Knuckledragger

Was listening to Queen's 1977 album News of the World and reflecting on its cover art. The cover art was done by Kelly Freas, based on his cover for the October 1953 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. There's an alternative cover for NotW, which was also inside the gatefold on some versions: Freas' artwork is kind of creepy, unsettling, quite vintage looking but also weirdly futuristic. I remember seeing it as a kid and not being sure what to make of it. The music is pretty spectacular as well.

Dark AF Polandball:

In spite of my considerable reservations as to his character, it turns out that the current on hiatus status of The Grand Tour has left me wanting more freakishly tall British jackassery in my life so when the Prive Video splash page (bless its heart) suggested this to me last night: I started watching. True to form, Jeremy is bad at everything. Also this show was filed right before Covid started, which certainly gives it a vintage feel. It's like watching pre-9/11 films in 2002.

Russia Threatens Wikipedia With $50K Fine for Ignoring Ukraine Warning. 🤡

Oh man, I've been putting off writing this one. I have 3 uncles, all on my mother's side. The youngest is a really good dude who has been tasked with dealing with the aftermath of the bad actions of other family members for his entire life. The oldest is an unimaginable piece of shit even by the standards of trash tier relatives. I would not micturate on him were he on fire. Sadly, he lives on at the age of 82, showing no signs of slowing down. My third uncle, the middle one, was born retarded. He spent some troubled times in the 1960s and 1970s in "state schools" which were horrible institutions in MA where all sorts of people with mental disabilities were dumped. In those places my uncle experienced horrors we shall never know. He was never verbal beforehand and was even less so after. From family stories I know he was attacked by aggressive "patients" (not really an appropriate term, but it's what they used) and was more or less defenseless. He'd show his trauma and pain by biting his own hands and the staff would notice the wounds. How long this went on I cannot say, but it was a time period measured in years. In the 1980s, he got out of the ellscape that the MA institutional system and into much more caring group homes. In the 1990s, he moved in with a family who were paid by the state to take care of him. Mercifully, they were a very caring group and took care of him quite well. Late last year the matriarch of that family contacted my youngest uncle (the good one) and said they could no longer really take care of my retarded uncle. That lead to a series bureaucratic headaches where my uncle eventually ended up back in MA institution. Fortunately they aren't as bad as they once were. Not too long after, my uncle contracted Covid. He recovered, but he was 63 years old and not in great shape. He was in and out of the hospital, most recently being treated for intestinal blockage. He returned to the institution and died hours later. His passing has been very hard on his surviving siblings (minus the asshole one, whose opinion to me on par with that one Mr. Putin.) I think for my uncle it was a mercy. What I observed of my uncle was that in spite of the horrors he experienced and witnessed, and his inability to communicate his suffering to anyone around him, he was an an amazingly sweet guy. His limited expressions showed shyness, curiosity, good nature, humor and a kindness I seldom see in us "normal" people. I tried to draw some inspiration from his kind spirit and find strength in his ability to rebound from trauma.

^ That's my entire virtual record bag, archived. Normally only the changed files need to be copied, but part of the process of rebuilding my virtual DJ infrastructure changed the mtime on every single track in it. This M1 MBP doesn't have ethernet of course, so that transfer had to happen over WiFi. Related, I'm eyeing one of those CalDigit TB docks. Probability of me finally returning to the airwaves this coming Friday increasing.

In lighter news, Sanctioned Russian oligarchs break down in tears over their inability to book private jets, reports say.

https://news.obozrevatel.com/ukr/show/people/vse-zaminovano-na-vulitsyah-bagato-til-komarov-pokazav-pershi-kadri-zi-zvilnenoi-buchi.htm

I can't quite see the calendar from where I'm sitting.

Wow. I just learned that a woman I knew in the mid-late 00s during the heyday of the 413 drum n bas scene died in January. She was only 38. The scuttlebutt, which I take with a dump truck sized grain of salt is that she got ahold of some cocaine laced with fetanyl. I have no idea if that's remotely true. Vicky was a wild an hedonistic girl in her 20s, but I never saw her hanging out with the cokheads. What I remember about her was energetic, outgoing, uninhibited and uninterested in what other people thought of her. She led charge among her group of friends on events like Camp Bisco (a huge music festival revolving around the jam band the Disco Biscuits) or just local DNB weekly event. I know she rubbed a few people the wrong way, especially men who had a higher opinion of themselves than she did. Certainly 38 is entirely too young an age for anybody to go, especially a speeding bullet like Victoria. Somewhat related, a dnb DJ I knew died last November, days after he turned 44. His death was definitely due to a fetanyl overdose. That shit is everywhere, being used to lace all sorts of things where one would not expect to find a synthetic opiate and it's frighteningly deadly.

