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| 2024 | one thought at a time |
"Of all the things I’ve lost, I miss my mind the most.”
(Ozzy Osbourne)
12 | December
20 | The main positive aspect of 2024 was that I weaned myself off anything digital almost completely.I noticed, for example, that I used my smartphone 4 times this month, for a few seconds each. Sometimes I wonder why I still have one, although, I guess, when traveling it's still useful. I've ditched Twitter/X, Instagram (all accounts), and try to spend less and less time online.On the other hand, I notice that friends and acquaintances usually immediately assume I have either contracted a life-threatening disease or have passed away. There doesn't seem to be any middle ground anymore: if you don't use digital devices 24/7, there MUST be something wrong with you.
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19 | Once in a while, excellent films just pop out of nowhere for me. "Sing Sing" was such a film. If I read about it, I can't remember, but this low-key film was a refreshing end to an absolutely mediocre film year for me (although the movie was released in 2023). Excellent work by, especially, Colman Domingo and Clarence Maclin!"[...] Based on the real-life Rehabilitation Through the Arts program at Sing Sing Maximum Security Prison, the film centers on a group of incarcerated men involved in the creation of theatrical stage shows through the program. [...]"
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18 | In Germany, ages ago, a programmer started a website for one single purpose, to name and shame programmers and companies who have released Windows (not only) programs/apps that just suck.The programmer intended the website to be a one-time affair, but I just opened it up again and for more than a decade, people have continued to vote for the shittiest programs and apps available for Windows. The people voting there are usually experts who have had to put up with this software year in and year out.Lo and behold, Microsoft "Teams", "Project", "Outlook" and "Internet Explorer" regularly occupy top spots ... every. single. year. What a surprise.
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17 | I often follow stories just for the hell of it, for example the controversy surrounding McDonald's ice-cream machines (which I already mentioned at least twice this year).It's just "fun" to see how often companies force customers to jump through hoops to get what they orginally paid for. We all know that saving 2 cents on each machine or product makes companies a couple of million extra.Keeping that in mind, here are two interesting articles:(01) Frozen Out: The Inside Scoop on McDonald's Ice Cream Machine Controversy(02) "The C602 is an absolute nightmare to deal with". [from X/Twitter]
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16 | I spent the weekend catching up on a band, "Rare Earth," that, as far as I remember, I had never consciously listened to in the many decades I have been very passionate about music.I spent most of the time catching up on their early 1969-1974 albums, the first (unsuccessful) one on Verve and then their Motown albums. Interestingly enough, in a spur-of-the-moment decision based upon the band's suggestion, Motown decided to name the new label they had set up to showcase white rock acts "Rare Earth".The band's music has a very prominent late 60s/early 70s vibe to it and featured a lead singer, Peter Hoorelbeke (aka Peter Rivera), that I really like. Shades of yesterday, in a good way.
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15 | Well, I did watch Gladiator II and, surprise, surprise, it sucked. Why do people keep making these ridiculous films? Instead of my own thoughts, here's a series of quotes from IMDB that I would sign my name to:"Paul Mescal could barely lead a herd of goats." | "More doesn't always equal better." | "This movie is why one should not let chatGPT write dialogue." | "A mediocre copy of the 1st movie." | "Insults your intelligence." | "What a mess...." | "Why?" | ...
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14 | Just in timer for Christmas, "Time Lapse: From Pinecone to Pine Tree in 110 Seconds." (via: kottke.org]
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13 | I was happy to see that Robert Bloch, a favorite author of mine, has finally gotten a decent website, three decades after he passed away."This website, authorized by the Bloch Estate, provides insight into the breadth of Robert Bloch’s versatility as a writer—at home in the worlds of fantasy and horror, but equally adept at writing thrillers, science fiction, detective/crime, and humor. The author of over 25 novels and hundreds of short stories has cemented Bloch’s reputation as one of the masters of fictional horror. His versatility extended to the field of scriptwriting as well, his talents frequently in demand for writing/adapting stories for radio, television, and film."
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12 | "WordPress isn't WordPress anymore." Some very sound suggestions as to how WordPress could get back on track, although I seriously doubt that any of these (necessary) changes are likely to happen.
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11 | Since I have been updating the WordPress vs. WPEngine drama here once in a while, this: "Court orders Automattic to restore WP Engine’s access to WordPress.org".
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10 | I'm not the biggest fan of Amnesty International, but now that Saydnaya has fallen in Syria, Amnesty's "Architecture of Memory" website detailing the horrors of that place is still one of the most impactful websites I have encountered in a long time.
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09 | With my eye problems (Uveitis), I wouldn't be able to drive anymore, even if I had a driver's license, which I don't.From my regular position in the passenger seat, I have noticed one thing though: headlights have gotten increasingly brighter over the years, so much so that I am regularly completely blinded by them.Apparently, it's not just me: "Asleep at the Wheel in the Headlight Brightness Wars". People "[...] aggravated by the excess glare produced in this new era of light-emitting diode headlights [...] are riled up enough that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives more consumer complaints about headlights than any other topic, several insiders told me."
The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s data shows that headlight brightness has roughly doubled since 2015.
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08 | I was just researching an old acquaintance and because he was active on "Blogger", his website, "Stomp Off" is still around. If you have the patience, that website has a ton of great information which is often not available in other places. Chris(tiern) Albertson could be a pain in the neck, but he was also an extremely knowledgeable expert on all things (classic) jazz.
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07 | Classic hifi components seem to be on the way out and if true, the news aren't good for my favorite company: "Denon, Marantz and B&W: Business closure allegedly on the cards".
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06 | It's that time of year again. December 6 is St. Nicholas Day and last night, "Krampus" roamed the streets and beat those who were naughty with branches and sticks. If you really dive into this central European popular legend, "Krampus" was sometimes even thought to eat children or take them to hell. As "Britannica" states, "[O]n December 6, St. Nicholas Day, children awaken to find their gifts or nurse their injuries."LonelyPlanet has a nice piece on this legend and the Munich 'Krampus Run': "Everything you need to know about Krampus – and where to find him."
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05 | "The Internet" (2024):
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04 | A very intersting (very long) read, in which "James Kaplan remembers one of Jazz’s great generational battles": "The Icon and the Upstart: On Miles Davis’s Legendary Feud With Wynton Marsalis"."[...] Wynton Marsalis surprised everyone - especially Miles Davis - when he walked onstage with his horn, uninvited and unannounced, as Davis and band were in the midst of a blues number. The upstart Marsalis approached the veteran Davis but Miles shook his head in a negative fashion. Instead of leaving, Marsalis walked to a microphone and began playing, which resulted in Davis stopping the music. The abashed Marsalis, who has always revered Davis, then walked off. 'I don’t know why he was up there,' Miles said. 'We have things that we do and we time everything. If he wants to jam, why doesn’t he go out to a club? I wonder what would happen if I did that?' [...]"
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03 | And the next great interview was posted over on Rick Beato's YouTube channel:"Jeff "Skunk" Baxter is one of the most iconic guitarists of all time, and in this interview, he shares the incredible stories behind his legendary career. From playing unforgettable solos on Steely Dan hits like 'My Old School' and 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' to his time with The Doobie Brothers, Jeff opens up about what it was like to shape the sound of two of the most influential bands in rock history. He also dives into his approach to guitar, the music industry, and some of the behind-the-scenes moments that only someone with his experience could share. If you’re into classic rock or just love a great story, check this out."
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02 | If you are interested in building websites, for fun or for profit, "Footer" is a wonderful (continuously-updated) resource and inspiration for designing the footer area of a website. Highly recommended!
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01 | From what I have seen, Gladiator II looks like the usual Hollywood crap and I probably won't watch it until it's streamed somewhere, but I had to laugh when I read this on Vulture the other day:"To paraphrase Cher Horowitz, searching for historical accuracy in a Ridley Scott film is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie. That’s not a knock against the entertainment value or even the overall quality of Scott’s work — he just famously does not care. During the press tour for 2023’s Napoleon, the filmmaker made a number of pointed remarks against historians who were quibbling with perceived mistakes. “Get a life,” Scott said in a New Yorker profile. In a different interview with the Sunday Times, the director offered, “When I have issues with historians, I ask: ‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well, shut the fuck up then.’ [...]”
11 | November
30 | Ah, well, here's to the future: "AI-Powered Robot Leads Uprising, Talks A Dozen Showroom Bots Into 'Quitting Their Jobs' In 'Terrifying' Security Footage". Cheers!
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29 | In regard to yesterday's events, it appears that my trusted old PC (the first one that lasted more than 5 years) is beginning to show too much wear and tear. It needs to be replaced. The problem is that I simply don't know what I really want. In the past I followed developments and these last couple of years, I didn't, so I don't even know what the cool kids buy nowadays.
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28 | Spent a day fixing my PC when an update rolled around that broke things in a major way. I HATE Microsoft.
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27 | Although he doubted it would happen with YouTube's restrictive strikes against, for example, music by Pink Floyd, Rick Beato now finally managed to secure an interview with one of his heroes, David Gilmour, talking almost exclusively about his new album, "Luck and Strange" (which isn't one of my favorites).Beato seems to be a bit more star-struck in the beginning, which really isn't a surprise, but it's a wonderful 52 minutes of listening to Gilmour's gravelly voice (sometimes I wonder how he is able to sing with that voice) talking about working with drummer Steve Gadd and producer Charlie Andrew, being deeply involved with the recording and production of his albums, listening to the finished product in the car (as do most others), enjoying the work with Pro Tools, his wife coming up with lyrics on long walks, featuring his daughter (vocals) on the new album, "family chemistry", managing over 1000 sometimes baffling voice memos on his phone to keep track of his ideas, playing piano and drums, using the powerful "Big Muff" (Electro Harmonics) distortion, the moment of discovering the famous "Wish You Were Here" cord, his lyrical playing (as opposed to fireworks), which originates from just wanting "to play a tune", and, and, and.Fascinating stuff!
Check it out!
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26 | I have always loved Joe R. Lansdale, a writer with a unique voice, whose story and novel ideas haven't gone stale in all these countless years like they have gone for other writers I know. His knack for dialogue and local color is really unsurpassed.In 2013, he wrote a wonderful western/mystery novel, "The Thicket", which then became Peter Dinklage's passion project.The film Dinklage turned that novel into finally rolled around this year and I watched it last night.It's a great little film which, if you like Lansdale, manages to filmatically capture Lansdale's bleak voice, transported by excellent acting (Peter Dinklage, Juliette Lewis and Levon Hawke). James Hetfield (yep, that Hetfield), Arliss Howard and Ned Dennehy shine in their comparatively small roles and altogether, it was finally, after many years of mostly continuous duds, a film I really enjoyed.I especially also liked the simple title sequence, which doesn't show up until 11 1/2 minutes into the film. Online, there's next to no info available about it, but if I read the end titles correctly, the images ("Main Titles Sequence Art") are by Pouya Moayedi, who hasn't said a word online about his involvement. Pity.
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25 | In February of 2025, we are going to have early elections because our government, as expected by most, imploded a little while ago.The political parties have already gotten their election campaign machines oiled and ready to rumble, but all I have been able to discern so far is the promise that the same mistakes will be made again, for the umpteenth time.I wonder how the electorate will react to the same-old, same-old this time.I can't be the only one who has had enough of this game that, as some established parties attempt to recapture times long gone to avoid a decisive shift to the right while gaining the upper hand for the next 4 years, excludes both the "Millennials" and "Gen Z" entirely.And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
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24 | Exactly four weeks before Christmas, and after a full day of hard work (mostly by my wife), we now have six large jars filled with Christmas cookies.
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23 | There's a new TV series out with Ted Danson, one of my absolute favorites. The show, "A Man on the Inside", is basically the tale of a widower’s undercover investigation in a retirement home. When reading around various reviews for this show, I found this wonderful quote:"There are excellent stories to be told about aging, and Hollywood is slowly learning that life isn't over after the Botox wears off."
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22 | This very long article (Maclean's, Canada) reminded me of the many problems we had trying to get rid of smartphones in classrooms and hallways at the school I worked at.It also shows how difficult it is to get everyone on board in regard to strict rules, especially if you have officials who are "'[...] happy to sacrifice an entire generation of kids because there’s a one-in-a-billion chance that some student or parent might complain about something,' says Adam. And without support from the top, the rules are toothless. 'As teachers we do the best we can,' he adds. 'But if kids call our bluff, we’re screwed.'"
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21 | You would think it's Christmas already. Christmas cookies right and left, neighbours putting up masses of LED-lights, Christmas decorations everywhere. Looks like, in times of depressing news, people are looking for some coziness earlier than usual.
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20 | The tables have turned. I've noticed that in Germany, more and more renowned restaurants are closing (the latest victim is Dylan Watson-Brawn's restaurant "Ernst" in Berlin). Many of the fine-dining places have had declining numbers of visitors since the corona pandemic, had to resort to "downgrading" their menus and to inventing all kinds of "special events" to make sure all tables are taken. Inflation in Germany is also keeping regulars away. Before the pandemic, one had to wait weeks or months to get a table. Depressing times for "foodies".
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19 | In the ever-expanding world of "WordPress Drama", "WordPress vs. WP Engine Dispute Timeline" is the next new website tracking (mostly) Matt Mullenweg's utterly demented shenanigans. Other websites that offered similar summaries were either targeted or harassed, or they just simply vanished in the wind like 380 ppm of CO2.
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18 | Some great artwork by Mikael Hallstrøm, especially his watercolors (via kottke.org).
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17 | Now that everyone is talking about alternatives to established social networks, does anybody remember Ello?It was a new social network (launched in August of 2014) that promised to do better and to avoid the pitfalls of the others and be "[...] a place to connect, create and celebrate life."Color me surprised, but it didn't really go as planned: "The Quiet Death of Ello’s Big Dreams."
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16 | "Why are they like this?" To be quite honest, in the age of social media consumption, that question is of course a rhetorical one.I had to laugh out loud when I watched this and other similar videos because we've all seen it before: Years ago, people apparently started losing all self control, embarrassment stopped serving a useful purpose, entire strata of society went off their collective rockers and neuroses became the new normal (more: 1, 2, 3, 4, ...).It could be that what we have seen in recent elections and in a drastically shifted online discourse is - in many cases - also just a simple backlash from people who have basically had enough of this insane behaviour.
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15 | When Rick Beato interviewed Rick Wakeman three days ago, he seemingly just pressed a button once and the stories came rolling out. Wakeman, who has recorded more than 2000 sessions, talks about meeting or working with Tony Visconti, the Queen Mother, David Bowie, Cat Stevens, Elton John and, of course, Yes. Lots of fascinating stories well worth your time.
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14 | I've been reading my entire life, anything I could get my hands on really, and what Matt Pearce writes in his article, "Journalism's fight for survival in a postliterate democracy" rings true with me on every level.Obtaining bullshit instead of facts is cheaper, you still need to do lots of legwork to break an important story, which modern technology can't do for you, Baumol’s cost disease is ruining quality news production, the quality bar is being lowered constantly, the written word is harder to monetize and doesn't reach enough people anymore, a tidal wave of permanently impatient people are reluctant to read or write, and, altogether, there is "[...] growing consumer alienation from the actual sources of information, a return to a kind of folk-story society ripe for manipulation by demagogues who promise simplicity in an increasingly complex world."
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13 | Now that the new Dune TV series is just around the corner, Vulture published a very good interview with Emily Watson the other day: "I'm Blessed With a Readable Face".
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12 | In regard to yesterday's post, I've had a long discussion online with lots of people I've known, again online, for decades.The summary is this: We don't even know if we actually want to be members of social networks anymore. They have all degraded to such a degree, also technically, that they aren't worthwhile anymore. AI and algorithms have turned them into useless aggregators of fragmented worldviews and places of self promotion. They have become echo chambers for those not really interested in anything but themselves and like-minded individuals. Alternatives are far and few between and limited in their abilities to overcome these deficiencies.So, yes, I am also constantly on the verge of allowing my itching trigger finger to just hit that big red button. Won't be long anymore, I think, so instead of replacing icons, like I had planned yesterday, removing them entirely is perhaps the better option.
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11 | After I deleted all my Twitter accounts, I started a new (mini) one over on Bluesky, not because the "left" is there and the "right" remained on Twitter (I couldn't care less about either side's simple-minded and often downright primitive and uneducated attack angles), but because it allows me to block/mute sh*t I don't want to read.Social networks are the last places suited for any in-depth discussion, so I bowed out to keep my sanity.P.S.: After a little while, I'll replace the icon at the bottom of each page on my website here to reflect that move.
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10 | It's unbelievable how much ideological garbage German newspapers have been publishing seemingly every other minute in regard to the US presidential election. It's an astonishing flood of fearmongering, attacks, insults ... no matter what you are looking for, the German press delivers on all (negative) fronts.The newest angle of attack is Trump's possible re-hiring of Robert Lighthizer, who, according to newspapers here, is the reincarnation of everything that's evil in the world.The reason for these all-out attacks are simple: Germany has been a more than successful export nation for ages now and that reliance on a steady stream of export surplus has made this country lazy and highly inflexible.You don't have to be a Harvard alumni to at least see where Lighthizer, a staunch protectionist, was coming from when he "[...] blamed free trade for the loss of American manufacturing jobs and called the US trade deficit 'alarming'." (FT) The logical solution for him and Trump are tariffs on all/most imports.If that will really solve the problems for the US remains to be seen (and is, in my eyes, highly unlikely), but to attack the stance out of principle, from an ideological and economically lazy and immobile perspective is just dumb, especially if it comes from a country, mine, that has been subsidizing industries to hell and back again for ages now to keep them afloat and somewhat competitive.
