acid-brain

Yes, most people are happy. China's growth has been 7-10% for the last 30 years, which means that the economy has doubled in size every 8 years or so. Improvements in quality of life have been so massive for most people that they don't feel resentment about the government at all. In fact, they identify their country with their government, and feel proud about both. I think that most revolutions actually happened after the government released control and gave some freedom to the people, and the Chinese government realise that. So they are very proactive in brutally shutting down potential protest groups. They are also very interested in citizen monitoring technologies. With the dawn of huge-scale surveillance it is hard to see how a revolution could ever get started. Just read about this: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-34592186. The current premier Xi Jinping has been far more authoritarian than previous leaders. Yep, in fact the highest growing economies of all time, Singapore, China, South Korea etc have all had highly authoritarian, protectionist governments, which might be troubling for liberal democratic free-trade kind of people. When I was in Beijing I met loads of Russians who had moved there for a better life.

I lived in China for almost a year and speak a fair amount of Mandarin. One thing that struck me is how disconnected from politics the average Chinese person is. Sure, some of them express nationalistic fervour and lots of them are posting their unhappiness about the ruling to social media right now, but the vast majority remain apathetic. They don't really know anything or care about their own governance, and that's exactly how the ruling party wants it to be.

Okay, makes sense now It all depends on where you draw your boundaries though and what music history chooses to remember. Some would say that Kraftwerk invented techno. Good call, those are some of the best contemporary artists. Aerosis's track Contorsion is outstanding and Chromatone produces pure psytrance wizardry.

Also I think that Ofer Dikovsky anticipated this genre with tracks like Timelessness and Alien Pump. But he never gets the credit - I've never seen anybody draw the link between his brand of dark industrial goa and modern techno. Yes that track is 20 years old now (!!).

Glad you guys liked this genre too. Production qualities in these tracks are extremely high. For a few years now this sort of techno has been popular in Berlin and the more exclusive club nights in London. Nice track recommendation, I hadn't heard that one before. You should like this one then:

That's deep.

Currently my favourite genre. Top artists: Rrose, Xhin, Orphx, Sandwell District, Function, Kangding Ray, Ancient Methods, Dadub, Zeitgeiber, and more.

I really don't know about that It may be true about popular music, but many musical genres actually originated in the UK: shoegaze, drum and bass, grime, dubstep, trip hop, acid jazz, hard rock, punk rock, heavy metal, prog rock.

Apologies, yeah Kapala was M-Run and DJ Inada. I also think there is something quite funny about the whole arrangement of that track, something that is likely to slap a smile on the listener's face.

I see what you meant now is that you invested a lot of time and love into helping these animals, and that you feel that your investment has been repaid with grief. And if you had never bothered to help, you would actually feel better about yourself. I think that the natural world is fundamentally unfair, and that our attempts to impose fairness on it will often fail and lead to suffering. But we should not blame ourselves when unfair things happen in an unjust world. Nor should we stop helping and loving others out of fear we will harm ourselves. Think of the happiness that you did bring to those dogs, and come to accept that they are no longer your responsibility. Just imagine what would have happened to the dog if you had not cared for it - it would have been far worse. As I said above I have a great deal of respect for people like you who take their time to care for creatures in need. I hope that you will continue to do so, and that the cruelness of fate will not hold you back.

M-run, in particular the tracks Kapala and Cognitive Disorder. They mock goa and the kind of people that listen to goa whilst at the same time being examples of some of the best neogoa ever made!

Hey Starkraver really sorry to hear of your losses. You and your family are doing a great thing, caring for these beings that would suffer otherwise. Buddhism does not say that anybody's desire or craving caused the dogs to die or disappear. That's a fact of the world. It says that your personal desire for the dogs to be safe and happy is what is causing you to suffer. Obviously some amount of grieving is only natural and right, but at some point you will have to accept the loss and move on. Ultimately you have done the best that you could for these animals and you will never be able to stop them from running away (if you give them freedom) or dying eventually. Suffering occurs when you hold yourself to unrealistic standards, or expect the world to always stay the same when in truth bad random stuff happens like this all the time. You are not to blame and in fact anyone who follows the ahimsa culture should be highly respected.

Yeah, Grateful Dead is still massive over there, massive in a cultish way that I can't imagine a European band ever being. It does strike me that psychedelic music and psytrance is an extremely international genre. Almost all other genres are localised to a particular place. But you can see from the internet that there are roughly equal amounts of psytrance fans in many many countries, Russia, Israel, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Japan... go to a Youtube video of any goa or psy video and you will find commenters in every language. Basically our scene is widely dispersed and that may be why it's less popular than it should be

Great points. This music is WAY more popular in Europe, Israel and parts of Asia compared to America. I'm particularly interested in this one: Yeah, I think that apart from linking tenuously to the 60s hippie counterculture, psytrance doesn't really connect to American culture and values in any obvious ways. I would also add that psytrance is a collective and spiritual experience whereas the USA is seen as the world's most individualistic and materialistic nation.

I think you might be thinking of a Thai horror film called Shutter. This album rocks.

Probably the right choice. Linux has its fair share of problems too. In particular gives a lot more power to the user which means it is really easy to mess up your whole system. Whereas Windows just messes up your system for you, but probably less catastrophically.

I've been using it since it was just called Mozilla, not sure if that's older than Phoenix I run it on Linux and never have any problems, still the best browser for me - great with resources and more customization options than any other.

Everyone MUST READ "The Colour Out of Space"! http://www.lovecraft-stories.com/story/the-colour-out-of-space

I thought for a moment that we had strayed too far from the original topic. Now you've made me think BDSM on shrooms, and I realised we may be coming full circle...

Yeah, it's Filipe at his best. Have you heard Denaris - Martian Law? Just whacked out beyond belief

Oh fuck, I'm just imagining Angel's Trumpets all over your country being played so loud that the entire population goes into psychedelic paralysis and is powerless to resist. Actually sounds like an effective war strategy.

I wouldn't be surprised. The American government has done a lot of crazy fucked up shit. Pretty much any fear the Russians had was probably justified.

:D