M Is FOR MASHUP - December 18th, 2017
S.I.R. - Strictly 2017 - dELIverance (2017)
By DJ Useo
S.I.R. is one of the more "mysterious" home producers, but one thing we do know about him is he mixes great tracks. You can reliably count on him to make complete albums, & when he does, they're perfect. Now comes his newest release
"S.I.R. - Strictly 2017 - dELIverance (2017)"
( sirremixes.blogspot.de/2017/12/sir-strictly-2017-deliverance-new-album.html )
A Pop-on-Pop 16-track collection.
Working with artists like Rihanna, The Weeknd, Ed Sheeran, & Katy Perry, among many others, S.I.R. puts big smiles right in his tracks as you enjoy the contrasting songs you know, but with large twists. It can be amazing to hear how much changing the instrumentals can be rewarding.
My favorite track ( Although I enjoy them all ) is "Jesse Ritch vs. Earth, Wind & Fire - Get On Up ( In September ). I find that it's the perfect album opener, as it excellently demonstrates the patterns of the tracks that follow. Right up until the last track "Mariah Carey vs. Ladies' Code - You're Mine, Eternal ( I'm Fine, Thank You )" this batch of S.I.R.'s latest maintains the highest quality.
As with most mashup albums,
"S.I.R. - Strictly 2017 - dELIverance (2017)"
( sirremixes.blogspot.de/2017/12/sir-strictly-2017-deliverance-new-album.html )
can be obtained at no charge, which is pretty fine news for the listeners! Treat yourself, & your friends to this fine, fine album today, & "man will live you better".
There's a
sample video to help you choose, found here
( www.youtube.com/watch?v=RK2XY7JrcnY )
or you can take my word for it that the album is great. His many past albums remain available from his blog.
Have a Merry Christmas season, all of you.
Recommended Reading
from Bruce
Paul Krugman: Passing Through to Corruption? (NY Times Column)
Are Republicans more concerned with their bank accounts than with their country?
Mary Papenfuss: #CorkerKickback Turns Up The Flame Under Senator For His Tax Vote Switch (Huffington Post)
Bob Corker says he had no idea the perk was in the bill because "I never saw the actual text" before supporting it.
Arthur Delaney and Jonathan Cohn: Republicans Already Say They'll Need Another Bill To Fix Their Tax Mistakes (Huffington Post)
Normally, you'd want to fix problems before passing a law, not after.
Josh Marshall: Trump Was Warned and What To Think About That (TPM)
But this warning didn't come in a vacuum, even in the tighter chronology of the campaign itself. The report about this warning says it came in late July or early August. It was July 27th when Trump made his notorious public request for Russia to hack and release more of Hillary Clinton's emails. So that bizarre statement might have come just after or just before that heads up. Wow.
Paul Mason: The British elite is at war with itself - on a scale we've never seen before (The Guardian)
Our elites used to keep calm in a crisis. But now - with the Tories fighting to the death over Brexit and the tabloids terrified by Corbyn - they've lost their heads.
Abraham Riesman: "What You Need to Know Before Seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi" (Vulture)
In December of 2015, the Force heard its alarm clock, winced, squirmed in its high-thread-count sheets, contemplated hitting the snooze button, then thought better of it and chose to awaken.
Harrison Ford's Best Moments From 'Blade Runner 2049' Press Tour (Hollywood Reporter)
From forgetting his co-star Ryan Gosling's name to having a few drinks during an interview, the 75-year-old star has been having fun on his most recent publicity push.
Ron Dicker: Ian McKellen Says Actresses Used To Proposition Directors For Sex (Huffington Post)
The actor predicted some people will be "wrongly accused," but the reckoning ultimately will be "nothing but good."
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
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David Bruce has over 80 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Presenting
Michael Egan
took the day off.
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
Reader Comment
Current Events
4 cartoons attached. If they're too dated to use, I've just caught up after recovering from a migraine, so sorry they're late.
Linda >^..^<
We are all only temporarily able bodied.
Thanks, Linda!
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
from Marc Perkel
Marc's Guide to Curing Cancer
So far so good on beating cancer for now. I'm doing fine. At the end of the month I'll be 16 months into an 8 month mean lifespan. And yesterday I went on a 7 mile hike and managed to keep up with the hiking group I was with. So, doing something right.
Still waiting for future test results and should see things headed in the right direction. I can say that it's not likely that anything dire happens in the short term so that means that I should have time to make several more attempts at this. So even if it doesn't work the first time there are a lot of variations to try. So if there's bad news it will help me pick the next radiation target.