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09 | Here in Germany, in all of this yelling, screaming and frothing at the mouth after the US presidential election and the collapse of our own government, two important texts got completely lost in the noise.You don't have to agree with everything discussed in either one of them, but they both stabbed at the core of two completely different problems that definitely need more attention, attention far removed from the usual ideological skirmishes.(a) The first one is an astonishingly brave and eloquently direct speech given by Marko Martins, a German author, who confronted our President, Walter Steinmeier, in his own "home", with a rhetorically sound barrage of criticism in regard to our (former and current) governments' faulty stance both towards revolutions in the East that brought about the downfall of the Soviet empire (and East Germany), the erroneous snuggling up to Putin in the aftermath and then all the way up to its current stance on the war in Ukraine.Apparently, Steinmmeier blew several fuses directly after the speech. Both the speech and the reactions to it by our President are only available in German, but they are well worth anyone's time to see how incapable of handling (valid) criticism the political establishment has become.(b) The second text, which I thought was lacking in places but was finally able to describe a dangerous and fundamental problem of (western Europe's) education in a widely-read newspaper, was one by Oskar Mahler who, in the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung", describes the "Unbildung" ("uneducation") of "generation Tiktok".It accurately reflects my experiences as a high school teacher of 30 years and although Mahler only scratches the surface and often only hints at all of the culprits and negative developments of the past decades, what he says resounded with me on every level.We've got a massive problem and everyone continues to ignore it with steadfast disinterest. The turmoil we are seeing today is (also) a direct result of developments he describes.Note: If interested, copy either text into any AI-powered translator of your choice and read it. Lots of truths to be found that nobody really wants to hear.
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08 | Microsoft crammed AI into its Windows 11 notepad now. I'm sure that is exactly what the world has been clamoring for.
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07 | Now that the German government has also imploded, I think it is time to put up the Christmas tree early to get some sparkly lights to illuminate the gloom (and the fog we've had here for nearly two weeks now).
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06 | Oh, well, my cynical side won the election ... as expected.In other news, the "Pergamonmuseum" in Berlin, which was closed recently for renovation, is already haemorrhaging money right and left and (seriously) the reopening, which was slated for 2037 (!), will probably happen in 2040+ ... if they still have the cash by then to complete the work.I'll probably be dead by then.
A sad state of affairs in Berlin.
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05 | Just like everyone else, I'm anxiously awaiting the results of the presidential election in the US today and will probably stay up tonight to see how things develop.It would be going too far (after months, if not years, of constant ideological barrage from all sides) to say I don't care one way or the other anymore, but considering the fundamental shift of politics in the western hemisphere towards populist, nationalistic and even isolationist policies wherever one looks, I think the result is going to be a clear signal as to where we are all heading in the near future.I myself have developed both a defeatist and downright cynical attitude in recent years and I really hope that the latter of those aspects doesn't win with a clear margin tonight, if you know what I mean.Having to choose between two inadequate candidates is a situation we have also encountered in Germany in the past (and will encounter again in the upcoming federal election next year), so I'm interested in seeing what the American electorate decides.
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04 | Quincy Jones (1933-2024) was and is a legend. Many sections of my CD shelves are filled with his work. Quincy Jones has more than 1000 compositions to his name and recorded nearly 3000 songs and 300 albums. From Lionel Hampton, Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee to Frank Sinatra, and from George Benson, Aretha Franklin and Patti Austin to, of course, Michael Jackson and Quincy Jones' own albums from 1962 all the way up to 2010. What a testament to a life's work.
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03 | Apple is snapping up Pixelmator. The air for Adobe is getting thinner. Good!
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02 | "NASA Provides Update on Artemis III Moon Landing Regions."
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01 | My former school, the Copenhagen International School, which I attended decades ago in much more humble premises, publishes a regular alumni newsletter.In the latest issue, my memorial website for Mr. Anthony Vadala ("Mr. V.") was featured.It's always nice to see that people will (perhaps even accidentally) come across that website. That's really why I have kept in online for so long, simply because the Internet does forget a lot more than it preserves.
Mr. Vadala is and always will be the best teacher I ever had. Without him, I would never have been where I am at today.
10 | October
31 | An important part of my family is Spanish and I have been following Spanish news and developments for many decades.I know that many people, usually "boomers" and other hardliners, love to negate climate change, usually with knee-jerk assumptions, but the catastrophe that happened around Valencia is real.200+ victims and counting, a devastated landscape and rescue efforts that are hindered, well, by the devastation that the whole area was hit by.I really wish that people would take climate developments more seriously than they have these past two decades. The climate has changed fundamentally and it simply isn't enough anymore to say "Hell, it used to rain in the past as well. Get over it."
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30 | We're travelling to our former capital - Bonn - again tomorrow. My mom has been in hospital for weeks now and we need to check how things are going.
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29 | These past two days, I have fleshed out a longer post which was formerly called "site history".Now it's called "A Life on the Web" and covers my activities on the Web from the late 1990s up until today. I intend to expand on it again in the future by including my various social network activities that I just alluded to this time around.
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28 | The saxophone is an instrument that can easily get to be too much for me, unless it is played, for example, by Paul Desmond, Paul Gonsalves, Ben Webster or Dexter Gordon. They all had a certain tone that I can just listen to endlessly.I don't know how Jan Harbeck escaped me for so long, especially because he is from my "home away from home", Denmark, but he belongs right into this group.He's recorded some excellent albums with his "John Harbeck Quartet", of which "Copenhagen Nocturne" (2011) is perhaps my favorite. If you want to know what he sounds like, listen to this album, or, for example, check out this decade-old live recording from the Copenhagen Jazz festival on YouTube. In the end though, every album he recorded is excellent and they are readily available via the usual streaming sites. Very highly recommended if you like this kind of jazz that transports you back to a different time!
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27 | We've just had our seasonal clock shift, again. Opting out has been on the agenda for years here, but Europe is still deadlocked on the issue. Other places have been more successful: Places around the world that opt out of daylight savings - and why.
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26 | Some very interesting talking points: Why millions of Americans avoid the news — and what it means for the election.
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25 | Something I wrote about frequently and again just recently has (finally) reached the news in Germany.Before I retired in 2023, I began to notice that all sorts of extremist and/or downright absurd ideas, discussions and "interpretations", usually by fundamentally uninformed people, were being brought into the classroom by students who were exposed to ever-increasing radicalization at home and in the various social networks they frequent.This had begun before the pandemic, but was boosted drastically by it, so when classes resumed, things had shifted fundamentally.On top of that, the AFD, our very own right-wing party, which has unfortunately been steadily gaining ground in Germany, started to try to assert more influence in classrooms by asking students and parents to name and shame teachers that, according to their world view, were not "objective."In Germany, in the later 1970s, the "Beutelsbach Consenus" layed the ground rules for civic and religious education. The problem then was and is that "objectivity" has never been and shouldn't be the fundamental goal. As a teacher of politics or history, of all social sciences, it is your job to reflect diverse and controversial discussions taking place in the real world, giving students the chance to form their own opinion by not excluding but including what is happening all around them.Both the left and the right never understood this fundamental principle, simply because, for ideological reasons, they did not and do not want to. In frequent knee-jerk reactions, they purposefully interpreted any mention of opposing views as "indoctrination".I certainly do not envy teachers who have to navigate this minefield today and I'm glad I don't have to anymore.
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note: | A routine check showed that embedding videos on my one-page micro diary, which I did several times this year, was having extremely negative effects on the site's page speed. So, I removed all of them, even if most visitors probably didn't notice. The page speed tripled (again) when all the injected YouTube gunk, iFrames and whatnot were removed.
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24 | I came across this wonderful - both charming and bizarre - crime/detective story again today when surfing around various websites.If you know who Joyce Hatto was, you probably already know the whole story. If not, do not google her name, pour yourself a good glass of wine and just read the (very) long "Fantasia for Piano" by Mark Zinger, which appeared in The New Yorker in September of 2007.This story, which would make a wonderful novel or film, has it all: love, disease, gullible music fans, confused and vain critics ... and an unbelievable amount of chutzpah.
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23 | Leave it to "The Onion" to hit the nail on the head:"The Donald Trump and Kamala Harris campaigns both debuted new commercials Tuesday that attempt to win support for their respective candidates with a supercut of Trump's most racist comments."
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22 | I was just thinking about Michael Cuscuna again today, who passed away in April of this year. While going through my jazz collection, I realized just how much great music he put into our hands and how insightful his liner notes and his writing in general were. There are only very few people on this planet who have had such a decisive impact on countless people. Every jazz fan I know knows who Michael Cuscuna was.
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21 | I spent an entire day without news, social networks, newsfeeds, the Internet and everything else and, as usual, I didn't miss a single thing.
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20 | Just as a side note, I surfed across some forums I used to frequent (often on a daily basis for many years) and it was depressing to see how many members I used to converse with frequently have passed away these past 12 months.
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19 | Today, I wrote a mail to Ted Gioia, an important voice I have been following for ages. I think it is the first such mail I wrote in this regard since the late 2000s.Why?
I was fundamentally pissed off.
And I don't even know if it will reach him.Ted Gioia publishes a newsletter on Substack, the venue many important voices are "fleeing" to and continue to "flee" to in ever increasing numbers. People are making money there, some of them lots of it, but I couldn't read the rest of his newsletter outlining recent developments in this process ... because it was behind a paywall.This development contradicts every single belief I hold in regard to something people like to call "open web" and the "free flow of information". This group of writers, authors, journalists, etc. has decided that its livelihood can be secured by joining a platform that allows them to monetize their writings.Sorry, but that is such an incredibly destructive movement that in the end absolutely excludes the average person unable to dish out the comparatively small fees those authors are asking for, simply because these are not "small fees" if you want a balanced opinion and in any sort of breadth that used to amount to a single newspaper. If I subscribed to the 20 people I read, I would need to pay $140 per month.Really?What we then have is the formation of an elitist club that only caters to those who have the money to sustain it. And, worst of all, many of these writers believe that they are doing "good". They are not. They are cutting off a huge number of people who cannot pay for what they have to say and in the end, they are consciously helping to destroy the already massively damaged public discourse by effectively removing themselves from it.I know they have based their livelihoods on this approach to writing and publishing, but there MUST be a better solution to moving public discourse forward in the 21st century.
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18 | In Germany, politics are approaching American levels of utterly populist and ignorant (= stupid) levels.Our current chancellor (SPD - Social Democrat), Olaf Scholz, used his most recent appearance in parliament to attack the opposition (CDU - Christian Democrats) for their terrible family policies that, according to his statements, the population still has to suffer from.As usual - and as is common today - he conveniently ignored the fact that for the last 11 years (that's more than a decade), the family ministers were either members of his own party or that of the coalition party. It is absolutely mind-baffeling to see how the government has not been able to attack those problems, in more than a decade, that the previous government(s) supposedly caused.I cannot wrap my head around the fact that our current government actually dares to stand in front of the assembled population to admit that it is unable to change anything, move anything or fix anything.Of course, effective changes take time and need due democratic process, but, still.11 years... and still lamenting.The problem is that voters with any kind of intellectual capability simply cannot and will not be able to find an alternative to vote for in the upcoming federal elections.There is absolutely nobody to replace the current ineffective and downright embarrassing government that we have.
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17 | "David Lynch Releases on YouTube Interview Project: 121 Stories of Real America Recorded on a 20,000-Mile Road Trip.""Interview Project sticks to small-town or rural settings — Camp Hill, Pennsylvania; Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; Tuba City, Arizona — but still encounters people who may at first glance strike viewers as disturbing, menacing, saddening, forbidding, or some combination thereof. But they all have compelling stories to tell, and can do so within five minutes." [via: Kottke.org, always highly recommended!]
16 | The second season of "Silo" is coming. I loved the novels by Hugh Howey and the first season of the TV series (Apple) was true to the author's intention.
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15 | I have written about the most recent "WordPress Drama" several times in the past weeks, but the popcorn factor has been rising every single day since the whole thing started.On a website, aptly entitled "Matt Mullenweg’s Bull(enweg)" (https://bullenweg.com/), you get a pretty good summary of those events that make it quite clear to everyone that not everybody is suited to "lead", especially if he/she calls him-/herself "post economic" and is basically a downright erratic and spiteful character with a long history of bullying.Unfortunately, thousands of major players and their businesses are too financially dependent on WordPress to chime in with what, in most cases, would certainly be criticism, so, in the long run, not much will change. And that's exactly what Matt Mullenweg is counting on. I hope he is finally wrong this time.
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14 | Fabulous pianist Tord Gustavsen has released a new trio (!) CD, "Seeing". The first three Gustavsen trio albums are "holy grail" material in my household and the new one shows equal artistry, albeit even more refined. His melodic approach is still the focus and that minimalist, relaxed and spacious Scandinavian vibe never gets old for me. Great music!
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13 | By blocking ad blockers, Google is currently using its dominant Windows browser market share anticompetitively.
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12 | Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS is currently passing earth. It was last seen from earth 80,000 years ago when Neanderthals were around. I guess not much has changed since then.
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11 | For nearly 1 1/2 years, I've been watching an apparently single senior citizen (anywhere between 75 and 85 years of age) rolling down our street in his wheelchair, from our retirement home at one end of our street to the supermarket at the other end.For about 600 meters, he needs an hour or so, using both his arms and his feet to slowly move forward, keeping his head down and not looking at or speaking to anyone. On his way back, he moves his wheelchair backwards and needs about 20 minutes extra.I've tried to speak to him several times, but he won't answer.It's a sad state of affairs for people like him in my country, but, at the same time, I have huge respect for him and his stamina and persistence. Rain, snow, heat ... he rolls by every single day (besides Sundays).Another man of about the same age, who used to come by several times each week to sit on a park bench right next to our front entrance, to take a short break and eat or drink something, read a book or just take a short breather, hasn't been around for a month or two. He has probably passed away without people really noticing.
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10 | I have recently given all these new AI sites a spin and whereas it is amazing what they can do, it is equally baffling how faulty the results often are.AI is only as intelligent and accurate as the websites, texts and other online material it harvested and learned from, and if you know your stuff and test it out on areas you yourself are very knowledgeable in, AI will invariably just repackage the inaccuracies available online. AI just gives those results a cosmetic upgrade.Again, because I referred to him yesterday, Ted Gioia highlighted the following snippet in his most recent newsletter:"Newspaper pretends a dead critic is writing reviews again—thanks to AI.""Art critic Brian Sewell died in 2015 at the age of 84. But a few days ago, he reviewed the new Van Gogh exhibit in London. The London Standard brought back the dead journalist with the help of AI. The newspaper’s CEO said this was part of a plan to be 'bold and disruptive.' By total coincidence, this newspaper recently eliminated 150 employees, including 70 members of the editorial staff. The AI-raises-the-dead move was widely mocked on social media, and by other newspapers. But what would Brian Sewell think about this. Somebody got the bright idea of asking AI—and the response was best writing I’ve ever seen from a chatbot."
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09 | In his recent newsletter entitled "Terry Gibbs Celebrates His 100th Birthday—but Why Isn't He a NEA Jazz Master?", Ted Gioia reminded me again of this excellent jazz musician (vibraphone, piano) who, having recorded with just about every other great jazz musician under the sun, has not garnered the accolades and attention that he deserves.I have lots of Terry Gibbs' recordings and as a result of the newsletter, listened to the entire 6-CD run of his fabulous "Dream Band" albums (1959-1961), which all showcase big band jazz at its toe-tapping finest.Gibbs' solo and small group sessions are equally great! Do seek his music out!Note: The "Terry Gibbs Dream Band" albums are listed below and most can be found on your preferred streaming services (I found them on Qobuz, which has a ton of Gibbs' recordings available):Vol. 01 - Dream Band
Vol. 02 - The Sundown Sessions
Vol. 03 - Flying Home
Vol. 04 - Main Stem
Vol. 05 - The Big Cat
Vol. 06 - One More Time
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08 | I haven't watched "Saturday Night Live" for ages really, just snippets here and there, but "Washington's Dream" must surely have been the funniest sketch in many years, also because of Nate Bargatze's deadpan delivery. Apparently, just a few days ago, "Washington's Dream 2" was broadcast, but I have only seen bits and pieces here and there (SNL episodes are constantly deleted, reappear once in a while and then are deleted again). Keep an eye out for it!NBC: "While the original poked fun at our unique, hard-to-explain terms for numbers and measures, Washington now extols the virtues of how we spell things and tend to name animals something different after they've become food."
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07 | Well, once again, a brilliant interview by Rick Beato, this time with Rick Rubin, a groundbreaking producer of many iconic albums (Run DMC, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Tom Petty, Red Hot Chili Peppers, System of a Down, Johnny Cash, and many others).I have always loved the way Rubin approached producing much more from a listener's and fan's perspective, rather than from a technical one, which would have lessened a lot of the music he helped come to life. Plus, he single-handedly revived both Aerosmith's and Johnny Cash's careers. Fascinating stuff.
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06 | One of the funniest sites I have seen in many years is mcbroken.com. The site shows a real-time map of all broken (or working) McDonald's ice cream machines. Funnily enough, it seems to be a site exclusively supported by "Wendy's"!
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05 | In "The Decline of the Novel", Ted Gioia briefly comments on many developments and problems I have also noticed (and sometimes commented on) these past many years.
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04 | Lots of pointy ears, Orcs and assorted other folk in various costumes are all around us today. Unfortunately, many of the hundreds of fans also seem to be your average overweight and otherwise challenged people who haven't left their rooms or basements for weeks or months. Strange folk indeed.
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03 | We are only able to spend one night in Bonn because our hotel of choice is booked out for the weekend (others are as well). The reason is "Magic Con 2024", an event at which those inclined can meet their favorite "Fantasy & Mystery Stars". Actors like Richard Armitage, Miranda Otto, Dominic Monaghan and many others are (or will be) in attendance.
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02 | We're heading to Bonn tomorrow for a couple of days. Posts will resume on Saturday. I'll leave you with this long read, which has some fascinating insights:Jimmy Carter's First Century: In this essay, James Fallows, a renowned journalist who had once been Carter’s speechwriter, outlines how Carter managed to turn things in his favour in the beginning and then stumbled over a botched and ambitious rescue effort towards the end.
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01 | Yeah, we have these areas too, although we are still far removed from American suburbia: "American Suburbs Are a Horror Movie and We’re the Protagonists." [via: kottke.org]
09 | September
30 | ♥ Happy birthday to my wife ... and partner for nearly two decades! ♥
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29 | Interesting: "The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time:
A study of humanity’s most brilliant, collected wisdom in 27 categories, backed by data and with real sources."
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28 | Justin Johnson is another one of those musicians that supposedly don't exist anymore ... but continue to produce excellent music.
