Month: January 2022

The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson’s Get Back

The Banality of Genius: Notes on Peter Jackson’s Get Back:

Paul: To wander aimlessly is very unswinging. Unhip.

Later…

As viewers, we get bored of seeing them rehearse it and we see only some of it: on January 23rd alone they ran it through 43 times. The Beatles don’t know, during this long process, what we know – that they’re creating a song that millions of people will sing and move to for decades to come. For all they know, it might be Shit Takes all the way down. But they keep going, changing the lyrics, making small decision after small decision – when the chorus comes in, where to put the guitar solos, when to syncopate the beat, how to play the intro – in the blind faith that somewhere, hundreds of decisions down the line, a Beatles song worthy of the name will emerge.

[Adding it to the list…]

I was a little nervous about a meeting a thread by @EPrecipice

Thread by @EPrecipice on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App:

When talking about our agendas for the day, I told my 5yo I was a little nervous about a meeting I have today. He said, “Mama, I am nervous all the time. I know what to do.” So friends, here is all the advice he could fit into the drive to school:
1. “You gotta say your affirmations in your mouth and your heart. You say, ‘I am brave of this meeting!’ , ‘I am loved!’, ‘I smell good!’ And you can say five or three or ten until you know it.”
2. “You gotta walk big. You gotta mean it. Like Dolly on a dinosaur. Because you got it.”
3. “Never put a skunk on a bus.”
4. “Think about the donuts of your day! Even if you cry a little, you can think about potato chips!”
5. “You gotta take a deep breath and you gotta do it again.”
6. “Even if it’s a yucky day, you can get a hug.”
Extra addition from this afternoon: “Don’t get distracted and your feet will stay on the sidewalk and not too full of snow.”

[Speechless at the emotional wisdom. Also, someone’s else’s child… wanted to be an astronaut. Mom says, study hard, go to college, learn a lot of science, take a physical fitness test. The response? “That’s just 4 things.”]

The president and the citizens should be joined by a social network for governing.

…joined by a social network…:

I’ve been saying this since long before Obama entered the White House. The president and the citizens should be joined by a social network for governing. The first president that does that well will be as revolutionary as Thomas Jefferson. It’s why we govern in fits and starts. As scared as it may make the established journos and politicos, it’s the big step we must take. Evolution demands it, nothing less than that.

[Remarkable]

Source: Scripting News

Twitter Announces NFT Profile Pictures

Twitter Announces NFT Profile Pictures:

Twitter Blue:

You asked (a lot), so we made it. Now rolling out in Labs: NFT
Profile Pictures on iOS.

Such profile pictures will be identifiable by being hexagonal. (Android and web users are still locked out of Twitter Blue.)

Sam Biddle:

I predict a browser extension that auto-blocks people with
hexagonal avatars would become very popular very fast.

NFTBlocker:

This is a browser plugin that blocks people who use Twitter’s NFT
integration.

See also: This.

Link: twitter.com/twitterblue/status/1484226494708662273

[Yuck on them all.]

Source: Daring Fireball

Fight against hell

Fight against hell:

When people say we’re “fighting for democracy” even that isn’t strong enough.

We must fight so we don’t become a fascist country with slavery for Blacks, ovens for Jews and women turned into baby-producing handmaidens. And for a human-habitable planet.

If you think that isn’t what’s happening, well it is.

  • This country has never actually revoked slavery. A lot of people are still bitter about the outcome of the Civil War. Blacks are not, according to many Americans, entitled to the full rights of Americans.
  • Anti-semitism is also a foundation, not just of America, but most of the world. We heard Trump say that American Jews are really citizens of Israel, which emphatically is not true.
  • And the last one, women as baby-producing handmaidens, that’s what overturning Roe v Wade is for.
  • And of course it’s not just Blacks, Jews and women, there’s a hellish place for every non-white non-male non-Christian American.
  • And who knows why they don’t want to keep the planet habitable for humans. Maybe they think God meant for them (and not us of course) to migrate to other planets. Whatever it is, it’s another form of hell.

Yet journalism still mostly sees it as a partisan horse-race and every step we take into the abyss is bad news for one or two people like Biden or Schumer. Their delusion by now is really a form of insanity. Forget about waking them up, we have to move past them.

The thing that unites us is the hell the Trumpists have in mind for all of us.

[Why ia this not obvious to everyone?]

Source: Scripting News

Gig Performer | Optimize your Mac for a Gig

Gig Performer | Optimize your Mac for a Gig:

Apple computers running macOS have great support for real-time audio and MIDI and typically do not require much optimization – however you may still want to make sure that your performance is neither impacted nor interrupted by other running processes. We have compiled a list of tips to help you get the best experience out of your Mac for your live performance.

All tips and screenshots were made using macOS Monterey 12.1, the latest version of macOS available at the time of writing

[It might be easier to have a operate account for live gigs… unless the computer is dedicated to live performance. That’s a lot of stuff to switch on and off.]

Time to create

If you haven’t, you should watch “Get Back” the Beatles documentary. Because, ya know, The Beatles.

But if that’s not enough of a reason, here’s another. Many businesses, even those that wish to consider themselves creative in nature, don’t understand the need for slack time or space.

It’ll be easy by now to find a clip of Paul McCartney strumming his bass and pulling Get Back out of the ether. There was no “C’mon Paul, we’ve other things to do!” From the other band members, or the notion of “grinding” that some successful people have embedded in our culture. Work the weekends! Stay late! Up early. Work all day, train all night! That doesn’t work for creativity.

And to be certain I was guilty of the personal version of this when I stayed up late because I find the lack of “traffic” (phones calls, dropping in people to say hi, and vice versa, and lots more) soothing. No FOMO, no I can’t believe I missed you and had to give the gig to this other person.

Still, that’s not how creativity works.

I understand that if you are a professional song writer, or painter, or podcaster, there’s a certain amount of “Just get on with it!” that is necessary. And certainly you can create environments more or less conducive to inspiration. But in the end…as the saying goes you can’t hurry love.

It’s important to develop techniques for progress. Don’t get stuck on the words… anything that fits will do, as the word pomegranate fills in for future and final for George. But we shouldn’t confuse that sort of technique for setting a ten song goal if you want something inspired to be the result.

Don’t be afraid to leave time to create all kinds of stuff, and let them ripen in their own good time.

See also:

Custom 3D Landmarks in Apple Maps — Pixel Envy

Custom 3D Landmarks in Apple Maps:

I often wonder if it makes sense that there are basically two major efforts in digitizing the world’s cartography for commercial purposes, and both are fronted by companies based in the same part of the United States. The expense of such a wide-reaching project is surely a hurdle, but it would be great if others could offer a more local solution. Perhaps one reason there is not as much competition in this space is, in part, because iOS users cannot change their default maps app. I am not sure it makes sense to modernize the in-car GPS systems that required a different disc for each region, but I also have to wonder if Apple or Google can deliver worldwide cartography that is accurate and not encumbered by their myriad other business interests.

[It would be nice if there were more efforts to help the world and not monetize all the things, all the time.]