Yeah

Happy Halloween.

Speaker

I am going to suggest you read this interview with John Boehner.

There is some insight to the machinations inside our capitol, first hand accounts, that are beyond the typical curated speaking point that swirl around it.
There is also context from his friends and some foes.
Some thought of his place in history, as well...

...The triumph of John Boehner is that he achieved reform and ascended to the speakership and often rose above the uncompromising dogma of both parties; the tragedy is that he came to Congress an insurgent only to be swallowed by the insurgency...

I know, John Boehner...

You don't have to read it.
What else have you got going on though?


That link, again.

M H

I have always had a thing for these Hailwood bikes.

This one certainly pushes some buttons...




There is a whole write up, with more pictures, over here.

The Doors

Don't even hesitate...

Bjark

I am pretty sure this is a dog dressed up as Bjork, that time Bjork wore the swan dress.


I just thought you should see this...

Impala

How about some of this action?

Slippery Slopes

An article covering a gathering of political scientists and theorists sounds fun, right?

I meant to link to this Vox bit before, but instead just went on living my life without thinking of posting something for you...

Basically, this poli-sci convention was kind of a downer.
Lots of scholarly types thinking total bummer stuff about the state of democracy in America...

Stuff like this-

Nancy Bermeo, a politics professor at Princeton and Harvard, began her talk with a jarring reminder: Democracies don’t merely collapse, as that “implies a process devoid of will.” Democracies die because of deliberate decisions made by human beings. 

Usually, it’s because the people in power take democratic institutions for granted. They become disconnected from the citizenry. They develop interests separate and apart from the voters. They push policies that benefit themselves and harm the broader population. Do that long enough, Bermeo says, and you’ll cultivate an angry, divided society that pulls apart at the seams.

I do think the story is worth a few minutes, if you have a few to spare.

There is a particularly interesting bit about the function of time in the language of campaigning/politics...
If you go for that sort of thing.


Link, again.

Africa Twin

There is some dissonance when reading Africa Twin and looking at this motorcycle, huh?


I know.

This was put together by Ron Wood, to run on the big tracks, I guess.
Using that Honda mill, instead of the more standard options.

Huh...

False Flag

Probably just a false flag produced by the failing liberal media...


But somebody snapped a pick of some patriotic football fan sitting on the flag.

Like a picnic blanket.
While wearing a shirt saying they stand for the anthem.
And drinking beer with a straw.


Sure, it's all about showing respect, supporting troops...
All of that stuff.

Sure it is.




There is almost an article on this, over here.

Heavy

So heavy, man...

Diversion

I mean, things are kinda fuckered these days...
We all know that.


Let's just take a moment to ignore all of that stuff...
And watch some tiny goats with cowboy hats run around, doing goat stuff.

Doesn't that help?

Farkles

Got all the cool things for your bike?

The do-dads.

Audio, accessory mounts, exhaust, power outlets, extra lights?
You only think you have it all...


You probably didn't even think about pontoons, did you?

Motherfucking pontoon-bike, yo.

Ooh Horsey

Fall

It's gone all fall here...

A few warm days still seem to be mixing in, but things get down to freezing at night.
The chill kinda caught me last night.  Letting me know it was moving in for a while.

Did the random pumpkin farm adventure.  Very family friendly style adventure, I guess...
With a clear few of Smith Rock, to remind me of where I am.
Seasonal gourds have been applied to the front porch here...

Folks here still run the lawn sprinklers, in spite of the cold nights.
The whole desert thing, you know...
Which can lead to some slippery bits of sidewalk on the morning dog walk.

A bit of training for the next change of seasons here, I guess...

Merc

Car post...

Look, a picture of a car.

Errors

It is October baseball time...

The big games.
Honestly, I haven't really paid much attention this year to the sport.
Too many other priorities.

There is even a little summer college league team that plays here.
Didn't catch a single game.

Anyway, enough about me and my baseball watching habits...

The New Yorker ran this interesting article on errors in baseball.

Baseball has another vision. It is a spectacle of fairness as well as of accomplishment. What are we watching when we watch a game of baseball? We are witnessing the progression of a struggle toward an outcome through which the skill and power of the players and the team can be expressed, like in any sport, but we are also watching the lines of a moral universe being demarcated in a game played, uniquely, without time. The error declares that might is not always right, that win and loss is an insufficient measure of the experience of human contest. The error belongs to the moral dimension of American life—a highly systematic, entirely futile effort to imagine the terms of a perfect world inside even so minor a forum as the official rulebook of a boys’ game.

You could probably skip it if you are not a fan, but I found it worth a read...

Samples

How about sampling 1500 different styles of music?

Is that something you would like to do?

Well, head over here, to EveryNoiseAtOnce.


They describe things like this:

This is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the musical genre-space, based on data tracked and analyzed for 1536 genres by Spotify. The calibration is fuzzy, but in general down is more organic, up is more mechanical and electric; left is denser and more atmospheric, right is spikier and bouncier.

Jump right in that time hole...

Costume

Halloween costume...

The skeleboner.
With inflating phallus.


I mean, c'mon people...