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localonlineinsurance · 2 years ago

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MA agency for auto, home, or business policy coverage Lunova Insurance

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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 year ago

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Autoenshittification

Forget F1: the only car race that matters now is the race to turn your car into a digital extraction machine, a high-speed inkjet printer on wheels, stealing your private data as it picks your pocket. Your car’s digital infrastructure is a costly, dangerous nightmare — but for automakers in pursuit of postcapitalist utopia, it’s a dream they can’t give up on.

Your car is stuffed full of microchips, a fact the world came to appreciate after the pandemic struck and auto production ground to a halt due to chip shortages. Of course, that wasn’t the whole story: when the pandemic started, the automakers panicked and canceled their chip orders, only to immediately regret that decision and place new orders.

But it was too late: semiconductor production had taken a serious body-blow, and when Big Car placed its new chip orders, it went to the back of a long, slow-moving line. It was a catastrophic bungle: microchips are so integral to car production that a car is basically a computer network on wheels that you stick your fragile human body into and pray.

The car manufacturers got so desperate for chips that they started buying up washing machines for the microchips in them, extracting the chips and discarding the washing machines like some absurdo-dystopian cyberpunk walnut-shelling machine:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/desperate-times-companies-buy-washing-machines-just-to-rip-out-the-chips-187033.html

These digital systems are a huge problem for the car companies. They are the underlying cause of a precipitous decline in car quality. From touch-based digital door-locks to networked sensors and cameras, every digital system in your car is a source of endless repair nightmares, costly recalls and cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/quality-new-vehicles-us-declining-more-tech-use-study-shows-2023-06-22/

What’s more, drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps. Digital systems are drivers’ most significant point of dissatisfaction with the automakers’ products:

https://www.theverge.com/23801545/car-infotainment-customer-satisifaction-survey-jd-power

Even the automakers sorta-kinda admit that this is a problem. Back in 2020 when Massachusetts was having a Right-to-Repair ballot initiative, Big Car ran these unfuckingbelievable scare ads that basically said, “Your car spies on you so comprehensively that giving anyone else access to its systems will let murderers stalk you to your home and kill you:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/03/rip-david-graeber/#rolling-surveillance-platforms

But even amid all the complaining about cars getting stuck in the Internet of Shit, there’s still not much discussion of why the car-makers are making their products less attractive, less reliable, less safe, and less resilient by stuffing them full of microchips. Are car execs just the latest generation of rubes who’ve been suckered by Silicon Valley bullshit and convinced that apps are a magic path to profitability?

Nope. Car execs are sophisticated businesspeople, and they’re surfing capitalism’s latest — and last — hot trend: dismantling capitalism itself.

Now, leftists have been predicting the death of capitalism since The Communist Manifesto, but even Marx and Engels warned us not to get too frisky: capitalism, they wrote, is endlessly creative, constantly reinventing itself, re-emerging from each crisis in a new form that is perfectly adapted to the post-crisis reality:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/31/books/review/a-spectre-haunting-china-mieville.html

But capitalism has finally run out of gas. In his forthcoming book, Techno Feudalism: What Killed Capitalism, Yanis Varoufakis proposes that capitalism has died — but it wasn’t replaced by socialism. Rather, capitalism has given way to feudalism:

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/451795/technofeudalism-by-varoufakis-yanis/9781847927279

Under capitalism, capital is the prime mover. The people who own and mobilize capital — the capitalists — organize the economy and take the lion’s share of its returns. But it wasn’t always this way: for hundreds of years, European civilization was dominated by rents, not markets.

A “rent” is income that you get from owning something that other people need to produce value. Think of renting out a house you own: not only do you get paid when someone pays you to live there, you also get the benefit of rising property values, which are the result of the work that all the other homeowners, business owners, and residents do to make the neighborhood more valuable.

The first capitalists hated rent. They wanted to replace the “passive income” that landowners got from taxing their serfs’ harvest with active income from enclosing those lands and grazing sheep in order to get wool to feed to the new textile mills. They wanted active income — and lots of it.