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27 | [Update:] On the 23rd of this month I wrote about the ongoing nuclear war (Matt Mullenweg) between WordPress and WPEngine, a WordPress hosting company. Since then, it has heated up tremendously and I needed several buckets of popcorn to keep up.Mullenweg throws tantrums regularly, but, from my vantage point, he has begun to notice that this time the shit hit the fan on all sides. In a video (yesterday), he stated that at some point he was so exhausted that he had to throw up. Why? I think that even people who used to defend his stance on open source are contesting both the content of his statements and his strange ways of fulfilling his leadership obligations.I would love to see exactly this case enter a court of law and firmly believe that Mullenweg doesn't have any standing. He'll lose, not because he might not have a point but because legally, he won't be able to prove it due to his absolutely erratic behaviour, changing his story several times over in the course of this dispute and actually twisting things to fit his narrative whenever he makes a statement.Mullenweg is an example of your typical 21st-century CEO who is totally out of his depths because he simply lacks the qualifications to muster a storm at that level.
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26 | It's my wife's birthday on Monday. Because she reads along here, I can't be too specific, but, as one present, I tried to replace a product which is decades old and she uses every day. Said product has finally reached its "end of life" stage.The same company has "upgraded" this product several times since that earlier model and, of course, they have done everything in their power to reduce the overall quality, manufacturing cost and ease of use.It is absolutely astonishing to see how excruciatingly bad this product has become. Stainless steel replaced by cheapest plastic, a hundred methods to lock customers into pricey renewal schemes, instability, planned obsolescence all around. I ordered and tried three models and each one was worse than the next. One arrived already broken, the second one was so flimsy it hurt and the last one was a (heavily) used product they tried to peddle to another unassuming customer, me.What a fucking waste of time and money.We were supposed to be living on Mars by now, but corporate greed is moving us closer to throwing the entire planet back into the stone age.
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25 | Today, the leadership of our "Green" party resigned after several recent election debacles. Shortly thereafter, the top ranks of their youth organization resigned and announced they would be founding a new (leftist) party.I'm not a fan of said party, mostly because they were incapable of "selling" their policies properly (glaringly so) and because they used authoritarian methods to impose their agenda, but at heart many of their good and important ideas were steamrolled by an (elderly) electorate that is so resistant to any kind of change that they wouldn't leave a burning house if you paid them to do so.
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24 | Note: My mom has run into some health problems that need to be taken care of. I might have to be away from here and this site for a shorter or longer period of time while that happens. So, don't worry if I fall silent for a while.
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23 | Although close to half the websites on this planet are run using WordPress, I dropped it years ago for many reasons.Every WordPress installation had become unnecessarily bloated and an instant spam magnet the second you pressed "publish". Constant "urgent plugin security updates" were more than a nuisance. Then WordPress forced "Gutenberg" down everyone's throats (which, 6 years or so later, still is nowhere near the promised ease and quality) and costs were rising constantly if you wanted to have any decent page speed.The main reason though was that I thought that Matt Mullenweg (CEO of Automattic) and many of his minions were total twerps. They loved to strongarm people who were trying to create viable businesses or simply disagreed with some developments (check out this post, for example) and when I started reading more and more about the whole WordPress universe, I quickly realised that I did not want to be part of it (anymore), despite the many good people working in it.WordPress constantly seemed to me to be very much like the closed-off Wikipedia universe, whose administrators love to lord it over contributors that dared not be aligned to their politically skewed worldview. Validated facts did and do not matter if they don't conform. I never understood why anyone would give a single cent to them in their ever more frequent and prolonged "donation" runs.Just like Wikipedia, WordPress loves to call itself "open" ... unless Matt Mullenweg didn't or doesn't like a person or a product. Then it becomes closed and Mullenweg becomes spiteful.Rinse, repeat.Just the other day then, Mullenweg started a new war, this time with WPEngine, one of the most-known hosting providers, and cites his open source agenda as a reason. Hours later we find out that he was apparently extorting said company ... for financial reasons."WP Engine sends cease-and-desist letter to Automattic over Mullenweg's comments".In my world, Mullenweg is absolutely no different from miscreants like Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk and the world would be a much better place if all three of them would end up on the trash heap of history as quickly as possible.
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22 | For the upcoming weeks, Munich and its "Oktoberfest" will again be ground zero for those people who love to pay €16 for a half-filled liter glass of beer, three times as much for any decent-sized portion of food, and, especially, for those people who love to watch debauchery at its very finest.
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21 | I used to frequent DeviantArt for many years, trying to find new options (wallpapers, themes, icon sets, etc.) I could customize my various Windows versions with. That time is long gone. Here's why:"The Tragic Downfall of the Internet’s Art Gallery" - "Once a vibrant platform for artists, DeviantArt is now buckling under the weight of bots and greed—and spurning the creative community that made it great."
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20 | I'm really happy that I'm not a (politics) teacher anymore. You simply cannot explain this kind of behaviour to anyone of sane mind anymore.In politics, these kinds of degenerates are gaining the upper hand, boosted by an electorate that simply does not care and seems to thrive off of double-standards, deviant behaviour, lies, fake news, etc. People actually support these kinds of individuals and are willing to fight for them to the death. Absolutely mind-boggling.
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19 | The most interesting thing for me in regard to Suntup's new, lavish and limited editions of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" is the essay written by illustrator Yoann Lossel, who outlines the painstaking and lengthy work that went into these (costly) editions. A fascinating and highly-recommended read for those who love books!
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18 | In his most recent article, Ted Gioia asks the question if we are now living in a parasitic culture. Of course we are, as I have written here many times, but here are some tidbits from the article:"There’s a parasite that hovers around the eyes of cattle—it literally lives off blood, sweat, and tears (like some parody of Churchill). That’s a metaphor for much of the digital economy. [...] Nowadays, parasite businesses are the largest corporations in the world. Their technologies do many harmful things, but lately they have focused on serving up fake culture, leeching off the creativity of real human artists.Just take a look at the dominant digital platforms—and consider how little they actually create. But the amount of leeching they do is really quite stunning, especially when compared with the dominant businesses of the past.What does Facebook really create? Almost nothing. [...]What does Google really create? Almost nothing. [...]Then look at every one of Alphabet’s other business units, and ask the same question. What’s getting created here by the company itself? Very little—but this enormous business is a genuine innovator in parasitical software and business models, leeching off others so successfully, that it now has a market capitalization of $2 trillion. [...]What does Spotify really create? Almost nothing. [...]What does TikTok really create? Almost nothing. [...]Consider the case of the woman who attracted 713,000 TikTok followers and generated 11 million views for her videos—and got paid $1.85 over the course of five months. No that’s not $1.85 million—it’s one buck and eighty-five pennies. You can practically hear the lifeblood getting sucked out of the creator economy. [...]."
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17 | After decades of reading, I would say that those controversial posters most people know, either internationally or nationally, can really be condensed down to three types:(01) The first type is your typical poster that has learned early that posting unsubstantiated but controversial things will invariably get him or her clicks. Today, people call that "clout chasing". Those kinds of posters are the easiest to identify ... and the easiest to dismiss.(02) The second type is your average "grifter", a person who actually discovered that you can earn money that way without too much "traditional" effort. Post crap and turn it into T-shirts, coffee mugs, posters, etc. and hope you will be invited to some TV talk show or news programme.(03) The third type is the dangerous one (there are several I can immediately think of that I have been following since the late 1990s). Those people experienced a (perceived) wrong decades ago and have been on the warpath against the (perceived) perpetrators ever since.The problem is that the latter types are a) difficult to identify if you don't know their background and b) have started to blanket everything and everyone with their venomous hate and constant criticism. They are always on the lookout for new "enemies" they can unload on. Everyone is against them and they perceive themselves as the only valiant knights fighting evil on our behalf. In short, things have become pathological for them ... and they won't stop until they're dead because they have dedicated their entire lives to fighting the "good" fight.P.S.: I left out a fourth group, the idiots, but we can all easily identify those, ... can't we?
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16 | I've been dancing around the "reMarkable" devices for years now. In fact, it's the only device I can remember that I almost bought several times already. One day I might.They've put out a new (color) version, the "reMarkable Paper Pro". Have a look. First reviews are promising.
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15 | More and more authors, writers and journalists I have been following for years now, people who published material way above the average junk available today and who did their own thing on their websites, their newsletters and their corners of publishing websites, have begun to increasingly wall themselves in, hiding excellent insights, wonderful prose and well thought-out articles behind unsurmountable paywalls.I can absolutely understand their motivation, but it goes against my conviction that if you want to change things or inform people, you need to keep what you have to say available to everyone, also to those who cannot pay the expected monthly fees, which (very) quickly add up.In the end, those authors and writers are forcing people to only follow their distinct voices and none of the others.So, with great regret, I have started to unfollow many of these wonderful and important voices.
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14 | This guy is the best of all of them.
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13 | The Age of Enlightenment - and developments since then - brought us some fundamental truths that, surprisingly enough, many people today simply don't want to hear anymore. These people would rather use their 21st-century complacency to attack these truths until a point in time when they will suffer under systems they themselves helped propagate in a state of - willful - educational amnesia.I don't know much about Malcolm Turnbull, 29th Prime Minister of Australia, but the following few sentences of his summarize my 60 years of being taught by people whom I respect more than any of those countless hate- and lie-spewing populists active today:"Liberal democracy empowers the majority, but it also, through the rule of law, constrains the majority. And if you get to the point where anybody who can muster a majority [...] is given absolute power and then can do whatever they like to the minority [...] that's NOT a democracy, that is a tyranny. That is an autocracy. Even if it's got the support of 50, 51 percent of the population, that is not what makes a democracy. A democracy as we understand it, is one where the rule of law protects all citizens and the rule of law applies to all citizens, whether they are the president or the prime minister or an ordinary elector."
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12 | "The Raven", read by James Earl Jones (January 17, 1931 – September 9, 2024):
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11 | Jazz musicians of the past had notoriously bad contracts. Often, they earned - at best - a few hundred dollars in royalties later on in life. Many died in or near poverty.Richard "Blue" Mitchell was what many sources like to call an "obscure jazz musician", but - not only in my book - he was one of the best trumpeters of the 1950s and 1960s.24 years after dying of cancer, his wife suddenly received comparatively huge roaylty checks from EMI publishing because the "Basement Jaxx" had sampled one of my absolute favorite "Blue" Mitchell tunes, "Fungii Mama", which he had recorded in 1964. Later, that sampled version was used in a round of Intel ads and she again received a substantial royalty check.Thelma Mitchell had been living on Social Security checks and a minimum of savings.Jazz history abounds with many stories along those lines that usually don't have as positive an ending as this one.P.S.: My favorite version of this track is by Monty Alexander, who has often played it live. This version is one I have listened to a thousand times (with Jeff Hamilton on drums and John Clayton on bass).
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10 | The following link is one of those treasures that only a few people outside of a music forum or two might be aware of.Andrew, hailing from Munich, has a website up with fabulous, high-quality scans of covers from some of the most coveted classical music boxed sets. I always rip all of my new sets to flac and Andrew's work has proven to be an absolute time saver throughout my digital journey:-> "Coverart"
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09 | The following tidbit I found in a (German) newsletter I subscribe to, sums up our current state pretty well.The author was referring to a dangerous development which led to renowned experts being openly attacked and their accomplishments increasingly being diminished by people who barely made it through high school ... if at all. "Feelings", ideologies and selected, uninformed and rudimentary information have replaced knowledge and expertise."Like most other places in the West, we Germans live in a time in which experts without expertise populate talk shows and knowledge-free "expertise" is becoming more and more widespread. [...] Anyone who defames statements as nonsense because they do not fit into their own world view says more about themselves than about the person being defamed."
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08 | Here's another great Rick Beato interview, this time with Tony Levin, one of the best and often also most innovative bass players (Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, King Crimson, Jeff Beck, David Bowie, John Lennon, Mark Knopfler, Pink Floyd, Buddy Rich, Yes, Terry Bozzio, Steve Gadd, Mike Maineri, Alice Cooper, etc.) I know and listen to a lot.
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07 | According to the best and - from my vantage point - most reliable weather forecast, today is going to be the last warm day of the foreseeable future. Starting tomorrow, temperatures will take a serious dive, shaving off 15 degrees from what we had become accustomed to these past many weeks. Fall is coming and, again according to my trusted forecast, it's going to be a wet one with lots of rainfall.
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06 | Donald Trump was asked today if he would commit to prioritizing legislation to make childcare affordable, and if so, what specific legislation he would advance. This is an unedited transcript of his response:"Well, I would do that, and we're sitting down, and I was, somebody, we had Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka was so, uh, impactful on that issue. It's a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I'm talking about, that, because, look, child care is child care is. Couldn't, you know, there's something, you have to have it – in this country you have to have it.But when you talk about those numbers compared to the kind of numbers that I'm talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they're not used to — but they'll get used to it very quickly – and it's not gonna stop them from doing business with us, but they'll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Uh, those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we're talking about, including child care, that it's going to take care.We're gonna have - I, I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with, uh, the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country, because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care, but those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I'm talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just, uh, that I just told you about.We're gonna be taking in trillions of dollars, and as much as child care, uh, is talked about as being expensive, it's, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers we'll be taking in. We're going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people, and then we'll worry about the rest of the world. Let's help other people, but we're going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It's about Make America Great Again, we have to do it because right now we're a failing nation, so we'll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you."
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05 | Without wanting to partake in the discussion, I'm extremely happy about having been able to attend university before this total insanity started soaking into higher education (P.S.: the following is Berkley's own description of the hiring process).
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04 | Someone posted the following on some social network and, not surprisingly, hundreds of commenters simply didn't get it and started attacking, ranting and raving with spittle flying from the mouth.The world is going to hell in a very small handbasket and we all have a front-row seat."Once again Marvel resorts to the woke/DEI agenda. Instead of finding a planet sized alien that is older than the universe, they instead cast a 6''3 English actor who has likely never eaten a planet. Go woke. Go broke."
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03 | When you are retired, there are days ... and then there are days. That's why I had to laugh out loud at the following quote, taken from a new Apple TV-series, "Bad Monkey" (featuring Vince Vaughan), based on Carl Hiaasen’s New York Times bestselling novel and enduring cult favorite of the same name:Q: "What time is it?"
A: "Just past ... uh, bathrobe time. So you're still good."There is more, uhm, subtle humour in the series, so check it out.A: "You have a concussion."
B: "I'm fine."
A: "Please tell me you didn't drive here."
B. "I don't think I did."A: "Your place is a rat trap! Why don't you get a cat?"
B: (points to inactive cat) "I have one right here!"
A: "Yeah, then buy a tiger!"
B: "You can't get tigers in Florida, idiot!"
A: "There was a documentary about it, dumbass!"
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02 | I'm currently reorganizing about 20TB of music files. Using modern software, that sounds like a simple task, but it isn't. I need to restructure, find doubles which were accidentally added, check the integrity of files, separate (some) wheat from the chaff and, altogether, streamline my collection for future use. Even using fast transfer protocols, we are talking about 8 days of 24/7 work (and, most of the time, waiting for things to complete). And then there are new albums to rip, a whole pile of them, and ...
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01 | Of course, right- and left-wing parties were successful in two of our state elections. Only the biggest idiots didn't see it coming.Without going into any details, the basic problems are a) that we have entered a populist decade, b) that our government has stopped long ago to work for a larger part of the electorate and c) the idea of democracy is under constant fire from an ideologized and egotistical world view that all too many individuals, groups and activists share.
08 | August
31 | Without FreeFileSync, my digital collections would be dead in the water. Free, open source, perfect:"FreeFileSync is a folder comparison and synchronization software that creates and manages backup copies of all your important files. Instead of copying every file every time, FreeFileSync determines the differences between a source and a target folder and transfers only the minimum amount of data needed. FreeFileSync is Open Source software, available for Windows, macOS, and Linux."
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30 | Everyone's talking about the Oasis reunion. Because the 1990s pretty much passed me by in regard to independent rock music and "Britpop", I couldn't care less. I never liked their self-absorbed approach and, after the first two albums, they didn't seem to have any idea about what had made them special and tried to recapture that elusive something without any real success. I wonder if they still have anything relevant to say today. Could be. Let's wait and see.
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29 | I'm currently reorganizing my positively massive digital music collection. I'll probably need the rest of my life just to sort out albums that aren't where they are supposed to be.
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28 | If you are someone like me who loves movies, the following video will probably resonate with you: Sincerity: Hollywood's Forgotten Currency. The video concentrates on how "[...] Hollywood's obsession with ironic, self-aware storytelling has led to a decline in genuine audience connection, and why it's time to revive sincere, emotionally resonant narratives.".
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27 | Happy birthday to me. Made it through another year and was rewarded with fabulous weather, great presents, an excellent dinner and some great drinks. Life's good.
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26 | I've been on a "Saga" run again lately, a Canadian band from Ontario which was much more successful and popular over here in Europe, especially also in Germany.I saw them live several times, the first time when they were on tour with "Styx" in 1980 ... and were simply better than the main act. Later, in 1982, I saw them again and became an audience member on their fabulous live album, "In Transit", which was recorded in Copenhagen (Denmark) and Munich (Germany) in February of 1982. Later, I went to more live concerts and the atmosphere was always stellar, despite the many lineup changes over the years.Their discography is extremely solid and the album run between 1980 to 1983, with "Silent Knight" (1980), "Worlds Apart" (1981) and "Heads or Tales" (1983), yielded all the hits, which, usually, always showed up on their setlist(s).
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25 | As predictions go, some were accurate and some were not, but a very interesting read nonetheless: 50 Years Later: Remembering How the Future Looked in 1974.
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24 | Jon Anderson's new album, "True", recorded together with "The Band Geeks" (Richie Castellano [bass, guitar], Andy Graziano [guitar, bass], Rob Kipp [guitar, keyboards], Andy Ascolese [drums] and Chris Clark [keyboards]), is absolutely fabulous! It is astonishing to hear what Anderson can still do at age 79! Highly recommended.
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23 | "Elon Musk’s X sues advertisers over alleged ‘massive advertiser boycott’ after Twitter takeover".Strange wording because the lawsuit is, if I understand correctly, aimed at "the World Federation of Advertisers", which apparently coordinates advertising for the firms (Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Oersted) Musk is going after and via which, according to X CEO Linda Yaccarino, these companies organized "a systematic illegal boycott". Still, in the long run, Musk will lose this one because, in the end, companies would just have to manage their advertising themselves to be rid of Musk and his minions.
