Knuckledragger

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.

Spotlight doesn't index network drives on macOS Monterey. This is a complete PITA if one has, say, 5ish TB of FLACs on a network drive.

Mutinous Russian troops ran over their own commander, say western officials.

Dual 75" monitor setup.

Fanatical has followed suite to Humble and put together their own Stand with Ukraine bundle, 58 games for $15 (or as much as one cares to donate.)

also "This Morning, Russian Phosphorus Bombs Were Used": Zelensky To NATO.

RIP to Stephen Wilhite, the dude who created the GIF format.

I have no idea where else to post this, Home of Republican who crafted Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill is destroyed by tornado. 🌪️

Maersk to completely leave Russia and sell its Russian assets. Anonymous released 10GB database of Nestlé.

Don't think about it too hard.

96 year old Boris Romanchenko, survivor of four different nazi concentration camps killed last Friday by the Russians in his home in Kharkiv.

This interview is amazing. I listened to the whole thing last night, and repeated large parts of it. The ending is particularly scary.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy accuses Nestle and Auchan of using 'cheap PR' to justify continued business in Russia. #FuckNestle

Putin 'in better shape than ever', Belarus leader says. That means he's probably terminally ill.

Today I got everything wired up (MOTU M4/Mixer/laptop) and am testing it out. I've spent much of the evening ...just poking at things. It's a bit like re-learning Traktor from the ground up. 6+ months away plus the UI changes to the new version have left me struggling to remember basic functions. Also, and this is not a small point, I have been running Traktor since late 2008. I set a bunch of config options back then and they carried over version to version. With my new install, all of that is gone. I've had numerous instances of "X isn't doing the thing I expect" then figuring out what that function is, where it's located in the options menu and setting it the way I want. Talking to a friend, I've likened the situation to sitting down in my car only to find that the clutch pedal has a different depth, the speedometer has different graduations and the stick shift is in the wrong place. I did get the new Mixlr app and the MOTU M4 working at least. I am [gosh darn] tired, so I don't think I'll do a test broadcast tonight. I am going to try to mix a few tracks just for myself later.

Humble has a $40 bundle with 123 games in it to support Ukraine.

Putin is rumored to be purging the Kremlin of Russian officials he blames for the faltering invasion of Ukraine.

Photoshop battle!

New M4 arrived. Tentative good news.

Flickr is changing their ToS. From now on only paid members can show titty publicly. I take this as a sign that the site had been overrun with porn and phishing accounts. Based on the moderation I've had to do in the tattoo group I took over (because it had been abandoned for years and was overrun with porn and phishing links) I can't say I'm surprised. Also did I mentioned I had to leave the Discord of a group I founded because one of the VERY VOCAL members objected to a channel dedicated to photos of tattooed women? I hate the modern world.