J-Dake comments

*All popular songwriters, artists and popular groups from the past 40 years, none necessarily “rock” but still deserving honorees for induction into a “Popular Music Hall of Fame”:*

Pat Benetar was most definitely and necessarily “rock”.

but I agree with the sentiment

cornerstones of the genre itself (MC5 and Link Wray) still can’t get a bone while pappy shlock like Carly Simon and Lionel Richie saunter in with their adult contemporary sounds. The rock hall is a bigger joke than even the Grammys are

Forced tattoo coverings like armbands and stickers.

Some of our posters seem to be hinting at that.

I think they need to consider what freedom of speech means if they do.

I wonder sometimes whether people are struggling with what it really means to be a member of an active democracy. It has been a while since we have had such hard lines drawn with people taking up their causes en masse in a very vocal way in the West. It is understandably hard to deal with on an emotional and political level. For me, I think we have to put up with uninformed mouth pieces like Rogan and Trump (not comparing them politically just as examples of ppl who say controversial, factually suspect thing on a large platform) for the greater goal of freedom of speech. Ultimately, hopefully everything is an excuse for a conversation and an opportunity to learn. But the ability to protest by opting out is as essential as Rogan’s right to express his opinions. They must coexist along with a free press charged with reporting facts and access to that info for all classes for it to work at all

Does nobody use dictionaries anymore? Look up censorship - the definition does not require government. Too many of the left don't understand these words, or confuse them. Listen to your own recently anti-free speech ACLU:

"Censorship, the suppression of words, images, or ideas that are "offensive," happens whenever some people succeed in imposing their personal political or moral values on others. Censorship can be carried out by the government as well as private pressure groups."

When you quote something it is customary to include your source. Here is Cambridge dictionary’s definition:

”a system in which an authority limits the ideas that people are allowed to expressand prevents books, films, works of art, documents, or other kinds of communication from being seen or made available to the public, because they include or support certain ideas: 

Civil libertarians say that the ruling amountsto censorship.”

It doesn’t come out and define “system” or “authority” but I think you can probably figure that out for yourself. People saying “if you include him on your platform you can exclude me” would be a pretty egregious reading of “censorship” to me. Are you saying that Neil Young shouldn’t have the right quit a company he disagrees with ethically? Because that is what this really amounts to.

for the record i am against censorship and don’t think rogan should be censored. He should be taken on directly and exposed as the clown he is for all to see

The attempt to cancel him backfired as should all attempts at censorship

This is not censorship Bronco. Censorship is when the government silences people. When it is the will of the people changing public and/or private policy that is democracy working how it was intended.

Ultimately Spotify has the right to make this decision. In a totalitarian state where censorship is used to maintain power it would not be.

Gender is decided by chromosomes, not by what a person feels they "identify as."

No, “sex” is decided by chromosomes. Gender is engendered (by a myriad of experiences and influences). It’s not solely what a person identifies as but that is certainly a part of it. You were perhaps born a male or female but for the most part you learned the behavior of a man or a woman and/or anything in between or adjacent.

Give him 15 years at a jail for adults and treat him like the adult he deserves to be judged

Or maybe give him some help??? He is 14 years old. I doubt he is hopeless. It may be an extreme call but the image painted seems to one of that crying for help. My initial reaction anyway. For whatever that’s worth

Shouldn't that read adopted daughter?

No, why on earth should it (even if it WERE true)? Parenthood has absolutely nothing to do with delivering a baby. They are 2 separate things. I wouldn’t ask you to introduce yourself as “pseudo-human” would I?

Suitably ominous and doomy picture

This smells staged to me. Hard to believe that both this recording slipped out of Cruise’s fort knox Scientology-fortified publicity cadre AND that Tom is thinking about other people’s troubles. A rant would be easy enough to swallow though. Sounds like a free publicity move to me. Maybe I’m just cynical?

The great thing about that first date filter is you really only lose the wrong women.

Sorry but the bus was turning left in an intersection. Yes, it is absolutely reasonable that the driver should be alert and making sure no one is in the path of the bus. Whether the kid was walking, crawling, or riding his bike it was the driver’s responsibility to make sure the crossing was clear and not on the kid, even if he was erroneously riding.

Having said that, I do not know precisely what happened in this exact incident. But one thing is absolutely clear to me, far too many driver’s in Japan do not respect the damage their vehicles can do. The amount of times drivers have whisked through zebra crossings one after another while I have been clearly standing and waiting to cross far out umber the times cars have actually stopped without me having to insist. And it doesn’t seem to matter a lick whether I’m standing with 2 young children or not.

Moderator: The bus was turning right, not left.

Just avoiding them and not thinking about them should be enough.

Oh yes, the ostrich technique. That old chestnut.

*just to allow a bicycle to pass

Can I have links establishing the credibility of those six supposed "facts"?

Somehow I doubt it because he is confusing "facts" with emotionally inspired wild speculation.

Are you suggesting that bicyclists pay fuel tax too Bjorn?

I'm willing to pay taxes to ride my bike if car owners are willing to pay a destroying the earth tax. Sign me up today!

Interestingly I have had the exact opposite experience as you. I find that most riders don;t ride dangerously at all. You see the odd person driving too fast and recklessly but for the most part I think bicycle riders impose far less on the average pedestrian than motor vehicle riders. I've never had to duck into a driveway in Tokyo just to allow a car to pass for example.

And the bells, yeah they are there so that we don't crash into you when you walk on the bike path. As far as I understand they were not invented nor are used primarily for annoying Bjorn.

