The hammer turned out fairly nice and I would trust it more than a cheap one from Harbor Freight.
In Japan for the Motegi circuit MotoGP a few big surprises came into play through qualifying 2. The first of these is that Marc Marquez set an unrivaled pole time for first place which was revoked due to just exceeding track limits exiting turn 4(?). He would qualify ninth on the grid. Atrocious. Jorge Martin would one-up Marc and wreck out before setting a good time and start from 11th. The game, then, for Jorge would be to limit points damage from Bagnaia who qualified second. Pedro Acosta took pole position after the track limits error from Marquez.
In the sprint Pedro Acosta got off to a strong start and looked set to win for most of the race but crashed late with Bagnaia taking the lead and the eventual win. Bastianini would go from fourth to second with a poorly starting Vinales dropping like a rock from third to 9th. Marc Marquez and Jorge Martin managed strong starts to put them in the running with the front row. Marquez rode to a third place podium and Martin was down in fourth, but with the sprint format this was only a loss of a few points.
During the race proper Martin managed an even better start and leapt into third behind Bagnaia and Acosta. Pedro lead only briefly as he again crashed out, only much earlier this time. Martin kept the pressure on Bagnaia almost the entire race before having to give up due to worries about crashing and finished second to Bagnaia's first for a loss of five points. Impressive from his fourth row starting position.
Bastianini and Marquez fought for third place for the majority of the race with great back and fourth. Marquez would beat out the Italian, known for his late race pace, and now Marquez sits just 2 points away from third overall in the championship. This on a new to him Ducati which is also not the current spec bike.
Philip Island Australia is next week's race and often windy or less than perfect conditions prevail there.
What was atrocious about Marc's qualifying endeavor is that race control waited several minutes to cancel his lap for track limits, leaving him no time to do it again.
I'm not sure about that. I'll talk about it next year but I'm currently working at a nightmare shop-closing gig that is almost beyond parody. People aren't leaving because they can't.
It's definitely a very weird job market now. After years of being told "learn to code!" Tt seems that folks have finally realized that writing code itself isn't so valuable and LLMs can do it, the difficulty is in writing good code or knowing what problem to solve. Even then it still seems to get screwed up because some C-level guy or investor is high on the supply about "AI"
Every software product we use now is absolute shit. Probably because I muttered under my breath 10 years ago "Could this be any worse?" and the answer is an emphatic "YES"
I agree that this is the hardest part, or knowing how to break down the problem into steps that can be done with the tools you have. In SQL Server-land, when is a stored proc better than SSIS, for example.
The best people have to understand the business problems fairly well to write even halfway decent code.
A computer science degree will teach you to solve any problem, except one you've never seen before. I try to only hire self-taught people for that very reason.
I actively discourage anyone I can from entering IT or programming careers. Nobody writing the checks cares about quality and will outsource your job overseas at the first opportunity. I'm a VP of Engineering. My sons are welders and diesel technicians.
You should see my company. Our department head stood up at a meeting and told his immediate subordinates, the team managers, to spread the word that anyone who thinks they're underpaid should go work elsewhere.
I can't wait for ten years from now, when they'll honestly not understand why they can't find enough people to work here.
Read the comments, it’s been a minute since I checked in on jalopnik; was not disappointed. “Ban all cars from school zones” was a gem… how are we supposed to, you know, pick up and drop off our children?
Pausing reading for a moment to acknowledge the borrowing of Quincy’s Beatles quote. That quote hits like a pound of fatback drums on Memphis Soul Stew
The 30 something basketball coach at my high school was dating a senior. I think she turned 18 sometime during the school year. They married right after she graduated. They didn't try to hide their relationship and I don't recall anyone thinking it was terribly inappropriate. This was in the early 1970s, in a school district based in a working class, Catholic community. The age of consent was 16, just like it is now, but now it's conditionally raised to 18 if the other party is an authority figure like a teacher. Now, Michigan Compiled Laws (MCL) Section 750.520b makes it a felony for a teacher or any school employee to engage in sexual activity with a student, regardless of the student’s age, if the student is enrolled in the school where the teacher or employee works.