Via redderp:

Having escaped the uncanny valley that is AI generated faces, let's smooth things over with some "relaxing" music. Black MIDI is a form of experimental music revolving around the idea of inputting insane numbers of notes into a sequence. It's not a new idea at all, and in fact predates MIDI as a whole. For reasons that are unclear to me, the black MIDI piece "Rush E" went viral recently: There's a well known and highly respected YouTuber named penguinz0 AKA MoistCr1TiKaL AKA Charlie who has been neck deep in meme culture for many years now and has made quite a career out of it. Charlie is impressive in that he's almost universally liked, which is nearly impossible on the internet. I don't watch his content regularly, but I often find his explantations of internet happening useful when I need something "explained in Boomer speak." He did a video on some of the drama surrounding Rush E: I should not be surprised that people have attempted and succeeded to perform Rush E live, and then turned it into a pissing contest. This is a decent short documentary on black MIDI and the 20th century experimental composer Conlon Nancarrow:

Russia Finally Rules Out Using Nuclear Weapons Over Ukraine War. Next week "Kremlin is pleased with "special nuclear operation." Russia accuses US of leading massive cyber campaign. "Pot to Kettle" dept.

Fair waring, this is going to get a little bit gross. Over the weekend I had the Linus Tech Tips podcast on while I was doing housecleaning (Cool story, Knuckles! Tell it again!) They mentioned a site that made AI generated photos of people. Linus and Luke were both impressed with the results. Curious, and tired of vacuuming, I investigated: Almost normal, except for the weird artifacts in his chin. Dude being photographed by a demon. Nice steampunk goggles, lady! Dude and his buds. Hand. Ma'am, you have something on your face. This is when I closed the browser tab.

^ Related: Imma still keep looking for shitpost memes on the slap, though.

So there's a guy named Will Smith, with Twitter handle has better namespace than the, ahem, *other* guy who shares his name. I'm posting the link to his Twitter ...as a link, because man does the HC software embed Twitter strangely. Will has been mistaken for his more famous namesake many times over the years. None top the last 20 or so hours. The ginger Will has taken the whole thing in stride. If you want to experience true brainrot, read some of the replies to his tweets. EDIT: Oh, I forgot the most important part. Many years ago on the Giant Bombcast (when it was the best thing ever) the late, great Ryan Davis had some choice words for the ginger Will. It was such a memorable moment, a couple GB fans animated it:

On the plus side, we'll have plenty of meme fuel for the foreseeable future. General internet savagery: You might have to say this one out out. Minecraft: TF2: Not to mention #BlackPeopleTwitter A couple serious points:

Fuckin' goddamn, dude.

That permanently attached power cord gives me flashbacks to 1990s components. I remember in the late aughts when I donated two LCD panels to my friends DVD rental business (which I motored up to in my model T) because his were failing. Remember the bad capacitor curse of the first half of the 00s? My frind's business got hit pretty hard by bad caps. I helped him replace two monitors and a HT receiver, but I digres... Both of the LCDs that I gave away had permanently attached VGA cables. One of them also had a permanent power cord as well. Apple's choice makes even less sense given that they engineered a very nice magnetic power cord for newer iMacs. I expect better both from Tim Apple and for a fricken $1600-$1900 display. For that money, even from Apple, there are some basics that need covering. A power cord contemporary with the century in which we are living is one of them. There's also the issue of the "Studio Display" being a really poor match for the fricken Mac Studio, with which it shares a name and presumably a market segment. I have talked to a number friends who produce music, video and photos. I have a gentleman's bet with them that more or less all of them will be buying a Studio in the next few years. The amount of desk space and power consumption it saves vs a cheesegrater Mac Pro is something that looks appealing to basically everyone. The only holdout I can name in my personal friend group is the one guy who has make use of a couple PCI-E cards. ...also, anyone else find it highly amusing that El Cabeza de Sputnik needs an app called "Magnet"?

I went down several internet rabbit holes this weekend. The first was rare versions of the white album by the Beatles. Given that it's arguably the most famous album by the most famous rock n roll band of all time, I expected some doozies. I found fewer than expected, but I did discover a few notable examples: The 1982 MFSL half speed master shouldn't surprise anyone. TBH I expected a 4 record version, maybe at 45RPM. The 1968 US mispress from the wrong master is something I remember hearing about but had never bothered to actually look at. I'm vaugely curious what it sounds like. There are a number of vintage open reel versions: 1968 UK mono, 1968 UK stereo, 1968 US stereo and 1970 US stereo. Weirdly, none of these are that well regarded among analogue snobs. US and UK stereo '68 suffer from lousy mixes and poor mastering. 1970 US has better mastering but has all sorts of edits to the songs to cut time. Yuck. This is where things get weird. There are a couple PlayTape versions, which is some weird cousin of the 8-track. There was also an initial version on 4 track cartridge, which was a format I'd never heard of before. I asked a friend of mine who is enough older than me to remember it and he said (twice) "Madman Muntz!" to which I said "WAT." and then saw just how far the rabbit hole went. Earl William "Madman" Muntz was a man who was (in)famous in the mid 20th century for selling anything any everything. He designed (borrowing heavily of course) his own radios, TVs, tape format and even a car called the Muntz Jet. He was married 7 times, dated Phyllis Diller and was friends with Dick Clark. I was peripherally aware of him because I saw one of his Muntz TVs at an antique auction in the late 80s. At that time my father didn't deal in TVs so he had no interested in it. I did a YouTube search for Muntz and found this: An entire documentary on him that's an hour and 47 minutes. I'm sure it will exceed the interest of ...everyone on HC, but I found it fascinating. The car was pretty cool looking, at any rate. Next up: the horror if AI generated faces and music.