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22 | One from my bucket list I will never get around to is the Everest Basecamp Trek through the Khumbu valley. Too old, lungs not fit enough, too expensive.The final ascent I would, of course, never have embarked on, but there's this fabulous video to enjoy, showing a complete drone flight along the full Mount Everest climbing route (from around 5300 meters elevation and basecamp to the summit), "29,000 Feet Up Mount Everest.Today, you often read that with enough money, "anyone could do it", but, well, have a look yourself. Would you be able to?
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21 | Talking about Ellen DeGeneres' supposedly last comedy tour, Joe Berkowitz had this to say about the end of her talkshow in a "Vulture" article:"The [...] eventual sunsetting of The Ellen DeGeneres Show was greeted online with the kind of Schadenfreude one might expect to accompany Donald Trump falling down a long, steep hill while trapped in a porta-potty."
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20 | I can't even remember the countless films that were major disappointments these past months and years.I've seen people absolutely rave about "Alien: Romulus" and I guess expectations are so low today that really anything above an IQ of 20 is termed "a winner".Filmmaking - besides a handful of films here and there - has hit absolute rock bottom. It's the (mostly, but not only) Hollywood version of dumbing down society to such a degree that any half-way sensible person can only shake her/his head at it all."Alien: Romulus" is a rehashing of tired old ideas and never manages to develop an identity of its own. It's a film that aims for the lowest common denominator and - as is commonplace today - throws in completely superfluous references to the much better earlier films ("Hey, look! Seen this before? Or this right here? How about that scene over there? What a wonderful fan you are if you recognized it! And we didn't even have to spend money on being original. How fucking cool are we ... and you?"). These references and "cameo" appearances are absolutely cringeworthy and insulting.Lazy script writing, mostly faceless characters without any depth or development, simplistic dialogue, the first half a tedious slog, a final third that at least offered some tension, and then a finale with a "villain" that was just laughable.Sorry to say, but this film was just the usual fare (albeit with a couple of well-done effects). Watched and forgotten within a few hours. I have given up all hope that we will get anything better out of this franchise. Shelve it already!Bilge Ebiri sums it up quite nicely in his review for Vulture magazine: "Alien: Romulus is diverting enough, but it’s also instantly forgettable — something I don’t think I’ve ever said about any other Alien film, good or bad."
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19 | Cory Doctorow reviews a book I read a while back, "Corporate Bullshit" by Nick Hanauer, Joan Walsh & Donald Cohen.It's the kind of book that immediately lands in nowhere land between the frontlines of the ongoing right vs. left war, especially with that title, but Doctorow's review is spot on:"The authors' thesis is that the business world has a well-worn playbook that they roll out whenever anything that might cause industry to behave even slightly less destructively is proposed. [...] I. First, insist that there is no problem [...] II. OK, there's a problem, but it's your fault [...] III. Any attempt to fix this will make it worse [and] IV. This is socialism."If you have even half a brain and aren't encamped ideologically, I'm sure you've seen those four talking points from that playbook a thousand times before. Hence, in Doctorow's review, the following passage made me laugh out loud. Sound familiar?"[...] Income tax is socialism. Estate tax is socialism. Medicare and Medicaid are socialism. Food stamps are socialism. Child labor laws are socialism. Public education is socialism. The National Labor Relations Act is socialism. Unions are socialism. Social security is socialism. The Fair Labor Standards Act is socialism. Obamacare is socialism. The Civil Rights Act is socialism. The Occupational Health and Safety Act is socialism. The Family Medical Leave Act is socialism. FDR is a socialist. JFK is a socialist. Lyndon Johnson is a socialist. Carter is a socialist. Clinton is a socialist. Obama is a socialist. Biden is a socialist[...]."
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18 | Brian Keene confirms what we have all been seeing: that engagement on social media is sinking rapidly. It's the same for everyone.He writes that because major companies are throttling our interactions with each other, "[...] engagement is down across the board, across all platforms, and for everyone. I’ve talked to influencers, bookstagrammers, reviewers, critics, authors, artists, editors, comedians, politicians, and a few adult film stars, all of whom have told me privately that their engagement is down, and the engagement that does still exist might be bots because nobody can really tell anymore. [...] Engagement is down for me, as well. The only places I get any real traction are Patreon and Twitter and to a lesser extent, Instagram and BlueSky. But BlueSky’s audience is so small that the engagement is mostly a handful of likes, and it’s really impossible to actually engage with people on Instagram, since 99.8% of its users are simply scrolling down through their feeds, clicking Like on their individual thirst traps." [Brian Keene, "Letters from the Labyrinth, #390].
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17 | Donald Trump, like so many other lesser-educated people on this planet, really believes that single individuals (or their limited short-term policies) are responsible for inflation. It's absolutely maddening to read the bullshit Trump (and a league of others) have started peddling everywhere without having the foggiest notion of how global economics (or, really, anything else) works. And people gobble it up because they don't (want to) know any better.
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16 | There is a reason why I dislike Apple, and Cory Doctorow put words to it better than I could ever have done: "Apple vs the "free market".
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15 | This is a depressing list ... and the details of many of the cases even more so.
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14 | I found out today that I need extra surgery on my left jaw (again) because, as the doctor said, I'm that one person (from a total of 0,01% of all patients treated) for whom things went wrong. Not to be too negative, but I've always been a member of the 0,01%-group. Every single time.
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13 | Tonight we were extremely lucky.We had a rotating thunderstorm just above us and whereas we were in the clear, most towns around us drowned.In one city just north of us, the water level rose from 10 centimeters to nearly 3 meters within less than an hour, after much more than 120 liters of water poured down within that timespan. There wasn't a house that wasn't flooded and today they turned off electricity there to prevent further fires. Trains are down, highways are blocked, people are out of a home.But, climate change doesn't exist. Never has, never will ... according to some brain-dead morons rising from the primordial sludge of days long gone.
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12 | Because we are experiencing exactly the same problems in Germany, here's the brilliant speech Rowan Atkinson gave in May of last year:
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11 | "The World's First Medieval Electronic Instrument" is the coolest beat machine (“instrumentalis electronicum") I have seen in ages (check out the website and the sound samples)."Hurdy gurdys, lutes, Gregorian chants, thundering drums and punishing percussive Foley FX. The EP-1320 is the first of its kind: featuring a large library of phrases, play ready instruments and one-shot samples from an age where darkness reigned supreme, the instrumentalis electronicum is the ultimate, and only, medieval beat machine."It even includes medieval punch-in pocus, torture chamber reverb, dungeon echo, a bardic ensemble and a dimension expander.All for only €349, not including the medieval quilt bag, keychain or T-Shirt (those you have to buy separately).
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10 | In the past, I subscribed to three newspapers and a handful of magazines. Today? None. I piece together what I need from good writers and solid, old-fashioned journalism from around the Internet.In "The Death of the Magazine: Or what happens when journalism forgets about quality writing", Ted Gioia consistently hits the nail on the head. It's a read well worth your time.
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09 | We are just about to enter a phase of five or six days with constantly rising temperatures. Next Tuesday will be the peak of this curve with another tropical night and nasty thunderstorms and flooding to follow directly after. Let's see which region in Germany will get hit the hardest.
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08 | I've never really been a fan of Microsoft. They never listen to their users and just constantly "improve" their products to death, adding things users don't want and changing things around so you can't find anything anymore. And, if nothing new tickles their fancy, they change the program icons ... again.Just happened with outlook.com, which I have been using forever. Now it looks like Word and all the primary and useful functions of an Email client are, of course, hidden at least two clicks deep (if you can find them at all). Microsoft hates consumers.
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07 | There are far too many left-leaning people in Germany who, for some incomprehensible reason, have supported the Venezuelan regime(s) since the start. I simply don't get it. No matter what happens, they can still find some reason to defend the dismal state this wonderful country and its people find themselves in. They ignore the corruption and the human suffering in favor of some (simplistic) ideal that went out the window decades ago.The only thing I am certain of is that they don't have any real-life connection to a country that is slowly killing its citizens. In short, and as usual, they don't know shit about what is actually happening there every single day. I guess, Wikipedia and some leftist rags are the only information sources they consult. And, worst of all, they really only care about ideology and couldn't give a flying fuck about anybody or anything else.Absolutely despicable human beings!
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06 | I have had the last one of three major surgeries done on my jaw and despite some problems along the way, I'm fast approaching the final stage (coming in October/November). When completed, the whole procedure will have taken longer than an entire year and will have cost an arm, a leg, and two livers.
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05 | Zack Snyder's "Rebel Moon" duology is NOT improved by the director's cut versions recently released by Netflix. Both are simply not films worthy of anyone's time because absolutely nothing works. The added effects and snippets simply cannot hide that the two films have what I like to call a "zero story" (zero originality, all copy) and horrible dialogue. It's not the actors' fault that the whole thing fell flat. It's the director's fault, Zack Snyder, whose almost "mythical" abilities - according to some hardcore fans - are simply non-existent.
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04 | Deadpool III ("Deadpool & Wolverine") was a pretty good film, not because of that stupid multiverse angle, but because of the wonderfully off-the-wall dialogue that is just hilarious.
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03 | Aerosmith ends touring, citing permanent damage to singer's voice. "'He has spent months tirelessly working on getting his voice to where it was before his injury. We’ve seen him struggling despite having the best medical team by his side. Sadly, it is clear that a full recovery from his vocal injury is not possible,' the statement said. 'We have made a heartbreaking and difficult, but necessary, decision — as a band of brothers — to retire from the touring stage.'”Steven Tyler is 76 years old. Most people aren't alive at that age anymore. What a run he had.
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02 | I am a fan both of the original Fleetwood Mac and the later reincarnation with Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks. Lately though, Fleetwood Mac has become just another one of those bands continuously milking their past recordings for all it's worth.It's probably their management, but how many "live" (often reorganized with maybe a bonus track or two), "Best of", "Very Best of" and reprinted box sets does the world really need? And, really, how often can you possibly remaster an entire catalogue? I think the world has everything Fleetwood Mac has ever recorded, and that at least thrice over.
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01 | The weather has been spectacular these past days and I hope it stays that way. It could be a little cooler here and there, but we prefer the sun to the torrential rains we experienced in recent months.
07 | July
31 | I supported Sophie Atkinson's Kickstarter project, an illustrated edition of Bram Stoker's Dracula.It was fun to see the project take shape and unfold. Today I received a signed copy of the hardcover edition, as ordered, and it is as beautiful as I had anticipated.If you are interested in any of her books, drawings and other goodies, items are still available in her online shop. Highly recommended and your chance to support an up and coming artist!
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30 | Lots of hard work outside in the blistering sun today. I'm thoroughly roasted and done for the day.
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29 | The last thing anyone can accuse me off is that I care about fashion. The only thing I have been known for is my constant criticism of people who a) follow those ever-changing trends and b) look like either galloping horses or grazing cows when they run around town in high fashion that really wasn't meant for them and their non-standard bodies.That's why this well-written and extremely funny article, "Boho Ohno: Boho’s back, baby, meaning droopy, limp and dismal is the name of the game" was my article of the day.P.S.: "Boho" stands for bohemian chic here. Or ... droopy, limp and dismal.
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28 | Altogether 11 glass doors and 3 big windows. Each and every one needed to be cleaned today. Fun times!
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27 | I watched parts of the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris yesterday and it was an opulent one which, to me, seemed a bit too theatrical and altogether overdone. But, in times of international mayhem, it was a nice way to escape for a little while.
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26 | The new 6-CD "Synchronicity" boxed set by "The Police" is, as they say nowadays, the shit for those of us who enjoyed the band's music as much as I have always done.A well-remastered original album, tons of bonus, unreleased and live tracks (Live At The Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, California, USA , September 10th, 1983) really make this an outstanding package.Very highly recommended!
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25 | I've started writing a longer article about another one of my obsessions, book collecting, so that one should be posted here pretty soon.
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24 | Whereas I am retired and have enough time to spare for hobbies and interests, my wife isn't and doesn't.Her job - which used to be my job as well - is becoming increasingly tough to handle in regard to obligations and ever more extras raining down from administrative goons who think that other people should do the work they themselves get paid for.Her summer holidays started today and these next 6 weeks, we're going to be doing lots of different things, in and around the house + elsewhere entirely.So, if things get a bit quiet around here, don't worry. We are out and about, enjoying real life ... the way it should be.
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23 | Now that I got that off my chest yesterday and removed myself from the Internet right and left, we can get straight back to regular programming and keep it that way.Ted Gioia asks perhaps the most important question of all, "Do Drummers Live Longer?"I sure hope so, but, seriously, Gioia talks about Roy Haynes and other drummers, who have been around forever. In regard to Haynes and the artists he performed with and places he performed at, Gioia writes:"As it turns out, Chick Corea is now dead—as are most of the other legends who hired Roy Haynes for their bands. These include John Coltrane, Lester Young, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sarah Vaughan, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, Bud Powell, Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner, Art Pepper, Freddie Hubbard, Michel Petrucciani, and many, many others.Even the Meyer Library, where I first listened to that record featuring Haynes with Parker and Gillespie, has been torn down.Only Sergeant Haynes survives."
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23 | I sometimes wonder what happened to people in the past few years.In my opinion, it has absolutely nothing to do with "free speech", something that everyone tends to carry around as an all-mighty, fundamentalist defense shield and excuse, but with a shift towards psychotic as well as self-centered behaviour, which is spreading like wildfire, on all sides of the political spectrum and throughout all strata of western society.Especially a sizeable part of my generation ("boomers") and the one following ("generation X") have suddenly turned into verbally rampaging and ragingly mad lunatics with the most absurd, destructive and, especially, egoistic takes on anything and everything, combined with more than patchy, often basically flawed and consciously distorted factual knowledge, based on usually unrelated tiny fragments quickly ripped from suspect online sources which support just about any ludicrous claim made today.Add to that everyone's refusal to engage in meaningful discourse and what you get is a room full of flailing and screeching infants trying to drown out everyone.I've seen some shit in my life, but the past few years have been excruciating.With more known people like, just to take three extreme examples, actor James Woods and those Republican backbenchers, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, all of whom are clearly completely off their rockers, with James Woods being one of the most despicable persons I have had the misfortune of reading these past few years, you could at least have seen it coming because they and the many others have always been on the bonkers side of the populace.Also unempathetic, anti-Semitic and downright spiteful Elon Musk, who somehow managed to become one of those people's envied leaders, has always been a little off the spectrum, to put it mildly. Now that he has bought himself his very own Gabriel's trumpet, he's more akin to the four horsemen of the apocalypse, all rolled into one.I always prided myself on being able to judge people pretty well, which, I think, is an abilty one simply needs as a teacher, but I'm seriously doubting if I was ever really able to.Perhaps I myself have changed fundamentally (very well possible), but around me some friends (also many online), former colleagues and neighbours have, comparatively quickly, totally gone off the deep end. It's almost as if they had all been silenced for decades and suddenly received a signal that screamed "NOW you can FINALLY speak out!". And they did and continue to do so, with no end in sight.It didn't take more than a decade, a pandemic and a handful of populist leaders for western civilization to go right into the toilet, with a loud minority propagating those insane stories of "the Deep State", George Soros, Bill Gates and the Clintons running the world from luxurious backrooms, with cabals secretly manipulating everyone (including, of course, every single election), paedophiles lurking behind every single piece of furniture and cloud seeding destroying our planet. And that's just the tip of the iceberg!On the other side of the spectrum, everyone is considered to be a "Nazi", a "boomer" or just a basic imbecile, completely bereft of compassion or empathy, someone who is only interested in him- or herself, wallowing in hate and xeno-, trans- and homophobia while trying to keep everyone else down and below the poverty line. Those people are generally thought to be out to ruin the climate, sabotage equality and altogether keep us squarely in the Stone Age, incapable of moving forward and unwilling to further change.There is no winning this.It's a rampant epidemic of paranoia that reaches from the very top to the very bottom and from the very right to the very left."Everyone is after ME and MY family and MY friends, taking things away from ME and ruining life for ME and MINE. I need to be respected. I count. I, I, I! THEY are the guilty, THEY are ruining my life, THEY, THEY, THEY."Individual responsibility, accountability and also etiquette have gone out the window even faster than common sense.Was it the corona pandemic? Did the Internet bring to light what people were really like all along?What the hell happened?If this were happening in insane asylums only, I would have expected it to be the inherent atmosphere, but all of this is taking place in the halls of power and around each and every one of us. Accusations instead of debate, rage instead of equanimity, calculated lies instead of fundamental truths, superstition instead of science, and, yes, hate instead of love and war instead of peace.My most basic problem is that this behaviour has started to soak into everything, the discussion of music, books, TV series, films, food, relationships, weather, transportation, traveling, ... absolutely everything. No matter what the topic is, it will invariably be infused with this abnormal behaviour and discourse and you can be sure that people will invent really clever ways of making sure that they achieve exactly that goal.So I decided to step away and leave the cleaning up to the next generation. I know it will take years, perhaps decades, because at the moment a large part of the 50+ year-old crowd dominates and pollutes every nook and cranny of every country and political system, with the 35-45 year-old crowd following closely behind, with an entirely different agenda.I am simply tired of it all, especially because my background is that of basic humanistic education. And that's why things have just become unbearable outside of the small bubbles I have recently begun to create for myself. In those bubbles, I have so far encountered the opposite of what I described above. I'm abolutely sure I want to keep things this way.But, for many others, I suspect, this is really the time to become an indefatigable misanthrope.
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22 | I just listened to the new Deep Purple album ("=1" ... yes that's the actual title and the cover also just screams "creativity" ... NOT! ) and whereas some of the tracks are pretty good, the mastering is an absolute abomination.On my stereo, on which I had previously listened to an old Judas Priest album (LP, none of those later brickwalled CD releases), I had to turn the volume down by 2/3 just to prevent my trusted loudspeakers from exploding into a million fragments.I'm too old to fight against popular opinion, but those people who like that kind of screaming, in-your-face brickwalled sound with absolutely zero dynamics of any kind have a genetic problem or have never heard what music is supposed to or can sound like."=1" (still can't get over that stupid title and crappy artwork) will leave this house much faster than it entered it.Trash.