It seems to me that this law pretty much makes the notion of age of consent moot, it infantilizes young adults, and may even violate the freedom of association clause of the 1st Amendment.
Modern music makes me feel like a dinosaur. My tastes were contemptible before Clairo was a twinkle in her Daddy’s eye. Heck, the other night I had a swell time banging out “Shoot, Shoot” by UFO. A Middle-aged man with a tube amp and a parlous grasp of timing spending an hour in my rock imaginarium…same as when I was sixteen, except for the gulf of time between us. Would I recognize myself, if we met? I don’t know. Would he despise me? Maybe.
So when I’m out there riding the chord changes, Am I really there or just chasing some echo of that kid, running down the ghost notes I missed along the way?
I dunno. Too much staring at my navel. Time for more tube amp
In the audio world, rather then the guitar one, I hate to say it, but tube amps are passe. SS has gotten so good, that the compromises of tube gear are becoming way too obvious.
Interesting. I have always suspected that audiophiles and guitar players have fundamentally incompatible worldviews, sort of like the ancient rivalry between clowns and mimes we learned about in that masterpiece of cinema, Shakes the Clown.
As someone who is occasionally each of these things... yes. A tube amp is part of an instrument and colors the sound. I don't want that in my playback.
Anything less than 1% distortion is likely inaudible to the vast majority of people. Egnater told me that his amps are probably close to 10% when they are cooking.
Amplifiers are amplifiers. They take a signal and make it stronger. "A wire with gain," as the purists say. Guitar and stereo amp circuits are fairly similar. The choice of individual component values probably has more to do with the overall sound, tone, and distortion than the basic circuit used. Early Marshalls were Bassman clones. They sounded different from the Fenders because they couldn't get the exact component values in the UK that Leo was using in California.
There are plenty of great sounding solid state guitar amps. Lots of classic rock standards were recorded with transistor amps from Kustom (which, btw, weigh as much as tube amps).
Garcia used a McIntosh MC2300 300wpc solid state power amp (using a Fender Twin's preamp). His personal MC2300 sold for ~$300K at auction a few years ago.
People who know such things tell me that most of the classic tweed Fender amps are derived from the RCA Tube Manual.
I have a 5W Monoprice tube amp that's literally a clone of Laney's version of the Champ. I had an amp guy do some harmonica friendly mods and I had him substitute a potentiometer for the negative feedback resistor. Turn down the feedback and it breaks up real nicely, turn it up and the amp gets hifi clean.
That part I agree with, but I am instinctually repelled with how audiophiles describe music. “You take that talk of kHz and THD and you get out of here, demon nerd!” The data geek map ain’t the terrain. Yet, at the same time I can tell many audiophiles experience the same ecstatic transport through music that I do. I know they can hear Jimi, not just listen. That said, I ain’t gonna set up my jerk station and pop on Becker and Fagen.
Yeah, but they're both highly dependent on the same 12AX7, 6V6, EL84, and EL34 tubes.
Even that guy down in Georgia who owns the Western Electric brand and is making new-production 300B power tubes for audiophile gear has announced plans to make popular guitar amp tubes.
Some people (and I am one of them) want accuracy; let them play their 384KHz 24-bit files through their Brown-Burrs and hot Class As or digitally-driven Class Ds with all the noise filtering and phase compensation.
Some people want a certain sound, regardless of whether it is accurate or not; let them drive their vinyl through their tube amps.
Either is a perfectly valid way to enjoy music as long as it is doing what you want it to do.
And here I just had conrad-johnson service my tube-based preamp and over in my electronics assembly station there's one of a pair of Dynaco Mark IV mono power amps that I'm rebuilding.
I'll concede that when we can buy a 100wpc Class D power amp module that's flat from 20hz to 20khz for less than 10 bucks on Amazaon, tube circuits are a bit like mechanical watches, maybe an affectation, but if it sounded good in 1959 and the components haven't deteriorated, it will still sound good today. Maybe not state of the art but musical enough for enjoyment.
