Another great video from Patrick Boyle.
Splice or Error?
In his In The Midnight Hour episode, Andrew Hickey tells a great story about the recording of Mustang Sally. While the tape was rewinding after recording in one take, the capstan flew of the recorder, shredding the tape into fragments and sending them flying all over the room. The volatile Wilson Pickett was about to explode, when Tom Dowd told everyone to calm down and take a 30-minute break. Dowd then spliced the fragments, a total of 40 splices, an average of one every three or four seconds. Hickey plays a 30-second sample containing the only possible splice he can hear (it’s at 2:22) but thinks it’s more likely a drumming error. Nah, that’s a splice.
I can’t hear the other 39. Tom Dowd was a badass.
How Does Anybody Do This?
Even professionals can’t keep a straight face.
It Just Wouldn’t Be Christmas…
without The Portsmouth Sinfonia.
This has nothing to do with Xmas, but while I’m in full assault mode, here’s the great Florence Foster Jenkins having at Mozart’s “Queen of the Night” aria from The Magic Flute.
Oh No Crypto Bro
I’ve followed this story with some delight. Apparently Michael Lewis, who wrote The Big Short, has been trailing FTX guy Sam Bankman-Fried around, so we’ll certainly get a kick-ass film out of it someday. Among many, many remarkable facets to the tale is that the crypto market has supposedly lost $2 trillion of valuation this year… and Wall Street has barely flinched.
When Sequoia Capital – allegedly the most intelligent venture capital firm – invested $210 million in FTX last year, it asked to see financial reports and instead was told “we’ll send you a few bullet points.” It’s traditional when investing that much into a firm to have someone on the board, but Bankman-Fried wouldn’t let anyone on the board of directors, which was him, an attorney, and an FTX employee.
For a company “worth” $32 billion at one point.
Zero oversight! What could go wrong?
I’ve followed developing news with Patrick Redford of Defector, who is typically hilarious. But there are several excellent reporters and twitter feeds. Ed Zitron on Twitter is great.
Here, a professor of finance at King’s College splains it to us. He keeps showing photos of Phil Spector for Sam Bankman-Fried, so gotta respect his game:
It’s an exciting time to be in the crypto world.
Mike Love Raps…
…with predictable results. Even the girls can’t save this sad abomination; I couldn’t make it past one minute. According to this guy, the song was conceived as a duo with Bart Simpson for an upcoming Simpsons movie, but the producers declined, feeling that “Bart, after all, has some standards to uphold.” Indeed. Instead, it landed on Baywatch. I might have saved this one for Loathsome Thursday, but this stands in its own category of awfulness. I hesitated to post it at all.
Tyranol
Everyone’s wrong about something sometimes. That said, I’m glad I don’t need Tyranol.
Now They Tell Us
And of course there’s this. Oy.
Aerial View of Сhernobyl Exclusion Zone, Ukraine
Just what your Monday needs!
Abandoned cities, which were humming with life in the past, enchant with their specific romance and the mesmerizing power of time! Welcome the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone from a bird’s eye view! Watch the spectacle of an urban apocalypse and the nature revival accompanied by dramatic ambient music and the soft patter of rain. The cities of Chernobyl and Pripyat look lost in the woods and get more and more absorbed by nature, which is rapidly dominating the hand-made creations that have fallen out of use. The overcast weather and stunning scarlet sunset give the scenic drone footage a special flavor.
He Makes Some Excellent Points
but I’m iffy on the album.