When Social-Media Blocking Goes Political

I’ve talked about free speech often in the past. I even said, quite recently and quite angrily, that getting blocked on social media is not a violation of your free speech.

However… it would appear that some Twitter users have found an exception… and I’m not sure I can think up an argument against this…

President Donald Trump may be the nation’s tweeter-in-chief, but some Twitter users say he’s violating the First Amendment by blocking people from his feed after they posted scornful comments.

Lawyers for two Twitter users sent the White House a letter Tuesday demanding they be un-blocked from the Republican president’s @realDonaldTrump account.

“The viewpoint-based blocking of our clients is unconstitutional,” wrote attorneys at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University in New York.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Great Guitar Solos – Glen Campbell and Carl Jackson Play Dueling Banjos in 1973

Well, technically, guitar and banjo, but still…

I decided to include this, but I didn’t want to go for the clip from Deliverance because that would be too obvious and pretty much everyone’s seen it.

Instead, I want to highlight this performance from 1973. It features Carl Jackson on banjo and Glen Campbell on acoustic guitar, and it’s really, really good.

I’ve always enjoyed the song (no, I haven’t seen the movie, and I honestly don’t want to; that’s not a judgement call or anything, I’m just not interested), though sadly never really tried to play it because I’m really a terrible finger-picker (although hopefully that’ll be changing as I start learning Bron-Y-Aur Stomp).

Anyways… since this is an instrumental, just listen to, and watch the whole thing…

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So This is Why Alamo Drafthouse is Doing a Women’s-Only Showing of Wonder Woman…

h/t PZ Myers

This is likely what all those people angry that Alamo Drafthouse will be doing women-only showings of Wonder Woman on opening night believe is actually going to happen

We at the Alamo Drafthouse would like to officially apologize for our role in the end of mankind as we knew it, and the ascendant Gynocracy that followed. We didn’t know our women-only screening of Wonder Woman would result in the overthrow of all world governments and the total subjugation of men, but in hindsight we probably should have seen it coming.

“Why can’t women have one night to enjoy a character that’s meant so much to them over the years?” asked the Shadowy Figure. The woman came into our offices in a cloak as black as the grave, followed by three wild-looking dogs. Her voice had no age, or every age, it was hard to tell. Sometimes it sounded like more than one woman was talking. The Shadowy Figure made good points about Representation Mattering and Safe Spaces as she idly flicked raw flesh to her dogs. Around her swirled plumes of sickly sweet incense from a source unknown, but this is Austin, so we figured she was just keeping it weird. How naive we were.

About halfway into the film, Gal Gadot put down her sword and shield and turned to the camera.

“Who has hurt you?” she asked. “Who denied you, violated your person? Who has defiled your temple? Name them now.”

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Keyser Soze’s Reveal

I’ve decided to drop “Self Care” from the titles of these posts. It’ll still be a category and in the tags; they’re still Self Care posts.

This is one of the greatest endings of one of the greatest movies ever made. Obviously, spoilers for The Usual Suspects, but this movie’s been out for 22 years. I think we’re well past the point where spoilers matter… and yet I’m still gonna put it below the fold… (there is a bit of ableism in this clip, BTW… and no, we’re not debating that)

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Self Care – Great Guitar (and Bass Guitar) Solos: Jeff Beck and Tal Wilkenfeld Play ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers live at the 2007 Crossroads Festival

I’m showing you this for two reasons:

1. Jeff Beck is amazing.

2. Tal Wilkenfeld is a phenomenal bass guitarist that more people need to know.

This one is an instrumental, so it’s mostly Jeff Beck playing an incredible guitar solo. But do not miss Tal Wilkenfeld’s incredible bass guitar solo, starting at 1:34 and ending at 2:27.

If you don’t know about Tal Wilkenfeld, please check her out. She’s incredible. I might actually bend the rules* of my GGS series to show you some of Tal’s solo work, as well. She’s definitely worth it.

*You could definitely argue that bass guitar solos count as guitar solos, and you would not be wrong. And in that case, I wouldn’t be bending the rules at all. In fact, now that I think about it, I never actually established any rules for the series, so… how about this! Any solo on a stringed instrument played with a pick or fingers, a slide, etc counts. This would rule out violin/fiddle solos (for example), but would include sitars, mandolins, banjos, lap steel guitars, and other such instruments. What do you think?