happybadger

From 1867 to 1974, various cities of the United States had unsightly beggar ordinances, retroactively named ugly laws.[1] These laws targeted poor people and disabled people. For instance, in San Francisco a law of 1867 deemed it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view."[2][1] Exceptions to public exposure were acceptable only if the people were subjects of demonstration, to illustrate the separation of disabled from nondisabled and their need for reformation.[3]: 47

This region of Colorado, maybe an hour's drive from where this was taken, is where Chronic Wasting Disease was first detected. Our Cervidae species naturally change their elevation based on seasonal habitat availability. They go into the Rockies during high summer when they can forage without snow and retreat to the front range when it's too cold to survive any higher.

The front range was immediately colonised by cattle ranchers and farmers. The ecocide of the bison degraded that land on top of industrial agriculture's impact, as their foraging patterns are different. Between fencing, irresponsible hunting, calorie loss, wildfire/water policy, and the urban development of the front range/foothills the Cervidae were concentrated in the least desirable pieces of high elevation land. Their most genetically healthy were killed for trophies while the isolated breeding pools created what will be dementia covid at some point. CWD is the most horrifying disease I know of and it comes from denying habitat.

I like that this city-managed natural area manages to balance habitat with accessible low-impact hiking. It has a tremendous number of birds and insects. The native grasses are healthy despite recent heatwaves, so the deer and elk can actually seasonally migrate to quality grazing land. It was full of currants and dozens of our 946 native bee species and dead trees pockmarked by woodpeckers. If we had just done this from the start, the world would have been spared The Big One.

One of my favourite native wildflowers, Cleomella serrulata. I saw a few dozen of them today that were covered in a mixture of native bees, wasps, ants, and beetles. There was a really healthy and diverse bird population in that natural area as a result of the robust insect populations and fruiting shrubs.

I hate golf so much that I'm writing a book which features it. It's ecocide as much as it is wholesale genocide for the benefit of sociopaths. As a big urban greenspace guy, they're uniquely infuriating.

Unfortunately I have to do the horticulture at a couple municipal ones. Today I'm pruning the shrubs in one of them and feel a thud against my shoulder. Some golfer hit a ball at full power (160 kph~) in my direction while I'm wearing high visibility gear, somehow hit me with it, and somehow missed bone. It went between my scapula and spine/neck/skull so it's just a really painful bruise. The guy spontaneously came over to apologise which was good enough for me.

Actually feeling physical pain from golf is a whole new dimension of reasons to hate golf. I could always separate myself from it and golfers, but now it's personal. Golf courses aren't just drastically increasing my chance of developing horrific illnesses. They actually made me want to fight a specific person representing all the reasons I hate golf.

If I was a Menshevik hater of golf before, now I am become Bolshevik the destroyer of golf. I fucking hate golf with three asterisks.

https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/1441/concerto-in-f

In addition to continuing to satisfy a large public clamoring for more of his sweet and tender, buoyant and rambunctious songs that could be sung, whistled, and hummed, George Gershwin took another foray into the classics in 1925. This one, the Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra, was even more ambitious than the previous year’s Rhapsody in Blue: a full-fledged concerto in time-honored three-movement form and a work that was all Gershwin, down to his own orchestration, which had not been the case with Rhapsody in Blue.

Those who thought Tin Pan Alley’s super-composer had gotten the “serious” bug out of his system with Rhapsody were wrong—in a way. Although the phenomenally talented and successful songwriter turned in earnest to the serious musical forms of concerto, symphonic poem (An American in Paris), and opera (Porgy and Bess), he didn’t change his musical persona for the concert hall—no split personality for Gershwin. Whereas most American composers of his era, many of whom had far more traditional musical training, were writing in the fashionable European styles, Gershwin cultivated his mother tongue—the one truly original American vernacular: jazz.

It may be true that Gershwin’s style has a highly polished commercial veneer, compared with what is considered real—that is, improvisational—jazz. Still, there is no denying the strength and vitality of the Gershwin product, in whatever form it appears. As for the Concerto in F, it is jazz all the way and a remarkable achievement for a 27-year-old tunesmith.