Capitalist philosophers railed against rent. The “free market” of Adam Smith wasn’t a market that was free from regulation — it was a market free from rents. The reason Smith railed against monopolists is because he (correctly) understood that once a monopoly emerged, it would become a chokepoint through which a rentier could cream off the profits he considered the capitalist’s due:

https://locusmag.com/2021/03/cory-doctorow-free-markets/

Today, we live in a rentier’s paradise. People don’t aspire to create value — they aspire to capture it. In Survival of the Richest, Doug Rushkoff calls this “going meta”: don’t provide a service, just figure out a way to interpose yourself between the provider and the customer:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/13/collapse-porn/#collapse-porn

Don’t drive a cab, create Uber and extract value from every driver and rider. Better still: don’t found Uber, invest in Uber options and extract value from the people who invest in Uber. Even better, invest in derivatives of Uber options and extract value from people extracting value from people investing in Uber, who extract value from drivers and riders. Go meta.

This is your brain on the four-hour-work-week, passive income mind-virus. In Techno Feudalism, Varoufakis deftly describes how the new “Cloud Capital” has created a new generation of rentiers, and how they have become the richest, most powerful people in human history.

Shopping at Amazon is like visiting a bustling city center full of stores — but each of those stores’ owners has to pay the majority of every sale to a feudal landlord, Emperor Jeff Bezos, who also decides which goods they can sell and where they must appear on the shelves. Amazon is full of capitalists, but it is not a capitalist enterprise. It’s a feudal one:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

This is the reason that automakers are willing to enshittify their products so comprehensively: they were one of the first industries to decouple rents from profits. Recall that the reason that Big Car needed billions in bailouts in 2008 is that they’d reinvented themselves as loan-sharks who incidentally made cars, lending money to car-buyers and then “securitizing” the loans so they could be traded in the capital markets.

Even though this strategy brought the car companies to the brink of ruin, it paid off in the long run. The car makers got billions in public money, paid their execs massive bonuses, gave billions to shareholders in buybacks and dividends, smashed their unions, fucked their pensioned workers, and shipped jobs anywhere they could pollute and murder their workforce with impunity.

Car companies are on the forefront of postcapitalism, and they understand that digital is the key to rent-extraction. Remember when BMW announced that it was going to rent you the seatwarmer in your own fucking car?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/02/big-river/#beemers

Not to be outdone, Mercedes announced that they were going to rent you your car’s accelerator pedal, charging an extra $1200/year to unlock a fully functional acceleration curve:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/23/23474969/mercedes-car-subscription-faster-acceleration-feature-price

This is the urinary tract infection business model: without digitization, all your car’s value flowed in a healthy stream. But once the car-makers add semiconductors, each one of those features comes out in a painful, burning dribble, with every button on that fakakta touchscreen wired directly into your credit-card.

But it’s just for starters. Computers are malleable. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing Complete Von Neumann Machine, which can run every program we know how to write. Once they add networked computers to your car, the Car Lords can endlessly twiddle the knobs on the back end, finding new ways to extract value from you:

https://doctorow.medium.com/twiddler-1b5c9690cce6

That means that your car can track your every movement, and sell your location data to anyone and everyone, from marketers to bounty-hunters looking to collect fees for tracking down people who travel out of state for abortions to cops to foreign spies:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7enex/tool-shows-if-car-selling-data-privacy4cars-vehicle-privacy-report

Digitization supercharges financialization. It lets car-makers offer subprime auto-loans to desperate, poor people and then killswitch their cars if they miss a payment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4U2eDJnwz_s

Subprime lending for cars would be a terrible business without computers, but digitization makes it a great source of feudal rents. Car dealers can originate loans to people with teaser rates that quickly blow up into payments the dealer knows their customer can’t afford. Then they repo the car and sell it to another desperate person, and another, and another:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/07/27/boricua/#looking-for-the-joke-with-a-microscope

Digitization also opens up more exotic options. Some subprime cars have secondary control systems wired into their entertainment system: miss a payment and your car radio flips to full volume and bellows an unstoppable, unmutable stream of threats. Tesla does one better: your car will lock and immobilize itself, then blare its horn and back out of its parking spot when the repo man arrives:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

Digital feudalism hasn’t stopped innovating — it’s just stopped innovating good things. The digital device is an endless source of sadistic novelties, like the cellphones that disable your most-used app the first day you’re late on a payment, then work their way down the other apps you rely on for every day you’re late:

https://restofworld.org/2021/loans-that-hijack-your-phone-are-coming-to-india/

Usurers have always relied on this kind of imaginative intimidation. The loan-shark’s arm-breaker knows you’re never going to get off the hook; his goal is in intimidating you into paying his boss first, liquidating your house and your kid’s college fund and your wedding ring before you default and he throws you off a building.