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NOTE | A faithful and trusted reader with impaired eyesight has asked me to use separators between posts, especially between longer ones, because for her it was difficult to discern where one entry ended and another one started.She specifically asked me not to increase the spacing between posts, but to include a visible separator.I'm happy to comply, especially because I have my own eye problems and know what that's like when using the Internet, and after I tested this "three-stars" solution with her, they will become a standard around here, starting with this full month of July 2024.
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21 | We all know you can't trust anything or anyone on the net anymore. A simple act like trying to buy a half-decent garden hose has turned into a week-long project.Using a review checker and my own skills, honed by decades of studying reviews on Amazon and elsewhere, more than 90 percent of all the garden hose reviews that I looked at are fake, posted either by people who wrote exactly 1 review online, for that one garden hose, or artificial entities who mass-produce KI-generated bullshit.When you then find the few real people who actually spend their time writing trustworthy reviews, each one a modern-day Don Quixot, you'll find gems like the following, which say the exact opposite of what the other 1000 fake reviewers said. And all of that for a simple garden hose (produced in China, of course, which is a fact that the producers tried to obscure by jumping through a thousand hoops ):"More Knots than a Gordian ConventionI’m assuming this hose was meant for the comedy/clown section and not intended for garden/watering purposes. If Les Dawson or Mr. Bean were looking for a watering-related prop, this would be for them! I only had this for a few weeks and already it ties itself in knots, makes a traditional hose’s kinks look amateurish and twists itself so tightly, it cuts the water flow (so I have to spend a happy 5 minutes dangling it to let it spin itself back into shape).If this is the upgraded version, I dread to think what the original was like.Save your money, time and sanity and avoid this one."
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20 | For only the second time in decades, I killed my presence on a major social network. First it was Facebook, many, many years ago, when, under Mark Zuckerberg's sociopathic thumb, it had turned to absolute sh*t. Yesterday, it was Twitter (I still refuse to call it "X").You know it is time to leave if you can invariably anticipate any shitty, racist, homophobic and otherwise disgusting trend before it happens. And, as is customary in my world, I'll never return, not for a second.Still, I kept my account to safeguard the name/moniker.History will show that these kinds of social networks (the technology and algorithms behind them, the technology used to access them and the people controlling [or allowing access to] them) were the main reason for the downfall of western civilization as we once knew it.
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19 | On Instagram you are often tagged in some sort of group thing. I usually ignore them, but this time I participated in one called "20 Obsessions", simply because I could make something out of that to use in what they call "highlights" on Instagram, a small section at the top of your profile page that remains accessible whereas "stories" disappear within 24 hours (yeah, people, that's the terminology of the modern age for you).Anyway, instead of posting one single story with a simple list, I turned it into 20 stories, plus introduction and "outro".To finally get to the point, often people quickly skip through these stories ("doomscrolling") and you can see who actually read them, who "liked" something, etc.I was happy to see that many of my former students actually took the time to like one of those 20 stories, the one about teaching, in which I expressed the hope that I had some sort of positive effect on the thousands of students I had taught in 32 years.On top of that, many nice comments and reminiscences started rolling in immediately. Not a negative word in sight (I guess those people who could have written them decided to keep quiet).Warm, fuzzy feelings all around.
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18 | The Mobile Fidelity reissue (SACD, remastered) of Van Halen's second album, simply entitled "Van Halen II", is absolutely excellent. To my ears, it's the best version since the release of the original in 1979.I just love all those Roth-era Van Halen albums to death. All of them.
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17 | The other day I watched a video on Instagram with a person trying to avoid saying "like" a hundred times per minute. She simply couldn't, although she tried hard for a few minutes. Every sentence fragment had at least two or three in them, often more, plus other filler words.Add the completely incorrect usage of "literally" and its bastard son "literal" to the mix and you get a completely moronic horde that is marching across the language landscape and nuking English by a filler word per second.That's like I mean like the whole like literal civilization going down the drain, like literally. It's a literal like pandemic. People can't like speak anymore at all like literally. Like ear cancer like I mean it will get literally everyone like literally. Like! Literally!
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16 | In 1992, Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen released an album, "Uncharted Land", which has been a favorite of mine since then.Besides such small (instrumental) gems as "Natten er så stille" (Weyse), "A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square" (Manning Sherwin) and "Someday My Prince Will Come" (Frank Churchill), it is the title track, "Uncharted Land" (music by Pedersen and lyrics by Liza Freeman) with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen (acoustic bass), Steve Swallow (electric 5-string bass) and Danish singer Søs Fenger, I've listened to a million times. Atmospheric, excellent spacious recording and great arrangement. Just listened to it again five or six times in a row last night.Uncharted Landon the shore
the restless sea
seems endless as
eternity
but those, who sail
to the unknown
have gentle winds
and waterbirds
to take them homeevery star
or grain of sand
is a universe
of uncharted land
and those who gaze
into the night
find diamond skies
like children's eyes
in candlelights
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15 | I already quoted from Brian Keene's newsletter the other day, but again today, he summed up developments quite well:"It’s an hot, ugly, dangerous time in America, and it’s only going to get hotter, uglier, and more dangerous. My advice to you is to spend less time online. Spend less time scrolling through TikTok or Insta or falling down YouTube rabbit holes. Instead, interact in real space with people you care about. Find things that bring you joy, and bring others joy, as well. Then invest in those things. November is still a long way off, and many of you are gonna burn out long before then, if you don’t take a step back now. [...][...] Yes, I know how shitty things are in the world right now. You don’t need to fill the comments with 'But what about…?' and 'Well, actually…' and 'Well I’m choosing President Coke over President Pepsi and this is why…'. Trust me, I’m fully aware."And, of course, it's not only America we're talking about.P.S.: Deservedly so, Spain won the European Championship last night. Congratulations! From the start, they were the best team of this 2024 tournament.
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14 | Trump. The assassination attempt showed how divided and downright evil everything is nowadays.I watched the whole thing unfold online from almost the get-go and it didn't even take 20 minutes (if even that long) for the conspiracy theories to rise, the right vs. left and vice versa bashing, the photoshopped fake news, the yelling and screaming, the accusations and the constant barrage by "online experts" one is accosted by that are experts on nuclear energy one day, on disease control and then sharpshooting the next. Virtual shapeshifters and brain-dead morons, the lot of them.
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13 | I don't see my various family members often enough. Today, my brother came by for a visit en route to my mom and then on his way home after an extended business trip and we were able to enjoy the roof terrace and later a nice dinner in great weather.
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12 | Cleaning day. 150sqm are a bitch to keep clean on a regular basis.
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11 | Harking back to the 27th of last month, "Van Halen II" (SACD, Mobile Fidelity) is on the way to my place. I'm really looking forward to it. Should be in the mailbox tomorrow.
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10 | Talking about the decline of western politics, discourse and values in general: I have finally had enough of both sides of the ongoing LGTBQIA and Feminist "resistance" battles (including each and every "allies" group and faction), which are permeating absolutely everything nowadays.This battle is raging everywhere and has taken over Google reviews, Goodreads discussions, Reddit, Twitter, Instagram, etc.You name it and these assholes are already there, yelling at each other, at clouds or just into the void. I have no other word for either side as they try to cancel and constantly slander each other, opinions, statements, people, books, articles and ... everything.They absolutely don't care if they ruin it for everyone else with their various egotistic, entitled and downright juvenile "opinions", which, taken the way their points are formulated, are about as relevant after years of enraged behaviour as a pigeon turd on a coffee table.They WILL - invariably - scream their take on things into your face, use their invectives and their thinly veiled sarcasm to somehow pull you over to their side, ignoring the fact that they are alienating just about everyone around themselves because irritability and aggressive behaviour are their modus vivendi. They are killing their own agendas and are too far gone to even notice it.So, I've started muting each and every one of these grossly intrusive people and will not listen to a single point anymore. I don't care if they are right or not, I just want them to shut the f*ck up after years of mind-numbingly irrational, childish and destructive debates.Both sides claim that they are "our saviours", the only people able to save humanity, western civilization and democracy while, at the same time, they are really just driving another nail into the various coffin lids.Altogether absolutely despicable people.
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09 | France has averted a right-wing takeover, but the election results are a shit show all by themselves. I wonder a) how long the new left coalition will last and b) if they can get any sensible work off the ground at all.Politics in the western hemisphere are completely and utterly off the wall and I wonder if France isn't just an example of what happens and will happen in the process of preventing a swing to the (far) right.The problem I see is that conservative parties don't seem to have gotten the memo yet (and probably never will). They don't have viable candidates anywhere in any country, but they huff and puff about developments without even attempting to strengthen the middle.When the shit hits the fan, and it will, exactly those conservatives will - of course - be "completely surprised" about developments and, as usual, really everyone else, the weather, aliens and spaghetti monsters will be at fault.
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08 | Brian Keene sends out a regular newsletter which I found the following tidbit in. The last sentence cracked me up:"[...] Central PA is in the squelching and oppressive grip of a wretched heatwave — the kind that makes your eyeglasses steam up when you walk outside, and makes wild animals hunker down beneath a bush, and makes fish stay at the bottom of the river, and makes your underwear ride up even if you’re not wearing underwear. It’s a malignant, corpulent, and annoying sort of weather — the meteorological equivalent of a conversation with Patrick Tomlinson."
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07 | Of course I'm watching the 2024 UEFA European Football Championship, but as Lewin Day already said in April of this year, "VAR Is Ruining Football, and Tech Is Ruining Sport".
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06 | It sure looks Like ‘Dune: Part Three’ just got a release date.
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05 | Let's go to extremes to make a point:The past: "Love is a smoke made with a fume of sighs. Being purged, a fire sparkling in lovers eyes. Being vexed, a sea nourished with loving tears. What is it else? A madness most discreet, a choking gall, and a preserving sweet." (Shakespeare]Today: "Bruh I been smokin deadass since I wus 13 ain't nun ever been n issue, shi but the other day I wus jus hittin a wood ain't nun crazy but my teeth deadass felt like they wus finna fallout or like jus hella sore or sum shi, i be seein people say they know what im talking ab but my shits still hurtin days later." [someone on the Internet]
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04 | We've had almost a week of fall weather here (less than half the temperature of the previous week + tons of rain). Next week it's supposed to get better, but in retrospect, the past 12 months have been altogether horrible.
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03 | I watched "The Pledge" again today and it's one of those small film gems that aren't really produced anymore.It`s "[...] a 2001 American neo-noir psychological mystery drama film directed by Sean Penn and starring Jack Nicholson alongside an ensemble supporting cast of Patricia Clarkson, Aaron Eckhart, Helen Mirren, Robin Wright Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, Sam Shepard, Mickey Rourke, Tom Noonan, Lois Smith and Benicio del Toro."
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02 | Ludicrous Supreme Court decisions are the logical consequence of developments in the US these past many years, but this one really takes the cake: "Read the full Supreme Court decision on Trump and presidential immunity".
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01 | I'm glad I moved away from Wörth am Rhein and the whole area that I lived in for about 30 years. This year, after months of rain and floods, that area and others directly along the Rhine river are being plagued by a biblical influx of mosquitoes. My wife's parents still live there and simply can't go outside anymore without being eaten alive.
06 | June
30 | It really doesn't surprise me anymore how critics are treating Kevin Costner's "Horizon". They want it to tank, especially because you are simply not supposed to be successful if you work outside of established Hollywood circles and don't produce another average and bland movie based on an absolutely formulaic script that generates just enough movie goers to finance the next trashy outing.The procedure is identical to the one "Heaven's Gate" was killed with by self-righteous critics who first wallowed in the production disaster rumours and then, when the film premiered, enjoyed throwing a "told you so" into everyone's face.Don't know "Heaven's Gate"? Check these two videos: 01 | 02 to see what I'm talking about.
29 | I often wonder where these climate-change deniers come from and what their mindset is. Are they just dumb, fundamentally ignorant or simply uneducated? They always claim they are looking at statistics and studies which prove that climate change doesn't exist and immediately after they post complaints about how f*cking hot it is again, how ridiculous their electricity bill is (because they have their AC running 24/7) and how irritating endless weeks of rain are. Yes, I'm simplifying, but if you don't see that things are changing, you live in some sort of alternative reality in which, for example, Trump and Biden are good presidents.
28 | I could write up a steam about the presidential debate last night, but, I guess, like most people around the planet, I can't help but be depressed about how things could deteriorate to such a degree in the US. The coming years will not be good times for anyone.
27 | Van Halen II is finally ready to ship from Mobile Fidelity. Only took a year or so. And getting hold of one over here in Europe isn't exactly easy if you don't want a direct import to disappear in customs for a month or two.
25 | We all know it, but here it is, once again, black on white (written by Jonathan Zeller): "Calm Down — Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World. “So don’t even worry about it."
25 | Dave Natale, front-of-house mixing engineer (for everyone, incl. the Super Bowl) finally appears on Rick Beato: "What do The Rolling Stones, Prince, Van Halen, and Jeff Beck Have In Common?".
24 | AI-generated content WILL explode across the Internet, no doubt about it. It will be up to us, the consumers, to decide how much of it we allow to exist and how it should be handled.Right now, and rightfully so, companies are suing for copyright infringement, but we all know how well that went when, for example, MP3 rolled around: "Listen to the AI-Generated Ripoff Songs That Got Udio and Suno Sued."
23 | Over on Instagram, on "@invitingcovers", I post a new book cover once every day. I have hundreds (probably thousands) that I retouched and saved these past 30 years or so.When I look many of those books up today, the price tags affixed to ripped, torn and shredded copies is absolutely insane. Just like with old Blue Note LPs, people are milking collectors for maximum amounts of cash. We are talking four-, five- and often even six-figure numbers you have to dish out to buy yourself, say, a half-decent copy of a rare Hemingway hardcover.I have never invested more than $150 in a book and won't, but apparently many collectors have enough money to burn.
22 | Referring to my post from June 4th, our Instagram experiment showed, as we expected, that on Instagram things don't work the same way they used to.The only suggestions you get on a new account are established accounts with - usually - a five-figure number of followers and new accounts don't have their posts shown anywhere ... at all. It was the same for each and every one who participated in said experiment.It's really that simple. Their algorithm, also contrary to what they keep insisting on, doesn't work or, better, works towards profit, not community.In addition, if you run more than one account and switch between them on several devices, for example a PC and a tablet (it's 2024 after all), using both to read and post, Instagram will, within a day or two and without fail, accuse you of bot activity, lock you out of your account at some point necessitating an "appeal" and/or eventually, after a few warnings, log you out on the second device when using the first one and vice versa. Happened to everyone who participated in the experiment.Human contacts do not exist anywhere in Meta's universe. Everything is run by algorithms (bots), even the appeals when locked or logged out again and again. Nowhere in the chain is there any human activity visible. The latter is restricted to looking at spreadsheets and maximizing profits.In the EU (in my case, Germany) the form required to opt out of AI-training using users' posts required several fields to be filled with text, explaining your stance on various aspects. Once completed and sent off, the (favorable) answer reached one's inbox three to four seconds after bots checked - I guess - for keywords/key phrases and complete sentences in each text box. That's it.That is how every aspect of Instagram is run.That's why scammers, for example over on Twitter, make a killing. They allude to (human!) "contacts" they have at Meta to have accounts reinstalled, etc. They promise to fix things for you but are, of course, only interested in your credentials, nothing else.Nevertheless, I'm still having fun on my two small accounts and will keep them up and running until Meta's "enshittification" is complete.Then I'll shut things down and leave the network to all the braindead "influencers" who are, because they help maximize profits, preferred by Mark Zuckerberg and his minions.P.S.: I will never forget Zuckerberg's testimony before Congress that showed even the most forgiving customers how fundamentally - both socially and empathetically - inept the man is in real life.
21 | Akira Kurosawa’s epic Seven Samurai has gotten the 4K treatment and the restored three-hour film is heading for cinemas again. Great news!
20 | Donald Sutherland passed away today, one of my favorite actors. They don't make 'em like they used to.
19 | Just my kind of article from the Critic's Notebook (NYT): "Are These Really ‘the World’s 50 Best Restaurants’?" The places on this year’s “50 Best” list are endurance tests, theatrical spectacles, monuments to ego and — the two most frightening words in dining — “immersive experiences."
18 | Is something like this a) really necessary and b) commercially viable?"Netflix plans to open two new in-person experience venues in 2025. The locations, which will be in King of Prussia, Pa., and Dallas, will feature a wide array of shopping outlets, eateries, and activities tied to major franchises. The two new Netflix Houses will have footprints spanning more than 100,000 square feet. Netflix doesn't see these permanent retail destinations as becoming a sizable new business segment - it is aiming for them to serve as marketing vehicles that invite fan engagement to support the core subscription-streaming business." (Variety)
17 | Excellent (!) news (although nothing will change): "US sues Adobe for ‘deceiving’ subscriptions that are too hard to cancel".
16 | An interesting read: "Scientists preserve DNA in an amber-like polymer": With their “T-REX” method, DNA embedded in the polymer could be used for long-term storage of genomes or digital data such as photos and music.
15 | Instead of finally releasing a deluxe version of "London Town" (promised last century), Paul McCartney threw "One Hand Clapping" in everyone's face. I have given up hope.
14 | In regard to yesterday's post, I cancelled Disney+ after I had already kicked Amazon Prime to the curb months before.This whole streaming thing is turning into its own total shit show ... with wildly increasing subscription rates, changes in user agreements, ads injected everywhere (or about to be injected everywhere), with abysmal business plans and absolutely braindead content forced down our optical nerves for many moons now. The "golden age" of TV/streaming is over and there's nothing but dire crap left.The whole thing reminds me of Web 2.0, which failed horribly ages ago.Sorry, but as I have done in the past, I don't support people, companies, franchises or whatever who have nothing more to show for themselves than greed ... and their naked white asses (that's a Berthold Brecht quote only insiders will understand).Again "enshitification" across the board.
