Leaderboard

My little wrestling organization is looking to do more social media related content, so we decided to get a wireless system for it. Because it's professional wrestling I didn't want to spend a ton of money on it, as it could easily get damaged. I also didn't want to waste money on a system that had internal batteries, so that limited my options a lot. In the end I set out to accomplish a couple of things: Spend as little money as I possibly could while still achieving decent audio quality. Find a system that didn't feature internal non replaceable batteries. Find a system that had a decent enough build quality. Again, spend as little money as I could! With the focus being on small systems like the Rode Wireless Go and the dozens of knock offs, I knew that it was going to be difficult to find anything new under $200, which was my initial spending goal. Still, I looked and there were systems from Movo and Comica with so so reviews on YouTube, but as with most YouTube reviews these days I had to take them with a grain of salt because they were from smaller channels who I suspect will praise anything that is sent to them for free or channels that I feel have proven themselves to be biased. Regardless, these reviews weren't thorough and were essentially just someone testing them in their bed roo... er... "studio" and then, sometimes, going out into a field to do a range test. There isn't really much you can learn from these folks if they aren't putting the system through its paces. I started to think about spending a little extra and getting a Sennheiser or Sony system, which I could use for my non-wrestling work, but then I remembered the old Rode Rodelink systems that were the rage back in the day. Surely they'd be under $200 by now! I had experience with them and had also watched dozens of videos about them back in the day when YouTube wasn't just the marketing arm of all these companies. So I went to eBay, and typed in "Rodelink." Yeah, they were definitely under $200! Indeed, most of them were well under $100! There were lots of "Buy It Now" listings for $50, $75 and $100, most listed as being in "excellent condition." I scanned the listings and found one that was 5 hours away from ending. It had a "Buy It Now" price of $50 and a starting bid of $25. The pictures of the item looked like it was in pristine condition (it even still had the plastic screen protectors on the screens) and the listing said it was in "excellent condition, like new." It came with all the accessories. The seller was reputable, with 100% positive feedback and hundreds of reviews. So I said "eff it, I'll bid." What's the worst that could happen? Someone would probably come and snipe the auction at the last second anyway! They didn't. 5 hours later, as I woke up to go to the bathroom, I looked quickly at my phone and saw I'd won the bid. The winning bid? $25, shipping included. The Rodelink Wireless Filmmaker kit was still selling for $399 new as recently as 2022. On Monday mine arrived. I've pretty thoroughly tested it and I'm almost certain this unit was barely used. It has no scuffs on it, and like I said it still has the protective film on the screens. The sound quality is more than adequate and the included mic doesn't seem to have the RF interference that some folks used to get when using it. I could not be happier with the purchase, and short of one of the wrestlers destroying a receiver or transmitter I think this will last for years; certainly longer than any of the super small wireless systems with internal batteries will, anyway! Not bad for $25! Let this be a reminder that we don't need to always get the latest and greatest. There's a lot of great old gear out there that is more than adequate and will cost you a fraction of what you'd pay for new. The latest Rode systems aren't appreciably better than the old Rodelinks, at least not when you compare the prices. Is the $219 for the Rode Wireless Go II really have that much better sound than a Rodelink system you can get for 1/4 the price? And when the batteries in the Rode Wireless Go II die in a couple years and you can't replace them, the cheaper used Rodelink will still be going strong with replaceable AA batteries. Seems like a no brainer for me!

As I said, in literally my next sentence is (emphasis added for clearity): Very very clearly my statement you're referring to I wasn't claiming is a 100% ironclad rule of nature, I was very aware exceptions existed and I even highlighted a specific example myself. Never said they are consumer grade gear. But I'll put them on par with Tentacles, as they all hold time for the day just as well as another. Mozegear or BETSO or Ambient or Tentacle or whatever, will do the job just the same in the end. I wouldn't single out Ambient above all others as "the gold standard", I can't see where the argument for that is. Because they have the biggest market share? Nah, that's Tentacle. Because they're an older company and a historical argument is being made? Nah, Denecke takes that throne. Ahhhh.... the argument is because a camera company chooses Ambient. By that logic then Sonosax is better than Sound Devices / Aaton / Nagra / Zaxcom combined.

Back to the Trump bashing... https://news.sky.com/story/prosecutors-file-to-drop-2020-presidential-election-interference-charges-against-trump-13260598 One rule for him, another for the ordinary guy of course!