Thanks to the malleability of computerized systems, digital arm-breakers have an endless array of options they can deploy to motivate you into paying them first, no matter what it costs you:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/02/innovation-unlocks-markets/#digital-arm-breakers

Car-makers are trailblazers in imaginative rent-extraction. Take VIN-locking: this is the practice of adding cheap microchips to engine components that communicate with the car’s overall network. After a new part is installed in your car, your car’s computer does a complex cryptographic handshake with the part that requires an unlock code provided by an authorized technician. If the code isn’t entered, the car refuses to use that part.

VIN-locking has exploded in popularity. It’s in your iPhone, preventing you from using refurb or third-party replacement parts:

https://doctorow.medium.com/apples-cement-overshoes-329856288d13

It’s in fuckin’ ventilators, which was a nightmare during lockdown as hospital techs nursed their precious ventilators along by swapping parts from dead systems into serviceable ones:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3azv9b/why-repair-techs-are-hacking-ventilators-with-diy-dongles-from-poland

And of course, it’s in tractors, along with other forms of remote killswitch. Remember that feelgood story about John Deere bricking the looted Ukrainian tractors whose snitch-chips showed they’d been relocated to Russia?

https://doctorow.medium.com/about-those-kill-switched-ukrainian-tractors-bc93f471b9c8

That wasn’t a happy story — it was a cautionary tale. After all, John Deere now controls the majority of the world’s agricultural future, and they’ve boobytrapped those ubiquitous tractors with killswitches that can be activated by anyone who hacks, takes over, or suborns Deere or its dealerships.

Control over repair isn’t limited to gouging customers on parts and service. When a company gets to decide whether your device can be fixed, it can fuck you over in all kinds of ways. Back in 2019, Tim Apple told his shareholders to expect lower revenues because people were opting to fix their phones rather than replace them:

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/01/letter-from-tim-cook-to-apple-investors/

By usurping your right to decide who fixes your phone, Apple gets to decide whether you can fix it, or whether you must replace it. Problem solved — and not just for Apple, but for car makers, tractor makers, ventilator makers and more. Apple leads on this, even ahead of Big Car, pioneering a “recycling” program that sees trade-in phones shredded so they can’t possibly be diverted from an e-waste dump and mined for parts:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/yp73jw/apple-recycling-iphones-macbooks

John Deere isn’t sleeping on this. They’ve come up with a valuable treasure they extract when they win the Right-to-Repair: Deere singles out farmers who complain about its policies and refuses to repair their tractors, stranding them with six-figure, two-ton paperweight:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/31/dealers-choice/#be-a-shame-if-something-were-to-happen-to-it

The repair wars are just a skirmish in a vast, invisible fight that’s been waged for decades: the War On General-Purpose Computing, where tech companies use the law to make it illegal for you to reconfigure your devices so they serve you, rather than their shareholders:

https://memex.craphound.com/2012/01/10/lockdown-the-coming-war-on-general-purpose-computing/

The force behind this army is vast and grows larger every day. General purpose computers are antithetical to technofeudalism — all the rents extracted by technofeudalists would go away if others (tinkereres, co-ops, even capitalists!) were allowed to reconfigure our devices so they serve us.

You’ve probably noticed the skirmishes with inkjet printer makers, who can only force you to buy their ink at 20,000% markups if they can stop you from deciding how your printer is configured:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/07/inky-wretches/#epson-salty But we’re also fighting against insulin pump makers, who want to turn people with diabetes into walking inkjet printers:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/10/loopers/#hp-ification

And companies that make powered wheelchairs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/08/chair-ish/#r2r

These companies start with people who have the least agency and social power and wreck their lives, then work their way up the privilege gradient, coming for everyone else. It’s called the “shitty technology adoption curve”:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/08/21/great-taylors-ghost/#solidarity-or-bust

Technofeudalism is the public-private-partnership from hell, emerging from a combination of state and private action. On the one hand, bailing out bankers and big business (rather than workers) after the 2008 crash and the covid lockdown decoupled income from profits. Companies spent billions more than they earned were still wildly profitable, thanks to those public funds.

