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Here is a video demo of the 7-string acoustic guitar I just received all the way from Ireland! Hope you enjoy the description and a bit of my playing! youtube.com/watch?v=481fgfR5jG…

Unboxing the beautiful X20 7-string acoustic guitar by Emerald Guitars, made in Ireland

I just received this wonderful X20 7-string acoustic guitar made by @emeraldguitars from Ireland.Since I was not able to find too many demos of this instrum...
YouTube

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"She glides from the fashion fitting to the table setting, and from the “candlelit dinner” to the “starlight ball”, with a face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal."

A face like a fist and a voice of sheet metal. Brilliant.

theguardian.com/film/2026/jan/…


Melania review – Trump film is a gilded trash remake of The Zone of Interest

Dispiriting, deadly and unrevealing – there is a decent documentary to be made about the former model from Slovenia, but this one is unredeemable
Xan Brooks (The Guardian)

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I just imported a MIDI of Rush E into NVDA Composer by @FreakyFwoof and it…didn't go very well, or maybe it did considering. Anyway you be the judge, here's the audio of what playing it actually did. If anyone wants the resulting project file or the original MIDI, just let me know. I think there's a bit of this that @arfy would enjoy.

@Andre Louis @Arfy

Andre Louis reshared this.

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🎉 Big NV Speech Player update just dropped!
Hybrid glottal source - Finally fixed the "breathy" voice quality at 16000 Hz and above! The synth now picks the right waveform per sample rate: smooth cosine at low rates (no aliasing), LF-inspired buzz at 16kHz+ (that Eloquence-like crispness).
VoicingTone v2 - 3 new DSP params:
• Noise glottal modulation (Klatt-style pulsing)
• Pitch-sync F1/B1 modulation (vocal tract coupling)
All with backward-compatible version detection so old drivers keep working.
Phoneme Editor - Full voicing params UI! 10 sliders, per-voice storage, auto-loads when you switch voices. Plus 3-tier DLL fallback for older builds.
NVDA Addon - New voicing sliders in synth settings ring. Tweak brightness, tilt, crispness per-voice.
Linux builds - Fresh x86_64 .so files included.
This was a marathon session - glottal waveforms, struct versioning, crash fixes, UI work... mass refresh across the whole stack.
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
github.com/tgeczy/NVSpeechPlay…
in reply to Neil Kandalgaonkar

mastodon - Link to source

Neil Kandalgaonkar

The other day I was at Elysian on Ontario comparing notes on company ethics with a friend. I said, probably too loudly, “At least we don’t work for Hootsuite!” forgetting I was in a business that might as well be their offsite cafe

Nobody said anything though.

A backgrounder on the Hootsuite/ICE controversy, going back to 2020

thetyee.ca/News/2026/01/29/Hoo…


Hootsuite’s ICE Contract Puts Employees in a Tough Spot | The Tyee

Employee backlash killed an ICE deal in 2020, but a law professor says times have changed.
Isaac Phan Nay (The Tyee)
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

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I’ve launched a Citation Needed membership drive to celebrate publishing my 100th recap issue!

Citation Needed critically covers cryptocurrency, the crypto industry, and its influence on policy. Paid subscriptions support much more than just the newsletter — here’s what goes into this work:

citationneeded.news/membership…


Citation Needed membership drive

Celebrating 100 recap issues and sustaining critical independent coverage.
Molly White (Citation Needed)

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CNN in Minneapolis: "We are seeing thousands and thousands of people, we've been standing on the corner here for the past ten minutes. This crowd has not let up. It's just continuous.

I've covered many protests, especially in New York City. And I have to tell you, I've not seen a crowd like this before. It is eight degrees out here. It feels like five. It is freezing, but nothing, nothing is stopping these people." ✊

#USPolitics #FuckICE #SolidarityIsBeautiful #Minneapolis

#uspolitics #fuckice #minneapolis #solidarityisbeautiful

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Yeah it's YouTube, but it's also Green Day, and I feel like at this point the power of green day and the power of punk overwhelms the power of the fucking data masters and the billionaires and we gotta stick together, right? youtu.be/eebfMFzJHNs?si=yce-Cj…

Green Day - Warning (HD Upscale) [Official Music Video]

Warning (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) available now: https://greenday.lnk.to/warning25thanniversarydeluxeWebsite https://greenday.com/ Tour Dates https:/...
YouTube

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Starting my day by consoling my naturalized citizen family member while they sob in fear of ICE.