I've signed up for Bruce Egnater's amp class in January. The class involves building either a 20 or 50 watt version of Bruce's take on the Bassman/Marshall circuit. I opted for the 50 watt.
I know they are generally under attack, I meant I read they were down and their password DB may have been compromised but when I checked I was able to get in so I don't know what that was about.
Got your latest Wednesday post as my phone announced a tornado warning with a loud screech, I almost dropped my phone. Anyway Milton is hammering central Florida as I write this and 1.5M are with out electricity an hour after landfall. Six inches of rain and 70 mph wind here 100 miles from the eye. we have another 8 hours before Milton takes his leave out over the Atlantic….
Hope you're still doing alright in central Florida. Our family place in Vero ended up alright, but there was no power overnight and tornados dropping down a mile away. It was a really scary night across Florida. We're praying for everyone down there.
I didn't think that the story was about you, but I definitely got the impression that your life experiences helped you give voice to the story.
Oh, and a lot of my writing career has been based on spite - because I was told by the 'people who mattered' that I sucked, many many times. Now I've got over 40 best-sellers and they've got squat.
"Oh, and a lot of my writing career has been based on spite - because I was told by the 'people who mattered' that I sucked, many many times. Now I've got over 40 best-sellers and they've got squat."
Good grief that Instagram reel is unwatchable (he says without a trace of irony having had four on the official Autopian Insta recently) but this sort of thing is hard to do well on your own. She clearly had a videographer with her, or one was provided. Just shooting for reels on my own was a huge ballache without better equipment, like errr a phone mount.
Hammer came out well in the end, but I guess it’s a time/effort trade that a lot of people are not of people are not willing to make. I try to buy good (as opposed to UK made because we don’t make anything here any more) tools as a when I need them. Finally splurged on a set of Facom screwdrivers earlier this year.
It's a pain even with the right equipment. My girl used to do makeup videos and had a pretty decent following for years. She stopped when TikTok started to get popular for this exact reason. Occasionally, she gets the itch to throw something up on Instagram. It immediately turns whatever we're doing into "work"
I shot loads of footage blabbering away while driving with the phone propped on the dash, and then had to pull over when the bloody thing dropped into the footwell. Again. Then the majority of it gets lost in the edit as someone who knows what they’re doing tries to get it down to a couple of minutes. Luckily that wasn’t me.
I'm not much on modern music, so the stuff John Marks post I'm sure is interesting to a lot of people, just not me. I'm fine with some AC/DC, some Nickleback, Puddle of Mudd, or some Morgan Wallen. If it sounds decent and makes me happy to hear it, sign me up. Not really sure when that happened. As a kid, my family was very musical. I could sing lead, second harmony, and third. Was told I had very close to perfect pitch. I didn't care. I had bikes to ride, cars to wreck and fix, beer that needed drinking, cigarettes that needed to be smoked.
I currently (and don’t see myself changing) cannot stand Tik Tok. It captures two things I loathe: the time waste of perpetual click video bait and motherfunking vertical video format.
Remember when it was a shunnable (that’s not a word) offense to take and post vertical video when capturing literally ANYTHING?! Now it’s the preferred medium of laziness.
In other discussions we mention the constant loss of art vs Ai and the like. Vertical mobile based formatting basically destroys creativity and cinematic effect. I still don’t know if it holds real monetary merit for the amount of views it can attain. I’ve no doubt people buy dumb shit based on tiktok but homes? Cars? Really anything big ticket?
Is it criminal to make people rotate their phones? I’m in agreement that the phone has replaced the computer, or app based tv viewing for the majority of the world’s internet consumption. If so, why standardize a substandard format?
Then you have the legal issue of China based information seeding, it’s own capture and basic technological warfare to dumb down America’s youth by pushing endless loads of garbage out. What happens when we eventually pull the plug?
