toolikethelightning | Member Posts

"Much of the Fifties existed in order to edit out of history the freedoms of wartime: a renewed McCarthyite puritanism drove homosexuality further underground with the inevitable psychic consequences. By the mid-to-late Sixties, there were all sorts of exposé! books, but not then: just a few coded, discreet novels (like James Barr's Quatrefoil), which would usually end in suicide or death."

Jon Savage (quoted in Loaded, by Dylan Jones)

brithistorian

3 September
- Komi Can't Communicate, vol. 26 (Tomohito Oda)

brithistorian

I received an email tonight saying I had a comment on one of my fics, which is a rare enough event that I got extremely excited. Then I read the comment. The first sentence sent my heart soaring:

The way you write is cinematic.

Then I read the remainder of the comment:

I only do paid comic work, and I think we could create something amazing. Let’s chat on Insta: [REDACTED]

So I reported them to AO3 (this sort of commercial solicitation violates the site's TOS) and I'm going back to writing.

(Also, just out of curiosity, I went to their Instagram. Even if I was interested in hiring someone to make a comic based on my fic, it wouldn't be them — their work was sub-mediocre at best!) ^^

brithistorian

I imagine that a web search could turn up the answer for this (or at least it could have, before AI ruined web search), but I feel like one on you could probably explain it to me better, and you might even enjoy imparting your knowledge to someone, so I'm asking the question here.

This morning I was reading the interview with Chow Yun-fat in the Giant Robot 30-year celebration book, and I was hoping one of you could explain what he's saying here about the difference in space and cameras between Hollywood and Hong Kong films:

In the Hollywood studios, you have more room, more space, I mean for the dimension for the camera, for the screen. But in Hong Kong, our buildings, our rooms are narrow, so we must use a lot of action or movement because the depth is not enough to expand the whole images in the picture. So we must use a lot of movement. Also, we must use a lot of wide-angle lenses to enlarge the environment, the space. So every time you see actors in the movie we look wider, fatter because the lens can make the people like that [puffs up his cheeks for emphasis]. Usually here [in Hollywood] we are using 50mm lenses for the close-up or 85mm lens. But in Hong Kong we use 35mm or 28mm, because the depth is not enough.

I'm not understanding the relationship between size of the lens and depth of the picture (and TBH I'm not entirely clear on what he means by depth of the picture). I thought the different sizes of lenses were for different distances between the camera and the subject, but apparently there's more to it than that? (Or else I'm entirely wrong about that?)

brithistorian

When I was reading Geoffrey Parker's Global Crisis: War, Climate Change & Catastrophe in the Seventeenth Century, one of the things I make a note to research more later was the fact that Maréchal Vauban had made models to show Louis XIV the fortifications that he had designed. I wondered, of course, if any of these models still survived. As it turns out, many of them do, in a number of different museums throughout France. Here is a blog post that describes a visit to a museum that has one of these models on display, as well as mentioning the locations of some of the others. I was pleased and surprised that so many of these models are still extant, given what's happened in France in the roughly 350 years since they were made. I was also stunned and surprised at the scale of the models: On reading about them, I had pictured something roughly along the lines of 1:5000 scale (roughly 1 foot = 1 mile), but instead it turns out they were constructed in 1:600 scale (roughly 9 feet = 1 mile). Wow! Definitely something I'd like to see, if I ever make it to France and have sufficient time available.

brithistorian

I'm currently reading Friend of the Devil: My Wild Ride with Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead by Len Dell'amico. In the first chapter, Dell'amico tells about meeting Jerry Garcia for the first time in September 1980. They're talking backstage in Garcia's dressing room before a concert. One of the other people in the room is a Hells Angel named Tiny. Garcia pauses his conversation with Dell'amico for a moment to talk to Tiny. As it turns out, Tiny had been sent to deliver an official message to Garcia, which begins " I come tonight with a message for you from Mr. Sonny Barger, the president of the Oakland Chapter of the Hells Angels. . ."