13 | I know this was not intended, but "The Acolyte" made me laugh so hard that I almost permanently cramped up.That show is the biggest bag of odorous excrement ever assembled in the history of television.Never mind all the woke stuff everyone is complaining about, which could maybe have worked if anything else did. No, what I mean is the whole concept and execution. What were those 100+ million dollars spent on? An execrable script, horrible cinematography, cardboard sets, absolutely wooden actors trying to portray horribly bland characters, zero tension, a basic non-mystery ... and truly horrible dialogue akin to "You did it. - No, you did it. - No, YOU DID IT!"What an embarrassing shit show of galactic proportions.
12 | If you are one of the few sane-minded people left on this planet who are also still on Twitter (now known as "X"), this article contradicts about 99.9% of the right-wing lunacy there: "Violent crime is down and the US murder rate is plunging, FBI statistics show". I'll start looking for posts over there to see how they again manage to twist and negate the findings. "FAKE NEWS!" Always fun to watch.
11 | I had heard one or two songs before, but I discovered Labi Siffre for myself here, a British singer, songwriter and poet. Certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but, as I get older, lots of his material I really like.
10 | Yep. Germany and France went as predicted.
09 | EU and local elections, all rolled into one here with ballots half a mile long. No matter what I vote for, right wing groups will surely gain an even more solid hold in many European countries. Germany, certainly, but I also predict France will take a hit.
08 | I love maps and this shaded relief map of Manhattan, which was made using LiDAR data from the US Geological Survey, is just ultra-cool (Reddit)
07 | The weather is surprisingly stable at the moment. People call it "too cold for this time of year" but I say, "Bollocks!" Just my kind of weather in which I can enjoy the sun and reading outside without melting instantaneously.
06 | That's the way life goes ... I had to buy two more 18TB external hard drives.
05 | Robert Plant just seems like a great guy, introspective in a good sense, and just a joy to listen to: "Robert Plant Talks About His Favorite Part of Being in Led Zeppelin" + "Robert Plant Opens Up About Losing His Son" + "Robert Plant Talks About Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven'".
04 | Because I talked to many of you already about it over there, you know that I started a third small Instagram site, "Inviting Covers" (yes, other permutations of covers, book covers, etc. were already taken, so there!).Reason: I'm a member of a Reddit user group (closed) that is running a test to see if someone who starts a small (new) feed can get any followers whatsoever without advertising it outside of their own profile(s). I have hundreds of already finished and touched-up book covers lying around my hard drives, so I was one of 12 people who volunteered.My theory: Impossible! Mark Zuckerberg and the other Borg at Meta have made sure that their algorithms will run the whole site into the ground as soon as possible, mimicking a Tik-Tok kind of approach that is currently destroying anything that was once a thriving community. It's profit only. The rest doesn't matter.
03 | Someone posted this on a forum I frequent. I think it is very apt:"The 'Internet Cultural Classical Thoughts Compliance Police' will come to get you for violating one of the most basic norms of internet expression: Everything must always be rank-ordered (aka racked-and-stacked), compared to other recordings, performances, orchestras, conductors, soloists, etc. with assessments of "best," "next best," "worst," and other terms that others will recognize. [...]It occurs to me as a relative newbie that most of my opinions about who is first- or second-rate are not based on experience but based on reputation, what others have told me, what I have read, reviews, marketing, etc.As with all matters of taste ignorance may be bliss. I've never tasted a truly great wine that's been aged to perfection (and suspect I never will), but there are many wines I enjoy very much and others I like less, but only in comparison to those.And that's the point. All of these judgments are relative to one's experience of other examples of the same thing. Even if I had the pleasure of drinking a top class, properly aged wine, I would only be able to judge how great it was by reference to my experience of other wines I've known.It seems to me it takes a lot of listening to really become a connoisseur, and one could drive oneself crazy obsessing over what one might be missing. [...]It also occurs to me that often the things we most love and enjoy are not necessarily objectively the best, but things to which we've become attached for more personal, subjective reasons. Maybe it's because we encountered them when we were young and impressionable. Maybe it's a matter of familial, local or national pride.At the same time I understand that collecting can be a big investment and it's natural to want some sort guidance on how to prioritize our exploration.I think I'm trying to strike a balance between practicality and not being afraid to give things a chance and make up my own mind."Yep!
02 | I've started reading Stephen King's most recent short story collection, "You Like It Darker". So far, the stories I have read were great and gave me that tingling sensation which made me a fan decades ago.
01 | The southern part of Germany is being flooded and within the next 14 days, more torrential rain is expected. But, of course, "...climate change doesn't exist. It also rained when I was a kid 40 years ago!". Too many asshats on this planet.
05 | May
31 | And one more fascinating interview by Rick Beato: "The LOST Steely Dan Interview feat. Jay Graydon & Dean Parks""In this episode, Steely Dan alums Jay Graydon (Peg solo) and Dean Parks (Played on 5 Steely Dan records) discuss Steely Dan and their storied session careers. Tim Pierce and I joined them in what I would describe as the ultimate studio guitar hang".
30 | My wife is a consistently great cook. Even when she is experimenting, the results are always great, although she herself likes to criticise them. I'm always a happy camper!
29 | My preferred weather service has announced nearly two weeks of torrential rains with potential (flash) floods, especially just south of here. We'll mostly be in the clear here, but everywhere just south of here will suffer.
28 | Again, Rick Beato published a great interview on YouTube: "Brendan O'Brien Interview: The Unsung Hero Of Rock Music"."In his first ever full length interview, producer/engineer/mixer (and multi-instrumentalist) Brendan O'Brien talks about his contributions to many of the most significant records of the past generation [...] The Black Crowes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Rage Against The Machine, Kings X, Korn, Audioslave, Bruce Springsteen, AC/DC, Train, Incubus, Mastodon, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, The Killers, Paul Westerberg, The Offspring, Velvet Revolver etc".
27 | Someone asked Copilot: "Are you bound by Isaac Asimov's 3 laws of robotics?"The answer didn't surprise me. "As an AI, I don't have physical form or personal agency, so Asimov's laws don't apply to me. [...]"
26 | Just a thought: If you read one book per week and 50 books per year, that's a total of 3500 books you can read until you turn 70. I've seen book collections that span two, three or more times that number.
25 | Because it's a topic which, I presume, will become a lot more prominent rather sooner than later, here's a link to Ted Gioia's newsletter whose post zeroes in on problems affecting us all: "Let's Just Admit it: The Algorithms Are Broken".
24 | After all that wine, we enjoyed a quiet night at the hotel and a great breakfast with (again) excellent service. Both the hotel and the restaurant are highly-recommended for those in the area and willing to spend the money (the restaurant isn't cheap but well worth your money).After having tasted some excellent wines on the way, we then travelled to "Weinessigut Doktorenhof" for a tour of the premises we had visited previously. The (nearly 2-hour) tour was informative and entertaining and there is a reason why everyone, from the British Royals, the rulers of Oman and just about any other royal family shop here. Of course, we also bought a bunch of their products (again).
23 | Rather spontaneously, we decided to combine several things on our "to-do" list for a brief two-day trip.We travelled to Siebeldingen along our well-loved 'Southern Wine Route' to do three things: living well, eating well and tasting some excellent wines.We stayed at "Villa Königsgarten", a small family-run hotel in an old building typical for the area, with a top-class restaurant ("Tischlein Deck Dich") and an excellent wine cellar on the grounds.Both the hotel and the restaurant were excellent (which we already knew from the many 5-star reviews).The four-course dinner was top-notch, as were the location and the service. Along with the dinner, we were served four excellent wines selected by the restaurant's very knowledgeable 'sommelier' (wine steward for all you Americans) and we were allowed ample time to enjoy it all.
22 | After I deleted nearly half of my "followers" on one of my two Instagram accounts today, I pumped out a barrage of (thinly-veiled) negativity and I was absolutely surprised about the feedback I got.I published my criticism in form of "stories", which disappear within 24 hours, but although i only have very few followers on that feed, the comments have been flooding in ... one per minute.People are absolutely sick and tired of algorithms that used to get them hundreds of likes per day (=affirmation) whereas nowadays they are supposed to be satisfied with 10. People are also sick and tired of "engagement farming" by people who couldn't give a flying f*ck about anyone else but themselves and algorithms boosting pumped-up asses, Botox lips and totally irrelevant posts which are injected en masse into their feeds."Small" content creators have gotten the shaft and Instagram is showing its age: trying to survive, they are boosting what makes them money. Nothing else matters."Enshittification", as Cory Doctorow has called it.
21 | The title of Rick Beato's new interview is a bit misleading because it only features one aspect of it: "Ted Gioia on AI's Threat To Music".Of course, the range of topics is much broader and all of the aspects touched upon align with many things I have thought about or said myself in the past.Ted Gioia and Rick Beato talk about the change in culture (anything from coffee and music to films, books, TV and everything else), the long stagnation period we have been experiencing since the beginning 2000s, about companies favoring a decidedly formulaic output, about algorithms keeping the audience and customers in their own "bubble", about AI as a last resort for companies trying to generate (enough) profit, about too many cooks making (= spoiling) the meal, about what Gioia calls "macro culture vs. micro culture", honesty vs. scarcity of trust, and, most importantly for me, the dangers of passive consumption and the resulting loss of originality.If you are at all interested in culture, give it a view/listen, even if the whole thing spans 1 1/2 hours, perhaps more than your attention span allows if you happen to be a social network, Spotify etc. acolyte. ;-)
20 | Today we visited Schwetzingen Palace and Gardens ... and that on one of the nicest days we've had since late September last year. If you ever happen to drop by the area around here, a visit to this palace (dating back to 1350) is a must, especially also because of the vast gardens surrounding it. Check out the website to get a good idea of what you can expect to see there.
19 | These past many months I spent several hundred hours reading up on purchasing a new pair of headphones for myself, headphones that fit my listening scenario perfectly.I'm highly critical of all these audiophiles whom I always like to call "golden ears", you know the ones that can hear a flea cough, but because I zeroed in on trustworthy sources (check this video by "Passion for Sound" reviewing two pairs of headphones including the ones I bought), I managed to a) get the right tool for the job and b) make a "killing".I'll make it short. The Hifiman "Arya Organic" are very hard to drive at 16 Ohms and they cost more than $1200 over here in Europe, but I managed to get a pair at a greatly reduced price which some dissatisfied customer returned (in fact, they are totally brand new which I found out when the shop put me in touch with the guy who returned them and only used them for a maximum of 5 minutes).After about two hours of giving them an extreme test run, they fit my hearing ability (reduced highs, tinnitus here and there, etc.) more than perfectly. I picked the "Organic" over the "Stealth" for me and, to prove me right, my wife, who has much better hearing, noted that they were a touch on the bright side. For her, the "Stealth" would probably be the perfect pair, which I might also still get (at half the price of the "Organic").One more thing: I have a whole bunch of excellent headphones at home. In comparison, they all sounded - excuse the language - like shit.
18 | Around the time I retired, I had an extremely short list of things I still wanted to get for myself: Firstly, a record player and copies of the original releases of some of my favorite LPs (check), secondly the best reclining chair I could find on the European market (check), and, thirdly, the best pair of headphones available in a certain price bracket. Well, before I write more about it tomorrow, it arrived today and several hundred hours of reading paid off ... what I bought is, well, perfect (for me).
17 | Torrential rains. Water from all sides. Strong winds. As my dad used to say, "That's the life in the tropics": "European State of the Climate 2023".
16 | I actually think the first official painted portrait of King Charles III since his coronation is great, but it doesn't surprise me that countless people online love to yell and scream about it, because that's what they enjoy doing ... every single day of the week, about anything and anybody.
15 | I've always loved "The Battle of Evermore" by Led Zeppelin and got into it again these past few days.Robert Plant once said "[...] If it suffered from naivete and tweeness — I was only 23 — it makes up for it in the cohesion of the voices and the playing.".Those voices are of course his plus, especially, Sandy Denny (Fairport Convention), who was even given her own symbol (three pyramids) on the album sleeve."The Battle of Evermore" remains the only song Led Zeppelin ever recorded with a guest vocalist and I love the mix of acoustic guitar, mandolin and the eerie, haunting atmosphere of the song.
14 | I've been keeping up with news on Francis Ford Coppola's "Megalopolis" and it's amazing to see how this (now completed) film is being handled by the press, distributors and parts of the public that have read somewhere that the film "experienced problems".Hardly anybody is willing to take risks nowadays if it isn't some sort of mind-numbingly stupid, "in-your-face" and cgi-infested Hollywood junk that has been churned out for ages now.I'll take Coppola at his worst anytime instead of having to watch "Argylle" ("‘Argylle’ Has a Big Secret: It’s a Stunningly Bad Movie"), "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" ("Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire strands its two titans in a bland, ugly movie"), another totally mindless Marvel movie ("How Marvel Lost Its Way"), crap like "The Fall Guy" ("The Fall Guy Isn't About the Fall Guy"), another "Beverly Hills Cop", another this and another that.
13 | After a couple of really warm days, the weather is about to tilt into the opposite direction again. Weather reports have promised torrential rains (once again) ... let's see how that goes, but summer has started knocking on the door, that's for sure.
12 | GeoSpy AI is just another new tool in the AI arsenal, but if you follow developments across the AI sector, things are getting scarier and scarier. Yes, there are many useful tools ... until someone or something starts abusing them: "I tested GeoSpy's photo location detection skills with my personal photos. Results: Wow!".
11 | In regard to yesterday's post, here's the other important person from that time long-gone:
10 | Decades ago, I had two major contacts in the US in regard to importing books. One was Robert Weinberg, a mail order book dealer whom I bought books from every month for many, many years and the second person was Ted Dikty, the man who ran Starmont House. He helped me get the books I needed for my final university thesis and without him and his contacts, I would have been lost. To top it all off, he was a very kind and knowledgeable person, old school down to the bone. I still have handwritten letters by him, which I have always kept. Read "A Requiem for Starmont House (1976-1993)" by Robert Reginald to get an idea what Ted's publishing business was all about.
09 | Before it disappears again: THIS is definitely the most insanely stupid Apple commercial I have ever seen. You wonder who the creative director was and why he hasn't been sent to the North Pole yet to live out the last few hours of his miserable existence there... Crush! | iPad Pro | Apple
08 | I wanted a copy of Neal Stephenson's SevenEves in my modest book collection and via eBay imported a first edition hardcover (not easy to find in Europe) from a private seller in the UK, who had a perfect unread edition available. But, although it was packaged perfectly, the shipping company managed to play football with it and ruin it in transit. You can't order shit online anymore without it getting wrecked.
07 | A perfect quote for life today that I found online. It's from an interview with German filmmaker Werner Herzog:"The French writer André Gide once famously said: 'I modify facts to such a degree that they resemble truth more than reality.' It's a very deep statement for me. [Editor's note: Discover's fact checkers could not verify that Gide said this. When asked about the quote's source, Herzog said, 'I may have invented it.']"
06 | If you have been following along here, I was in for major surgery about two weeks ago. Today I had the stitches removed, and the prognosis is pretty good, although things didn't heal quite the way I would have liked them to. But, everything is fixable and once that work is done, I need to wait until the middle of July for step 2 (and then another three to four months for the last one).
05 | Over on Harper's Magazine's website, Daniel Bessner wrote an excellent article outlining "why film and television writers face an existential threat": The Life and Death of Hollywood.If you are as interested in quality TV series as I am, here are several reasons why we probably won't see a large number of them in the future.
04 | Paul Auster died on April 30th. You should really read his wife's (Siri Hustved) thinly veiled attack on how the media and social networks today ruin any kind of mourning one could hope for. Before anyone could really say goodbye or notify the next of kin, the media and the networks had already started screaming into everyone's face: "Here I am! You read it here first! ...".Disgusting, ... as always.
03 | As constant readers here might know, I started posting my book collection over on my Instagram feed. I started with a 3x3 grid but quickly found out it wasn't a good idea.My main Instagram feed had been all but abandoned when I rebooted it and now I'm just interested to see if the algorithm still works the way it did when I posted parts of my CD collection on my other one ... and then stopped when I reached a thousand followers (and then lost 100+).Let's see ... so far I have a couple of new followers in the single-digit realm.
02 | Just for the fun of it I read around today, trying to find out what people think of something we in Germany call "Hawaii Toast". Believe me, online and offline the topic is a culinary minefield.It's basically a slice of (pre-toasted) toast, one slice of ham, a ring of pineapple and the cheese of your choice on top. Some people add a sweet cherry or other berry-like substances on top of the cheese in the middle. Into the oven it then goes until the cheese is melted.It was invented by Germany's first "TV chef", Clemens Wilmenrod, and I remember my mom making it once in a while for us just about 5 decades ago.Yep, I went retro and made a few of them these past months and ... I like them!P.S.: Don't shoot the messenger. Germans also put pineapple on pizza (which permanently soured our relations with Italy decades ago). I think we might almost have started another war when that started to happen.
01 | After my operation, things aren't healing the way they are supposed to so I'm taking a day off.
04 | April
30 | I've always been a fan of Scandinavian (functional) design. My own apartment is stuffed to the rafters with it. Arne Jacobsen.com is one of those websites that for once does justice to the genius designer he was. I wish other designers were honored and remembered this way online.
29 | While smartphone zombies ("smombies") are shambling about the planet, hitting lampposts, falling into rivers and altogether making several hundred years of history obsolete, NASA managed to reactivate Voyager 1: "NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth."
28 | In the past two weeks, I deleted and/or reactivated various social network accounts. It is downright frightening to see how the various algorithms have changed.On Twitter, using a new and absolutely "nude" account, I was - after two days of peace - again flooded with conspiracy theories, racist and otherwise absolutely brain-dead content right away. Even blocking that shit didn't help. All of this happened while I actively avoided looking at anything controversial, racist, homophobic, etc. It didn't help. What a cesspool that site has become.On Instagram, I noticed how radically commercialized everything has gotten. I post there for fun and for myself, but I have the impression that if those people I follow don't pay for getting their content seen, people like me won't notice it at all. Users post regularly (as I find out when I hit their profiles), but none (!) of their posts show up for me, although I subscribed to their feed. What does show up, endless streams of it, are ads, "recommendations" and other bullshit I'm absolutely not interested in.I wonder when all of these social networks are just going to implode.Nobody in his/her right mind will want to invest time into creating content if it's not seen by anyone ... and, as Reddit and other sites tell me, those algorithms have made it nearly impossible for new content creators to gain a foothold ... and established ones have taken massive (!) hits since I last used the site extensively two years ago.
