Chip McDonald

.... and Mandrake? It's interesting to see how apparently both audiences were open minded enough to appreciate Ray Charles sandwiched between two psychedelic bands. I know there was a time when promoters thought in terms of trying to bring in 2 crowds with different acts; it seems Lollapallooza is the only event where that concept is tried today. And it seems successful (if infamously so right now - on topic). I can't think of any show off hand I think I've been to that is so "mixed genre", but there should be more "mini-pallooza"s. If we ever get past covid, that is.

I had a student do a gig saturday night, full house apparently. Another student texted me yesterday with the dates for 3 shows she's doing, "I know you won't come out because of covid, but anyhow". 103,000 new infections yesterday. 14% prevalence in Georgia. People in bands got sick and died last year when the rate was lower than now. Being vaccinated keeps you out of the hospital, but not from organ damage. And the 2 people I know that have it right now are military, physically fit, early 20s. And the World Champion Formula 1 race driver Lewis Hamilton, ultra fit athlete - who got covid at the end of last year - is having problems month later breathing, walking, bouts with blurred vision. I'm not doing gigs. When Eddie Van Halen died I had 2 different... organizations want me to play at tribute shows, and were aghast that I was "afraid of covid". I went to see a student do a small outdoor gig at a restaurant literally down the street from my house, back when the rate was at 10,000 infections a day - my target number - back in May. That was literally the only week it seemed partially, almost safe to venture out in public; low prevalence, vaccinated, no delta back then, outdoors, able to keep a distance from others. A number of musicians in town got the original strain last year, one went in the hospital. There were a number of spreader events where many people from clubs got infected; things that never found their way into the news, you'd only know from talking to people that work at the hospitals. I'm sure the same thing is happening now, but again it's not going to be a "known" thing. Clubs don't put out signs that say "last weekend 20 people tested positive". It would seem now the time has come to brag about having had it, and Been a Man and it not having bothered you much. "Aw man, everybody in the band's already had it, hahaha, it's no big deal!". The common misconception is that everyone is vaccinated, or is naturally immune "forever" because they've tested positive, so "it's over". Friends in Nashville, other places on the planet touring are maybe in denial; they seem to either be planning for things to be "normal" again, maybe "next week" - or they're actually in the logistics phase to tour. I don't see that happening, it's peculiar people are even spending money to go through the process right now. "I'm vaccinated!" is the mantra. Some of these people know better, but they're doing it anyway. A lot of hospitals in the CSRA/Central Savannah River Area, and I know at least 2 no longer have ICU beds open, and I think one is starting to set the tents back up today. I understand there are no beds open in a few states right now. The whole premise of doing gigs right now is insane.

The most surreal thing I recall from 9/11 was stepping outside my backdoor, to take a break from the surreality - only to find...Dead silence. It was so stark, I called my room mate to come outside, and said "isn't that strange?" and I just stood there. I wasn't sure he'd get my meaning, "listen... do you hear that?" "It's quiet" he said. A fairly cool day, no wind, no air conditioners, people inside not using leaf blowers, lawnmowers, nobody driving. And no airplanes. You don't realize that airplanes are always a low level rumble, cars a low level hum. We stood out there in the back yard, and it was dead silent. You *think* it's "silent" sometimes outside, but it's so constant that constant sub-58 db background you blend into thinking "wind sound, birds". Like walking onto the floor of an old-school Storyk-style tracking room. It was like that a bit during the lockdown; but that day was QUIET. I miss movie theaters not so much because of movies, but because of the simple experience of sitting in a super low noise floor damped THX room. Hearing someone whisper 30 rows back, stir the straw in their drink. Common, mundane sounds that are normally masked. / There *are* outdoor places I've been to that are silent, no planes or anything near, but.... you need Very Ultra Special Super Duper Permission to be there.