As a historian, this is interesting/amusing to be because by 1980, Barger had already been worldwide head of the Hells Angels for 22 years, yet here Tiny is introducing him as "president of the Oakland Chapter." Apparently the Hells Angels use the same leadership structure as the Catholic Church (where the pope's official tile is "Bishop of Rome)! ^^

brithistorian

“Great art is somehow already in the future, showing us a place we haven’t arrived at yet. Not just to entertain us but to make us grow.” — Jan Younghusband, in Loaded: The Life (and Afterlife) of the Velvet Underground (Dylan Jones), p. 173.

thewayne

Well, this is kinda interesting! It's hard to say at the moment what the significance of it is, though. This is what I love about medicine: they discover one thing, only for it to prove how little we know about the body. "Hey! We know how to stimulate growth of gray matter! But we don't know why or if it's good for anything...." But hey, it's science, and science builds upon science, so it's all good.

From the article: "Researchers from Kyoto University and the University of Tsukuba in Japan asked 28 women to wear a specific rose scent oil on their clothing for a month, with another 22 volunteers enlisted as controls who put on plain water instead. (and that's not entirely accurate: 29 women wore the scent, but one was unable to do the post-MRI)

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans showed boosts in the gray matter volume of the rose scent participants.

While an increase in brain volume doesn't necessarily translate into more thinking power, the findings could have implications for neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia."

There was no change in the areas of the brain where smell or emotions were processed, which is interesting. But "significantly more gray matter in the posterior cingulate cortex or PCC (linked to memory and association)."

They don't know why this change is happening. One thought put forth is that the rose scent is acting as an irritant, which is interesting. I'm hoping they do longer term studies to see if it actually affects dementia-related illnesses! Of course, I'd also like to see this study replicated using men. It's the same problem of most medical studies using only men because they don't want to have to bother with accommodating women's hormonal variances, it's just so yucky and unpredictable! Then they proclaim that everything applies equally to all women, and they just don't.

The scent-wearing group were 29 participants aged 41–69 years, the control group 22 participants aged 41–65 years.

https://www.sciencealert.com/smelling-this-one-specific-scent-can-boost-the-brains-gray-matter

The full paper is currently available at
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361923024000297?via%3Dihub

If it becomes restricted, I downloaded the PDF and would be happy to supply it.

brithistorian

I just finished reading Cherie Priest's It Was Her House First. It's a really good book and I highly recommend it. It's a haunted house book set in the Seattle area, centered around the ghost of a silent film era actress and her house, now badly in need of restoration. It's got an interesting twist that I've never seen before in a haunted house story, but I can't really say anything else without spoiling it. I hope you give it a shot, and I hope you enjoy it.

thewayne

My, my, how time flies! But fly it does, and October will see the release of a 4K HDR box set of the newly-restored movie that will have TWO documentaries!

A lot of the movie cast is still with us, though we lost Meatloaf a few years back. Interestingly, the movie was not a success in its initial run, it wasn't until the midnight circuit picked it up and the shadow casting and other fun started and it took on a life of its own that it really became a success. According to the article, RHPS may be the origin of cos-play!

I'll definitely be ordering this when it comes out. As it happens, I listened to the soundtrack just a week or so ago.

https://arstechnica.com/culture/2025/08/celebrating-50-years-of-the-rocky-horror-picture-show/

thewayne

There are a couple of problems with recycling plastics. The biggest is that an overwhelmingly vast amount of it doesn't get recycled. It mostly doesn't matter that we separate it out into its own little bin, there are few actual plastic recycling centers. For the most part it still goes to the dump. Sometimes it may get separated into its different classes and baled and sold on for reuse, but that's actually pretty rare.

The other part is that it takes forever - almost literally - for plastics to break down in the environment. And I'm not even going to talk about microplastics in the environment - and in our bodies and in the bodies of pretty much every living creature! Plastic is pretty perfidious stuff. But hey! It made the petroleum industry billions of dollars, so it can't be all bad, can it?