27 | Lately, I have been listening to tons of Ed Motta's albums again. A lot of his material is in Portuguese, which I only understand a fraction of, but his music is solidly grounded in R&B, rock, soul and jazz, reggae, Brazilian folk ... and everything in-between. You should really check him out. Very (!) highly recommended!
26 | Ian Stone continues to crack me up whenever I see clips of his material on Youtube and elsewhere.This one, for example, which is the seventh or eighth one I'm highlighting on here this year (check February first and thereafter for more):"I reckon twenty years from now, Christopher Nolan will make a film like "Dunkirk", but about "Brexit". There will be four hundred thousand British people on a beach, all desperately waiting for boats to turn up carrying life-saving drugs and decent cheese. We'll all be there going 'Have you got any Brie? We haven't had Brie since 2019'."
25 | The operation went well (went for a quick checkup today) but I'm still down for the count.
24 | Football yesterday, Quasimodo today. I'll stay in bed.
23 | After preliminary work, I went in for the biggest surgery today and now I look like a football.
22 | If you are at all interested in books and the publishing industry, here's a pretty eye-opening (longer) article about how things really work: "No one buys books. Everything we learned about the publishing industry from Penguin vs. DOJ." (by Elle Griffin)."[...] "But during the trial, the head of every major publishing house and literary agency got up on the stand to speak about the publishing industry and give numbers, giving us an eye-opening account of the industry from the inside. All of the transcripts from the trial were compiled into a book called The Trial. It took me a year to read, but I’ve finally summarized my findings and pulled out all the compelling highlights. [...]".
21 | In regard to yesterday's post ... when I went through my book collection I came across loads of material by and about Harlan Ellison, whose work I love and whom I always admired, no matter how irritating he could be.In his foreword to Harlan Ellison's posthumously published "Greatest Hits" (Union Square & Co., 2024), Neil Gaiman also wrote "[...] There’s a story in this book called 'All the Lies That Are My Life.' It’s a fantasia about the death of someone who is a version of Harlan as he might have been if he was A Great Man, that is, at its core, about the fear of being forgotten—the fear that Harlan had that his stories, which were his children, would be swept away in time. That he would become one with Thorne Smith or Gerald Kersh or any of the other writers who were, for a moment, here, and who, for a heartbeat, mattered, but whose words were mostly forgotten and who had become footnotes in dusty reference books.I fear that aside from Ellison's top tier stories, a lot of his great essays and other writings will in fact be forgotten, rather sooner than later, also due to his contentious personality which riled up a lot of people, but before that, as I found out months ago, this year will finally see the publication of "The Last Dangerous Visions", a little more than half a century in the making. To fully understand the whole story behind the publication of this book (originally intended to be three volumes and now with a final length of just a sixth of the originally intended), you should really read Christopher Priest's final draft of "The Last Deadloss Visions" which, after Priest's death this year, is still available online (via the Wayback Machine).
20 | Neil Gaiman on Harlan Ellison: "Harlan and I slowly became friends, and I loved being his friend, even if sometimes it felt like I had been befriended by a hand grenade." (Gaiman, Neil. "Foreword" in: Ellison, Harlan. Greatest Hits. Union Square & Co., 2024)
19 | I watched "Fallout" (TV series) these past two days and must admit that it was actually pretty damn good. It's certainly not for everyone, but production values were high, the acting was above average and the worldbuilding and story were interesting enough even for those who don't know the game the series is based on. Well done. I'm looking forward to season 2.
18 | Because it's there, I'm going to use my "old/main" Instagram account to post 3x3 images of books I have and love. It's going to screw up other peoples' timeline because they only see bits and pieces when I post each book - unless they hit my profile feed - but I'm old school and like it that way.
17 | When the Internet got started, it was a somewhat idealistic endeavour. We've progressed quite a bit since then: "YouTube is putting third-party ad-blocking apps on notice. An ominous post on the official YouTube Community Help forum titled 'Enforcement on Third Party Apps' says the company is 'strengthening our enforcement on third-party apps that violate YouTube’s Terms of Service, specifically ad-blocking apps.' Google would really like it if you all paid for YouTube Premium." When that (finally) comes to pass, I'm gone for good.
16 | Filmed in 1987, this is more pertinent than ever:"Seriously though we've heard a lot about extremism recently. A nastier, harsher atmosphere everywhere. More abuse and bother boy behavior less friendliness and tolerance and respect for parents.Alright but what we never hear about extremism is its advantages. Well the biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good because it provides you with enemies.Let me explain...The great thing about having enemies is that you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you. Attractive isn't it?So if you have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway and you therefore enjoy abusing people then you can pretend that you're only doing it because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons. And that if it wasn't for them you'd actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time. So if you want to feel good become an extremist.Okay, now you have a choice. If you join the hard left they'll give you their list of authorized enemies. Almost all kinds of authority, especially the police, the city, Americans, judges, multinational corporations, public schools, various newspaper owners, fox hunters, generals, class traitors and of course moderates.Or, if you'd rather be an extremist on the hard right, no problem. Fine you still get a lovely list of enemies only they're different ones noisy minority groups, unions, Russia, weirdos, demonstrators, welfare sponges, meddlesome clergy, peaceniks, the BBC, strikers, social workers, communists and of course moderates and upstart actors.Now once your armed with one of these super lists of enemies you can be as nasty as you like and yet feel your behaviors morally justified. So you can strut around using people and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth, a fighter for the greater good are not the rather sad paranoid schizoid that you really are."
15 | Here's a fun video: "20 Minutes of Charles Schulz Drawing Peanuts". Matt Barnett spliced together everything he could find of Charles Schulz drawing his Peanuts characters.
14 | It is absolutely amazing how many low-quality Yardbirds (re)issues are out there. Most of what I've listened to is absolutely horrible.
13 | Unfortunately, I can't be in Copenhagen this weekend where lots of my old friends are meeting for a school reunion. I hope they are having a great time. Just watched a video the other day which is totally unrelated but somehow fitting: "Teacher makes good on decades-old promise to watch eclipse with former students".
12 | Wonderful photos: "The Pyramids of Giza, Shrouded in Mist".
11 | Getting scans done today for more surgery.
10 | I went on another one of my Roth-era (1978-1984) Van Halen binges today. Love every one of those albums.Next up: My monthly "first-phase" Judas Priest binge, which ranges from "Sad Wings of Destiny" (1976) to "Point of Entry" (1981) ... an absolutely classic run of albums.
09 | They are actually building it and I'm keeping an eye on this, perhaps, most spectacular construction site in the history of mankind: "NEOM - The Line".
08 | I don't want to really write too much about politics etc. on here, but I've been following this whole "gender" discussion for years now and it is absolutely amazing how in this debate, the proponents of the "new view" are obfuscating every book and "theory" to the point of illegibility. It's a post-scientific (and post-democratic) view of sex, gender and race that feels utterly constructed and, in the end, outright laughable. I've read uncountable numbers of books and studies my entire life and what they are publishing is, sorry to say, utter bullshit. That entire governments are convinced and then usurped by this mindless stuff doesn't surprise me in the least. Sensible education went out the window decades ago.
07 | "Streaming farms" have been manipulating chart positions and music sales on a broad scale. Nothing new to me, really, but most people should be wondering about how a lot of this mindless and repetitive stuff manages to hold on to top positions.
06 | We are going to have two days here - in April (!) - with nearly 30/31 degrees (Celsius) and tropical nights. What we also have is a larger part of the population ignoring climate change (and just about everything else) for, I believe, mostly monetary reasons. If it'll cost ya', it ain't real. [Addendum: Two days ... later].
05 | We're exhausted and are taking a day off.
02 - 04 | The three days in Bonn flew past and were spent doing lots of paperwork for my mom. At the hotel, we were upgraded to a suite on the top floor and we enjoyed that very much, incl. the hotel's absolutely above-average breakfast buffet. The weather sucked, mostly, so we couldn't enjoy the view from our suite very much.
01 | If you have been following me these past decades, you surely know that I am a sucker for design and layout. I have been an avid reader of "The Critic" since its premier issue in 2019 and this month's issue has a cover which I would immediately hang up on my wall. Wonderful.P.S.: We'll be away in Bonn from today until Thursday. I probably won't post on those days and sum up what we were up to when we get back. We're going to be staying at the "Maritim" again and are looking forward to a wonderful extended breakfast every morning with the broad selection of good stuff they offer every single time we're there.
03 | March
31 | Last month's microblog I ended with a summary of what I had been listening to the previous four weeks and I think I'll make that a regular feature from here on out, especially because music is an absolute constant around here.March was dominated by an eclectic mix of mostly old (or very old) recordings, starting with two Eagles albums (my wife hates that stuff), Hotel California and The Long Run, whose Mobile Fidelity limited SACDs reincarnations I bought before they disappear.In the middle of the month, I rediscovered the many Michael Franks recordings I have (which pretty much constitute his entire discography), the 2011 Queen remasters (I have all the 2-CD deluxe edition ones; people over on that contrarian SteveHoffman website couldn't get a consensus on them if they tried, but I like them) and the French Django Reinhardt remaster series, Intégrale (20 double-CD volumes covering the recording dates between 1928 and 1953).Last, but not least, I dived into Little Feat's discography which had been lying by the roadside in my collection for all too long.Today, I'm just enjoying the width and depth of my collection without worrying all too much about sonics. I'm old and my ears probably don't even appreciate the frequencies anymore that most remasters promise. Besides that, most of the marketing brouhaha is BS anyways: either the original tapes are mixed well or they aren't. The rest - upsampling, etc. - doesn't usually play much of a role at all.
01 | If you are an avid YouTube user, you've probably watched this one already, but it was new to me: Mike Dawes - Jump (Van Halen) - Solo Acoustic Guitar. Fascinating playing.
29 | Great stuff: "'Eruption - Take 1'. Live Studio 1. Unmixed - Van Halen (Sunset Sound, 1977).
28 | Two days ago, Affinity announced that it had been bought by Canva. Since then, they have been living a PR nightmare. After their CEO spouted the usual management gobbledygook about "synergies ... nothing will change ... bla, bla, bla...", users have been attacking them for shafting their loyal user base without which they would never have gotten as far as they did. Because they were not subscription-based, they became everyone's alternative to Adobe. Barely one day later, after all the massive backlash, they were forced to post "pledges" stating, f.ex., that perpetual licenses would remain, but - still - nobody believes them because they have seen it all before so many times and from the myriad of comments around the web, you can tell that people are seriously tired of these money-grabbing mergers. To understand where all the hate comes from, to have a good laugh and see what happened to tons of other companies, check "Our Incredible Journey."
27 | And, because I've highlighted some quotes these past few days, here's another one by Tom Waits I always thought was spot-on: "The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."
26 | "You need wisdom to deal with information". That's the one thing people just refuse to understand. It is NOT and NEVER enough "to know where you can find something (on- or offline)", you need the background knowledge to be able to see the larger picture. If you don't dive into the history of problems, conflicts or, really, anything, you will never understand what anyone quickly shot from his or her hip the day, week or even year before. People and, indeed, our educational system over here, have dropped this fundamental approach to learning completely, and they are the worse for it.
25 | This quote sums up my feelings perfectly: "Back in the day we used the internet to escape from real life, today we use real life to escape from the internet."
24 | NASA is trying to fix Voyager 1. The fact that "[...] Voyager 1 is more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, it takes 22.5 hours for a radio signal to reach the spacecraft and another 22.5 hours for the probe’s response to reach antennas on the ground" doesn't exactly make the engineers' work easier.
23 | I just noticed that I have 2812 films at home and watched a lot more than that up until today. One might think I spent my entire life in front of a movie or TV screen, but I didn't. I just started early.
22 | Lol. In the past I would have needed me one of his creations, today I don't care. "How Ghana's top fantasy coffin artist has put the fun in funeral. Accra exhibition to celebrate work of Paa Joe, the master craftsman behind some of the most extravagant caskets in the world."
21 | As of today, "NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is on Unsplash."
20 | Many years ago I bought a Beyerdynamic T90, which I was and am a big fan of. The problem is that when compared to other headphones I have, the build quality just didn't hold up. The headband has disintegrated completely ... and there are no replacement parts for it. I wonder why renowned companies leave their customers out in the rain with defects like that.
19 | Here it is then, Rick Beato's anecdote-filled interview with George Benson, one of the greatest guitarists next to Wes Montgomery and Charlie Christian.
18 | Today I found out from my good friend, Dave K., that Michael Patrick Kling passed away far too early. We attended school together in Copenhagen, Denmark, and although I didn't have as much contact to Michael at the time, these kinds of news hit hard. In a reply to Dave, I wrote this:"We have a saying/proverb here which roughly translates as 'the impacts are getting nearer', meaning impacts of shells like in a war. What it means is that death always seems very far away until people near and dear to you, in your age group, or just friends and acquaintances start passing away. My dad talked about that a lot the last ten years or so. In the end, he and another guy were the only ones that were left from their time together as children/pupils nearly 75-80 years before."
17 | This evening, my wife's choir in Karlsruhe performed "Israel in Egypt" by Georg Friedrich Händel. A sold-out, wonderful performance. Of course, it wasn't video taped, but if want an idea what it was like, here's a performance by Thomas Hengelbrock & Balthasar Neumann Ensemble.
16 | I just read an article (only available in German) how difficult it has become for artists to not have their art stolen by random people to be sold on sites like "Shutterstock". In this case, Swiss photographer Stefan Forster suddenly saw his film material being used by a TV station that had licensed his clips from Shutterstock. The problem is that Forster never sold his material and never granted a license to anyone. But, as the Internet works today, he simply cannot find anyone to address his complaint to and going to court is simply too expensive. Those monster stock material sites know that and just shrug it off (= ignore any complaints completely).
15 | My answer would be "Yes!", but what do I know: "Setting the stage: Should there be an Oscar for title design?" Art of the Title’s Lola Landekic speaks to the graphic designers behind titles and posters for some of this year’s biggest films, exploring the process and changing landscape for these creatives setting the tone of films through typography.
14 | I thought this was fun to listen to: "'I'm a Barbie Girl', but in the style of 6 classical composers," by Joseph Castanyer. If you don't know this (absolutely horrible) tune, here's the original.
13 | One of my favorite websites (a private one that I'm not going to link to) has announced that it will close down in early April. It was one of the last ones left from what I would call the "golden age" of websites and forums. Engagement has gone down considerably as people flocked to (absolutely useless) social networks. It's the way of the world ... but a sad moment in my internet "history". That website ran since the middle 1990s and a lot of knowledge will be lost forever.
12 | I can't remember if I linked to this before, but "In2White" is absolutely insane. The website has been online for quite a while and on any of my browsers, the text links don't work anymore, but the main attraction does ... just start zooming in ...
11 | Before the rabble arrived, the Internet actually used to be a nice place. It is absolutely insane what you can (or have to) read on social networks nowadays. Most people do not even have the tiniest fragment of a moral compass anymore.
10 | Lately, I have rediscovered a lot of music I overdosed on decades ago. George Benson, Michael McDonald, Harry Connick Jr., Randy Crawford, and many others recorded some excellent albums and, additionally, some excellent ones after I had abandoned them way back when.
09 | I don't know what it's like in restaurants in your country, but here in Germany space per guest is shrinking rapidly. I often wonder how a couple of normal-sized people can sit at a table which isn't much larger than an open magazine ... and about 10 inches away from adjacent tables. I avoid those kinds of restaurants like the plague.
08 | The new Judas Priest album, "Invincible Shield" is pretty damn good. The "deluxe" edition has three more tracks than the standard one. I hate when they do that on release day.
07 | This made me laugh: A compilation of 5 remastered Cerveza Cristal beer advertisements which originally aired in Chile in the early 2000s and were injected directly into the movies!
06 | I've run into some minor problems adapting to the DNS-changes my provider needs me to implement. If you are experiencing any problems, check back a couple of hours later and things should be OK.
05 | Here it is, Rick Beato's interview with one of my favorites, Michael McDonald. Close to two hours of interview goodness.
04 | Christopher Walken in Dune II? Not my cup of tea (although I love the guy). That's one actor I would not have cast in this film.
03 | I have just been reading up on the clusterf@ck that was the demise of JazzTimes, a magazine I used to read regularly years back. The short: it was sold to "BeBop Media" and landed in the hands of a lunatic who then managed to run it (along with other magazines he bought) into the ground in, what, a few weeks? I'm not going to link to any of it here, but if you can get your hands on the last two issues ... do! Those issues are better than any comedy programme that you can watch nowadays. Insulting your readers, crapping on anyone that worked on the magazine the previous 50 years, call all white people "gatekeepers", fire everyone, turn the design and writing department over to (unpaid) students, make fun of everyone who complained on X (formerly Twitter) and then ... disappear. That's the 21st century for you.
02 | I'm just listening to the new Albert Cummings album, "Strong" and am really enjoying it.
01 | March, April and May are not going to be much fun and I'm not looking forward to them. A solution for my mom is still far off, I need to continue with surgery on my teeth, my wife has a sh*tload of work coming up and, lately, I've had the feeling that a bunch of things will start to go wrong as they have several times these past many weeks, throwing sand into gears that are otherwise turning smoothly.
02 | February
29 | February was a difficult month because I spent days - if not weeks - tyring to find a solution for my mom who has problems staying in the house she lived in more than two decades. Music kept me going and this month I spent listening to, in no particular order, Hyperion's wonderful 86-CD series "The Romantic Piano Concerto" with lots of little-heard gems, lots of jazz records - especially piano trio recordings - released by the wonderful Japanese "Venus" label, Mosaic Records' fantastic "The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings of Art Pepper", all 11 CDs of Clifford Brown's "Complete EmArcy Recordings", Philip Sayce's new release "The Wolves are Coming", the 2023 double-CD "Charlie Watts - Anthology" featuring his jazz recordings, Oscar Caceres 25-CD boxed set "Panorama De La Guitare" from 2018 by Erato/Warner, and the two Rival Sons albums from 2023, "Darkfighter" and "Lightbringer" (which could easily have fit on a single CD).
