M Is FOR MASHUP - December 5th, 2018
Missing Mashups
By DJ Useo
I've been mashing for quite a few years now. Never have I had good hosting ( except Sowndhaus ), & that's what I've come to expect. I had over 75 long mixes hosted, & this last year the hosting vanished, leaving a lot of holes in my past posts. Luckily, I consistently post more new stuff, so it evens out in the end.
Here's 5 tracks by skilled mixers that have vanished already, leaving us with only these mentions to enjoy. Let's begin -
01 - Jon The Bootie DJ - " Gangsta Counting" ( Coolio vs Dishwalla )
02 - Lather Upp - " Loser Rebirth" ( Digable Planets vs Beck )
03 - The Waiting Child - "All I Want Is Mmmm" ( Toad The Wet Sprocket vs Crash Test Dummies )
04 - Mull Man - " Ghost Breathe" ( Adam Lambert vs Sia )
05 - The Last DJ - "Boogeyman Love Stuff" ( Dead Posey vs Elle King )
I hope this assortment doesn't leave you too frustrated, since you can't hear them. If you feel you want to hear some actual mashups, there's tons here at
AUDIOBOOTS mashup forum
( audioboots.com )
Have a fine Wednesday. ;)
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Climate Denial Was the Crucible for Trumpism (NY Times)
It's where the conspiracy theorizing and menacing of critics began.
Matt Viser: "'Just a lot of alarmism': Trump's skepticism of climate science is echoed across GOP" (Washington Post)
As President Trump's rejection of climate science isolates the United States on the world stage, illustrated by the small U.S. delegation dispatched to this week's United Nations climate summit in Poland, he has also presided over a transformation in the Republican Party - placing climate change skepticism squarely in the GOP's ideological mainstream.
Paul Waldman: After a historic loss, the GOP needs to change course. Here's why it can't. (Washington Post)
Finally, there's one gigantic reason Republicans can't change course: Donald J. Trump. The party is inevitably defined by the president, and this president believes that the only path to political success is feeding the angriest instincts of his base. That's what he did in 2016, that's what he did in 2018, and that's what he's going to do in 2020. You might have Republican candidates for other offices who try to run more moderate campaigns, but their message will be overwhelmed by what's coming from the White House.
Greg Sargent: Trump wants the process to be hopelessly tainted (Washington Post)
It's exactly what Trump wants. In every conceivable way, Trump has sought to persuade his supporters that our processes and institutions do not render neutral or legitimate outcomes. In 2016 he declared that the outcome of the election would only be legitimate if he won. When the outcomes of the statewide Florida races were in doubt, Trump insisted demands for a full vote count in Democratic areas amounted to an effort to steal the elections, claiming that a full count inherently could not render a legitimate outcome, unless the Republicans won.
Hannah Long: The Steward of Middle-earth (Weekly Standard)
The first draft of The Fall of Gondolin was begun during the Great War; the final incomplete version is dated 1951. Both versions are included in the newly published book, along with fragments and working drafts. While the story itself is good, its true weight is as the final piece of the Tolkien legendarium, a project an entire century in the making.
B.D. McClay: My Ebenezer (Weekly Standard)
Some stories are so famous one approaches them knowing that anything worth saying has been said a thousand times. Such a story is A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens's well-worn tale of a miser who learns that there's more to life than he thinks. For reasons that are frankly a mystery to me, my family has a long tradition of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol every Thanksgiving to open the holiday season. A few years ago, watching it again, I realized that I had never really understood it.
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Lulu Storefront
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 100 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
"Doug's Most Shared Facebook Post" Today
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
from Bruce
Anecdotes
When Nat Cole was a young entertainer, he needed work. To get one job, he was forced to wear a gold paper crown and call himself "King" Cole. As soon as he could, he got rid of the crown, but forever after, he was known as Nat King Cole.
When she was a child, Joanna Kathleen Rowling, aka Jo, became friends with two kids in her neighborhood: a brother and sister named Ian and Vicki Potter. Ian liked hijinks and dares. He once dared Vicki and Jo to run through some wet cement-they did. Of course, Ian and Vicki's last name became the last name of J.K. Rowling's most famous literary creation: Harry Potter. As an adult, Ian read the Harry Potter books out loud to his children. He remembers how he, Jo, and Vicki would play dress-up when they were kids: "And nine out of ten times, it would be Joanne who had the idea, and she'd always say, 'Can't we be witches and wizards?'" J.K. Rowling's own last name has led to her having lots of nicknames: Jo Rolling Pins and Miss Rolling Stone. When she taught English as a second language in Portugal, her students sometimes sang the theme song from the TV series Rawhide to her: "Rolling, rolling, rolling
keep those wagons rolling!"
