Ha, speaking of minimum wage and exploitation of labour, I'm just coming to the end of my first listening of Panopticon's Kentucky. Quite overwhelming as a listen, with all that's going on, but damn, my first impressions are *very* positive. There's an awesome, epic sweep to some of the black metal sections (particularly the closing of Black Soot and Red Blood) and I really love the folky and bluegrass elements: they're quite organically integrated in places, but I also like how they're centre-stage in songs in their own right as well. The lyrical concept is cool too. Don't know much about US history (beyond the battles / presidents) so it's interesting to get some perspective into elements of working class history. Going to spin this at least once more tonight I think.

Spewtilator got a shout-out from Invisible Oranges:
https://twitter.com/invisoranges/status ... 4744258560

Pretty cool, dontlivefastjustdie!

It's a fantastic album. Check out Appalachian Terror Unit from West Virginia, those two releasing a split together is a cool idea and I'm honestly surprised it hasn't happened yet.

Oh and more "Blackgrass"

Toronto M-Aers, anyone willing to host me for next week-end? I'm tiny and quiet, just need a place to sleep.
Yes, I'm serious. PM me if you're willing to help.

I wouldn't be getting out of bed for this shit. How the hell do you live off that?

By eating chip assortment party packs, lots of grits/crackers/oatmeal/noodle cups and water, occasionally having some gummies for a treat.

ed: also, Crushed .. I'm slowly closing in on $20/hr after working at my job for nigh on 8 years. And it's intermittent work. Rent around here is rapidly approaching retarded. We got a good spot just ahead of when rents started ramping really bad, so we're keeping ahead, but it's mainly because we're frugal homebodies with inexpensive life styles. It would be nice to have more fun, though. The mutual oribiter makes a bit more and works full time. Compiling our savings is slow going.

You can't. That's the problem. As Napero said earlier, $9.00/hr for 40 hours a week, every single week of the year, is only $16,000. Now factor in taxes, various monthly payments like car insurance, gas every week or so, food, plus whatever other stuff you add in there, and you see my point.

And as I said before, it is mind boggling how worthless the minimum wage is these days. The minimum wage when my father was 5 years old in the 60s had more worth than the minimum wage does in 2014. That's America for you.

14 year old kids working at Mcdonalds here in Oz are making about $8/hr, and goes up from there. In my company, our lowest paid workers are on $23/hr, and casuals earn $25/hr. Still could be more though, as that works out well for me (who is paid much more)

Pretty sure the minimum wage in the '90s was like $5-something an hour. I couldn't even imagine. I make about $13 an hour and I've been at my place of employment since 2006 (part time, admittedly).

Not just America but most western countries. For the low paid things are going backwards - like the cost of affordable housing.

No matter how you look at it, giving more money to the people with the lowest income makes immensely more sense from the macro-scale economy point of view than giving any tax breaks or increases or whatever to the high income people. Where the latter invest it abroad, hide it in tax havens, or simply hoard it, the people living on 16 000 US$ a year will return ALL of it to the economy. 100% certainly. If you give a person a chance to move up from nourishing himself with party pack crackers to eating, say, canned soup, you will have stimulated the economy. "Trickle-down" doesn't work, it's simply bullshit.

Also, Erosion, the argument was that had the minimum wage kept up with the rest of the economy, it would be 22$/hour. Not that it should be raised to that. The fact is that ever since the increases were forgotten, the economy itself has grown crooked, and is factually based on exploitation of those with no alternatives. It would not be a stretch in any sense to say that the economy based on such low income for a huge fraction of people is not healthy in any sense.

Finally, if you argue that moderate increases in minimum wage will lead to price increases, you're right, of course, it will have an effect. But if you argue that companies will stop hiring and that they will cut their work forces in a situation that applies to all of them, you betray a lack of faith in the power of the free market. If someone needs to do the work, it will be done if the theory of free market actually works (I have my doubts, though), and a minimum wage should simply be seen as an environmental factor that applies to every single company on the field, just like increases in gas prices and such. The point being that in capitalist utopia, both nature and the free market will find a way.

What does this mean? Well, for starters, if you could indeed make the same amount of money in Burger King as you make now in your shitty job, it would not necessarily mean that the wages of the Burger King employees are wrong. It would mean that your market value on a free market would have been depreciated, and that as a good capitalist, you actually should make the logical choice and switch to Burger King. Your work only has the value agreed between you (for losing your free time, applying the skills you've invested in, and in comparison to your other options) and your employer (basing his bid on the value of your work and his ability to pay you and get the money back from the other end). If the Burger King employees could actually make the same money as you, you couldn't really blame anyone for that, and it's just arrogant and childish to say that they should make less than you. In Finland, for example, if you apply that logic of skills to everybody, we should start by tripling the wages of every librarian and skilled nurse, for starters. But it does not work that way.

I don't hate my job, which I guess is relatively rare here. In my world view, the education I got does have a monetary value, and it certainly pays at least the same as I would get, had I just skipped education and gone to work immediately, like one of my friends did; the cumulative income since high school is a different subject, though, and we might get into that later. But to me, the main value in getting a degree was the fact that I can work in an exceptionally free, clean, safe, and comfortable environment, mostly thinking and discussing, instead of wearing greasy gear and hearing protection, and yelling or being yelled at, depending on how the chain of command would have ended up being in my case.

I think we mostly agree on the major points Nappy just not the details to get them done. My main point though ( which I may have forgotten to actually make) is that the income gap in some cases is the only thing that pushes people into college or the trades. Tons of people would just go work remedial jobs (bagging groceries, retail, fast food, etc.) In favor of going to college, spending ass tons of money and time for a degree to earn a comparable wage. Take my mother for example, she's an AA and drug abuse counselor and barely breaks the $45,000 a year mark. Now she would do that either way but I doubt most people would if like I said they could bag groceries for 40k.

