“In the United States, the House of Representatives and the Senate are supposed to give their approval in cases of foreign conflict. They were neither consulted nor even informed ahead of the operation carried out on Saturday to seize Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.”
Also, the UN perhaps? Can someone stop this man and the military-industrial complex please.
I’m super early thinking about appliances and whatnot for my house, but I’m looking around, pondering.
I peruse at all those touchscreen-based temperature controllers, those Bluetooth-infused radiators or coffee machines or cooking tops and I’m like HAHAHAHAHA. Never.
I want switches. I want buttons. I want the satisfaction of using my fingers to turn on/off something. I want zero updates and internet-deprived appliances, yes. 1,000%.
I found this shower mixer tap from Italy.
Isn’t it cool? Hi-Fi looking switches. Fantastic grip. Satisfying click sound and textured contact. Perfect rotary control. Probably lasts for a hundred years before it needs to be replaced. I’m sold.
Germany will provide the best cooking top I have ever seen. It’s just induction with built-in ventilation (no hood to install/plan, yay!) but instead of having those sad touchscreen controls, there’s the option to use rotary knobs to control the burners!!!
I can’t cook well if I can’t rotate heat up and down, it is a law of Physics. Sorry.
Touch is great. Touch is real. Touchscreens and internet-connected appliances are cheeks.
Assault on Precinct 13. I enjoyed it! Love me some LA from way back.
There was a huge concern about youth violence in the 70s, apparently. Many movies, shows, anime from all over the world took on that subject at that time. Which would be part of the equation for the 80s copaganda culture.
Half a century old movie. Hard to believe said like that.
Reading this book about Elektra Records. They talk about folk music, which was the bread and butter of that music label back in its early days.
It made me once again aware of how lyrics have never meant much if anything to me. Music is the thing. Not lyrics.
From my perspective, someone on a guitar singing lyrics I should pay attention to is not really making music. It’s some spoken word/poetry in a melodic way. I will be over it after half a song.
Music has to trigger raw, unescapable emotions, feelings, vibes not thoughts. If you’re thinking, you’re not listening.
Music is tones. Textures. Movements. It energizes. It soothes. It fits your melancholy or the needed mood. Those things are connecting with the human body and soul at a much lower level than the intellectual realm of words and lyrics.
It’s the 80s, I’m a child. Music is pouring from every room. I’m in France and overall music is probably a third French, a third American and a third English. I either don’t care about what the singer says about his girl in French, or I don’t understand what they’re saying. I naturally focus on how the music, the instruments, the production make me feel.
And the 80s are peak music (If I remember correctly, end of 70s/early 80s and end of 90s/early 00s are when the music industry made the most money). You have everything, every genre is fine. Music production then is also at its peak, profiting from all the knowledge from the 70s and the technical progress in recording gear that kept happening.
So I’m listening to everything on the FM radio. I notice what triggers goose bumps. How cool it is when instruments have a conversation between the left and right speakers. I notice the “weight” of things. Synths can be heavy and thick, but they can also be thin and fragile. Bass is that strong ass thing everywhere. Electric guitars are shape shifting all over the place.
The voice is an instrument though. I care about that. The desperation in Playboi Carti’s voice for instance, is important to the vibe. But what he’s mumbling about, I don’t care at all.
That’s why I never could get into any folk music, or rap ever. But I hear a Patrice Rushen’s chord progression and I want to close my eyes and cuddle, immediately. No thoughts. Just emotions.
Still the 31st here. It’s raining. Some mild covid symptoms. There’s a variant that gives me diarrhea for sure and it is here inside me.
What a tense year under the stupidest government we have ever experienced. Hoping everyone gets back to their senses and stops being insane? Not sure hopes are enough. Get off your phone.
For myself, I hope a lot. Working super hard. Studying like a maniac. I am building this custom house to pursue a lifestyle with no name involving reading books, cooking and skateboarding in and out the crib, possibly. Fancy or not, immensely satisfying to me.
Thankful. Let’s fucking go.
I couldn’t even read the subtitles, I swear.
It’s that bad. I don’t understand how it’s not absolutely illegal. It is completely insane here in LA. It gets worse because people’s reasoning is “I’ll buy the same insane headlights so that I’m never blinded!” and now everyone not having those stupid lights is suffering.
I’ve never looked more at the bottom right corner of my field of vision than these days. It’s that or complete blindness. Sometimes it is so absurd (like rearview mirror literally being an intense white page of #ffffffff), I laugh like a maniac, ducking in my car.
Sadly, it’s not just on the road. At work they started to replace fluorescent lights with 4600K LED bullshit and I told them hell to the fuck no are you insane?? Transforming the office into a gas station!
At home I bought a 65W LED “warm” light for a table and this shit is not only loud as fuck (I needed a 3W one) but it displays a way too uniform, robotic light. It’s creepy. It’s flat, unnatural. I swapped it for a 6W incandescent light and it’s so, so, so much better. Much closer to fire and sun. Nice colors.
The issue arises on a show like Andor, too. “we’re using simulated daylight with LEDs and it’s awesome!” If it’s immediately recognizable, especially in 4K then no, it’s not awesome at all.
So, they’re not great. They’re expensive. They’re not clean, full of plastic and PCB. People are getting used to them because they keep looking at their phones and all that LED blue light grossness is numbing them. Manufacturers keep pushing them on some “oh you wanted some lighting? Here’s some balls to the wall, 10,000 suns light in your damn face bitch” BS.
Fuck LED lights.
Thinking a lot about the digital world because like:
So who is real, for real? I know I am and a few blogs I’ve been following for 10+ years are too. But for the rest today? I don’t know at all.
This is a first in internet history.
I’m reading a book about a music label and there are multiple reports of women talking about going back home alone at night in NYC and never once feeling scared of anything. It was truly like that. 1950s.
In the 2000s, you never felt like the online profile or username was not real. It always was. If it wasn’t it was quickly obvious. The point was to find people like you so you needed to be you/define yourself.
2010s social media massively changed that (clout-chasing) and now it’s all pointless trash.
Writing online helps in so many ways, but I’ve been doing this for so long. The gains have already paid off. I remember starting though. After a few posts, wondering if that was useful at all.
The youth is emptying their energy online in manipulation-ridden silos controlled by private companies. That’s probably more problematic than starting a website and sharing thoughts.
I happened to have completely missed it in the 90s and 00s.
7 OVAs. The five hours of it all on YouTube.
The music barely stops and couldn’t be more phenomenal and epic. Cool story. Tons of characters. I see the massive influence on all giant robot-based anime that came after, especially Evangelion.
I watched it last month and still think about it.
Can happiness be achieved without sacrifice? Knowing that happiness is a never-ending process, this means some change of state, which probably indicates a worse and better side for things. Now does this mean sacrifices? What is a sacrifice? In this essay, I will…
I noticed how 65″ and bigger TVs swallow people’s minds. Whatever it is on screen, it doesn’t matter. At that size your eyes and brain are overwhelmed enough for you to not do anything but stare.
Phones do the same with a small size, but constantly.
I am on 15″ and 24″ most of the time and I am in control. Big enough to do anything properly, not convenient or giant enough for me to become their bitch.
Considering how good companies are at getting us hooked on anything, the less I am locked in on what is happening on a screen (usually to make me buy stuff), the better.
It’s the little things, y’all!