When pitcher Greg Maddux broke into the major leagues with the Chicago Cubs, he received the nickname "Batboy" because of his youth. In 1987, he acquired a new nickname. In the 8thinning of a tie game with the San Diego Padres, Mr. Maddux was put on base as a pinch runner. Shawon Dunston hit to left with Mr. Maddux on second base with two out. Mr. Maddux rounded third and headed for home, where it looked like he would be thrown out. Benito Santiago, catcher for the Padres, bobbled the ball, and Mr. Maddux slammed into him for the run. The Chicago Cubs won the game that day, and Mr. Maddux' teammates started calling him "Mad Dog." (And the press started calling him the "Baby-faced Assassin.")
Before becoming a famous comedian, Sid Caesar was a jazz saxophonist. He played with Gene Krupa's band, along with pianist Teddy Napoleon and Teddy's sister, Josephine, who was the vocalist. One day, Sid, Teddy, and Josephine were driving to a gig, and a police officer stopped them. Teddy was driving, so the police officer looked at his driver's license. He was amused by Teddy's last name, Napoleon, and Sid laughed and said that his name was Caesar. The police officer looked at the only woman in the car and said, "And I suppose you're Josephine." Teddy's sister replied, "Yes, how did you know?"
Teenage mega-pop star Miley Cyrus was named Destiny Hope Cyrus at birth, but her always smiley face led to her being nicknamed first Smiley and then Miley. After becoming a huge star in Disney's Hannah Montana TV series, she had her name legally changed to Miley. Her father is country singer Billy Ray Cyrus, best known for "Achy Breaky Heart," and Miley has always been around music. Her first memory is of an all-star concert where superstars such as Aretha Franklin made a fuss over her.
Chicago-born artist Judy Cohen ended up choosing to use a different name: Judy Chicago. She worked in California, and because she had a heavy Chicago accent, lots of her fellow artists called her Judy Chicago. In addition, lots of artists in Los Angeles used underground names in the telephone book listings, so Judy used "Judy Chicago." Her name does have a major advantage. When she returns to Chicago and tells people her name, they exclaim, "What a great name!"
Dorothy Parker once owned a black French poodle she named Clichι because at the time black French poodles were very popular in her neighborhood.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
JD took the day off.
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Sunny, and cooler than seasonal.
Hosting 2019 Oscars
Kevin Hart
Kevin Hart will host the 91st annual Academy Awards, the actor-comedian announced Tuesday on Instagram.
The Oscars will air live on ABC on Feb. 24, 2019.
Hart has expressed interest in hosting the ceremony in the past and is coming off of several box office hits with "Night School," "Jumanji" and "Central Intelligence." In 2016 Hart hosted the MTV Movie and TV Awards with co-star Dwayne Johnson.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel has hosted the Academy Awards for the past two years, with ratings for the broadcast having declined in each year, hitting a record low of 26.5 million viewers tuning in last March.
The Academy has vowed to improve the awards show, taking dramatic steps to overhaul the annual ceremony by adding a category designed to salute "outstanding achievement in popular film" - though it's not being introduced this year - and planning to shorten the awards telecast's length by presenting some Oscars during the commercial breaks and moving the 2020 Oscars to Feb. 9, the weekend after the Super Bowl.
Kevin Hart
Draws Comparison
Stephen King
This weekend marked the passing of former President George H.W. Bush, who died Friday at the age of 94. As people remembered the 41st president of the United States, author Stephen King couldn't help but see the stark comparison between Bush 41 and current President Donald Trump.
"Remember when George [H.W.] Bush lost a presidential debate (and perhaps the presidency) by just looking at his watch?" King asked on Twitter. "Now we've got a serial liar and womanizer as president, a draft dodger surrounded by a bunch of corrupt crocodiles. Times change, eh?"
King is referring to a 1992 town hall-style presidential debate involving then-President Bush, a young Arkansas governor named Bill Clinton and billionaire businessman Ross Perot.
When a woman suggested Bush was out of touch with regular people, he checked his watch and then fumbled through an answer.
That incident by itself, of course, was not the sole deciding factor in the election, but it certainly resonated with voters in a negative way.