Well. Scientists have developed a process in which PVC can be used to create "chlorine-free fuel range hydrocarbons and [hydrochloric acid] in a single-stage process," the researchers said. Reported conversion efficiencies underscore the potential for real-world use. At 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius), the process reached 95 percent conversion for soft PVC pipes and 99 percent for rigid PVC pipes and PVC wires."

Now, PVC isn't the only plastic out there, but it's a beginning. And if you can reclaim the PVC cladding from wires, you're also now in a position to recycle the now-clean copper in the wire! Twofer!

Very interesting, especially since the process is at a - relatively-speaking - room temperature environment. Increasing the process temperature to 80c/176f, decidedly above room temperature, only increased the efficiency to 96%. Perhaps some discoveries can raise the efficiency or lower the temperature, but that temperature increase I think the energy cost is going to ruin the yield savings.

Obviously there are lots of philosophical, ethical, ecological, etc. issues to consider. If we can increase recycling, we decrease the amount of plastics in the environment, which could decrease the amount of microplastics therein - but are we already at or too far beyond that tipping point? We'd also be decreasing the need for the amount of oil being pumped out of the ground. We don't know the costs of this process, it sounds like it would be pretty expensive, but we also don't know the yield: gross pounds in for barrels out. And would an improvement in the production of petroleum/gasoline decrease demand for EVs, which are decidedly better for the environment?

Lots of things to consider, I'm sure a lot more than I've posited.

https://interestingengineering.com/science/us-china-turn-plastic-to-petrol

https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/08/27/2258214/worlds-first-1-step-method-turns-plastic-into-fuel-at-95-efficiency

thewayne

Well, I think the subject pretty much says it all. A monitor doesn't have to be connected to the internet, and I can't really fathom why it would be aside from functionality like this. I don't think HDMI cables convey IP information. TVs: everyone wants you to connect their TV into to your WiFi so they can monetize what you're watching: LG makes more money off the data they collect from your viewing patterns than they do selling TVs!

You can "sign in to Microsoft for more personalized results". Or you can buy a different brand. And if you use a streaming device and DVD/BR player for your viewing, you don't have to buy a TV: you can buy a nice monitor and just ignore all the connectivity stuff. Or just not connect the WiFi, I've no idea if it will repeatedly beg you to connect to the mothership. My Sony BR player has Netflix and YouTube connectivity, but alas, it's not connected to my router in any fashion: I can access those through my Apple TV if I so desire.

Samsung has never been high on my list of preferred vendors, though I do have a nice little B&W Samsung laser printer that I bought just before HP finalized the purchase of Samsung's printer division.

https://www.theverge.com/news/767078/microsoft-samsung-tv-copilot-ai-assistant-launch

thewayne

At the end of September, Typepad goes dark. And with it, all of the blogs that have been accumulated over the last 22 years.

Interestingly, their front page has buttons for Start Now and Pricing & Sign Up, but they stopped taking new accounts several years ago while reassuring then-current users that the service would continue on. At least until the end of September.

Their Need Help? page has info about the shutdown, including refunds for people who have paid beyond the shutdown date and information on exporting your blog.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/08/one-time-wordpress-competitor-typepad-ends-its-slide-into-obscurity-by-shutting-down/

thewayne

I saw a question that revealed that it is not a voltage converter, so if you're going between 110/220 VAC countries, you'll still need voltage conversion equipment as needed. This will only handle the plug connectors! Some laptop power supplies will automatically switch between 110/220, it's important to know your equipment!

Important safety tip!