Remember Vine videos? Most here don’t I’m sure. It’ll be the same scenario of what was basically tiktok v 1.0. Whoever makes the next trendy US based platform for stupidity will win. Hopefully it’s easily cross formatted.
At the end of the day the pleeb brain doesn’t care to watch a 30 min production, much less a 3 minute production on anything. Forced ADHD has them pumping that 30-60 sec feeder bar. The views exist based on addiction vs genuine interest. It’s fodder to eat time and push dopamine.
My fat and old self hopes the fat and old programs win. They won’t. But it’s a better thought for the sake of creativity and humanity.
- Really nice job on the sledge. Refurbing crap to levels others will envy is a favorite past time. Where did you source the handle? I need to do similar.
I agree on how TikTok and vertical mobile are frying our brains, and hurting art, but I wouldn't underestimate the advertising or cultural power. I don't think people are BUYING houses or cars based on what they see there, but like good product placement back in the day, it's shaping the perception of what's cool. Having some influencer of the moment pimp the 911 isn't going to make anyone buy one this instant, but it puts the brand in front of folks who now see it as cool. No different than that Ferrari in Miami Vice.
I’m probably biased as I see a lot done for real estate which are immediate purchases. Usually it seems more agent brand building than the selling of the actual product, ergo influencers and lifestyle pages.
You are correct though in that there’s transient changes of culture. I was smitten by Miami Vice as a kid and still want all the cool cars - which I can’t really afford, and the Don Johnson looks - that I surely don’t have.
The writeup of the Hubbard and Jack's quoting Walkin' Blues made me think of this verse from "The Day John Henry Died" by Drive-by Truckers and how relevant it is to so much of what's happening to the American working class:
It didn't matter if he won, if he lived, or if he'd run.
They changed the way his job was done. Labor costs were high.
That new machine was cheap as hell and only John would work as well,
So they left him laying where he fell the day John Henry died.
The hammer turned out fairly nice and I would trust it more than a cheap one from Harbor Freight.
In Japan for the Motegi circuit MotoGP a few big surprises came into play through qualifying 2. The first of these is that Marc Marquez set an unrivaled pole time for first place which was revoked due to just exceeding track limits exiting turn 4(?). He would qualify ninth on the grid. Atrocious. Jorge Martin would one-up Marc and wreck out before setting a good time and start from 11th. The game, then, for Jorge would be to limit points damage from Bagnaia who qualified second. Pedro Acosta took pole position after the track limits error from Marquez.
In the sprint Pedro Acosta got off to a strong start and looked set to win for most of the race but crashed late with Bagnaia taking the lead and the eventual win. Bastianini would go from fourth to second with a poorly starting Vinales dropping like a rock from third to 9th. Marc Marquez and Jorge Martin managed strong starts to put them in the running with the front row. Marquez rode to a third place podium and Martin was down in fourth, but with the sprint format this was only a loss of a few points.
During the race proper Martin managed an even better start and leapt into third behind Bagnaia and Acosta. Pedro lead only briefly as he again crashed out, only much earlier this time. Martin kept the pressure on Bagnaia almost the entire race before having to give up due to worries about crashing and finished second to Bagnaia's first for a loss of five points. Impressive from his fourth row starting position.
Bastianini and Marquez fought for third place for the majority of the race with great back and fourth. Marquez would beat out the Italian, known for his late race pace, and now Marquez sits just 2 points away from third overall in the championship. This on a new to him Ducati which is also not the current spec bike.
Philip Island Australia is next week's race and often windy or less than perfect conditions prevail there.
What was atrocious about Marc's qualifying endeavor is that race control waited several minutes to cancel his lap for track limits, leaving him no time to do it again.
It was rough - tires had clearly cooled off and he thought he had it in the bag, which he would've by a country mile!
The Fisker thing is FASCINATING and it's likely a harbinger of many things to come in Our Connected Democracy.
I'm not sure about that. I'll talk about it next year but I'm currently working at a nightmare shop-closing gig that is almost beyond parody. People aren't leaving because they can't.