But there’s also a policy dimension here. Some of those rentiers’ billions were mobilized to both deconstruct antitrust law (allowing bigger and bigger companies and cartels) and to expand “IP” law, turning “IP” into a toolsuite for controlling the conduct of a firm’s competitors, critics and customers:

https://locusmag.com/2020/09/cory-doctorow-ip/

IP is key to understanding the rise of technofeudalism. The same malleability that allows companies to “twiddle” the knobs on their services and keep us on the hook as they reel us in would hypothetically allow us to countertwiddle, seizing the means of computation:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

The thing that stands between you and an alternative app store, an interoperable social media network that you can escape to while continuing to message the friends you left behind, or a car that anyone can fix or unlock features for is IP, not technology. Under capitalism, that technology would already exist, because capitalists have no loyalty to one another and view each other’s margins as their own opportunities.

But under technofeudalism, control comes from rents (owning things), not profits (selling things). The capitalist who wants to participate in your iPhone’s “ecosystem” has to make apps and submit them to Apple, along with 30% of their lifetime revenues — they don’t get to sell you jailbreaking kit that lets you choose their app store.

Rent-seeking technology has a holy grail: control over “ring zero” — the ability to compel you to configure your computer to a feudalist’s specifications, and to verify that you haven’t altered your computer after it came into your possession:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/30/ring-minus-one/#drm-political-economy

For more than two decades, various would-be feudal lords and their court sorcerers have been pitching ways of doing this, of varying degrees of outlandishness.

At core, here’s what they envision: inside your computer, they will nest another computer, one that is designed to run a very simple set of programs, none of which can be altered once it leaves the factory. This computer — either a whole separate chip called a “Trusted Platform Module” or a region of your main processor called a secure enclave — can tally observations about your computer: which operating system, modules and programs it’s running.

Then it can cryptographically “sign” these observations, proving that they were made by a secure chip and not by something you could have modified. Then you can send this signed “attestation” to someone else, who can use it to determine how your computer is configured and thus whether to trust it. This is called “remote attestation.”

There are some cool things you can do with remote attestation: for example, two strangers playing a networked video game together can use attestations to make sure neither is running any cheat modules. Or you could require your cloud computing provider to use attestations that they aren’t stealing your data from the server you’re renting. Or if you suspect that your computer has been infected with malware, you can connect to someone else and send them an attestation that they can use to figure out whether you should trust it.

Today, there’s a cool remote attestation technology called “PrivacyPass” that replaces CAPTCHAs by having you prove to your own device that you are a human. When a server wants to make sure you’re a person, it sends a random number to your device, which signs that number along with its promise that it is acting on behalf of a human being, and sends it back. CAPTCHAs are all kinds of bad — bad for accessibility and privacy — and this is really great.

But the billions that have been thrown at remote attestation over the decades is only incidentally about solving CAPTCHAs or verifying your cloud server. The holy grail here is being able to make sure that you’re not running an ad-blocker. It’s being able to remotely verify that you haven’t disabled the bossware your employer requires. It’s the power to block someone from opening an Office365 doc with LibreOffice. It’s your boss’s ability to ensure that you haven’t modified your messaging client to disable disappearing messages before he sends you an auto-destructing memo ordering you to break the law.

And there’s a new remote attestation technology making the rounds: Google’s Web Environment Integrity, which will leverage Google’s dominance over browsers to allow websites to block users who run ad-blockers:

https://github.com/RupertBenWiser/Web-Environment-Integrity

There’s plenty else WEI can do (it would make detecting ad-fraud much easier), but for every legitimate use, there are a hundred ways this could be abused. It’s a technology purpose-built to allow rent extraction by stripping us of our right to technological self-determination.

Releasing a technology like this into a world where companies are willing to make their products less reliable, less attractive, less safe and less resilient in pursuit of rents is incredibly reckless and shortsighted. You want unauthorized bread? This is how you get Unauthorized Bread:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-near-future-tale-of-refugees-and-sinister-iot-appliances/amp/

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

[Image ID: The interior of a luxury car. There is a dagger protruding from the steering wheel. The entertainment console has been replaced by the text 'You wouldn't download a car,' in MPAA scare-ad font. Outside of the windscreen looms the Matrix waterfall effect. Visible in the rear- and side-view mirror is the driver: the figure from Munch's 'Scream.' The screen behind the steering-wheel has been replaced by the menacing red eye of HAL9000 from Stanley Kubrick's '2001: A Space Odyssey.']

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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ed-recoverry · 15 days ago

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Some good news to get you through

As someone super into history and current events, everything always sucks so I just want to make a little masterlist of some glimmers of hope. Will try to make multiple of these.

