Is that the instrumental? If so, yeah, it was good.

I actually haven’t listened to any other Zappa albums, but probably will at some point.

I love the titular track, so I was excited to listen to the whole thing, but I think I found it 30 years too late. I get he was trying to go Reefer Madness style with his Central Scrutinizer telling a parable of how rock music leads to self-destruction, but the jokes just fell flat for me.

Obviously the nice girl who ended up having to do wet t-shirt contests to get home, the gay prison sex, the robot sex, saying Africans don’t have record players, etc. were all supposed to be absurd, but it’s very 70s humor that nowadays feels more denigrating than biting satire. I also didn’t really get him corpsing in the voiceovers: I’m guessing it was supposed to be a reminder not to take the story seriously, but I personally found it distracting.

I did find it cool that he mixed solos from his live shows into his songs, but it wasn’t enough to save it for me. It’s like when you go back and watch older movies or tv shows, and suddenly something just blatantly racist or sexist just pops up and immediately dates it way more than the technical aspects do.

In short, it feels like Zappa is trying way too hard to be edgy, and it sucked the life out of the album for me. The opening song still slaps, though.

Joe’s Garage by Frank Zappa

Ok Computer by Radiohead

I’m still not sure if I liked Tommy by The Who or not.

He’s 83 years old, older than both Trump and Biden.

I’d like to see AOC throw her hat in for 2028. She’ll be 39 then.

The Senate does not have a filibuster-proof majority. They could potentially end the filibuster, but given that it’s the Republicans’ favorite tactic, there’s a decent chance they might not. Especially since the less extreme Republicans can use it as an excuse to let bills they don’t like die without having to vote against the.

The House margin is likely to be thin enough that the moderate Republicans will vote down the crazies. So even if the Senate ends the filibuster, the most egregiously stupid laws should still be stoppable.

Trump still has the ability to do a lot of damage, and he probably will. But if the Republicans piss off people too quickly, they’re likely to tank in 2026, with there being a decent chance to turn both the House and Senate blue and lame duck Trump for the rest of his presidency.

It’s going to be rough, but do not abandon hope.

God damn it, won’t Harris stop trying to transition everyone already? First literally every school child and immigrant, now shitty presidents! /s

Climate change isn’t permanent. It has changed before and will change again. This will all sort itself out in the next several million years, you’ll see.

When it’s all counted, he will likely have about the same amount as he did last time.

It’s not that people voted for Trump, it’s that people didn’t vote for Harris.

Because the objective, non-partisan facts suggest the economy is doing well.

We just got the answer to that question yesterday.

Trump got about the same amount of votes as he did in 2020. Harris got about 16 million less than Biden did.

It’s less that voters changed their mind and more that millions of voters will show up and vote Democrat when they care and stay home when they don’t.

Started using it today, it recommended Green Onions. Very nice album and I likely wouldn’t have listened to it otherwise.

Kerbal Space Program (with mods) and Assassins Creed Mirage.

Is it universal that pro-lifers only make exception if the life of the person carrying the pregnancy is in danger? I’ve seen pro-lifers who make exception for rape and incest, and others who would advocate banning it in all instances, even when the life of both is at risk.

It ultimately is religious belief.

Religious people believe the soul enters the body at conception, granting personhood, so abortion is murder. They also believe that people put to death will go before God, where they will be judged as evil and sent to Hell for eternal punishment.

Everything else is just window dressing.

Clear and simple makes things easy, but easy is not always better. Also, the “life begins at conception” position only seems clear on the surface, but if you look deep enough things get quite muddled.

For example, is a zygote a single person? What if it later divides and becomes twins or triplets: did the twin’s life begin at conception? Did one life become two? Is a zygote a ball of life that can become one or more people?

What about miscarriages? It’s thought as many as half of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, but most happen so early that the carrier is not even aware they’re pregnant. If you come across a family with four kids, do you assume they likely had another 3-4 lost lives via miscarriage and hold a funeral for them?

Should people start getting child tax benefits as soon as they have a positive pregnancy test? Or is “life starts at conception” only relevant when we’re talking about abortion, but conveniently ignored everywhere else?

And what if there is a complication with pregnancy, where if an abortion is not performed both the carrier and developing human will likely die, but if an abortion is performed only the developing human will likely die? Is it now permissible? What if the carrier is a 14 year old who was raped, is suicidal, and has a high chance of stabbing themselves in the abdomen to try to self-abort if they’re not able to get an abortion: should they be restrained in a padded room until the baby is born, forced to serve as an incubator for a baby that the state will then take?

Even when your cutoff is strict, it is not always “clear” because this is a complex issue without a clear answer.

But to answer your question specifically:

Pro-choice people generally recognize that abortion is not desirable, but disagree exactly what the rules should be. Abortion does the least harm when the pregnancy is a single cell (zygote,) and in the embryo stage where most abortions occur the developing human is essentially a collection of multiple cell lines becoming differentiated into tissue but not yet developing functional organs (you’ll often hear this called “a clump of cells.”)

As the embryo develops into a fetus, the heart and brain develop and start functioning, which is where some pro-choice people start to draw a line. Others point toward viability: at about 22 weeks, a few fetuses have been known to survive with extraordinary health measures. By 36 weeks, fetuses can be live born without any extra health issues from being born early. So starting about 20 weeks, we start to recognize that pregnancies become more and more viable: that’s where a lot of people draw the line.

A very small percentage of abortions are done late in pregnancy, typically for health reasons. Not all pro-choice people are in favor of legalizing this, but many feel that in these situations, abortion is a tough decision that is best made by a patient in a careful discussion with their doctor, not by a politician they will never meet. So while these pro-choice people may not wish to see an abortion performed within a week or two of natural birth, they do not want to outlaw it so that the option is there for people who truly need it.

What do you mean by that? You’re an anti-natalist?

Gattaca was taking a lot of license for the sake of the movie. A lot of diseases are multifactorial and while genes might play a role, they’re not the only factor and often not even the main factor. The movie ignored things like epigenetics, early life exposures, lifestyle, age, sex, and just plain variance that are all factors that can play into chronic diseases.

That being said, allowing parents to make decisions based on genetic testing isn’t itself eugenics. Eugenics is a top-level idea revolving around the idea of improving the quality of human genetics as a whole. And that requires an institutional judgement of what are good quality genes and bad quality genes, which necessitates us saying some people are better quality than others and opens up the door to racism/homophobia/transphobia/ableism/etc. Eugenics is always bad, while personal medical decisions based on genetics can be reasonable.

Old Fashioned. It’s one with a huge variation in flavor from bar to bar, so it’s always interesting to see how they do it.

Jason Alexander