The Paris connection was extremely important for Gershwin. His admiration for French music is certainly made tangible in the Concerto’s Adagio second movement. An extended (46-bar) introduction confined almost exclusively to winds and brass (no piano at all) conjures an ambience that goes directly to the heart of Debussy and Ravel. Thematically, the main tune that finally emerges in the piano is hinted at early in the introduction by a muted trumpet. The fascinating manipulations of this theme by piano and orchestra and the figurations and filigree that evolve from it show Gershwin at his most inventive and bracing. The construction of the movement is highly original, with the reappearance of the introduction prefacing a piano cadenza that in turn leads into the “big” tune of the movement—a Gershwin song that is, well, irresistibly Gershwin. The melody is given the grand concerto treatment until it is cut off abruptly for a nostalgic, abbreviated return of the motif from the introduction, this time intriguingly scored for piano and flute.

The outer movements are, expectedly, fast ones that the composer, in a brief analytical note, described as follows:

“The first movement employs the Charleston rhythm. It is quick and pulsating, representing the young, enthusiastic spirit of American life. It begins with a rhythmic motif given out by the kettle drums, supported by the other percussion instruments and with a Charleston motif introduced by bassoon, horns, clarinets, and violas. The principal theme is announced by the bassoon. Later a second theme is introduced by the piano.

“The second movement has a poetic, nocturnal atmosphere which has come to be referred to as the American blues, but in a purer form than that in which they are usually treated.

“The final movement reverts to the style of the first. It is an orgy of rhythms, starting violently and keeping the same pace throughout.” —Orrin Howard

Orchestration: piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, bells, xylophone, triangle, and strings

My favourite ballet and the one I share with people new to the genre. The climax beginning at 11 minutes in is such a beautiful reflection of art in the late 1910s/early 1920s. All of the costuming in this production is faithful to the 1922 original without being too heavy to dance in. Like George Gershwin, Milhaud heard the early jazz in Harlem and used it to define 20th century music.

Saxophone quartet only version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3bZOd5-6qE

Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra, concerto for four saxophones—soprano, alto, tenor, and baritone—by American composer Philip Glass that may be performed with or without orchestra. It is remarkable not only for spotlighting saxophones, which are rarely used in classical compositions, but also for exploiting the wide-ranging timbral and emotive capacity of those instruments. The piece premiered for saxophone quartet alone in July 1995 at Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival; the version for saxophone quartet with orchestra premiered in September of that year in Stockholm.

Glass composed his Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra at the behest of the Rascher Saxophone Quartet (named for Sigurd Rascher, historically one of the world’s most respected classical saxophonists). The group specifically requested a work that could be played either with or without an orchestra, and the composer responded accordingly, with two versions of the piece. Glass believed that the nonorchestrated version would be the more complicated of the pair, as all of the musical layers would need to be carried by just four players, so he wrote the piece first for the quartet only. In the orchestral setting that followed, he distributed notes throughout the orchestral parts while retaining the most intricate lines for the four saxophone soloists. The Rascher Saxophone Quartet premiered both versions of the piece.

Whether performed with or without the orchestra, each of the four movements of the Concerto for Saxophone Quartet and Orchestra highlights one of the members of the quartet. In the gently swaying first movement, the soprano saxophone spins a sinuous melody atop the repeated undulating motifs of the lower-pitched instruments. The jazzy second movement features a lively ascending figure, laid out by the baritone saxophone and later picked up by the other members of the quartet and the orchestra. The tenor instrument carries a relaxed and soulful solo in the graceful third movement, and in the finale, all four saxophones are whipped into a frenzy of continually shifting metres and motifs before charging abruptly into the closing cadence.

Instrument list:

We are AWAKE and we are DAMAGED>

Liv Agar from QAA joins the gang to talk about Wexit - the hare brained scheme to create a promised land for drunk drivers all around the world in Alberta. Also, we discuss the latest evil from the TBI, the creation of the Bins Condittieri, and a new Guy enters the pantheon.

Alberta: the Baudrillard Province

In this episode, Sal Mercogliano — a maritime historian at Campbell University (@campbelledu) and former merchant mariner — discusses the video released by the Houthis on the sinking of the Greek-owned and Liberian-flagged bulk carrier Magic Seas, and the deadly attack on the bulk carrier Eternity C on July 8, 2025.

His bias is generically with sailors so he's vaguely anti-Yemen but not as overtly ideologically so. Posting because it's a critical perspective on the conflict which validates the claims of Ansar Allah.

One of my favourite hikes in the region. Up in that mountain bowl is Emmaline Lake and to the left is a trail leading over the Mummy Pass into Rocky Mountain National Park.