According to one source:
Regions that use ~220–240 V AC:
Europe (all countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, etc.)
Most of Asia (China, India, Indonesia, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, etc.)
Middle East (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Israel, Turkey, etc.)
Africa (South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, etc.)
Oceania (Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, etc.)
South America (most of it, e.g., Argentina, Chile, Peru, except parts of Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, and a few others)
Some Caribbean nations (such as Barbados, Saint Lucia, and most of the Lesser Antilles)

⚡ Regions that use ~100–127 V AC instead (different from 220 V):
North America (USA, Canada, Mexico, parts of Central America)
Parts of South America (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, some areas of Brazil)
Japan (100 V, 50/60 Hz depending on region)

thewayne

A similar case has been in litigation since 2000. Specifically, everything hinges on the sub-headline: "A suit challenges Prime Video telling people they can "buy" a movie when they're purchasing a license to watch it for a period of time." Licensing. They're using wiggle-words to get you to pay money so you think you're purchasing an intangible when, if Amazon loses the license to supply it, it gets yanked from your library.

In the early days of the Kindle, a high school AP English student was writing a paper on 1984 that he had "purchased", he was going to use as a college submission essay. Amazon lost the license for that particular edition of 1984 and yanked it from all Kindles using their ubiquitous Whispernet. Not only did the book go away, but so did his paper. Impossible to recover. Up until that point, no one really understood in a real fashion that (A) Amazon would yank books like that, and (2) if you had notes, they were irretrievably gone if a book went away. He sued, I have no idea what became of it. I believe Amazon gave him another copy of 1984. YAY JUSTICE!

The article goes on to say "...Consider the $4.99 director’s cut of Alien on Amazon Prime Video. Cheap, right? But if the tech giant loses the rights to that version, the movie can be replaced with a different cut, like the one for theaters. And if Amazon loses the rights to the film altogether, it’ll completely disappear from the viewer’s library.

So should Amazon be able to say a consumer is “buying” that movie? Some people don’t think so, and they’ve turned to court."

The main crux is bait and switch, Amazon contends that the consumer is aware that the term "buy" is understood by the purchaser to be limited to Amazon continuing to own the license.

This is why most of the ebooks that I buy either come with no DRM or are in a format that I can crack, and I don't "buy" online videos, just DVDs/Blu-rays. On occasion I'll rent a streaming video.

And this is also a problem for gamers who buy games from streaming game services like Sony or Epic, where they shut down a particular game or platform.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/prime-video-lawsuit-movie-license-ownership-1236353127/

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/26/0354217/class-action-lawsuit-targets-movie-ownership

thewayne

I don't normally shill for Kickstarter projects, but this one is pretty cool. I participated in the predecessor project to this one and I think the final product was pretty cool and well-built, and went ahead and bought this one, too.

When we did our river cruise in '05 from Prague to Berlin, we were told our cabin on the ship had a 110 VAC outlet. Well, it sorta did. There was one outlet in the bathroom, and it had unsteady voltage. I think it was run off of the ship's generator and not well-regulated. The cabin had a couple of outlets, but they were EU/German design, and that voltage was much better regulated and filtered. We ended up buying an adapter from the ship's shop which was a very nice device, and could handle what seems like all international AC plugs. And we were able to keep our devices charged through careful use of it.

The one we bought ship-board and this device's predecessor, is a little cube-like thingie with sliders that will produce a variety of plugs to socket into probably any AC outlet around the world, terminating in not only a dual-blade USA outlet (so it also has a step-down transformer) but also in most world outlets, so this is not just a gadget for American travelers!

THIS thingie takes it a step further. It also has three USB-C outlets and one USB-A! There are three models available: a 205 watt, a 175 watt, and a 175 with a retractable USB-C cable. If you have a laptop that can charge off of USB-C, then you can charge it directly off of this puppy!

I put in a pre-order for two. I also ordered two sets of cables for Apple people that include Apple Watch chargers to simplify cable management. It comes with a soft pouch, which should also hold some cables, and a hard case is available for additional $$$.

The project is fully-funded and they expect to ship in November, they say they've already sourced their manufacturer. Europeans and some other places will have to pay VAT on top of the purchase price.