I have written a "how to" guide for oncologists to perform the treatment that I got. I'm convinced that I'm definitely onto something and whether it works for me or not isn't the definitive test. I know if other people tried this that it would work for some of them, and if they improve it that it will work for a lot of them.
The guide is quite detailed and any doctor reading this can understand the procedure at every level. I also go into detail as to how it works, how I figured it out, and variations and improvements that could be tried to enhance it. I also introduce new ways to look at the problem. There is a lot of room for improvement and I think that doctors reading it will see what I'm talking about and want to build on it. And it's written so that if you're not a doctor you can still follow it. It also has a personal story revealing that I'm the class clown of cancer support group. I give great interviews and I look pretty hot in a lab coat.
So, feel free to read this and see what I'm talking about. But if any of you want to help then pass this around to both doctors and cancer patients. I need some media coverage. I'm looking for as many eyeballs as possible to read these ideas. Even if this isn't the solution, it's definitely on the right track. After all, I did hike 7 miles yesterday. And this hiking group wasn't moving slow. So if this isn't working then, why am I still here?
I also see curing cancer as more of an engineering problem that a medical problem. So if you are good at solving problems and most of what you know about medicine was watching the Dr. House MD TV show, then you're at the level I was at when I started. So anyone can jump in and be part of the solution.
Here is a link to my guide: Oncologists Guide to Curing Cancer using Abscopal Effect
Selected Readings
from that Mad Cat, JD
MERRY CHRISTMAS.
"GOODBYE IDEOLOGY. HELLO CORRUPTION."
GO HOME AND PLAY WITH YOUR TINKER TOYS.
THE WORST BILL IN HISTORY.
"TWITTER NAZIS."
"KILL THE MESSENGER."
"TRUMPOCALYPSE!"
JAIL TO THE CHEIF!
WHAT WERE THEY SMOKING?
ONE BIG 'McCAIN' TO GO.
BOB CORKER IS SHOCKED-SHOCKED!
Visit JD's site - Kitty Litter Music
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
Last night, just after I got the page up, the wi-fi went down.
Called good old Charter and they had me pulling cables and tracing wires and all kinds of crawling under the table kind of crap.
Finally they said the modem must have taken a dive and needed to be replaced.
Lovely. So called it a day and went to bed.
Couple of hours later the kid woke me up and said the wi-fi was back.
Gonna assume it was a local outage and not the modem.
Bastids.
Against Net Neutrality
Dead Commenters
Two more dead commenters have been spotted commenting on the FCC's foregone net neutrality vote, a small but not insignificant discovery considering that, while public outcry for net neutrality was high, FCC representatives dismissed most of supportive net neutrality commentary as spam.
While searching a database created by the New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a designer named Morgan Knutson was outraged to find comments by his his liberal mother, Dana Barancik,, and grandfather, Frank Barancik. Dana died in 2014 and Frank died in 2015. Both were seemingly vehemently opposed to net neutrality last August.
"Before leaving office, the Obama Administration rammed through a massive scheme that gave the federal government broad regulatory control over the internet," wrote the individual who used Mrs. Brancik's name and address. "That misguided policy decision is threatening innovation and hurting broadband investment in one of the largest and most important sectors of the U.S. economy. I support the Federal Communications Commission's decision to roll back Title II and allow for free market principles to guide our digital economy."
This same quote appeared in countless fake and fraudulent comments.
Schneiderman said that the commentary "[had] been corrupted by the fraudulent use of Americans' identities - and the FCC has been unwilling to assist my office in our efforts to investigate this unlawful activity."
Dead Commenters
Mindy Welcomes a Baby Girl
Katherine Kaling
Katherine Kaling is here.
Christmas has arrived early for Mindy Kaling - she's welcomed her first child.
The Mindy Project creator and star has welcomed a baby girl named Katherine Kaling on Dec. 15, reports E! News. The Hollywood Reporter has reached out to Kaling's rep for comment.
Kaling, 38, confirmed the happy news in August during a Sunday Today interview with NBC's Willie Geist. "It's so unknown to me. I have a lot of control over a lot of aspects of my life, and this is one where I'm like, 'OK, it's out of my hands,' which is kind of a fun feeling," she told Geist.
The identity of her baby's father has yet to be revealed.
Katherine Kaling
Most Common of 2017
Passwords
SplashData has published its annual list of the worst passwords of the year and with a quick glance one thing is clear: we never learn. Oh, and there are a lot Star Wars fans out there.