It's definitely a very weird job market now. After years of being told "learn to code!" Tt seems that folks have finally realized that writing code itself isn't so valuable and LLMs can do it, the difficulty is in writing good code or knowing what problem to solve. Even then it still seems to get screwed up because some C-level guy or investor is high on the supply about "AI"
Every software product we use now is absolute shit. Probably because I muttered under my breath 10 years ago "Could this be any worse?" and the answer is an emphatic "YES"
so it was you that cursed all of us with this crap. :)
"knowing what problem to solve"
I agree that this is the hardest part, or knowing how to break down the problem into steps that can be done with the tools you have. In SQL Server-land, when is a stored proc better than SSIS, for example.
The best people have to understand the business problems fairly well to write even halfway decent code.
A computer science degree will teach you to solve any problem, except one you've never seen before. I try to only hire self-taught people for that very reason.
I actively discourage anyone I can from entering IT or programming careers. Nobody writing the checks cares about quality and will outsource your job overseas at the first opportunity. I'm a VP of Engineering. My sons are welders and diesel technicians.
You should see my company. Our department head stood up at a meeting and told his immediate subordinates, the team managers, to spread the word that anyone who thinks they're underpaid should go work elsewhere.
I can't wait for ten years from now, when they'll honestly not understand why they can't find enough people to work here.
He sounds like quite the motivator.
And you are still there because ……
the checks cash.
Don't answer if you don't want to, but I'm wondering how much access he has to H1Bs?
Yeah, consumer confidence in Chinese EVs is likely to only go UP, dontcha think?
well when youre at rock botton up is usually the only way to go
Key word there is usually.
Most people haven't seen the crash tests, they're just thinking about the software glitches
Setting aside Ms. Swatosh's estimable follower count, she'd still be a more appealing partner for an automaker than this outlet and author:
https://jalopnik.com/dont-want-to-die-when-you-get-hit-by-a-car-tell-the-go-1851667419
There is nothing appealing about her.
You wouldn't choose her over Jalopnik and Amber DaSilva to review your product (at your expense)?
She's a real girl........
Read the comments, it’s been a minute since I checked in on jalopnik; was not disappointed. “Ban all cars from school zones” was a gem… how are we supposed to, you know, pick up and drop off our children?
The State will look after your crotch goblins, bigot!
Or, low bid contract school buses will do, what could possibly go wrong ? .
-Nate
“Crotch goblins!” Parked in memory bank!
I've heard the phrase a lot lately from the childless-cat-lady crowd.
Pausing reading for a moment to acknowledge the borrowing of Quincy’s Beatles quote. That quote hits like a pound of fatback drums on Memphis Soul Stew
Next up, I'll talk about how Blake Z. Rong was like Brando, only for teenaged girls.
I do love a good Blake Z. Rong reference every now and then.
Then you're going to love Sundays post.
holy shit hes going to groom a minor
"Going to"
I am 90% certain he slept with a high school senior during her senior year, and 88% sure she was 17 for a lot of that. He was, I believe, 26.
The 30 something basketball coach at my high school was dating a senior. I think she turned 18 sometime during the school year. They married right after she graduated. They didn't try to hide their relationship and I don't recall anyone thinking it was terribly inappropriate. This was in the early 1970s, in a school district based in a working class, Catholic community. The age of consent was 16, just like it is now, but now it's conditionally raised to 18 if the other party is an authority figure like a teacher. Now, Michigan Compiled Laws (MCL) Section 750.520b makes it a felony for a teacher or any school employee to engage in sexual activity with a student, regardless of the student’s age, if the student is enrolled in the school where the teacher or employee works.
It seems to me that this law pretty much makes the notion of age of consent moot, it infantilizes young adults, and may even violate the freedom of association clause of the 1st Amendment.