I would suspect he either was intimidated by true interest, or lost for not being able to navigate outside his experience. Being flexible and willing to work with an individual is key IMO, the Motivation Bank withdrawal should be respected. Whether it's the kid I've got right now that thinks "The Chicken" is a Jaco song and must learn that before anything else, or .... the dark times..... back when I had to figure out how to teach 10 year old girls how to play parts of songs from the "Frozen" sound track. Let me tell you, I have Bonus Points accrued from this one little girl, who I managed to get to play the melody to one of those songs on one string, tell me the names of the notes, keep her first finger down, coordinate alternate picking... she and her mother would sing along to it... "Ok Lauren, do you want to do another song now?" "YEAH!" "Ok, is there something you've been listening to lately that you like?" She rattles off the name of ANOTHER song from the Frozen sound track. Wonderful. She does that song, repeat: "what song would you like to do now?" - the NEXT song on the soundtrack. That went on for about 6-7 songs, months. From the Disney Frozen sound track. BUT - I managed to get her to start doing diads along with the melody, and to tell me whether it was a major third or a minor third, and to count offbeat accents. But man, that was brutal. My wife had knee replacement surgery at Emory Christmas week that year; during her procedure I went down to the cafeteria to get something to eat, and.... the hospital staff was having their Christmas party, and lo and behold, what was the theme of their Christmas party? FROZEN. Complete with people dressed up as characters from the movie. I had to hear Frozen Karaoke for an hour while I fed myself. But then, that's not the best part...... Seeing that knee replacement surgery is now "day surgery" (???) while the nurse pulls my wife out to the curb so I could go get my car and pick her up, my wife is in a wheelchair in the lobby, zonked out .... along with a woman dressed as princess Whatever from Frozen. My wife is still half anesthetized, and says "wow, I'm so drugged up, she looks EXACTLY LIKE A PRINCESS, it even looks like she has a tiara!". .................................................................... Your teacher could have been raging against a pre-conceived idea of what he expected you to eventually be. "He's capable, if he does this and this exactly like this he'll be a star!". Well, maybe, if it was 1892. But more than likely an inferiority complex I would think: "how dare someone think to do something I didn't outline first?". I face that a lot these days: "I tried practicing what you showed me, but I'm not sure I was getting anywhere with it. So I watched a video on it". "Ok, let me hear you play it..." "Well, I still can't play it... I didn't have a lot of time to practice this week" "........."

Well, I can't endorse the guy, but the reality is to be effective I've got to evaluate what you're capable of and what you know, and then figure out what you want to be able to do - because it's unbelievably all over the place. Then there is the wild card of figuring out *what you want to do but you don't know it yet*, the things that kinesthetically fun to play/rewarding, that will get you to "practice" more than you realize. Depends. A lot of what I do is try to figure out what the student *actually* listens to (which is something of a mystery for about half of my students.... a lot of times people say things they think *I* want to hear...). Because you play drums, I'd take that into account, but not knowing more that's too general of a question. Everyone's path is different. Optimizing it takes observation. Drumming can be broken down into limb independence, rudiments, and practice designed around that. The beauty of drums is that you CAN progress in a perfectly linear fashion; it's very logical. For a certain mindset it will click and snowball. The problem with guitar is that there are so many plateaus people hit, and the momentum gets easily broken. Back in the Old Days parents used to take their kids to the bank to open a savings account, to teach them about saving and earning interest. People have a finite amount of motivation in their "bank", learning drums can be like an old-days savings account that accrues interest, guitar is a checking account. People get wrecked in guitar lessons by teachers that expect the student to withdraw all of their "motivation money" at once. It's also why I was against Guitar Hero, it's like a Guitar Motivation credit card. I had a similar experience. I went from 11th grade being the Photography-Brainy Nerd Guy to 12th grade the Guy That Plays Van Halen with the Former Graduated Guys That Are Now Pro Musicians. The school band director came into homeroom the first day and pulled me out, asked me to audition for jazz band and suddenly I'm playing Duke Ellington. I make my students play to the recordings. The most important thing that's totally lost today thanks to the devaluation of music. It's also video game mentality: "I just barely cleared that level, on to the next!".