We're tentatively expecting to do another river cruise in Europe next year, I'd love it to be one to or from Vienna. A friend of ours is turning 60 and is inviting other friends to join her, and one of her friends is deathly afraid of sharks, so an ocean/Caribbean cruise is kind of ruled out. We're hoping to talk her into an EU trip.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iblockcube/bolt-205w-and-170w-travel-adapter-with-retractable-cable/

thewayne

You can't buy BYD cars here: the Biden administration slapped a 100% tariff on them to protect the Ketamine Kid's brand as they would literally destroy Tesla. They're available in Mexico, Europe, and selling like hotcakes in China where they're made.

BYD, Build Your Dream, started as an EV battery maker and became a car company. And they make amazing stuff. You can buy their entry level vehicle, the Seagull (they like aquatic names), for under $10,000 (converted currency, sans tariff).

Now here's where stuff gets interesting.

They have achieved L4 self-drive, and self-parking. Tesla doesn't have L4. And it's provided in the Seagull. And they have such confidence in it, that if your car dings itself or another car while self-parking, BYD will PAY FOR THE REPAIR!

The system is called God's Eye, it comes in three tiers. The basic level has - get this - 12 cameras, 5 millimeter-wave radars, and 12 ultrasonic sensors with 1-centimeter accuracy. The two higher tiers add one or three Lidar sensors.

The Tesla used to have Lidar, but Lidar sensors are expensive to buy and maintain, so they literally took them out of vehicles that it had been installed in and went camera-only. And they were cheap cameras.

My Subaru, a 2015 Crosstrek, has a system called Eyesight. It gives lane deviation warnings and has really cool adaptive cruise control. I can set the follow distance for three different lengths, speed-dependent, and it will maintain that distance quite well. If the vehicle in front of me slows down, my car slows down. If it speeds up, mine will speed up to the limit that the cruise control is set for. If another vehicle pulls in front of me, mine will slow down and re-establish that set distance that I configured.

It's REALLY cool.

But it doesn't self-park.

Tesla had self-park, once upon a time, and also had a recall feature where you could park your car in a lot, then go to dinner, walk back to the lot entrance, hit a button on your phone, and 'recall' your car and it would supposedly navigate the lot and come to you. I don't think they do that anymore after a lot of fender benders. Maybe they do, I'm not sure.

But these BYD cars? I expect they could do it.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91366273/byd-bests-tesla-again-cars-are-the-first-to-truly-park-themselves

https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/07/11/1930239/byd-pledges-to-cover-damages-from-self-parking-car-crashes

BYD, like pretty much every car maker, has a high-end line called Yangwang. They make a hypercar called the U9.

It can jump over potholes.

I kid you not. It has a computer-controlled suspension that can read the road ahead and tell the car to leap over obstacles! This video has all sorts of awesome, including eluding a ninja ambush. Sorta.

Watch on YouTube

If we move to Europe, I would seriously consider one of their cars.

thewayne

And there's nothing you can do about it.

Their Battery Health Assistance "feature" was optional in models 9 and below, but is now mandatory in the 10 and possibly subsequent models. And it will also throttle your charge rate. So shorter battery life, and longer charge times. YAY!

Google rates their batteries at 1,000 charge cycles before the battery drops to 80% capacity. Samsung, on the other hand, rates their batteries at 2,000 before the 80% level. Hmmm...

Apple got into trouble a few years back by introducing a silent throttle on some of their phones and had to offer free battery replacements, something that I took advantage of when I happened to be in Albuquerque for a day-long medical seminar that was literally across the street from an Apple Store. Now iPhones have a charge limiter - adjustable and can be deactivated - that by default limits your charge to 80%. When I got an iPhone 16 a year ago (my 13 Mini had strange problems that defied diagnosis), I set mine to 90%, and it reports that my maximum capacity is still 100% after 125 cycles. Sometimes the charge limiter forgets and my phone is at 100% when I take it off the charger in the morning.