I shopped around for all of these, but this website and this website offers happy stories all in one place for those who don't have the time.

Colombia outlaws child marriage after 17-year campaign

Jordan Recognized as First in the World to Eradicate Leprosy

Norway, Paraguay, Antigua and Barbuda join the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty

Orran Gala Raises $400,000 for Armenia’s Most Vulnerable

Hanover firefighter creates ‘Belize Heroes’ to donate lifesaving equipment to home country

‌Norway’s Kon-Tiki Museum returns artifacts to Chile’s remote Easter Island

Minneapolis man's murder conviction vacated after 16 years

Hiking group for Muslim women breaks barriers as hundreds flock to the outdoors

Scientists find a 35,000-year-old saber-toothed kitten in the Siberian permafrost

Tupelo Preschool Teacher Donates Organ to Student

Author Katherine Rundell donates royalties to climate charities in Trump protest

Pan-Mass Challenge Raises Record $75 Million for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Texas woodpecker no longer endangered after 54 years

Researchers discover 'lost' frog species in the Andes after over a century

More states are adopting laws to protect children of family vloggers

A 19-Year-Old Who Spent Her Childhood In Foster Care Was Finally Adopted By A Former Caseworker

Dolly Parton Gifts $4.5 Million to Nashville Public Library

New Mexico sees nearly 10% more first-year college students, bucking national trend

21-Year-Old Raising His 4 Siblings Since Their Mom Died Surprised With $40K and a New Car

Easy-fit prosthetics offer hope to thousands of Gaza amputees

UNM alumni hike tallest peaks in Ecuador to make prosthetic care more accessible

London charity helps young mums thrive

Italian charity sends 15 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza via Cyprus

Climate report shows the largest annual drop in EU greenhouse gas emissions for decades

Washingtonians defend the Climate Commitment Act

Voters decide MN Lottery will keep funding environmental causes

Finnish fathers taking nearly double length of paternity leave since 2022 reform

Oysters reintroduced to Firth of Forth appear to be 'thriving'

German union says auto and engineering workers to get 5.5% wage rise

Seaweed farming brings hope to Kenyan villagers hit by climate change

Previously extinct Cape Water Lily restored at False Bay Nature Reserve

From landfill to limelight, Ghana waste entrepreneurs win Earthshot Prize

A derogatory term for Native women will be removed from place names across California

Texas Native Health expands facility to better serve the state's Indigenous community

Borneo’s ‘omen birds’ find a staunch guardian in Indigenous Dayak Iban elders

African cinema takes to global stage with diverse storytelling

Maori haka in NZ parliament to protest at bill to reinterpret founding treaty

Animal welfare group works to rescue lions, pets in Lebanon

Inside a Massachusetts studio showcasing the work of artists with disabilities

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rainydawgradioblog · 9 months ago

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Interview with Samba Jean-Baptiste

The other day I came across an article about AI bots mass-releasing auto-generated music on Spotify under different names. A concept as democratic as “unfettered access to music by way of streaming services” was bound to be corrupted by bad actors. Artists are consigned to grueling tour schedules in order to make a living because streaming pays them in Monopoly money. Pitchfork is gone and the writing is on the wall for Bandcamp, because curation is now being handled by algorithms. It’s important to keep in mind that any artist releasing music today has to navigate a culture in which there’s more out there than ever before, it's all at the tip of one’s fingers, and everything except for the music itself is worse than it used to be.

The topic of how the internet has shaped music came up frequently in my discussion with Samba Jean-Baptiste, an independent artist out of Brooklyn. I discovered his work after seeing Dean Blunt’s music video to “Felony” (his best song? I’m ready to make the argument), and the Algorithm decided I might like a video titled “talk / pleasure.” Behind a camera that might be a flip phone, somone offers Jean-Baptiste directions: “Wait, look off that way, and start the song. Then just start doing your shit.” The music plays and we hear Samba’s subdued voice over acoustic guitar strumming. He crosses a wide urban boulevard. All of it is easy and unforced.

youtube

“Talk / Pleasure” was released on Cardinal, a project that’s difficult to categorize and beautiful and disarming. Jean-Baptiste chiefly uses acoustic guitar and his voice to create stripped-back art pop, as if the Young Marble Giants grew up listening to Stereolab instead of Lou Reed. The relationship between skilled yet raw guitar playing and more attuned peripheral production toes a line between an open mic performance and sound leaking from someone else’s headphones. There’s some really incredible interplay between organic and auto tuned vocals on “Windows.” The string and warped piano accompaniments on “A Wish Slanted” perfectly compliment Jean-Baptiste’s rhythmic strumming. It seems like he’s drawing from so much, because he’s had access to (and has seeked out) so much. The internet has given us windows into every corner of musical expression imaginable. If you’re an artist, how do you reckon with that, how does it find its way into your art? I didn’t want to put words in Jean-Baptiste’s mouth, so I reached out to see if he’d be interested in an interview for the Blawg.