That's normal. There is no way of knowing what to teach otherwise; and without context there can't be structure. That's good as well IMO. Short cut fingerings aren't a good thing IMO, particularly at first. In an ideal world students would practice exactly what is assigned to them, but that basically never happens. I would wait and see what the guy does for the next few lessons; having a book or a "structure" with no context is a rip off IMO. If a Juilliard person teaches a private lesson, as if the student is somehow attending Juilliard, with the same mentality, it's not going to be effective. You can't provide structure with no context; going to Juilliard is a context, but not just taking lessons from someone who went there. Practicing drums is a different mentality than guitar. Drumming can be a very linear learning process up to a point. And it *requires* a fastidious approach to become "good". "Good" as a target on guitar is all over the place. As a teacher you've got to figure out what the student thinks is "good", or else they won't listen or do anything you say at all. And getting to "good" happens faster in the context of motivation. Exercises on guitar will not pay off like it does with drums. You want a teacher that can teach unstructured. If they can't think on their feet, figure out what you want to do, what your motivation and skill level is - and then plop a book in front of you (unless they wrote the book - and you're fine with that) - that's a warning IMO.

I would guess they're in their late teens/early 20s, so I don't think they'd care too much - even if I knew who they were. Ironically the first time I was about to jump the fence and say something to them last year, I stopped because some people came into their backyard, and knocked on their shed door. What I heard was: "hey you guys, we live next door, you sound great!" "Cool, we were afraid you were shutting us down!!!" Me: "hahahaha." We live in a Post-Weed Blower world. A peaceful residential outdoors audio environment can no longer be had. (having said that, we bought this place I'm at because it sets back "in the woods" in a almost-downtown residential neighborhood on about 3 acres. Out our "front door" are just trees and a swamp. You can almost think you're not near anybody when you don't hear people racing sport bikes on the freeway a mile away, or the leaf blowers, the rattle of infrasonic subs in cars (somebody on the other side of the block has a car that is so infrasonic objects rattle inside my house, but you don't actually hear anything).... then there are the birds that imitate car alarms, the giant fireworks display that goes off at the bottom of the hill at the stadium every weekend, the horrible marching band renditions of songs from the HS football stadium a block over, and... I swear, *the world wasn't this noisy when I was a kid!!!*. It's not Get Off My Lawn-ism - leaf blowers, sport bike racing, cars with subs, neighbors that don't care about bothering others, .... I grew up the same distance from another HS football stadium as a kid, maybe 10 miles from here, and I *never* heard the marching band (or the BASS PLAYER for the marching band, or the Rabid Yelling Throng). Now the "marching bands" have bass players and p.a. systems?

That's the funniest.. most aggravating part. They're playing mostly songs I used to play 20 years ago *when the songs were current* in a cover band! What more Life in the Matrix like it seems like maybe they've been listening to the new Stone Temple Pilots remaster of _Tiny Music from the Vatican_ , they're songs from the bonus tracks that STP apparently recorded at Club La Vela in Florida... ... which long ago, a student's cover band used to play those songs at for multi-week stays during Spring Break there - they'd get a really wild reception at the place. I'm sure when STP actually played there, they really, really went nuts - and now it's on an Official Recording. So now I'm getting to hear a rendition of those songs, maybe prodded by the "new" STP release? Hah. Basically the aforementioned student's cover band, that used to do the frat circuit in the 90's played the same set these guys in their late teens/early 20s are partially doing next door. Which is fine, I try to get my guitar students to NOT bypass the cover band experience, but ... yeah. ... you'll get no argument on that from me! They've got a singer. He *could* be ok, except they haven't got the message yet about maybe not having your singer do songs that he can't sing. He's passable on some songs, the STP stuff is a little too detailed for him to track pitch wise, but then they try to do ... is it called "Apache" by Audio Slave? He's NOT Chris Cornell. I'd be going next door and stealing a singer... He's ok, raw novice, except when yodeling over his register. I would guess they're about ... a year out from their First Gig. 2 years from getting some polish post-gigs. ... but I don't want to hear them while they're in training. Particularly since THAT'S MY DAY JOB.... ahrgh. That's what my wife wants me to do. Wheel the 4x12 to the back door. Maybe if covid wasn't around I'd knock on their shed door and go "hey, hand me the guitar, count off that song" but... it would probably make them mad I would guess, based on their attitude. I just remembered. When we first moved here 10 years ago, the nephew was "sort of" into skateboarding. A pre-irony was that (as an avid skater when I was a little kid to about .. 14) his father was building him a mini-half pipe ramp in the backyard, again right against the fence. I found it ... alienating. The kid must have been around 12-14. I'd come home from the office, and he'd be playing in their backyard while his dad was working on building the ramp. Now and then he'd come over and look on as his dad cut plywood and nailed. He wasn't even trying to help at all. Get off my lawn: "when I was 12 I BUILT and maintained MY OWN, not 4' mini, but 8-10' HALF PIPE". Frakking frak. I had to listen to the kid fakie back and forth a few times everyday, with his friends standing on top hanging out. Then that degenerated into - the harbinger of the apocalypse - riding the little ramp with ... with... SCOOTERS!!! "Scooters"???? "Chip, in the 21st century kids will ride skateboards with handlebars unironically"..... ... that went on for about a year, and then nothing until now. I remember thinking then "well, I can't complain about the ramp sound, my neighbors dealt with that for years" (not right outside their back door, mind you...) Ahrghh. "Ahrghh".

