Mine In Mono

Strategems, gambits and wiles

Contact

  • ’Til All Are One

    Transformers: The Movie is showing in theaters in 4K starting in September to celebrate its 40th anniversary. I’m going to be like a kid when this comes out. I was so excited when the movie first dropped and fulfilled expectations with drama, action, and a great cast of voice actors.

    Transformers came with a soundtrack that was better than it had any right to be. Few soundtracks that combine a score with songs from various artists are as cohesive as this one. Everyone knows Stan Bush’s classic “The Touch,” which was also used in the film Boogie Nights. Bush’s “Dare” was another eighties touchstone and also made an appearance in the TV series GLOW. Vince DiCola, who additionally soundtracked Angry Birds Transformers, composed a score that conveys the emotional weight that many had invested in these cartoon robots. “Weird Al” Yankovic includes an original, “Dare To Be Stupid,” that he based on the sound of DEVO. It’s one of his most inventive songs, even if it is intentionally derivative.

    The rerelease happens just after the passing of Petter Cullen, who voiced the tough but gentle Optimus Prime to perfection.

    Watch the trailer for the movie below, which features the voice acting of Orson Welles in his last role.

    Transformers: The Movie (YouTube)

  • Bill Gates is coming out of a period of semi-seclusion to raise the alarm bells about generative A.I. Karen Weise covers the story for The NYT. One of the main concerns that Gates has is the potential for massive job losses.

    He proposed a new tax on A.I. use, known as a “token tax,” to make it more expensive to replace people and provide money to help those who do lose work. A token is a basic unit of A.I. computing. The idea of taxing it has gained some traction, including on Wall Street, as a way to increase the cost of using machines instead of human labor.

    Gates wrote a personal essay on his site about how dangerous the situation could be if we don’t take it seriously.

    AI will either be the greatest equalizer ever invented, or the worst source of injustice.

    The man is not downplaying the stakes here. He believes that the reason his peers are not coming forward is that there is too much money to be gained.

  • Will You Dance?

    The latest casualty of the streaming wars is The Bird and the Bee’s 2015 album Recreational Love, which unceremoniously disappeared from Qobuz sometime recently. The album still shows up, but lists all the tracks as “unavailable.” Usually this is a sign that the service has loaded a newer version of the album to select. Not so in this case.

    Music by The Bird and the Bee can sometimes be hard to find. The band followed up their first volume of Interpreting the Masters, an album of Hall & Oates covers, with a volume of Van Halen covers. The first is readily available, the second, almost impossible to hear on any format other than used vinyl.1 All the album’s listed on the merch site that the band links to are sold out. When there are so many music services out there, it seems careless not to make your albums available somewhere digitally.

    (more…)

  • Down With Podcasts

    At this point, I tend to average 1–2 podcasts a week. I’m in hybrid work mode, which means I drive to an office on a local college campus two days out of the week and work remotely from my home office the other three days. That gives me time for about 90 minutes of podcasts on my commute. My number one selection currently is Not Dead Yet (Apple Podcasts) hosted by Ben Sasse and Chris Stirewalt. As Ben Sasse undergoes treatment for his pancreatic cancer (and faces his own mortality), he’s been interested in discussing what comprises the good life.

    (more…)

  • The X Return

    It seems more people and organizations that were principally opposed to the X (ex-Twitter) network a few short years ago are now returning. Sometimes, they are doing so with apologies, as if they know it’s a bad look. The latest is the Apple-centric publication Macstories. The move was accompanied by the requisite explanation that they do not support the politics of Elon Musk or the direction he has taken the platform.

    (more…)

  • I have to say, I’m really looking forward to The Blockbuster Chronicles from Brandon. He writes about working at a Blockbuster at the turn of the century.

    That’s what The Blockbuster Chronicles is about. Not really the rise and fall of Blockbuster Video. Plenty of people have already told that story. This is the story of one Blockbuster store in Millington, Tennessee, during the last few years when video stores still felt like they were going to be around forever.

    Having worked in retail for years, I think I’ll be able to relate.

  • These Dreams

    Heart was the band that broke the glass ceiling and bought women-fronted hard rock to the masses. By 1985, they had expanded beyond just pummeling riffage and Renaissance Fair folk that betrayed their love for Led Zeppelin. They didn’t completely eschew the hard stuff, but they had synths and they were going to use them.

    (more…)

  • Jokes From Truth

    Bluesky CEO, Toni Schneider, was interviewed by Nilay Patel on a recent episode of The Decoder podcast. I like Patel’s interview style and thought he brought a good selection of questions to the discussion.

    After much business strategy and technical discussion, Patel asked Schneider about the common perception that the network is full of left-leaning users. Schneider acknowledged that as an issue and mentioned several times that he wanted to expand the user base. It’s certainly true that the social network is home to many emotionally dysregulated political progressives. I know several people who don’t use it primarily for that reason.

    (more…)

  • I Set My Face to the Hillside

    Tortoise – I Set My Face To The Hillside (YouTube)

    Last year, I bought TNT by Tortoise on CD from a Discogs seller.1 I should tell you, this sort of activity is as sure a sign of my devotion to a particular album as any. After all, I’ve got access to high-quality digital copies of albums like this through streaming. I don’t need to seek them out on an online marketplace, where, let’s face it, you don’t always know the quality of the merchandise.2

    (more…)

  • A Room You Can’t See

    Terry Godier might be something of a genius, as evidenced by his masterfully crafted RSS reader, Current, and the ideas behind it. So when I saw he had created a short documentary about musical formats, one of my favorite subjects, I had high expectations.

    Godier hits upon a lot of the problems intrinsic to streaming media in the video. When he discusses the limitations of physical media, he’s able to make them sound like desirable features.

    (more…)