Modern music makes me feel like a dinosaur. My tastes were contemptible before Clairo was a twinkle in her Daddy’s eye. Heck, the other night I had a swell time banging out “Shoot, Shoot” by UFO. A Middle-aged man with a tube amp and a parlous grasp of timing spending an hour in my rock imaginarium…same as when I was sixteen, except for the gulf of time between us. Would I recognize myself, if we met? I don’t know. Would he despise me? Maybe.
So when I’m out there riding the chord changes, Am I really there or just chasing some echo of that kid, running down the ghost notes I missed along the way?
I dunno. Too much staring at my navel. Time for more tube amp
God made the tube amp to rescue us from doubt. Let it growl.
It is always time for more tube amp.
In the audio world, rather then the guitar one, I hate to say it, but tube amps are passe. SS has gotten so good, that the compromises of tube gear are becoming way too obvious.
Interesting. I have always suspected that audiophiles and guitar players have fundamentally incompatible worldviews, sort of like the ancient rivalry between clowns and mimes we learned about in that masterpiece of cinema, Shakes the Clown.
As someone who is occasionally each of these things... yes. A tube amp is part of an instrument and colors the sound. I don't want that in my playback.
Anything less than 1% distortion is likely inaudible to the vast majority of people. Egnater told me that his amps are probably close to 10% when they are cooking.
Amplifiers are amplifiers. They take a signal and make it stronger. "A wire with gain," as the purists say. Guitar and stereo amp circuits are fairly similar. The choice of individual component values probably has more to do with the overall sound, tone, and distortion than the basic circuit used. Early Marshalls were Bassman clones. They sounded different from the Fenders because they couldn't get the exact component values in the UK that Leo was using in California.
There are plenty of great sounding solid state guitar amps. Lots of classic rock standards were recorded with transistor amps from Kustom (which, btw, weigh as much as tube amps).
Garcia used a McIntosh MC2300 300wpc solid state power amp (using a Fender Twin's preamp). His personal MC2300 sold for ~$300K at auction a few years ago.
People who know such things tell me that most of the classic tweed Fender amps are derived from the RCA Tube Manual.
I have a 5W Monoprice tube amp that's literally a clone of Laney's version of the Champ. I had an amp guy do some harmonica friendly mods and I had him substitute a potentiometer for the negative feedback resistor. Turn down the feedback and it breaks up real nicely, turn it up and the amp gets hifi clean.
That part I agree with, but I am instinctually repelled with how audiophiles describe music. “You take that talk of kHz and THD and you get out of here, demon nerd!” The data geek map ain’t the terrain. Yet, at the same time I can tell many audiophiles experience the same ecstatic transport through music that I do. I know they can hear Jimi, not just listen. That said, I ain’t gonna set up my jerk station and pop on Becker and Fagen.
"I ain’t gonna set up my jerk station"
bro a fuckin what station
i always wondered what a porn addiction looked like
Yeah, but they're both highly dependent on the same 12AX7, 6V6, EL84, and EL34 tubes.
Even that guy down in Georgia who owns the Western Electric brand and is making new-production 300B power tubes for audiophile gear has announced plans to make popular guitar amp tubes.
Different goals.
Some people (and I am one of them) want accuracy; let them play their 384KHz 24-bit files through their Brown-Burrs and hot Class As or digitally-driven Class Ds with all the noise filtering and phase compensation.
Some people want a certain sound, regardless of whether it is accurate or not; let them drive their vinyl through their tube amps.
Either is a perfectly valid way to enjoy music as long as it is doing what you want it to do.
Agreed.
And here I just had conrad-johnson service my tube-based preamp and over in my electronics assembly station there's one of a pair of Dynaco Mark IV mono power amps that I'm rebuilding.
I'll concede that when we can buy a 100wpc Class D power amp module that's flat from 20hz to 20khz for less than 10 bucks on Amazaon, tube circuits are a bit like mechanical watches, maybe an affectation, but if it sounded good in 1959 and the components haven't deteriorated, it will still sound good today. Maybe not state of the art but musical enough for enjoyment.