The problem there is that I live on a peculiar lot. Our house is about 1/4 mile back from an adjacent street, in the "center" of the block - not the street they're on. Our driveway is right on the other side of their fence - which is where their shed butts up against, and then there's our house. So where I'm sitting is about 30 feet from them, but they're about 100' from the road their house is on. Effectively speaking, we live in their "back yard". I'm not worried from that standpoint though, because if the police responded to a call by coming down our driveway, it would be pretty obvious they're too loud. They're over 70 db inside my house often, I can identify the songs they're playing and when the bass player is flamming with the kick from inside my kitchen. I mean, the absurdity of how loud they are in their little shed is kind of comical, they're playing at stage volume in probably a 10x10' box.

Over the fence, as the band took a break: "Hey, excuse me" (guy pretends to not hear me/know I'm there) "Hey EXCUSE ME..." "You guys have to turn down". (continues to ignore me). "YOU HAVE TO TURN DOWN" The guy finally looks over at me, and says "we're finished anyways". "You'll have to turn down the next time you practice" I tell him. "We've TRIED to be nice (mumble) (mumble) noise ordinance" .... ? His posture and tone of voice, I hate to say it, is.... pretty entitled. For no reason. "Do you know what decibels are? You're over 78 db inside my house." (Ignores me) "You've got to turn down. I don't want to hear Interstate Love Song inside my house unless I want to". Hmmm. Tried to be nice? He saunders off while the rest of his band exits their shed, ignoring me. When I've been in band situations like this, that's not how I/we handled it. I was going to tell the guy to just turn the bass eq down on the bass amp, try using Blastix/Hot Rods on the drums until 9 p.m. or so (when I'm not trying to do music on their side of the house). It would have been a great thing for many bands I've been in to have a free, residential practice room where the neighbor said "turn down until 9 p.m.". Now I'm guessing the next time I've got to call the cops on them. I'm going to try talking to his aunt again, but that didn't work before. What an ironic timeline I'm in....

Given what happened last year and is happening right now, this is patently offensive.

"Anti-science brigade" is not a political party. But partisan politics is *why the situation is so bad* and ignoring isn't going to make it go away. I disagree. Some people go whichever way the wind blows. They see the majority of those around them ignoring protocol, they will as well. When left alone, you're right, they won't educated themselves. When they realize there are plenty of people around them that has, they might change. But show them you're indifferent to their decision - *even though it affects everybody* - there is no social pressure to change. This is effectively about manners: is it or isn't it bad manners to blow your nose on your shirt, cough without covering your mouth, sneeze in someone's face? This is no different; some people, if allowed to, would not do any of those things if there is no social pressure to make it a norm. How has mask wearing in Japan become such a social norm? Is it because people coughing on trains was tolerated, nobody spoke out against sick people sneezing in crowds? It's not *socially* tolerated. Not wearing masks, not distancing, not getting vaccinated is *tolerated*, and that is why it's a problem. It changed in Korea after SARS. "Something" made people wear masks in other parts of Asia. A person can be drunk without harming you; there is social pressure not to drive drunk, in addition to laws. There is social pressure to use birth control. Smoking around others who are not is no longer considered acceptable - a perfect example of social behavior changing. I knew a guy years ago that insisted "nobody is telling me I can't smoke where I want to!!!". Very adamant about it. Does he still smoke in restaurants, standing next to strangers? No. It's not tolerated, *there was no question it would be tolerated*. It wasn't "don't say anything about the people smoking", or "the people smoking are a Particular Political Party, so you must not mention that". It wasn't accepted. We are accepting nonsense every time it's not addressed. "Now what?" asks for what we are going to do? The singular most important aspect of the pandemic IS the effect The Party That Shall Not Be Named has had on public health. People have, and are dying because of it. Is the answer to "now what?" "let others wreck what's left of the nation and public health, because we don't think *any* of them will change"? People *will* change. I've "converted" maybe a dozen hard core Unmentionable Party members to being anti-partisan, and I've gotten at least 3 people I know to get vaccinated, despite their Unmentionable Party affiliation. In the later cases, those 3 people each have spouses and children, as well as work with others. If I had just said "oh well, your leaders say the vaccine is no use and the virus a hoax" *they wouldn't have gotten vaccinated*.