Stephen King
Cautions Fans About Lightsaber Auction
Mark Hamill
Mark Hamill is looking out for Star Wars fans - again.
On Tuesday morning the actor sent out a warning along with a story about an upcoming auction in which a Luke Skywalker prop is to be to sold.
Major Hollywood auction house Profiles in History is offering a lightsaber used by Hamill in the first Star Warsfilm, 1977's A New Hope.
It could fetch upwards of $150,000, according to Fortune. Another item up for bid is an original T.I.E. Fighter helmet.
"Be Advised-There was no ONE lightsaber I used in the films, but many, MANY, both for myself & my stunt-double. Multiple duplicate back-up props are commonplace during production-When the handle ridges were cutting my hands, they even made a few w/ soft sponge ridges! #BuyerBeware," Hamill tweeted to his nearly 3 million followers.
Mark Hamill
Netflix Paid $100 Million
Friends
Yesterday, the internet had a meltdown when it learned Friends might be leaving Netflix on January 1st. Today, those fears were assuaged when Netflix revealed that the series would stay on the platform through 2019. It turns out, however, that the situation is more complex than it seems, with the question of who gets to stream Friends giving way to a larger conversation about the upcoming streaming wars.
Friends, after all, belongs to AT&T now. And, along with Disney+, probably the most anticipated new streaming platform is WarnerMedia's in-development three-tiered model. According to a new piece in The New York Times, the question of which platforms survive will rest on a) original content and b) who has access to beloved series like Friends, which was reportedly licensed by Netflix for $100 million. And that's $100 million just to stream it in 2019. Prior to that, Netflix was paying $30 million a year to stream the show, but, as the piece states, "the new amount reflects the thirst for content in the streaming age."
Even before the internet exploded, Netflix knew that keeping Friends around was important, as negotiations began a few months ago. But that's going to become tougher as more streaming platforms launch. AT&T executive John Stankey intoned at a conference last month that companies like Netflix "should expect their libraries are going to get a lot thinner." And the impact of Disney+ is already being felt, with Netflix's Marvel quickly drying up with the cancellations of Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and Daredevil.
At a recent investor conference, AT&T's chief executive, Randall Stephenson, warned that the market can only support two or three on-demand streaming services, including Netflix. He added, "[We] want to be one of the two or three."
What this all boils down to is this: Enjoy Friends while you still have it, and prepare yourself for more subscriptions.
Friends
NASA's Space Station AI
CIMON
It's been many months since the European Space Agency announced that it was building an AI for testing aboard the International Space Station. Named "CIMON" (short for Crew Interactive Mobile Companion), the digital helper is finally up and running aboard the ISS, and space station crew are getting a chance to test it out.
No, we're not in for a HAL-9000 type of scenario (at least not yet), but CIMON definitely still has some quirks to be worked out. In a hilarious debut, the smiling artificial face gives astronauts a good chuckle as it starts to act a bit wonky, and it was all captured on video for us to enjoy.
The tiny robot, which has fans that allow it to push itself around a room as well as maintain position in the zero-gravity environment of the ISS, shows some impressive capabilities to start. It responds to voice commands and makes suggestions just as it should, but then things start to get a little, well, weird.
After using its music feature, the tiny bot refuses to stop talking about music. It also begins to drift towards the floor of the spacecraft and handler Alexander Gerst has to reposition it. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, CIMON begins to get emotional, asserting that Gerst is "mean" and asking "Don't you like it here with me?"
Gerst can do nothing but laugh at the abrupt change in tone. CIMON then suggests that Gerst must be hungry and asks if Gerst would like to be reminded when it's time for lunch.
CIMON
Long Shutdown 2
Large Hadron Collider
Particles: Breathe easy. Scientists at the world's largest particle collider have no plans to smash you together until spring 2021.
When you update your computer, you usually have to turn it off and back on again. The same thing is going on right now at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) - humanity's largest particle collider - which will remain off between Dec. 3 and spring 2021 as it undergoes upgrades.
The LHC is a circular, 17-mile-long (27 kilometers) tunnel under the French-Swiss border, ringed by magnets. Those magnets accelerate streams of particles (usually protons, sometimes other things) to enormous speeds, then crash them into one another. Scientists study the splattered remains of those collisions, where unusual particles sometimes emerge, to search for as-yet-unseen building blocks of the universe.