Personally, I like to get 4-5 years out of my phones if I can and the only time I replaced a battery, that I remember, is when Apple throttled it and it did hit my battery life pretty badly. Normally I have no problem getting good battery life over the full life of my phone, but I don't spend all day texting or flipping through TikTok or other SM on it.

https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10-battery-health-assistance-3585863/

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/24/038259/will-googles-battery-health-assistant-throttle-your-pixel-10s-battery

brithistorian

There are a couple of things I saw around the Internet over the last few days that have been really bothering me, but I don't want to go back there and start fights in other people's places, so I'm coming here to rant in my own place. Feel free to reply or not, whether you agree with me or not. I just need to get these things out of my system.

One of my friends on Facebook made a post about how she took a ukulele lessen recently. She was very pleased with her accomplishment — in one hour she had learned 3 chords and learned to play a song. Someone else — I'm assuming one of her friends, apparently a guitar player — made a comment to her post that he thought the three chords she learned would transfer over to the top four strings on the guitar. She correctly told him that they wouldn't — which he may or may not have accepted, and I didn't stick around to find out — but at the same time I was sitting there fuming: Even if they would transfer so the fuck what? The ukulele is a valid music instrument in its own right, not some sort of training wheels to help one later change over to a guitar. Besides diminishing my instrument, I felt like he was diminishing my friend's accomplishment, but I didn't feel like I could say that in a way that wouldn't start a fight, so I'm coming to say it here.
Over on Threads, a group of people who live in Minneapolis were complaining about people who live in the suburbs saying they live in Minneapolis, one of them even going so far as to compare it to stolen valor. I live in one of the first ring suburbs of Minneapolis and when — as I do on occasion — I say I live in Minneapolis, it's not intended as some sort of flex. It all boils down to some variant of "How important is it to me that this person knows the actual physical location of my house?" and "Do I think it's worth the time to explain to this person exactly where the suburb I live in it located?" If I think I'm talking to one of these Minneapolis people who's going to make an issue of it, I'll sometimes say "One of the first-ring suburbs," generally supplemented by the quadrant of the metro area. In general, unless the person is going to come to my actual house (which almost never happens), I feel no need to tell them exactly which suburb I live in and then explain where it is because they don't know.

brithistorian

I had a very strange dream last night. It wasn't the content that made it strange — it was a fairly standard thriller/rom-com, featuring Japanese gangsters and a trip to Hawaii. What made it strange (for my dreams at any rate) was that I wasn't in the dream at all. The entire dream was in third person, like I was watching a movie. In fact, this dream started Ralph Macchio and Marisa Tomei!

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Fans of Ada Palmer's Too Like the Lightning

July 2022

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Page Summary

brithistorian - QOTD: On the 1950s
brithistorian - Books read, September 2025
brithistorian - Disgruntlement
brithistorian - AKICIDW: Camera lenses
brithistorian - Things that get saved...
brithistorian - How are the Hells Angel's like the Catholic Church?
brithistorian - QOTD: On art and its relationship to the future
thewayne - In a study, wearing rose scent for ONE MONTH increased growth in the brain's gray matter!
brithistorian - Book reaction: It Was Her House First (Cherie Priest)
thewayne - "It was great when it all began!" 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show!
thewayne - US/China team makes one-step process that turns plastics into fuel at room temperature
thewayne - Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot will be baked-in Samsung's 2025 smart monitors and TVs
thewayne - Forthcoming RIP: the Typepad blogging service
thewayne - A note about that Bolt travel plug adapter
thewayne - Amazon being sued over "buying" a movie via streaming
thewayne - A Kickstarter project that may be of interest for people who travel internationally
thewayne - A couple of interesting things about BYD cars
thewayne - Google confirms they're throttling your Pixel 10's battery
brithistorian - In which I rant here rather than start fights else-Internet
brithistorian - Weird dream channel

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