As *albums*, the only ones I have wanted to listen to uninterrupted were _Revolver_ and _Sgt. Pepper_. My *song* preferences are on _Abbey Road_ and the _White Album_. Mostly because they are interspersed with songs that sound like *previous* eras, early era Beatles, that to me wrecks the stylistic flow/progression. Which is why _Revolver_ is on my list; as a step beyond _Rubber Soul_ there is no "looking back", it's just progressive and different throughout. Which is the side of the Beatles *I* like. I have no nostalgia for the nascent, primordial post-Carl Perkins/Elvis Beatles. While interesting, it's not my tastes. From the standpoint of "what album prior to 1966 had such a comprehensively individualistic, unique compilation of songs" _Revolver_ has no peer. _Pet Sounds_ is unique, but from song to song doesn't present as much *singular8 diversity as _Revolver_ does.

At this point I find it curious that, given the anti-science brigader's position being based on conspiracy theory based philosophy - "I don't trust the government to get vaccinated", "I don't trust pharma", "I don't trust Bill Gates ", "wearing masks are meant to make you accept LGBT ideas" (yes, I've seen that on Twitter) - it's all based on "theories". Yet amazingly, none of these people have considered the fact that *their demographic is being affected more than others*. Thanks to history-cleansing between about 1910 and right before WWII, the general public knows nothing of what the eugenics movement was, or what "Malthusian trap" means. This group has apparently failed to notice that the feeble minded, the less-caucasian, the unfortunate to be born into a 3rd world country, those not able to function in a shark-end stage capitalist society *are the ones that are, or will be, decimated by SARS-COV2*. They worship their Orange Jesus, who was fortunate enough to be flown to a hospital to receive world-class leading edge health care - while they do not have the access to good healthcare, and must pay lifestyle-changing amounts to gain access to poor, corporate-profiteering based "health care". They know nothing of the attitudes of scientists in chemical companies coming out of WWI into WWII, in all nations: if "they" wanted to do something, they're blind to the fact that THEY WOULD BE THE TARGET. Here's a fun conspiracy theory: if the Chinese Communist Party wanted to make a virus, to what aim would it be? The state that has gulags for ethnic minorities, prejudice against Tibet, a self-imposed financial scaling system against the poor, and incentives against breeding? ...and if there is a Malthusian bent among a certain group of science elitists - and Bill Gates - what would be their reasoning for making a vaccine *against the virus* that seemingly accomplishes THE GOALS THE ANTI-SCIENCE BRIGADE INSIST IS THE REASON THEY DON'T WANT TO GET VACCINATED? It's so very clever, THAT idea triggers my conspiracy theory mind. If there is a conspiracy theory in action, it would be that: "how can we lower the population? What would be a clever way to SELECTIVELY take out the median and sub-median I.Q.?". Which would be crazy-pills talk 20 years ago, but is just par for the course set today. Having seen how the ultra-clever thinking of Roger Ailes and his cohorts have not just figured out how to SELECTIVELY manipulate demographics for political gain, but that they obviously INTENDED to do so, based on morally bad positions - *why their ilk would not take the next step*?. You really don't care for poor people, dumb people, and you want to reduce the population? Seriously? Like CCP party members might think, or immoral political figures/cronies, oligarchs? SARS-COV2 fits the bill, when combined with a vaccine that only the intelligent and fortunate take. When taken in conjunction with the notion that a lab possibly made the virus, and was ostensibly supposed to be in existence to *stop* such a thing - there is no suspicion there. It's been flipped to *the thing that could potentially stop it, in the unlikely event that everybody had access and the will to take it*. Uhg, yuk. *That* makes sense unfortunately, in a world of sociopaths/psychopaths in power. But sure, back to our regularly scheduled pandemic....