The list is created using data from more than five million passwords that were leaked by hackers in 2017. As SplashData notes, the past two years have been particularly devastating for data security, with a number of well-publicized hacks (Equifax, Dropbox, and the SEC to name a few), attacks, ransoms, and even extortion attempts.
And yet, people continue to use easy-to-guess passwords to protect their information. For example, "123456" and "password" retain their top two spots on the list-for the fourth consecutive year. Variations of these two "worst passwords" make up six of the remaining passwords on the list.
SplashData estimates almost 10% of people have used at least one of the 25 worst passwords on this year's list, and nearly 3% of people have used the worst password, 123456.
There are some newcomers, including "starwars," which joined the list at No. 16. Other new passwords to join the list include "freedom," "monkey" (that's puzzler), "letmein," and "hello."
Passwords
Indian DJ Receives Death Threats
Ajit Pai
The wave of online discontent with the Federal Communications Commission decision to reverse Internet neutrality rules has yielded one unlikely victim: A 42-year-old Indian DJ.
As the American agency marched closer this year to making a decision that would allow telecommunications companies to discriminate when it comes to bandwidth, Internet mobs took up their virtual pitchforks and began circling around the Instagram account of FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai. The only trouble, though, was that they got the wrong account.
Ajit Pai, the DJ who lives in Goa, India, says that he first noticed the strangely abusive comments about two months ago, but wasn't immediately sure why he had been targeted. It took a minute, but he eventually put two and two together when some of the online attacks began including the hashtag #netneutrality.
"I've been getting death [threats] and abusive calls the whole night, since we are 10 and a half hours ahead of your time" in India, Mr Pai recently told the Verge in an email. "My mailbox on www.ajitpai.com is flooded and I need to make my admin empty it out every two days. I can't even count the amount of mentions and comments I get every day."
Ajit Pai
White House 'Temporarily' Shuts Down
Petition Site
"We the People," the website that hosts petitions to the federal government, will be going offline at midnight Tuesday.
The White House told The Associated Press that it was "temporarily" taking down the website. It promised to restore the online tool in late January, saying the new platform would save taxpayers more than $1 million a year.
No other details were made available.
"We the People" was launched in 2011 by then-President Barack Obama. The Obama White House said at the time that the platform "gives all Americans a way to create and sign petitions on a range of issues affecting our nation."
If a petition garners more than 100,000 signatures within 30 days, the White House is supposed to issue an official response.
Petition Site
Magma Rising To Earth's Surface
US Northeast
People living in New England are sitting on top of a giant bubble of warm rock that is slowly lifting up toward Earth's surface and will one day pop in a huge volcanic eruption, new research indicates.
The explosion probably won't happen for millions of years, but it could be devastating to whatever lives in Massachusetts, Vermont and New Hampshire when the time comes, according to Rutgers University. Other states may also be affected by the rising rock, which is a smaller version of the magma blobs that ascend to the surface beneath active volcanoes before they erupt.
"The upwelling we detected is like a hot air balloon, and we infer that something is rising up through the deeper part of our planet under New England," Rutgers geophysicist Vadim Levin said in a statement. He added that the impending eruption won't reach the scale of the Yellowstone supervolcano in the mountain states of the western United States, but it would be a "distant relative" of the kind of monster explosion Yellowstone is capable of producing.
A team of geologists measured seismic activity across the U.S., finding vibrations that suggest an upwelling mass of rock underneath the northeastern region that stretches for a couple hundred miles.
US Northeast
Real People
Jedi Religion
"Star Wars: The Last Jedi" arrived in theaters Friday, and for most moviegoers, that galaxy far, far away fades from our imaginations once the film itself fades out. We chuck our popcorn tub into the garbage (hopefully), walk out of the cineplex and return to our blasterless, Yodaless, Millennium Falconless world.
For small sects of the fanbase, however, the line between the two worlds has blurred, and their love for "Star Wars" has manifested itself into a religious devotion. Literally.
A new film called "American Jedi" is an enchanting look at this community.
In 2012, filmmaker Laurent Malaquais directed "Bronies," a look at the obsessively devoted adult fans of the TV series "My Little Pony." The documentary streamed on Netflix and was a critical success.
Fascinated by the phenomenon of extreme fandom, Malaquais came across groups of "Star Wars" fans determined to become real life Jedi, representatives of the "light side" and the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy.