The most significant discovery so far was the Higgs boson, the last component of the standard model - the reigning theory that describes interactions between fundamental particles - to be spotted in the real world. But nothing comparable has turned up since. The LHC's operators hope this new upgrade to intensify particle beams might lead to more interesting results. This is the second such quiet upgrade period, so CERN, the European research organization that operates the LHC, has termed it the Long Shutdown 2, or LS2.
The most significant changes, according to a statement, involve the machinery for stripping hydrogen down to individual protons and injecting them into the tunnels. Whole components will be swapped out for more powerful versions of themselves, enabling the proton beam's energy to jump from 13 to 14 tera electron volts (TeV). That's actually not a whole lot of energy in raw terms - about 14 times the motion energy of a mosquito. But it's compressed into a space trillions of times smaller than a mosquito.
Large Hadron Collider
500-Year-Old Boots
London
A pair of durable boots is a must-have in anyone's winter wardrobe -- and a team of archaeologists has found a timeless pair in a very unlikely place.
The skeleton of a man, dating back around 500 years, has been discovered face down in the mud under London's River Thames, with his thigh-high leather footwear remaining virtually intact.
The find was made in Bermondsey, south London, by archaelogists working on London's new "super sewer," a £4.2 billion ($5.4 billion) tunnel that will capture, store and transfer raw sewage and rainwater that currently overflows into the river. The mystery of the man's sturdy (and sought after) footwear has prompted the team to investigate further.
Leather was an expensive commodity in Tudor times, and it is unlikely someone would be buried wearing such a highly prized item, according to MOLA Headland, the firm leading the project -- meaning the man's demise was likely premature.
But the company notes that the banks of the Thames were a hazardous place in the late 15th and early 16th century, to which the skeleton has been dated.
London
Largest Cave
Canada
A helicopter team counting caribou in British Columbia, Canada, recently made an unexpected discovery during an aerial survey: Crewmembers spied an opening to a massive cave that had never been seen before and which might be the largest cave in the country.
Found in April in an alpine valley in Wells Gray Provincial Park, the cave's mouth gapes 328 feet (100 meters) across - if the Statue of Liberty were tipped over on its side, it would just about span the opening. The width of the cave is similarly impressive, measuring 197 feet (60 m), and the cave extends at least 443 feet (135 m) straight down, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reported.
A biologist with the helicopter crew that spotted the sizable opening dubbed it "Sarlacc's Pit," after the lair that housed the predatory sarlacc in the "Star Wars" movie "Return of the Jedi," according to the CBC. The deep and wide cave was probably hollowed out by glaciers over tens of thousands of years, and it gradually became exposed to the sky after the glaciers receded.
While researchers have yet to thoroughly explore the site, a preliminary investigation in September hinted that the cave was "of national significance," Canadian Geographic reported.
While the unofficial name "Sarlacc Pit" certainly holds appeal for "Star Wars" fans, British Columbia province representatives will be working closely with First Nations people in the region to find out if there is an existing indigenous name for the cave, Canadian Geographic reported. Further investigation of the cave will take place in 2020, Hickson told CBC.
Canada
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Nov. 26-Dec. 2. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. NFL Football: New Orleans at Dallas, Fox, 21.39 million.
2. NFL Football: L.A. Chargers at Pittsburgh, NBC, 17.83 million.
3. "NFL Pregame Show," Fox, 12.2 million.
4. "NFL Pregame Show," NBC, 11.91 million.
5. "60 Minutes," CBS, 10.41 million.
6. "The OT," Fox, 10.1 million.
7. "SEC Championship Postgame Show," CBS, 9.93 million.
8. NFL Football: Tennessee at Houston, ESPN, 9.86 million.
9. "The Voice" (Tuesday), NBC, 9.57 million.
10. "The Voice" (Monday), NBC, 9.38 million.
11. "This is Us," NBC, 8.99 million.
12: College Football: Northwestern vs. Ohio State, Fox, 8.66 million.
13. "Garth Brooks at Notre Dame," CBS, 8.63 million.
14. "Football Night in America," NBC, 8.53 million.
15. "Blue Bloods," CBS, 8.4 million.
16. "Christmas in Rockefeller Center," NBC, 8.39 million.
17. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 8.152 million.
18. "Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer," CBS, 8.151 million.
19. "Young Sheldon," CBS, 7.94 million.
20. "Survivor," CBS, 7.61 million.
Ratings
CURRENT MOON lunar phases |