For starters, from a literal standpoint that's complete garbage. What you seem to be alluding to is a theory put forth by Bret Weinstein. His "position" is that by being vaccinated, human immune systems are effectively challenging the virus to mutate further from the original strain, into more dangerous forms. WHY HE'S WRONG: 1) the more people are vaccinated, the less it spreads - reducing the iterations *allowing it to mutate*; 2) to not get vaccinated means allowing the R0 value to go well over 2, which results in millions more dead; 3) it ignores the further strategies of distancing, masking, quarantine and isolation, reducing the iterative count. 4) it presumes natural immunity will work - which, given the fact that people that have previously had it seem to be about 50% likely to get infected again months later, is a flawed premise. His "position" presumes the entire population is vaccinated, and will be intermixing biomes equally - as an alternate to the same thing happening without being vaccinated. Which is complete rubbish. If I'm wrong in the above, explain where. No, I am not impressed by his credentials, or his knack for verbal exposition on fringe science. The vaccines keep you from dying, and for delta at least 25% less likely to spread it. Which isn't great, but it's SIGNIFICANT. Can you cite your source? Also consider that even if that was factual, can you do the math on the statistical significance of 45,000 vs. 163 million people? Do you understand that effectively speaking you shouldn't be getting in a car, consuming anything with sugar, certainly not eating red meat, only breathing air that has gone through a HEPA filter, eating only certified organic food, among a plethora of other things that has a more significant statistical likelihood of harming you? Do you eat fried foods? Do you know what the Maillard reaction is? Do you know what acrylamide is? Do you eat french fries? Again: What is the % of the whole vaccinated population are you using as your reason for not getting vaccinated?

Placeholder: Yesterday I had 2 guitar students out with covid. One was short, texted "got virus think going hospital", the other one "don't feel like the lesson today, wife and I tested positive, out of breath walking around the house". The last time I got a brief "I'm in the hospital can't breathe" text I never heard from the guy again. Both in their early 20s, and physically fit - they're military. It's bizarre the military hasn't required the vaccine, because I'm quite sure the Navy had a problem with it crippling some ships last year, not to mention the generals and admirals that were debilitated with it. It's idiotic people are worried about Russian and Chinese hackers, when the virus could put the military completely out of commission. Given what I know of their non-existent vaccination program (basically, it was "if you want to get it you can"), attitudes, the U.S. Army could very quickly have a really bad problem. A true national security issue, ignored.

He's a bozo. In 2013 he's diagnosed with peripheral neuropathy, says playing guitar is "hard work". 2014 he says he's "looking at retirement" because he has "odd ailments". In 2016 he said "One thing I had to realize was that this particular condition I"m living with isn"t necessarily going to get better,' ...and now, 2021 he says the vaccine made him unable to play. Ridiculous. Does this mean he's doing a super-spreader tour? Maybe the vaccine cured him... Clapton reveals nerve damage that makes playing guitar hard work

The 11,000 number was being trotted out by anti-vaxxers by referencing VAERS, which is *why* I wrote it is a *report* tool* because it's not evidence of anything. I've wrote as such in either this thread or somewhere else here when someone else was referencing numbers from VAERS as being proof of something. In world war II, Great Britain had blackouts to make night bombing more difficult. Can you imagine if someone had said "no government is going to tell ME I can't turn on the lights if I want to read, or drive with my brights on." I literally told a variation of that to a student yesterday for the same reasons, except my example was making people turn off the lights on the West coast, to thwart a potential Japanese attack. In discussions with my father, who was a kid during WWII, there were a lot of subtle little things that was expected, whether it was the army going door to door collecting rubber - maybe the tires off of a car - or taking control of a factory to produce items needed. People went along with it in order to win the war. It made sense, nobody argued about it. Or spreading misinformation. Which is what people are doing with covid right now.