Jedi Religion
Ends The Year On Top
Fox "News"
Fox "News" has faced a year of upheaval. Its talent departures and schedule changes are virtually unprecedented for a cable news network, yet it is ending the year in the lead, both in overall viewers and among those ages 25 to 54, the demographic coveted most by news show advertisers, over competitors MSNBC and CNN, according to Nielsen ratings.
In the past 12 months, Fox "News" has seen two of its top prime-time hosts, Megyn Kelly and Bill O'Reilly, leave the network. Kelly left in January for NBC News, where she is now hosting the third hour of the "Today" show, titled "Megyn Kelly Today." O'Reilly was ousted after a New York Times report revealed that he had settled multiple sexual harassment lawsuits, and advertisers fled his program
Fox "News" host Tucker Carlson started the year in the 7 p.m. time slot, then moved to 9 p.m. after Kelly left, then to 8 p.m. when O'Reilly was ousted. Sean Hannity's program moved from 10 p.m. to 9 p.m., and was replaced by conservative radio host Laura Ingraham at 10 p.m. The panel program "The Five" was moved to 9 p.m. when Carlson moved to 8. After Fox News host Eric Bolling was ousted by the network amid sexual misconduct allegations, "The Five" was moved back to 5 p.m. And Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum took over the 7 p.m. slot from Carlson when he initially moved to 9 p.m.
The revolving schedules are hard to keep up with, but they show the power of Fox "News" and its loyal viewership. And these changes, largely due to hosts being ousted amid sexual misconduct allegations, has not diminished the network's ratings, which appear to be immune from the scourge of scandal.
MSNBC has also had a banner year, leading with its top-rated "The Rachel Maddow Show," which goes head-to-head against "Hannity" and the second hour of CNN's "Anderson Cooper 360." And changes instituted by NBC News Chairman Andy Lack to the dayside schedule of MSNBC, which included eliminating all of the opinion shows and replacing them with news programs, have lifted the dayside ratings for the liberal-leaning network to second place behind the Fox News Channel.
Fox "News"
Prime-Time Nielsens
Ratings
Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen for Dec. 11-17. Listings include the week's ranking and viewership.
1. NFL Football: Dallas at Oakland, NBC, 19.19 million.
2. "60 Minutes," CBS, 14.42 million.
3. "The Big Bang Theory," CBS, 13.74 million.
4. "Sunday Night NFL Pre-Kick," NBC, 13.31 million.
5. "NCIS," CBS, 12.58 million.
6. NFL Football: New England at Miami, ESPN, 11.85 million.
7. "Young Sheldon," CBS, 11.64 million.
8. "Bull," CBS, 10.87 million.
9. NFL Football: Denver at Indianapolis, NBC, 10.64 million.
10. "The Voice" (Monday), NBC, 10.45 million.
11. "Football Night in America, Part 3," NBC, 9.82.
12. "The Voice" (Tuesday), NBC, 9.77 million.
13. "Survivor," CBS, 8.75 million.
14. "Mom," CBS, 8.65 million.
15. "Hawaii Five-0" (Friday, 9 p.m.), CBS, 8.48 million.
16. "NCIS: New Orleans," CBS, 8.21 million.
17. "Hawaii Five-0" (Friday, 10 p.m.), CBS, 7.71 million.
18. "NCIS: Los Angeles," CBS, 7.21 million.
19. "Gwen Stefani Christmas," NBC, 7.15 million.
20. NFL Football: San Diego at Kansas City, NFL Network, 6.99 million.
Ratings
In Memory
Heather North
The voice actress behind classic Scooby-Doo character Daphne Blake has died.
Heather North passed away at her home in Studio City, California following a long illness back on November 30, a family friend told The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday (December 19).
North voiced Scooby-Doo's loveable cohort Daphne on-and-off for more than 30 years, having taken over the role from original cast member Stefanianna Christopherson.
However, Heather North's version of the plucky Mystery Inc detective is the one you're most likely to remember from her appearances in the classic animated series Scooby Doo, Where Are You!, Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo and several other spin-offs.
Her final voice work as Daphne was in a pair of direct-to-DVD movies in 2003, Scooby-Doo and the Monster of Mexico and Scooby-Doo and the Legend of the Vampire.
The 71-year-old North also worked often in live-action, perhaps most memorably playing Kurt Russell's love interest in Disney's 1971 comedy The Barefoot Executive.
She would later meet and fall in love with her future husband Wes Kenney, a notable US TV producer, on the set of the soap opera Days of Our Lives and remained married until Kenney's death in 2015.
Heather North
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