You know what I immediately realised when I've started to deal with Russia (I lived there in 2012 and 2013) in those twenty years ago of 2005? Western politicians should only be able to candidate to the office from a living experience in Russia or they have no clue what they're doing. West should never insult/defy the good people of Russia because of the bad apple BUT never to be afraid of them either. Such fear will lead all of us to a nuclear war, unfortunately, just not in 2024 or 2025, very likely. Trumpism explores you all in a very embarrassing way, to the general view and history/science no less WTH : X Biden is the best President you had in two decades at least. To only pair Clinton and Reagan, whether the differences between them whether you like it or not. Half of U.S. voters are a bunch of ignorants on economics to begin with and their vote just proves it. Let alone the politics and sense of reality. Plain pathetic : ) On this, among a lot of other their claims, @Andrew Reid and @eatstoomuchjam are 100% accurate. And I am not the kind of individual who don't see pros and cons practically about everything TBH. Disclaimer: Nothing about you @majoraxis (one of my favs ones over here : ) neither I have any beef against Trump or Musk, on the contrary even though my fierce resistance, they're not losers at all, of course, I wish they would! BTW in the past, I supported for U.S. President versus anyone else who could fit the job, the perfect real American war hero and one of the best Americans ever born: John McCain. Remember his position on all this we're living today? And his loyalty to 'his' POTUS and VPOTUS too? Just not to this current elected one. You have no clue what you've done. Despite the fact you are in California so I suppose you haven't elected him. Your electoral system is far to be a democracy. A lunatic left not a small blemish on his father, uncle and his own family name's memory, when arranged a way to stay in the American history selling his vote for a role. And less than 233 thousands of votes in 3 out of 50 States and the District of Columbia. No 2nd round. Anyone with less than 50% can become the most powerful man in the world and rule the lives of all of us worldwide. For some reason the South African-born American businessman Elon will be part of the next government. The characters are all there: We have no need to be Nostradamus to understand what's really going on.

You're a free speech absolutist but a very poor judge of character. Are you not watching who Trump has around him, men like Steve Bannon and Matt Gaetz. The former is another convict, and the latter is an alleged sex offender under investigation from all corners, $10k payments to prostitutes, sex with an underage girl and there's even a witness for that. This is only just scratching the surface of the Trump circle jerk. They are terrible people. Absolutely terrible. You as an American deserve better.

The tariffs and mass deportation of immigrants proposed by Trump are likely to cause an inflation nightmare. Nearly every economic expert agrees. But be sure to enjoy your gas costing a little less at the pump. Great logical thinking skills on display there. Congratulations on electing a candidate who was friends with Epstein and just put an alleged sex trafficker up as his head of the DOJ, then. What a great step ahead in the fight against trafficking! Being convicted of 34 felonies and still running is, frankly, a stupid fucking reason to elect somebody. What the fuck is wrong with you? You do realize, right, that had he dropped out of the race, he would likely have been convicted for election interference in Georgia as well as having to face trial for his federal crimes relating to the 2020 election? Staying in the race was fully motivated by his own self-interest. And hey, now that he's going to be in control of the DOJ, he can demand that it settle his own 100 million dollar lawsuit. Nice that he'll directly take tax dollars from every individual in the US and put it in his own bank account. The recordings of him talking about how much he liked sexually assaulting women? How great that we have a sexual abuser in office - confirmed in court, as part of the trial for him defaming a woman that he sexually assaulted. Once again, what the fuck is wrong with you? The problem is that I do believe he will follow through on a number of the things he said he would do. Most of them are fucking awful. Elon Musk is an expert in almost exactly one thing - hiring smart people and exploiting them. He's invented exactly one thing - the hyperloop, the dumbest form of mass transit that has been proposed in more than 50 years. He's a shithead who failed upward by owning part a company that he was driving into the ground, getting fired as its CEO, and profiting when Peter Thiel actually made it successful. Oh yeah, the guy with a history of putting his own interests ahead of quite literally everybody else really has your back. Great reasoning there. He definitely won't fuck the common person and do a bunch of stuff to enrich himself and his cronies. Even if it means he'll have a few dollars less, he'll definitely look out for the little guy. 🤣

Went here today where they had hands on units. It feels *maybe* a little narrow but a small grip will sort that. My advice is if you don’t want to buy it then for God’s sake don’t have a play with it because you will very likely walk out with one. Unfortunately, they aren’t released here for another week by which time I’ll be back on Monkey Island so without a pre-order I expect I won’t see one available for a while. Incidentally, the orders for the X100vi are still suspended even here in FujiFilm’s own flagship place so you have to wonder at how fluid the supply of the new camera will be too.