Yet somehow you, and many others, have come into the possession of The True Information. You are concerned about social media sites banning "alternate "news"" and "information"; which conflict with *actual, technically vetted sources*. Meanwhile I look at the CDC and Johns Hopkins websites just about everyday; sources that ARE collating ACTUAL data. I read studies published on the Lancet, Nature, a variety of journals based on ACTUAL data. I listen to (not terribly exciting) lectures by virologists, epidemiologists. I have a couple of friends that are epidemiologists, doctors, frontline nurses and p.a.s. I am still able to discuss the subject on a very technical level with these people, including my wife - a nuclear scientist that deals with statistics everyday - we have wonderfully exciting discussions at dinner about whether the P value or confidence interval of a study on ivermectin is good or not. My wife says "show me the numbers": and that doesn't mean something someone is *saying* on Facebook or Twitter. I'm not telling an epidemiologist friend "Dave Ruben says a whole city should have been killed if covid was real", or "VAERS says 11,000 people have died from the vaccine", "this Italian doctor says HCQ cures covid" because.... IT'S NOT FRAKKING REAL. IT'S NOT ACTUAL SCIENCE. IT'S G_A_R_B_A_G_E. *I'm* not going to be censored from talking about it. I'm still going to be able to say what I *think* will happen (and I've been spot on for the past year and half). I'm still going to be able to say "I think ivermectin helps at a certain point". *That I can't reTweet some oddball doctor somewhere that says drinking apple cider cures covid bothers me not at all*. THIS IS WAR. You don't get to spread information about allied forces to the enemy, or kneecap an effort to make things better. *VAERS is a reporting tool*. 11,000 out of how many million vaccinated, is what percentage? And you're claiming that matters how, more than the amount of people out of the same number as a sample set that would have died within 48 hours at any given time? "Any bar that asks to see my i.d. won't get my money". "Any car dealer that requires I show proof of insurance before driving the car off the lot won't get my money". "I'm not going fishing where I need a license". "I'm not getting my power from a company that requires my s.s. number", "any restaurant that requires socks and shoes won't get my money", ......

Probably, but from the standpoint of "quick and easy" if done right it would be.... convenient. Actually having a limited set of choices, but which are integrated would be a more practical process for me. It occurs to me a good YouTube video would be to have a couple of mixers take the same tracked sources of a rock song, and 1) mix it with all Waves CLA plugins (*and* triggering the CLA SSD4 expansion) 2) mix it with all Waves Abby Road plugins (and the Abby Road drum library) 3) mix it with EZ Mix 4) mix it with an all faux-Neve/API/70's "virtual" approach ..and do it with a time limitation.

What I was trying to convey is that for someone considering "upgrading" their $100 headphone mixing situation they're going to be thinking about Sonarworks probably first, and if they're in the $500 Beyer category they probably have a well treated room/"pro" monitors.

The selling angle is kind of off to me. In promo shots I see pictures of a console, ATCs - what I want from a virtual audio space is more confidence in mix decisions from a realistic environment, not necessarily the presentation of a faux ATC monitor. For those of us with severely hamstrung mixing environments, I would want to know "does this replicate the feel of being in a larger, accurate room?". Not knowing what *your* room is like means it could go both ways. If it doesn't seem better than your room - but your room is fairly large, fairly flat/treated, then to *me* that might be very useful since I don't have that. But from Steven's standpoint, he's got to be offering something that provides utility beyond my Peasant Income JBLs, which I think is probably his largest potential market for the product. Does flipping through the simulations provide confidence in what you're doing mix wise is actually translating, or does it just sound like eq/selective time offsets/phasing combinations? $500 is a curious price point IMO. At $100 it would start a conversation, "can it replace Sony/AKG240/Denon standards?" or "can it provide the next step from the KRK/JBL lsr305/Tannoy Reveal level monitors?". He's also got to conquer what seems to be the rage now - I've never tried it - Sonarworks. His potential demographic will be thinking "Try VSX, or spend half as much for Sonarworks?". Sonarworks is going to win. Does it inspire confidence? Does it provide more utility doing a mix with Sonarworks? Can it provide significant utility beyond a $300-400 set of monitors? / I sent him an email once, long ago, saying he needs to figure out how to sell *an entire studio* as a product. Which he's kind of done, but this wasn't what I was talking about. He (or someone) needs to sell integrated products whereby the drum sample ambience, guitar sim ambience, reverb/room sound IRs are integrated together, and then the control room provide the 1:1 mix environment *coupled to the faux-Neve/API/SSL/1176,LA2" experience. Integrate *all of it* into ONE grand VST for $500, so you don't have to go in and out of different plug ins, that would be great. And imminently possible IMO. Waves is tip toeing up to it with the CLA stuff, but it's not an integrated process (yet). Eventually someone will take the step to do it, the All In Studio Environment. Apple could do it, Waves, Steven. As it stands I basically use OmniChannel for most eq and compression, if Scheps would do an equivalent "studio ambience IR" plugin, an reverb plugin, integrated as well as OmniChannel.... and then those 2 integrated into one plugin... into a mix bus plugin that incorporates the Expected Processing integrated with a faux-control room... Integrating these disparate products is going to be the next big thing I think.

