In my last entry I was also going to mention how I’d seen a couple of people mention recently getting the Walrus Slöer and praising it. I’ve been curious about the original Slö for quite some time, and Slöer even more so since it’s stereo and can be downsampled a bit. And having picked up Hypnosis after last Knobcon and making a spot for it (both interface routings and desk space), there’s a natural place for a stereo pedal to go.
On further review though… nah. The software reverbs that I have are doing a bang-up job at the exact role that the pedal has. I don’t feel like the clock rate control goes far enough into lo-fi territory to be really exciting.
Speaking of exciting. US political news over the past couple of weeks has been a hell of a rollercoaster. I didn’t much like the rumbling over whether Biden should drop out of the race, but now that he has, I think things are looking up.
People are actually uniting behind Kamala Harris — not just the party establishment centrists, not just the Squad, not just Black people or women, not just labor unions, but basically anyone who would ever consider voting Democratic anyway. Record-breaking funding with 60% of it coming from first-time donors.
Yes, in 2020 we were saying “Kamala is a cop and all cops are bastards.” Wouldn’t I rather have someone more progressive/leftist on the ticket? That’d be ideal, but let’s run with what we have.
- Bernie is too old (82) and part of the renewed energy right now is getting someone younger on the ticket.
- Elizabeth Warren is also getting up there (75)
- Ilhan Omar was born in Somalia, so she doesn’t qualify.
- AOC is slightly too young to qualify (34) and needs more experience.
- Cori Bush (49) also needs more experience IMHO. Plus she is currently under heavy attack from her competitor Wesley Bell, for doing exactly what we elected her to do (light fires under slower Democrats to make positive change happen). This is not the right year for her to run for VP.
I also read a bit about how Harris wound up as a prosecutor. Her parents met in a study group that led to the rise of the Black Power movement; it’s not like she grew up wanting to keep other people down. Rather, she wanted to get in and effect change from the inside, to change the balance. I’m not sure what I think of that story, but I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt.
One of the criticisms a lot of people rightly have against Biden is his stance on Israel/Palestine. Harris apparently wants to pressure Israel to stop doing a genocide, supports humanitarian aid for Palestine, and is going to kick out some of Biden’s appointees who have been so pro-Israel on this.
I’d like someone more on the left but this actually looks like a step in the right direction, a possible starting point for a real shift.
So yeah. I’ve gone from “I will hold my nose and vote for Biden because the alternative is horrible” to “I’m actually pretty glad to be able to vote for Harris.”
(Right now. Something might ruin that. I was pretty excited for Obama’s first term, buying into the entire Hope thing… and that kind of shifted toward “he’s not actually that progressive” by the time the election came around. For his second term I voted Green instead. But where I stand now, Harris looks like an actual decent choice and not just a lesser evil.)