I don't even know what to say to them anymore. Last year it was, "I know. It will be ok. You are a fucking citizen and nothing will happen." and now it's, "I love you. I will do everything to protect you. I'm scared too."

Fuck ICE. FUCK you if you support them. Rot in hell you bastards.

mastodon - Link to source

I call myself a fair-weather waller. I don’t do drystone work through the worst of winter. If you have ever jammed numb fingers between cold stones, started a morning by sledgehammering apart a frozen stone pile, or done a pee outside, bum exposed to biting winter air, you will understand why.

Drystone season is almost upon us. This year we have a run of really interesting jobs and I have a new ambition, learning to drive a digger.

#Scotland #UK #Sustainability #Nature #Art

Close-up of a drystone bench built into a low stone wall. The stones are layered in horizontal courses with upright coping stones on top. A thick wooden slab forms the seat, supported by projecting stones beneath. Grass and moss surround the base.
Wide view of a drystone bench set into a curved stone wall on a grassy bank beside Loch Voil. The wall is built from mixed local stone with upright coping stones along the top. Leafless trees and a sloping hillside rise behind the bench.
#sustainability #art #uk #scotland #nature
This entry was edited (2 days ago)

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ICE continues to dehumanize the same immigrants Woody Guthrie defended
theintercept.com/2026/01/28/wo…

Woody Guthrie Sang Against Dehumanizing the Immigrants Killed in a Plane Crash. ICE Is Doing It All Over Again.

Woody Guthrie wrote the tune “Deportee (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos)” about the same 1948 plane crash ICE is memorializing today.
Matt Sledge (The Intercept)
in reply to Herefordrob

mastodon - Link to source

Herefordrob

Deportee
by Woody Guthrie & Martin Hoffma

The crops are all in, and the peaches are rotten
The oranges are packed in the creosote dumps
They're flying us back to the Mexico border
To pay all our money to wade back again

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mi amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big aeroplane
All they will call you will be Deportee

Now my father's own father, he waded that river they took all the money her made in his life six hundred miles to the Mexico border
They chased us like rustlers, like outlaws, like thieves

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria you won't have a name when you ride the big aeroplane
No, all they will call you will be Deportee

The sky-plane caught fire, over Los Gatos Canyon A big ball of fire, it shook all the ground
Who are these friends who are falling like dry leaves
The radio said they were just deportees

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria
You won't have a name when you ride the big aeroplane. No, all they will call you will be Deportee

But we died in your hills, we died in your valleys
We died in your orchards, we died on your plains
We died on your deserts, we died in your treetops
Both sides of the river we died just the same

Goodbye to my Juan, goodbye Rosalita
Adios mis amigos, Jesus and Maria You won't have a name when you ride the big aeroplane. No, all they will call you will be Deportee
© 1948

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Vanadium version 145.0.7632.26.0 released:

github.com/GrapheneOS/Vanadium…

See the linked release notes for a summary of the improvements over the previous release and a link to the full changelog.

Forum discussion thread:

discuss.grapheneos.org/d/31313…

#GrapheneOS #privacy #security #browser


Vanadium version 145.0.7632.26.0 released - GrapheneOS Discussion Forum

GrapheneOS discussion forum
GrapheneOS Discussion Forum
#privacy #browser #security #grapheneos

mastodon - Link to source
As of around 11:21 AM Central time, we have power! I repeat, we! Have! Power! This was an approximately 124-hour power outage, which makes it the second longest I've lived through. And our whole house generator did a wonderful job of keeping everything going. Clarification: How do I know we got utility power back? Good question! We have an automatic transfer switch installed. Thirty seconds after power originally failed, it commanded our generator to start, waited until it was producing stable power, then switched our house to it. Then this morning, it saw that utility power had returned, probably waited a bit to make sure it was stable, switched our house back to it, let the generator run for a while with no load, then commanded it to shut down. Had I been fully awake I *might* have suspected utility power was back when we were switched to it, but the real giveaway was when the generator suddenly shut down but power didn't. Whew! It's over!
This entry was edited (1 day ago)

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I just want to say thank you to the Americans on here who have evidently made a concerted effort to start putting an F to specify when they are talking about Fahrenheit degrees.

I can't imagine what prompted the recent shift, but it makes a difference, it's clearer and respectful to the rest of the world, and I for one have noticed the change.

⇧