excited to watch the commercials during the Super Bowl.

I live my life in a way that minimizes the advertising I’m exposed to, and some people are just mainlining that garbage.

The Wikipedia article music of Egypt has a decent section on ancient music in the history portion.

But it’s important to remember that ancient Egyptian history is incredibly long and varied. It’s hard to pin down musical styles over thousands of years. The reality is that we don’t really know what the music sounded like, so educated guesses are the closest we can get. Notation would not be invented for thousands of years.

The instruments they used provide most of the insight that we have. Here’s a YouTube video of some people playing reconstructions of period instruments. This would just be a guess at the music, but it is at least informed by later tradition from around the region.

What’s your budget? You can get a ukulele or guitar for fairly cheap, and there are websites full of chords or tabs for songs. You can play hundreds of songs if you just know a few chords.

There are tutorial videos on YouTube to get you started. Play and sing along. You’ll suck at first, but if you keep at it and play every day you’ll get to be pretty good.

Now I’m picturing him being so delighted by you pulling a McChicken from behind his ear that he gives you Iowa.

The kind where one can get to a different galaxy in a single lifetime? I doubt it.

There’s a fire starting in your ship
Reaching a fever pitch and it’s bringing 'em out the dark
Finally I can see you crystal clear
Go 'head and crash land and I’ll strip your saucer bare

See how I leave with every piece of it
Don’t underestimate the things that I will do
There’s a fire starting in my heart
Reaching a fever pitch and its bringing me out the dark

The scars and gore remind me of war
They keep me thinking that we almost lost it all
The holes in my suit they leave me breathless, I can’t help feeling

We could have had it all
Terror from the deep
You had my heart inside of your hand
And you played it to the beat

It can’t be a universal thing for all birds, but budgies feel safer if there’s some ambient noise; it indicates that there isn’t a predator around that needs to be avoided. Silence means danger.

"This is a coordinated political effort to Islamify Texas, and you’ve got to say it, you’ve got to mean it, you’ve got to push the Legislature to pass laws,” U.S. Rep. Chip Roy, who is also running for attorney general, said in an interview with Steve Bannon. “We’ve got to tweak the Texas Constitution. Whatever’s necessary to protect Texas from being Islamified by the radical Marxists.”

Chip is a profoundly evil man who wants to enforce White Christian Nationalism. He isn’t as stupid as this quote meant for his constituency, he knows Texas isn’t going to be “Islamified;” he just knows that his base is that stupid: they’re motivated by racism and forcing their religion on others.

And the worst part is that he’s right.

Guitar, bass, ukulele, and renaissance lute. They’re all fairly similarly tuned, so there’s some skill transfer among them. Guitar is my strongest instrument, I’ve been playing that for about 30 years.

I play a bit of hand percussion, too.

I also play soprano and tenor recorder, they’re good to know for early music and tuned the same except an octave apart. I’m decent enough at them, and they’re especially fun when played in a consort. I picked them up about 4 years ago now.

Everyone who likes couch co-op should play this one. It’s fantastic.

That does sound interesting, kind of like you build your own class. I’ll check it out, thanks!

There’s no shortage of dipshits in the world who see machismo posturing and threats as a projection of power.

They think they’re safe from the reactionary tide because they fly the same colors, but the thing about fascists is that they always eat their own.

Granted this one got bit sooner than most, but I guarantee he’s not going to stop being a reactionary chud.

I’d love another good hero shooter after Overwatch shit the bed, and Rivals doesn’t really do it for me.

It’s been my favorite multiplayer genre since Quake World Team Fortress.

This could use a tonguebath, and you’re apparently ready to go:

Cool, I didn’t know there was an open-source alternative. Thanks!

Not a console, but PICO-8 can be installed on lots of stuff and uses lua.

He also fled the scene after.

Greg Abbott hates the big cities. We shouldn’t be giving tax breaks to multinational conglomerates anyway; they should be paying their fair share in taxes instead of leeching off of working families like the parasites they are.

We should be breaking up monopolies like we used to, not letting them exploit our economies.

Fuck AT&T and fuck Old Greg.