He was kind enough to agree back in early December; we spoke over the phone for about 40 minutes. I think he was playing Dave Bixby in the background. In addition to the internet’s impact on the music landscape, he touched on song-writing, looping, and Veeze. Hope you all enjoy it. Please, check out Cardinal on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, and Bandcamp (before it’s subscription based).

Can you tell me a little about yourself?

Yeah, I’m 22, about to be 23, I live in Bedstuy, Brooklyn, I cook at a Japanese Breakfast restaurant that’s also in Brooklyn. That’s kinda what I do four days a week. I grew up in Massachusetts playing classical music, me and my sister, I played Cello, my sister played violin and we grew up playing in the Boston Symphony Orchestra. That’s where I gained a lot of interest in music, because when I wasn’t playing cello, everyone would be showing off like, what pop song [they] could play on the piano, and from there everything trailed into, you know, writing a little song about a crush or something when I was a kid.

My family is from Haiti. That’s important to me. In middle school I used to just make beats so I was really into dubstep and a bunch of stuff on youtube. I was always big on youtube, listening to people make beats at home, and then soundcloud blew up, which gave so much access to random nooks and crannies to the country and world for that matter. Got into songwriting a little bit. Used to make a lot of different sounding stuff to now. Picked up guitar, somehow, and I guess that landed me to where I’m at now.

Songs like “Better Now” from Cardinal feature a lot of looping. Do you find that to be a big part of your process?

It’s funny because looping, from making beats in middle school, looping is such a big part of it. You make something, you loop it, you progress from there. But by the time I realized I could be playing actual instruments in my recordings, I still had that mentality. I’ll record something and think: “this part is great, I’m just gonna loop it.” And it doesn’t feel unethical. Cause for me, for a long time, looping other people’s music was like, “you’re going to hell, you’re not making music” but somehow my eyes have opened up and my ears have opened up to so many new ways of sound creation, rather than seeing it like “you have to create from the sound up like you’re fucking Beethoven.” You can hear something and make something out of that and that’s ok. It’s not yours, it's everyone’s.

Looping is really interesting too because everytime you hear something or see something you can see something new about it. There’s albums I’ve listened to kajillions of times and it’s like I’m learning something new about it every listen. The same thing can happen with a simple loop, it’ll just be new information, newly perceived information each time. So yeah loops are super important to me.

When you’re writing a song, do you have an idea of what you want the finished product to be, or does it evolve naturally over the course of the entire process?

Definitely the latter. That’s funny I was talking to my dad *today* that when I make songs, or work on an idea, I have to like make the whole song, just so that when I go back to these drafts, I can see the full blueprint. [...] It’s definitely a process. If I write a song in one sitting, I’ll kinda just… show a friend. That’s not the stuff I like releasing.

How did Cardinal become more acoustic than your previous album, Pandora?

It wasn’t so much a conscious decision to be like, I have to be different from the last record, but it was a conscious decision in my process. Because Pandora was made while I was still primarily recording through my laptop, and like, there’s guitar on there, but it’s all pitched up, and my voice isn’t in my natural cadence. But in the same way I realized I could use my instruments and play them in my recordings, I was like damn. That feels natural. I can also just sing in my natural low voice, I don’t have to be reaching for something that I’m not. So it sort of just trailed in that direction naturally.

I was wondering if playing the cello made picking up guitar easier, or otherwise informs your guitar playing? You said you “stumbled on guitar,” which sounds like a bigger undertaking than you make it out to be.

Yeah, picking up guitar was pretty simple for me because of that knowledge, but like, there’s six strings on a guitar [compared to cello’s four], so I’ve found new ways to approach an instrument, because there’s a learning curve there. A lot of my songs, if you listen to them, it’s all the same chords, because I only know so much, and sometimes I’m fucking lazy and I know certain chords and they make me feel good enough.