I've signed up for Bruce Egnater's amp class in January. The class involves building either a 20 or 50 watt version of Bruce's take on the Bassman/Marshall circuit. I opted for the 50 watt.
One of my personal favorites, straight from hair metal's own Late Cretaceous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRcbNRTpek
Genuine lol at “show me ‘round your fruit cakes”
Is the Internet Archive being attacked?
i think they lost a lawsuit shortly ago and the whole thing might wind up gone
best save what you need while you can regardless
I know they are generally under attack, I meant I read they were down and their password DB may have been compromised but when I checked I was able to get in so I don't know what that was about.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/internet-archive-hacked-data-breach-impacts-31-million-users/
Two different, possibly unrelated but concurrent attacks, yay.
Got your latest Wednesday post as my phone announced a tornado warning with a loud screech, I almost dropped my phone. Anyway Milton is hammering central Florida as I write this and 1.5M are with out electricity an hour after landfall. Six inches of rain and 70 mph wind here 100 miles from the eye. we have another 8 hours before Milton takes his leave out over the Atlantic….
Good luck to you LWG, hopefully you are waking up to minimal damage and clear skies this morning.
Hope you're still doing alright in central Florida. Our family place in Vero ended up alright, but there was no power overnight and tornados dropping down a mile away. It was a really scary night across Florida. We're praying for everyone down there.
I enjoyed the truck review and will watch others. I did find the wind noise (?) especially at the beginning very distracting.
Wasn't that just Kamil breathing heavy, he asked, stifling a chuckle.
That will need a dead cat filter.
I have since got a more proper mic! So the next videos will suck a little less... but not much less.
I didn't think that the story was about you, but I definitely got the impression that your life experiences helped you give voice to the story.
Oh, and a lot of my writing career has been based on spite - because I was told by the 'people who mattered' that I sucked, many many times. Now I've got over 40 best-sellers and they've got squat.
Ah, I love that kind of revenge.
"Oh, and a lot of my writing career has been based on spite - because I was told by the 'people who mattered' that I sucked, many many times. Now I've got over 40 best-sellers and they've got squat."
unfathomably based
fuck em
EXACTLY.
Did the mic still work after you dropped it?
The very best revenge is living well .
-Nate
As long as everyone knows about it.
? of course not .
You missed the point entirely .
-Nate
Good grief that Instagram reel is unwatchable (he says without a trace of irony having had four on the official Autopian Insta recently) but this sort of thing is hard to do well on your own. She clearly had a videographer with her, or one was provided. Just shooting for reels on my own was a huge ballache without better equipment, like errr a phone mount.
Hammer came out well in the end, but I guess it’s a time/effort trade that a lot of people are not of people are not willing to make. I try to buy good (as opposed to UK made because we don’t make anything here any more) tools as a when I need them. Finally splurged on a set of Facom screwdrivers earlier this year.
It's a pain even with the right equipment. My girl used to do makeup videos and had a pretty decent following for years. She stopped when TikTok started to get popular for this exact reason. Occasionally, she gets the itch to throw something up on Instagram. It immediately turns whatever we're doing into "work"
I shot loads of footage blabbering away while driving with the phone propped on the dash, and then had to pull over when the bloody thing dropped into the footwell. Again. Then the majority of it gets lost in the edit as someone who knows what they’re doing tries to get it down to a couple of minutes. Luckily that wasn’t me.
I'm not much on modern music, so the stuff John Marks post I'm sure is interesting to a lot of people, just not me. I'm fine with some AC/DC, some Nickleback, Puddle of Mudd, or some Morgan Wallen. If it sounds decent and makes me happy to hear it, sign me up. Not really sure when that happened. As a kid, my family was very musical. I could sing lead, second harmony, and third. Was told I had very close to perfect pitch. I didn't care. I had bikes to ride, cars to wreck and fix, beer that needed drinking, cigarettes that needed to be smoked.
On a side note, Will you be my honey bee?
My girlfriend watches tiktoks and wants a Macan for her next car. Porsche knows what it is doing.