28 | In the early days of web development, I was an avid follower of various luminaries of that time. One of them was Molly E. Holzschlag, a person who always seemed to have time for this odd German guy who was a teacher and not a web developer. We clicked on many issues, especially on web standards that she was tirelessly promoting. I won't get into all the details, but we spent a lot of time talking online. Then Molly became very, very sick, frustrated and at times very angry. Still we talked on and off and I tried to lift her spirits a little here and there. Because months would pass between online conversations, I simply missed that she passed away far too early at 60 not so long ago. It was something everyone expected, but it came as a shock to me. Then I searched the web for obituaries and ... Eric Meyer's "Memories of Molly" and Meryl Evans' "In Memory of Molly E. Holzschlag, the Fairy Godmother of the Web" stood out. When I read around the various blog posts in memory of Molly, I felt a kind of sadness for a time long gone (and web standards that still don't exist today).
27 | Want to have another scary look into the future? "High-speed humanoid feels like a step change in robotics".
26 | I cannot overstate the glorious joy I felt when Google's AI turned out to be shit.
25 | The "AI Comic Factory" is a fun toy to play with and, depending on the story prompts you enter, it actually does a pretty damn good job.
24 | By now, Rick Beato has interviewed all three members of "The Police". The last interview, which just dropped a little while ago, is the one with the always quirky Stewart Copeland. Highly recommened. P.S.: Rick has interviews with George Benson and Michael McDonald coming up soon. I'm sure those will be stellar as well!
23 | You might have seen this already, but it is, to me, a very sad story, despite the dedication and the unwavering work ethic connected to it. Ken Fritz spent 27 years putting together what he considered to be the best stereo system / music room on this planet. He invested in excess of $1.2 million and put a lot of strain on his family, especially his kids. When he was finally done, he became very ill and had hardly any time to actually enjoy it. Ken developed ALS, passed away and all the equipment he had built and put into his music room was auctioned off for a fraction of what he had invested. I was reminded of the whole story when I came across this post on Aftermath, "What Happened To 'The World’s Best Stereo System'?" I would have loved to listen to some of my favorite LPs on his system.
22 | One of my important external hard drives died on me from one second to the next. I have backup redundancy baked into my strategy, but hard drives are so expensive nowadays that I don't feel like shelling out the cash for a new one just yet. Time for two days of "re-juggling" the contents of a shelf-full of drives. And, no, I don't have a noisy NAS system around my place. I'm old school.
21 | I had almost given up on any good films being released and then I came across "Zone of Interest". A film about "Rudolf Höss", the commandant of German concentration and death camps of Auschwitz, might not be your cup of tea, but every aspect of the film - sound, picture, editing, directing and acting - is excellent throughout. Very highly recommended ... if you can stomach the evil constantly present in the mundanity depicted.
20 | Windows 11 and its totally fucked-up update routines is such a total pain in the ass. I've had three updates stuck for days now and I wonder if it is all the Dorito dust raining all over the operating system every single time they touch it that gets in the way of the programmers doing their job. Total asshats.
19 | Taking care of business for my mom who has again had to deal with lots of problems recently.
18 | We love puzzles but don't attack the many we still have to do often enough. We both get caught up in whichever one is on the table and, of course, that is more than detriemntal to my wife's day job. "Dissected Maps: The First Jigsaw Puzzles" threw me down into that rabbit hole again, from John Spilsbury, who invented the damn things, all the way to a French couple currently tracing their work on a 40.000-piece puzzle over on Instagram.
17 | As you all know, I love Rick Beato's interviews with world-renowned (and any other) musicians. The more he publishes on YouTube, the more other musicians notice that it might be a good idea to actually be interviewed by him.Every single second of "Brad Mehldau: The Greatest Jazz Pianist of Our Generation" is an absolutely fascinating interview with someone who really appreciates the knowledgable questions and opens up completely.Today, "fake news", uneducated journalists, agendas and whatnot completely dominate the publishing sphere, but Rick Beato is the real deal. He really wants to know things, is genuinely interested, has himself a wealth of musical knowledge and respects the people he interviews.This one here is the epitome of what good interviews should achieve and Brad Mehldau has the eloquence to deliver.
16 | I hardly buy any CDs anymore. I used to love to buy good boxed sets at discount prices but, and the fact has been lamented by many people on the music forums I frequent, those times are long gone, What used to cost $50 costs $ 250-$500 nowadays ... and isn't worth that kind of money. So, I refrain. I have everything I need and I do not need to pour money into the pockets of overweight shareholders.
15 | I've reached the age at which one gets rebellious. Netflix, Disney and other streaming services have such devestatingly bad business plans that they are all beginning to afix thumbscrews to their users. Ads, price hikes, cancellations of formerly perfect subscription plans, etc. Cory Doctorow calls this "enshitification". I concur and have reached a point at which I just cancel ... to never return. Alas, most other people do the herd thing and just bow their heads and nod.
14 | I save random quotes here and there that rang true with me when I encountrered them and in light of recent worldwide developments, I think this one, which I pulled off Twitter months ago (I don't haver the source anymore and am too lazy to look), is pretty apt: "People can get desperate enough to want to blow things up and see where the pieces land."
13 | Before we went to Muncih, I decided to redo my entire CD collection, organizing it differently and (re)integrating (empty) boxes that had been stored in the basement. The result was that I had to move 14000 CDs altogether 7 (!) times until I was satisfied with the result. Today I noticed that I had made a mistake and had to go for the 8th round. Just call me "anal" (and send a postcard to Sigmund Freud's grave).
12 | This year, we were somewhat more adventurous in regard to eating well, and besides the obligatory visit to "Braunauer Hof", a Bavarian restaurant we frequent every single time we visit Munich, we enjoyed Afghan dishes at "Chopan" and original south-east Asian dishes at "Spicery," just a few hundred meters north of our hotel. Another restaurant we (= my wife) discovered just in time, was one called "Klinglwirt", a Bavarian restaurant with excellent reviews (Falstaff, etc.) and an authentic atmosphere to boot. Great place!
11 | The "Lehnbachhaus" is probably our favorite museum in Munich. "The Lenbachhaus collects, conserves, studies, and presents the art of the nineteenth century, the Blauer Reiter, the New Objectivity, as well as international contemporary art." This year, we really enjoyed their exhibition presenting Günter Fruhtrunk's early years in Paris (1954/1967). His geometric and colorful paintings from that era were absolutely spectacular.
10 | When in Munich, we always frequent a couple of department stores which are way better than anything else around Germany. "Ludwig Beck" has - by far - the best CD and LP department (plus a fabulous "Papeterie"), and "Oberpollinger" has an excellent small restaurant and a wonderful kitchen/china/etc. department. Both of those we spent plenty of time at.
09 | The trip to Munich went well, especially because we upgraded to a first-class ticket for next to nothing. In Munich, we have had a favorite hotel for nearly two decades now, "Holiday Inn Munich City Centre". It's not the best - but a very good - hotel in town, but it's situated perfectly so if the weather is bad, you don't need to "surface" at all. You can access the subway right from the hotel and reach just about any place of importance without getting your feet (or anything else) wet. Recently, they have renovated a large part of the hotel and we - again - felt very comfortable there. Home away from home ... and all of that.
08 | Very early tomorrow morning, we are going to head to Munich for four days to escape the carnival mayhem around here. So, until next Tuesday there won't be any updates but, when we return, I'll fill in February 9th to February 12th with the exciting things we did, found and bought there.
07 | Ian Stone: Israel vs. Palestine:"They all blame each other, don't they?
- 'You started it.'
- 'No! You occupied our land in 1967.'
- 'Well ..., well, we did that because you attacked us during the Six-Day War!'
- 'Well, the reason we did that is 'cause you were given our land by the British that was legitimately owned by us.
- And the Israelis go, 'well the reason we were given the land is 'cause of all the suffering of the Jews during the Second World War' and I thought ... 'Ah, fuck, it's the German's fault!'"
06 | Ian Stone: Multiculturalism Has Failed:"Suella Braveman, our home secretary, do you know about her? Oh. My. God. A woman who is making us pine for the halcyon liberal days of Priti Patel. Jesus, what is wrong with her? 'Multiculturalism has failed?' You ARE multiculturalism! You're Indian, married to a Jew and living in Britain! What the fuck is wrong with you?Suella Braveman wants to make this country so inhospitable that all those people on the boats won't wanna come. Now, I don't know if you know the five countries where most of those people come from, right, Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Sudan and Iran. Do you think people from those five countries, people who cross continents, will be put off by not being able to get a doctor's appointment for a week and a half? Do you think they'll come sailing into Dover and 'WHAT? A BUS REPLACEMENT SERVICE? Oh no, I told you we shouldn't have come on a Sunday!'"
05 | Ian Stone: The Liberal Democrats:"The Liberal Democrats. I watched Ed Davey stand up at his conference and say 'The Liberal Democrats will fight organized crime!' And I thought, 'I think organized crime might win.' I was just imagining a load of Mafiosi in a basement 'OH NO, THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE OUTSIDE! There's 14 of them. Oh, is it 15 now, is it 15? 15 OF THEM! Are they armed? - Yes, with righteous indignation!'"
04 | Ian Stone: American Elections:"Can I ask you a question about America? Don't you think American elections are far too important to be left in the hands of Americans?"
03 | Ian Stone: Rock Against Racism:"I did a march in London years ago, 'Rock against racism'.Some of the older people might remember that. Billy Bragg played, The Clash ... We marched from Hyde Park in the centre of London to Hackney! Yeah, some of you know, that is a long way. Honestly, half way through the march, I'm thinking, 'Well, racism isn't that bad! Can't we get a cab against racism?'"
02 | Ian Stone: Living in Britain:[speaking to a member of the audience]
"You like it in Britain? You like it here?
"Yeah, err, I do ... it's fine you know ... ".
What's your name, son?"
"Salim."
"Salim. Listen Salim. We think this country is shit. We just don't like to hear it from foreigners. You know what I mean? I mean, and it is shit. It is, isn't it? It is shit ... that's why comedy works in Britain, 'cause things are shit. And me and other comedians will get up on stage and go 'Hey, aren't things shit? And everyone sits there and goes 'Yeah, they're shit' and we'll have a laugh, don't we? You don't get decent comedy gigs in Switzerland, do you? People walking on stage going 'Hey, aren't the trains punctual?
01 | How about we start this month off differently? I'm a huge fan of Ian Stone, a comedian hailing from Britain and someone I discovered on Instagram. I love his positive vibe, the devilish grin he can put on and the banter he loves to get into with his audience. Here's the first one of several to come:Ian Stone: Chinese Spies:
"'The Chinese are listening to our phone calls'. Are they? I couldn't give a shit. Most of my phone calls are just ordering Chinese!"
01 | January
31 | Note: I've had some trouble posting these last 10 days or so. The backend of this website is undergoing some major changes, all of which are a pain in the neck for me to adapt to and involve a lot of repetitive and moronic work.
30 | As regular readers know, I've been a fan of Stephen King's work since things really took off for me when I bought (the hardcover of) "IT" ages ago. I never bought hardcover copies of his books before "It" because the prices were and are just way out there (SK fans are generally nuts). From March onward, some of the classic HC titles will be reprinted by Hodder & Stoughton (UK): "Hodder to Publish 50th Anniversary Classic Edition of Stephen King's 'Carrie' in March of 2024 with New Introduction by Margaret Atwood."
29 | "Minibricks" makes some fascinating museum miniatures and realistic dioramas.
28 | In regard to yesterday's post, a brief update on the two series we watched, "Reacher" and "The Lincoln Lawyer" (both season two). In summary, we thought both were majorly lacking in comparison to their respective first seasons. The stories were "meh" and the character development / portrayal often did not work. They weren't a total waste of time, but ...
27 | For a short while, I thought - just for the fun of it - I would add two pages to my website entitled "currently listening to ..." and "currently watching ...". After a couple of posts, I've decided to remove those two pages again because I started using images that I grabbed from other websites and whose copyright I don't have. So, I decided against doing that kind of stuff which will eventually cause me major headaches.
26 | "Redesigning Cormac McCarthy’s Brutal ‘Blood Meridian’." Fascinating read.
25 | The little one that could: "After Three Years on Mars, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends."
24 | The upcoming issue of Germany's major PC magazine will have a longer article outlining the problems with smart technology losing its smartness when its manufacturers switch off all cloud functions (because, usually, the underlying business plan sucked). It's happened a lot these last few years and we need laws to cover consumers who invested a lot of money into these devices.
23 | "Lee Sklar - 'The Interview' on Sunset Sound Roundtable"
22 | There's been lots of (both positive and negative) talk about this one: "T-Pain - On Top of the Covers (Live from The Sun Rose)". He's got "Don't Stop Believin" (Journey) and "War Pigs" (Black Sabbath) in there. Fun stuff.
21 | "Coca Cola - Masterpiece". Here are both the commercial and the "making of" videos. Great work!
19 | I've read lots about the death of Rock music these past many years, but this recent Rick Beato video featuring a conversation with Jim Barber (former A&R executive at Geffen Records), "How Corruption and Greed Led to the Downfall of Rock Music" outlines pretty well how it all went to shit end 90s/beginning 00s.
18 | I had never heard about this wonderful animated film from 2013, "Minuscule Valley of the Lost Ants", but I really enjoyed it. Great work!
17 | The "ice storm" wasn't worth writing home about from our perspecive, but a little north of here it caused a bunch of accidents for people who were "surprised" about it despite the media having talked about nothing else for nearly a full week.
16 | Great weather today although for tomorrow, weather services are falling over themselves to warn especially my part of the country about ice rain which, apparently, is supposed to hit us quite hard starting tomorrow morning. Should prove interesting. I'll take a photo if things come to pass.
15 | Time to get with the program. I think I'll give ChatGPT a try these next few weeks to see what it can do.
14 | We booked a trip to Munich again for a couple of days in the second week of February, just to get away from the carnival madness that grips entire parts of the country every single year.
13 | Ah, OK. That'll do it ... "Google wrote a ‘Robot Constitution’ to make sure its new AI droids won’t kill us."
12 | ... and while I was at the doctor's office I caught a stomach flue which is apparently going around the area I used to live in.
11 | Today I found out that my doctor of 28 years went into retirement on December 31st, 2023. She had told me almost two years before that it would happen "in the near future" and towards the end she only treated me and a few other regulars, but I was unable to thank her for her help in the end because I hadn't seen her since October of 2023. She quit, sold off her place and furniture and moved elsewhere.She was a fabulous general practitioner, a bit rough around the edges and very direct at times, which I appreciated, but I will be forever in her debt because where tons of specialists failed for nearly three years way back when, she needed a single weekend to diagnose those things that were wrong with me.I remember her telling me after my first visit and after I had spent an hour or more outlining those things that were tripping me up regularly: "Give me this weekend and let's meet on Monday morning. I need to do some reading and thinking".She then told me what she thought was wrong with me, sent me to three different doctors, each one a specialist in his field, and all three confirmed that she had been spot on (and wondered why the previous "specialists" hadn't caught those problems).It will be very difficult - if not impossible - to find a new doctor around my new place to replace her. She was an old-fashioned doctor with tons of general experience from a lifetime of treating patients and had a knack for seeing the "whole picture" the specialists were always reluctant to focus on (because, I assume, they simply didn't have the knowledge or will to do so).They don't make them like they used to. I'll miss her.
10 | I've added two new pages to my website, "currently listening to ..." and "currently watching ...". You can access then from the homepage. I thought I'd remove posts regarding music and films from my microblog and flesh out those two new pages as I go along. Note: I decided to remove those pages again (see my January 27 post).
09 | Uhm, in regard to yesterday's post, I have to agree with some critics I briefly quoted. As it stands now, in its theatrical cut, "Napoleon" is a rather disjointed epic which leaves quite a bit to be desired.I think I know how Ridley Scott ticks, as I have watched all of his films several times, and there's a coherent film in there which, I hope, will raise its head with the imminent director's cut.Historical accuracy aside (which you can't really find in this film either ... not that I expected it ... it's a film, not life), the theatrical version suffers from cuts (jump cuts, really) which don't make all that much sense unless you have read a ton about Napoleon, which I have.
08 | As usual, Ridley Scott got some nasty reviews for his latest film, Napoleon. Critics called it "flavourless", "Mr. Scott's Waterloo", a "misfire", a "belabored 158-minute movie", "dull", "plodding", "slow" and "underlit", and those are some of the nicer "accolades".If you have the time, check what critics said about the theatrical version of Kingdom of Heaven ... those were even worse. I remember when the director's cut was then "reappraised" by critics many years later, deemed excellent, and it has been one of my favorite films since that cut was released.Still, I'm really looking forward to watching the UHD version of Napoleon tonight or tomorrow.Today, I searched around for a director's cut of Napoleon and, indeed, Ridley Scott is hoping this 4+-hour version of the film will be streamed by Apple TV soon.
07 | Have you ever heard of Lucy? I came across her by accident just today and here are three videos you should watch, her first appearance on Channel 4's The Piano, her final performance at the Royal Albert Festival Hall on that same show and her playing Bach's Prelude in C at King Charles' Coronation concert. What a spectacular talent.
06 | Whereas Scandinavia and the whole north-east of Europe are already in a freezer with up to minus 44°C, the cold will also reach us next week, albeit with only around -5°C to -10°C. Finally, some cold (and dry) days coming up.
05 | One would have thought the "Loudness War" was over, but the 2023 reissues of the red and blue Beatles compilation albums in their new configuration show that it isn't. Whereas the LPs sound wonderful, their CD counterparts are squashed to death. Sad.
04 | Mobile Fidelity's SACD reissue of Van Halen's debut album is the best this album has ever sounded in the digital age. Their 45 RPM one-step double LP reissue of this album is also spectacular.
03 | It's about time. "2024 may be a year of reckoning for Apple’s $85 billion services business."
02 | Is this going to be a trend? "AI-created “virtual influencers” are stealing business from humans." "[...] Their emergence has led to worry from human influencers their income is being cannibalized and under threat from digital rivals. That concern is shared by people in more established professions that their livelihoods are under threat from generative AI—technology that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds. But those behind the hyper-realistic AI creations argue they are merely disrupting an overinflated market. [...]"
01 | Happy New Year! Last night we had a spectacular 360° view from our roof terrace and the people around here apparently did not think much of the government's plea for fewer fireworks this year. They went the opposite way and lit up the sky, for hours.
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