From the outset Pfizer had more attention. All of the complaints against Johnson and Johnson have been things that are at background case levels - or lower, AND Pfizer and Moderna had equal cases to turn up in original trials. That they were discounted in the trials - *because it's expected as background incidence* - but then blown out in the media, Pfizer and Moderna ignored, is corporate bias in action. And when it comes to needing actual information, like with the efficacy of J&J against delta, AND the response of mixing vaccines, there is ZERO info. But after diving online, I see that they've been mixing adeno vax with the mRNA in Canada and Spain from the outset. All they do is "report" the hype aspect. I'm not for censorship, but this is effectively a time of war. There were things you did not, could not do during WWII for example, in the press; in the present situation, we've allowed idiots and sociopaths free reign that has made the situation FAR WORSE because they've had a platform. It's a slippery slope to censor, it's crazy, but *we'll never get past this the way we're going*. Ever. It will continue to mutate, to more vax resistant forms, possibly more dangerous. I don't want to deal with this until I'm 70 and then killed by it. But that's what we're facing, because of "freedoms" that are effectively traitorous acts during war time. Novavax seems promising. If it's as effective against variants as hoped, I DON'T WANT THE JERKS RUINING IT FOR ME OR THE REST OF THE PLANET.

You don't get the "freedom" to be reckless with the health of other people. Hyperbolic fallacy. You have a drivers license. You have a social security number. You have various financial accounts. You are required to "show your papers" routinely in all aspects of life, and it's No Big Deal. Being able to show you're less likely to be infected, or infected and infect others, is completely as reasonable as having pass a test to drive a car to get something to show you're not going to hurt others. It doesn't impede you, doesn't hurt you, does not reduce your "freedom". I wish my mother could have had the opportunity, who died of "massive coagulation" literally on this day last year, to have had the vaccine. Smart guy. It never will, if people continue think as you do: blaming it on "people from the southern border", not willing to lockdown and consider masks an affront to your "freedom". Meanwhile in New Zealand they didn't have a problem with that, and live life almost as if covid never happened. But sure, argue about how important it is nobody tells YOU to lock down, and YOU don't have to wear a pansy MASK if YOU don't want to, and YOU go wherever you want unvaccinated around other people! These are important things to YOU, YOU have no fear of what you can't see! Nobody is going to tell YOU to take the vaccine! YOU are going to do as you damn well please!

Of course not! It's all of those teutonic Norwegians coming across the southern border that's to blame! Right, if we only tested everyone that came over the border like we test everyone that comes in on airplanes, or on ships! So I guess that means you're for mandatory testing and contact tracing of all Americans, and vaccination, to reduce infections? Or just the international people that come over the border? What you're missing is the concept that you lockdown to *keep people from mingling and spreading it*. It's already here, it wasn't Mexicans that made it spread, it was dumb 'Muricans. If we had a real lockdown, ala Australia/New Zealand *it would affect the migrant Mexican population the same as the rest*. Why would someone suggest your comment about people coming over the southern border was racist? I didn't say it was racist, did I?