I am all for designated bike lanes, if as many cyclist keep saying and demanding equal access and rights then great. But with that equality I hope they also expect to be equally taxed yearly for owning a bicycle, have proper licensing such as driver's license and license plates, be required to purchase yearly liability insurance, and of course follow all road regulations. No going the wrong way on a one way street, no breezing through stop signs, etc... Equality on the roads mean equality in responsibility. In all discussions on this subject nearly every pro cycling person totally object to having equal responsibility especially training, licenses, yearly taxes and insurance.

@Antiquesaving

Some of those things are already in the woks in case you haven't been following the news. I am for all of those things besides equal taxation (bikes do not cause nearly as much deterioration of roads, are hugely less taxing on the environment, less dangerous etc.). I would be fine for the licensing and all (if I was provided with a safe place on the road to ride of course) but I would imagine the cost vs. benefit of such an enterprise may not be worth it overall. In Tokyo, almost without fail, you cannot find a city block where cars aren't parked in what is I guess supposed to be a bike lane. I try to ride with traffic in the bike lane every day but eventually always have to choose between merging with live car traffic which is of course unsafe and would bother all of the important car people with important places to go, or hop onto the sidewalk with people staring at their phones. I personally see far more dangerous motor vehicle driving on a daily basis than bicycle riding. Ultimately bike riders better treatment and consideration for not imposing themselves on the planet like car owners. In any environment where the earth is actually given the respect it deserves and climate change is taken seriously (ie not likely a car producing country) people would actually be encouraged to ride bicycles instead of riding machines that are too large for the roads they are ridden on (in Tokyo) and which damage the prospect for future life on this planet.

Maybe start with making actual bike lanes that one can actually ride in without being killed by motorists. Secondly, perhaps make it illegal and actually enforce a ban on cars parking in said lanes. Before you start making ringing bells illegal (it is actually as important as a car’s horn) you may want to sort out exactly where in these cities a bicyclist is supposed to legally ride. Even police don’t seem to know. I’ve been told by police in the same place to variously ride on the street AND on the sidewalk. Only a country that produces this many earth killing oil suckers (cars) would make it this difficult to be a responsible citizen of earth and avoid transportation by motor.

Who escalated the situation? Police officer talks to five people. One moron threatens to break the officer's jaw. Officer arrests the moron who escalated the situation from a conversation to a verbal threat. Threatening to break anyone's jaw is against the law. Threatening to break a police officer's jaw is also against the law. You (not "you") are now under arrest. You can come along quietly, or you can chose to resist arrest. Your choice.

The police officer escalated the situation from a verbal confrontation to a physical one by tripping him and sending his face into the pavement. He put his hand behind his back and then kicked his legs out from under him causing him to land on his face. He didn't resist. He was in a cuff-able position when the officer assaulted him. Did you actually watch the video?

I agree he should be arrested for threatening someone (not just a police officer) with violence. I disagree that he should be assaulted for words. It was the officer who turned this physical and not the mouthy yet unarmed minor. The cop should be charged with assault as fa as I'm concerned.

The odds were 5 to 1, and a young thug made the decidedly poor choice of threatened to break the police officer's jaw.

If the odds were so bad you would wonder why the cop would want to escalate the situation to actual violence the way he did.

If I threatened to break a cop's jaw, then I would expect to be taken down and arrested as well.

Arrested, sure. It was a threat. Have your face smashed into the ground though? That is excessive force against an unarmed minor. That much was easy to see in the video. The police created the actual violence in this situation.

And why should it bother them?

Agree completely kohakuebisu and well stated. The Unplugged series has aged horribly. It wasn’t even truly “unplugged” for the most part. Most bands didn’t even bother to rearrange their songs so what you effectively got was deadended versions of once electric songs and they mostly didn’t work because the arrangements were never meant for acoustic.

As to Bass4funk’s comment, “grunge” was a fashion movement; not a musical one anyway. The whole pacific NW post-punk scene was kind of actually dead by 1994. Whatever the media was matching onto wasn’t even really there by then. The mainstream was humping a ghost. Most bands had moved beyond whatever sound the media had identified as “grunge”. All you need to do is listen to the most popular bands’ records In 1994. None of them really fit that formula besides maybe Mudhoney

@ebisen I'm curious. Why do you think they were past their peak? They'd only made 3 studio records and a handful of singles with their last record (not Unplugged) arguably being their most artistically interesting. Both at the time and in hindsight I'd say they were still on the incline. I would agree though that the MTV sessions were far from career defining.

Didn't he die during the Vietnam War?

I think you might be confusing him with the USA itself

@OnTheTrail. You should get those ears to a doctor. That sounds serious.

The postal group needs to cut as many rank and file employees as possible in order for their shareholders to have a nicer cut of steak and smoke a finer brand of cigar because that is how privatization works. There, fixed it.

So the story continues. She started a party to pull away electable candidates from the only party able to stand a chance against the LDP a few years back and then went on to torpedo the party before the election. At the time I said she would be paid back by the LDP for her deeds of collusion and here is a taste of that payback. She is as dirty as they come. This is democracy in Nippon.

That rug is getting awfully lumpy sir

Preparing for the Olympics to go ahead as planned is only as logical as preparing to delay or cancel if needed. Failing to do both at an uncertain time like this is just willfully ignorant or naive. In either case, it this is simply poor leadership (if we are to take their their words to be sincere).

Rook takes out pawn and the spectators yawn