The pacing of that video is nauseating
guess its working as intended
now imagine if it was geared toward great cars instead of whatever modern swill is out there
That's grotesque. And completely, depressingly believable.
Thank you for not beating Ronnie to death with an electric harmonica so we can keep reading his thought provoking comments.
Yet.
Not beating him to death with an electric harmonica... yet.
One day at a time…..
I currently (and don’t see myself changing) cannot stand Tik Tok. It captures two things I loathe: the time waste of perpetual click video bait and motherfunking vertical video format.
Remember when it was a shunnable (that’s not a word) offense to take and post vertical video when capturing literally ANYTHING?! Now it’s the preferred medium of laziness.
In other discussions we mention the constant loss of art vs Ai and the like. Vertical mobile based formatting basically destroys creativity and cinematic effect. I still don’t know if it holds real monetary merit for the amount of views it can attain. I’ve no doubt people buy dumb shit based on tiktok but homes? Cars? Really anything big ticket?
Is it criminal to make people rotate their phones? I’m in agreement that the phone has replaced the computer, or app based tv viewing for the majority of the world’s internet consumption. If so, why standardize a substandard format?
Then you have the legal issue of China based information seeding, it’s own capture and basic technological warfare to dumb down America’s youth by pushing endless loads of garbage out. What happens when we eventually pull the plug?
Remember Vine videos? Most here don’t I’m sure. It’ll be the same scenario of what was basically tiktok v 1.0. Whoever makes the next trendy US based platform for stupidity will win. Hopefully it’s easily cross formatted.
At the end of the day the pleeb brain doesn’t care to watch a 30 min production, much less a 3 minute production on anything. Forced ADHD has them pumping that 30-60 sec feeder bar. The views exist based on addiction vs genuine interest. It’s fodder to eat time and push dopamine.
My fat and old self hopes the fat and old programs win. They won’t. But it’s a better thought for the sake of creativity and humanity.
- Really nice job on the sledge. Refurbing crap to levels others will envy is a favorite past time. Where did you source the handle? I need to do similar.
The handle comes from Seymour Midwest, there's a clickable link in the text of the article
Darn reading skills. Thanks!
Sir, I work for you and am happy to be my own concordance!
I agree on how TikTok and vertical mobile are frying our brains, and hurting art, but I wouldn't underestimate the advertising or cultural power. I don't think people are BUYING houses or cars based on what they see there, but like good product placement back in the day, it's shaping the perception of what's cool. Having some influencer of the moment pimp the 911 isn't going to make anyone buy one this instant, but it puts the brand in front of folks who now see it as cool. No different than that Ferrari in Miami Vice.
I’m probably biased as I see a lot done for real estate which are immediate purchases. Usually it seems more agent brand building than the selling of the actual product, ergo influencers and lifestyle pages.
You are correct though in that there’s transient changes of culture. I was smitten by Miami Vice as a kid and still want all the cool cars - which I can’t really afford, and the Don Johnson looks - that I surely don’t have.
It’s a good long term play.
I watch Tik Tok videos on Instagram, two weeks after they were popular, 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘥𝘶𝘭𝘵.
true maturity
why so soon?
some, like fine wine, need to age properly, like "pen pineapple apple pen" or "what does the fox say"
(insert rickroll link here...)
(With apologies to Merle Travis)
You know a ten pound Hubbard
Just a little too heavy
For my size, honey for my size
The writeup of the Hubbard and Jack's quoting Walkin' Blues made me think of this verse from "The Day John Henry Died" by Drive-by Truckers and how relevant it is to so much of what's happening to the American working class:
It didn't matter if he won, if he lived, or if he'd run.
They changed the way his job was done. Labor costs were high.
That new machine was cheap as hell and only John would work as well,
So they left him laying where he fell the day John Henry died.
I think Drive-By Truckers’ “Southern Rock Opera” is the only concept album where the concept worked
What about Tommy, he asked, stifling a chuckle.
Quadrophenia!