Monumentally stupid. (And the source of all this is Elon Musk on X, you just happen to parrot it). It is simply insane to suggest that the current Republican party is now closer to the Clinton era democrats. They are not even remotely similar and not even close to the Bush era Republican party or even 1980s Reagan. The Republican party of the past is dead. If you think the likes of Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz, Laura Loomer and Tom Homan are the spiritual successor to Bill Clinton you want your fucking head examining. It just goes to show how little you know about politics outside of social media BS. By the way, the values you are labelling far-left are nothing of the sort... They are centre-left neoliberal policies, not socialism or communism. They are not even really that unusual, and come from people's well meaning intentions in lieu of being less racist. That's not to say everyone has to agree with them and that there aren't major practical issues in terms of the implementation of it. You are free to want less immigration, not more. You are free to want less affirmative action and wokeness. But for fucks sake get your facts right before making your mind up.

Honestly this shouldn't be too surprising when you look at how the Biden Administration behaved over the last four years, and when you consider the palace coup which took place to put in place Kamala Harris, and how the Democrat Machine just totally ignored the will of their own voters in mattering in the process. Biden was too old and so they switched to Harris as the candidate. No laws were broken, as the party is free to put whomever they want on the ballot. There should be some kind of age limit on political candidates as many of the most powerful politicians today are really old and of questionable mental fitness. Also a limit on how much a single person or company can donate to campaigns should be limited to make the donating more egalitarian rather than the rich people controlling everything. USA has gravely depleted its weapon stocks. USA needs to immediately stop sending hundreds of billions of arms to Ukraine, as all it is accomplishing at the moment is: 1) needlessly perpetuating yet more deaths of Ukrainian men (they truly are trying to take literally the saying "until the last Ukrainian", this is going to be a demographic disaster for post war Ukraine) & 2) running dry USA's own stocks which is putting at risk USA's own security should they need it for themselves. USA has only been spending only a few percent of their defense budget on Ukraine, and a lot of it has been used to give old weapons that have expired and needed to be replenished anyway (so most of the money was spent didn't actually go to Ukraine directly but to defense contractors in the USA, boosting domestic employment). Ukrainians know what it is like to live under Russian oppression and they'd rather die than experience that again. America has never been occupied, lucky for them. I think the West needs to stop giving Ukraine restrictions on arms use and let them fight as deep into Russia as Russia has attacked in Ukraine. Otherwise a fair border can never return as the fighting always continues only on Ukrainian territory, gradually demolishing what was. How much of that was due to "outsourcing security to the USA" vs being due to: 1) having a collective living memory of the recent horrors of WW1 & WW2, with zero desire whatsoever to repeat that under any circumstance 2) having ever close economic ties with each other now within Europe than ever before (the more you're trading with a country, the less likely you wish to go to war and ruin all that prosperity) The memory of war in Europe has faded and new generations do not remember it, and this can lead to selfish and indecent behavior towards other people. Those close economic ties can be severed. Populist leaders already lead the UK to leave the EU single market with a hard Brexit lying before the election that of course they wouldn't leave the single market. Similar things can happen in other European countries, e.g., France was close to being lead by a populist far-right Le Pen. Eventually the economic co-operation can end and result in a hot war among European countries. Right now it is only Russia who is trying to return to the 17th century of nation states fighting wars over land and looting property, but this kind of thinking could spread. Russia is supporting rightwing populist movements across Europe because they know that a divided Europe is a weak Europe. Unfortunately true, because no matter who the people elect to represet them in Washington DC, its "the establishment" (the unelected bureaucrats) who hold all the cards. The bureaucrats were nominated by elected representatives, and as some of them serve longer than one electoral cycle, they can have the positive effect of stabilizing the society against too rapid changes (the US government is always by one party and so there can be a zigzagging effect of one direction and then reversing the direction repeatedly, which is not productive over the long term). In foreign policy, consistency is very important to build trust with other countries. However, now there is the world's richest man who apparently is taking the role of a shadow president. He owns the most popular media platform and effectively can control a large part of how people think with changes to algorithms behind the scenes. In the US, if you have money, you can be untouchable, as Trump has shown, he is still a free man after 4000+ law suits. The terribly botched withdrawal from Afghanistan happened under the Biden Presidency. True, Biden did handle it badly, but before he took office, Trump threw the Afghan government under the bus by making a deal with the Taliban and releasing 5000 prisoners. The Afghan government never had a chance after that. NATO primarily existed to oppose the USSR, and the moment The Cold War ended then NATO itself should also have been wound down and abolished. Russia is allied with Iran and North Korea today and to some degree also with China, and combined those countries can be very powerful economically and they're spending a lot of money on military build-up. Russia is trying to re-occupy the previous parts of the Soviet Union including Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia, and they're making threats that they will have a new world order from Vladivostok to Lisbon. I think NATO is needed today more than ever especially as Europe has cut its defense spending so much in the years since the cold war ended, people in many countries in Europe assumed that there would be peace and prosperity after the Soviet Union collapsed, but here they are again. Russia is testing where they can just take foreign land and resources. Now they're using threats about nuclear weapons use to prevent a fair defense.