But the claim that you have to whip people and chain them up to synthesize European folk melodies with African base rhythms seems at once absurd and sadistic.
Cool, I never made that claim. They probably needed to immigrate to a western country to invent it and popularize it, that they went there as slaves is a different matter.
There’s little chance that immigration wouldn’t have been involved somehow in your scenario(s). But true, maybe we could have gotten blues and jazz from a thriving, industrialized Congo, Nigeria etc.
Hell, maybe it would have come from middle class American Natives in the Mississippi Delta. Or Chinese rice farmers in a country not ravaged by opium. Or Iranians not ground under by the Shah’s dictatorship. Or Austro-Hungarians who weren’t cannibalized to fight the Napoleonic Wars or the 30 Years War that caused the Caucasian Exodus across the Atlantic.
They might have invented interesting musical genres that merge mainstream european music with their own more rhythm-focused music styles, but I really doubt any of them would have invented something that closely resembles early black music. Maybe one of them could have invented techno, but blues, jazz, soul, and blues-derived rock music as we know it? Very improbable. Music genres don’t spawn out of thin air.
The world would be a lot poorer without the music genres that spawned from the USA and UK, too. And most of those were only possible because people from Africa were (forcefully) brought to the USA.
Early humans already had mountain streams, which are refreshing as fuck in summer (or year round for the tropics, or winter for south africa). And Africa is actually pretty mountainous, it’s kind of an issue for infrastructure development.
I got a device from a competitor (the original company’s devices are >20€ nowadays). Worked great, too, but its longevity sucked - the next year, the ceramic plate didn’t get hot enough anymore, even with fresh batteries. Yet another example of “buy cheap, buy twice”.
One of those cocktail stirring spoons with a long, round handle. Makes stirring a glass full of ice extremely easier compared to normal spoon handles. In contrast, I found mixing glasses and cocktail shakers fairly optional (and those tend to be more expensive than $20 anyway if they’re decent quality).
IDK about you, but if I became a vampire, got 150 years old without visibly aging and recovered from severe wounds without medical assistance I would probably consider myself ‘immortal’.
Traditional search engines like Google can already do that, though.
I think there has been a certain amount of cultural change in the rightwing - used to be they just considered themselves the status quo upholders, the ones who were subversive were hippies, educated-but-not-rich city-dwellers, artists etc… Now that more progressive forces became somewhat mainstream and the rightwing radicalized, major parts of the rightwing have adopted a more subversive identity and messaging.
Alternative rock is fine.
In my language, ‘alternative’ is somewhat synonymous with ‘progressive’ (though we still have the bullshit meaning of ‘alternative facts’, ‘alternative medicine’). Is that not a thing in English, too? We rarely have an original thought when it comes to words like this.
I think your ideas here go into the right direction, but the confusing part for me is that many of the christians I know are so far below what you’d expect from a christian in these parts (which is already very little) - it’s not that they don’t give everything away to the poor, they’re doing (as far as I can tell) nothing - they don’t pray, they don’t go to church, and they don’t adhere to any of what the bible says they should do beyond maybe basic Golden Rule stuff. And it’s not even like most families would make a big deal out of it if you left the faith or even became fully atheist. Most do pay the church tax, though, which is about 1% of your gross income.
It’s certainly weird how many people say that they believe and then just … don’t do anything that their belief says they should do.
That’s potentially included in wishy-washy christianity. The important part is how they act on it. Though it certainly mystifies me how you can believe in that stuff and then act as if it doesn’t, but that’s kinda how people roll in my parts …
I wouldn’t get involved with someone deeply religious. I’d consider someone religious if they were sufficiently wishy-washy about it, though, e.g. people who are christian and believe in it at least enough to not call themselves atheists or agnostics but don’t really DO anything christian.
I never used social media that much and I can’t be bothered to hang around on Reddit in addition to Lemmy.
I vaguely remember someone saying that music is essentially brain massage. Pretty sure I got that from a sample used in a song.
Yeah, power can be abused, what else is new? But people joining for a cause also doesn’t do much if they don’t have the means to enforce their cause with violence - usually they’ll just get overwhelmed by whoever does have the means for violence. Peaceful revolutions are possible (e.g. Indian independence), but they require relatively specific circumstances and a lot of people who are willing to stay nonviolent even as they’re beaten up (and worse) by the police. I suppose you can do almost anything peacefully if your group is large enough and has enough cohesion, but that’s incredibly difficult to achieve and I think it’s actually more difficult nowadays, because everyone has a handheld communication device on them at all times that’s filled with fascist propaganda.
Can’t believe I’m quoting fucking Mao, but: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Arguably, being muscular is a male beauty standard. I would very much prefer it if men had more freedom of expression, though.
I did write that they came as slaves, but that’s not the necessary part. I’m starting to think that you just really want me to be racist, facts be damned.
Yeah, because american rock music already existed, and USA and UK have a long shared history. Inventing rock music without close personal proximity is much less likely, and inventing a style is one thing but popularizing it is quite another. It wouldn’t have gotten as popular in the USA and Europe if all the early blues and jazz musicians were in Africa.