Which brings me to a point we both share: the insane price of college education. Now my wife is about to graduate with a bachelors degree and for only about $50,000 which is unfortunately on the cheap side of things. Her sister is spending almost $30,000/year on her college education. A friend of mine told me that her student loan payment is almost as much as the mortgage on their 300k home. It's fucking ridiculous. Take my situation for example, I do well financially at work, better than most people I know, now the government says that I should be paying $40,000/year out of pocket for my wife's education. They already take about $25,000a year in taxes plus about another 5k in other deductions would leave me with only about $20,000 a year to live on. Not to mention that I'll have to start paying for my insurance next year so that's another added cost. The point being that in the great ole USA they make it impossible to move up in the world.

University costs 500€/year here and that includes free use of public transportation within the federal state.

It costs more than that to take one class here.

Here we don't get paid per hour, just monthly. Still, the minimum wage is like $2,22 per hour, 45 hours per week.

Sure, the cost of living is less here than in the US, but it's still very shameful.

Workers here feel forgotten and their concerns ignored. Those in power over the last few decades have repeatedly failed to tackle the effects of de-industrialisation, coupled with globalization of the employment markets.

Damn, Aborted's new album artwork is pretty lame. Par Olofsson is a competent artist but I dislike his style immensely for brutal and tech/death releases. They all feel so samey too.

I really dug the art he did for the most recent Abysmal Dawn album.

Ubuntu phones could be the next big thing...by the end of this year. It's been close to three years since I've been using my Nexus S, so perhaps by the time it wears off more, I can upgrade to this! Should be cool.

www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5426038/ubun ... oming-2014

That whole art style is just lame to begin with. Sure they're detailed drawings and all, but I hate the digital look of em. Getting tired of the formula of "big scary looking thing with spikes set against colorful sky" too...maybe if they were hand drawn it'd be a little better, but even so it's a generic metal album cover drawing style. Snore.

Rotting Christ's most recent album constantly makes me feel dwarfed in the face of evil powers about to crush my soul into nothingness.

You mean like Dan Seagrave? *snore*

Pretty much. I like a lot of the classic DM covers a la Everflowing Stream, Left Hand Path, Clandestine and some others though.

I'm getting a reader soon, thinking of choosing the Kobo Glo, any recs/comments about it or any other models?

Looks like the illustration of one those cards in Magic:The Gathering that I used to play, except this one looks more digital.

Yeah, they really have something going for them, but his Art is terribly overused as album covers. The word "generic" instantly jumps to mind when I see one of his paintings on an album cover. Which is not a good thing to start a relationship with an album.

I have a standard Kindle Fire and I like it just fine. It's a decent size for reading so the text isn't giant or way to small and it has no backlight which is nice as well. I think It's lighter than my phone as well so it doesn't bother me to hold it for long periods of time either.

I don't know, man. It sounds like you just don't like digital art, period. I think digital art is great. There's really only been a handful of stuff that I've seen that's looked like ass and even then, it's usually because the actual style was lame are just totally ill-fitting. Digital art is different from hand-done stuff. It doesn't take any less talent to create something good, but it seems weird to dislike something for what it is.

Whoa! COOL! Thanks for the heads up, I don't think I ever would have seen this otherwise haha!

Finally spinning Dark Tranquillity's Construct...

This is... fucking horrible.

THIS is great digital artwork album cover:



I agree with Emp about the overuse of the quasi-HR Giger death metal covers that are so played out.

Er... This thing? Seriously?

Edit: Wait, you weren't talking about the album cover, were you?

I may not be too huge on their music (god, Moon in the Scorpio is so boring), but I've always like Limbonic Art's cover images.

yeah, Moon in the Scorpio is a plodding waste of time. Check out Legacy of Evil though, Subrick. It doesn't even sound like the same band, and man is it some glorious kind-of symphonic black metal. The riffs border on death metal at times, thing pulverizes your eardrums into a fine powder and then bangs the dust like a line of coke. Dat rush.

Every time I tried listening to newer Rotting Christ it felt like a half naked, angry Spartan was shouting at and repeatedly slapping me for unknown reasons. It's loud, incoherent and makes me rather uneasy. The bland riffs didn't help.

Their newest one was pretty good. I preferred the latest Septic Flesh record though.

'Legacy of Ebil"

Digital art can look very good, I just don't like the particular way it's done on all these DM and deathcore albums. Like this, which is the worst example I know. The color contrasts used, the general blandness and cliche of what is actually being drawn in the first place - the whole "pseudo HR Giger" thing as stated. Nothing wrong with it in principle but just the style in which it is commonly used is so over done and dull now. I do prefer hand drawn art though, but as you said, any kind of art can produce something good. Just needs more imagination to it, is all.

Not a typo. As odd as it sounds, that's the lower case "v" in that font.

@ Napero and Erosion:
Relevant to "the choice of the good capitalist," a guy who used to work with me actually left his job as a "skilled labor" carpenter FOR a janitorial job at a private college which would double his pay, and give him benefits along with a retirement package. He bought a house. But so what .. he's a lifer there now. The way I look at it, quality of life should be the prime long term motive, regardless. That doesn't necessarily mean "standard of living." I've been a scenic carpenter for years. I'm skilled labor, and I know how much I could make if I joined the union. I decided against it entirely because of long-term quality of life concerns. Not only would the work environment usually suck, but it is basically guaranteed to fuck over my body. The only aging members of my field who don't have chronic pain or injuries are the people who moved up into the office. I knew a guy who put himself in a wheel chair because he was on his knees welding scenery all the time. He wasn't even 60 and could barely walk. Made a good wage, though.