Also it's funny because some songs are written on different guitars. “I Could Have Cried” was written on a guitar with five strings (the high E is gone) because my roommate didn’t finish stringing it. The other one I got in London, that one plays “Talk/Pleasure” and “A Wish Slanted” and it has four strings because two of them snapped. Each weird situation lends itself to a new creation, which is like a huge part of my process anyway. Error is so acceptable, if not sought out.

The stream of consciousness of it? Less premeditated?

Right. There’s a mix too though. I love when records have noise added after cause that’s real. You can only listen to so much perfect, cookie cutter stuff.

When you were making Cardinal, were there any major songs or artists that you took inspiration from?

Nah I had no influences, I came up with this shit. I’m playing, of course, of course, there’s so many. I feel like a lot of people are finding my music through like Dean Blunt youtube wormhole, and he’s for sure one of my big influences, like all my influences are like 30+ year old black people doing their thing. But the main influence is music that sounds like wind, water, grass, and that all relates to guitar.

I wish I had a list of my influences, cause on this record there’s a lot you know? I had a lot of people in my life showing me new things, because I’m so closed minded often. And I like to try to surround myself with people that will show me something new. A lot of inspiration is what’s new to me.

I think wind, water, grass sums it up great. Wrapping up, would you have any recommendations for me and the good people of Rainy Dawg Radio as a whole? Movies, music, books, etc?

Hell yeah. I just finished this book called Your Love is Not Good, by Johanna Hedver… Movies? I’m still learning about movies. Two or three things I know about her. I’m into Jean Luc Godard, that slice of life stuff where nothing happens, cause it’s just like looping music to me. Music? I’ll just give you what I’ve been into recently, cause I have huge influences but they’re probably everybody’s. I’ve been listening to this song called “Tea in Bed” by Blessed and Blushing. That shit’s incredible. I’ve been listening to this song called “Everybody Knows” by Glucose. I’ve been listening to a Serge Gainsbourg record, The History of Melody Nelson. I’ve been listening to Veeze, you know, Ganger. There’s so much shit. There’s so much out there. Michael White is this great jazz violinist, I’d definitely recommend him. Forma Norte, that guy’s incredible.

Who’s that, Forma Norte?

Yeah, you know what’s funny is I found him on my “related artists,” online, and sometimes I find stuff I really hate through that. But sometimes I think “damn this guy’s awesome, how’s he related to me?”

It’s so interesting to hear an artist’s perspective of their “fans also like” on Spotify.

That first one I said, Tea in Bed by Blessed and Blushing, is just blowing my mind recently. I’m like, “who is sitting down and making this shit?,” it’s so good. And that’s what’s crazy is there’s so much music now, it’s like, is there even a point in trying to make a career out of this? No. I don’t think so. Which I think is lending itself to the best music ever, cause people are like “there’s no fucking way I’m gonna make a career out of this, I might as well just make what I want, whatever I want.”

You used to have to deal with the label, but now everything is just, “yeah go for it.”

It’s such a blessed time in that regard, but at the same time… let me chill on that. Let’s say, Marvin Gaye, “I Want You”? We’re not getting that right now. And that’s no hate to right now. But it’s just like that was a whole different way of living, thinking, moving, breathing you know. It’s just a whole different way of recording.

But we’re so blessed to be able to do exactly what we want without the idea of needing to make money off it. Obviously it would be nice. But it’s unlikely so people are just making cool shit. And I’m really thankful for that.

You can find Samba Jean-Baptiste on Instagram here and YouTube here. Once again, listen to Cardinal any way you get your music.

#Spotify #Youtube

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mattnben-bennmatt · 6 months ago

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Biography Magazine (July 2002)

Ben Affleck on stardom, settling down, and working with best buddy Matt Damon

By Sheryl Berk

Ever since their 1997 Oscar for Good Will Hunting, no matter what Ben Affleck and Matt Damon do solo, it's hard to envision them as anything but in-cahoots. Any time one of them is mentioned, the other's name comes up. So, is it fluke - or fate - that Affleck and Damon are both starring this summer in spy thrillers based on bestselling book series? Affleck plays Jack Ryan in The Sum Of All Fears, while Damon is Jason Bourne in The Bourne Identity.

"I know what it looks like," Affleck admits, "that we somehow planned it this way. But I swear it just kind of happened. The fact that the movies were released around the same time was just a bizarre coincidence. I mean, there aren't all that many weekends in the summer, right?"

Actually, Affleck doesn't seem to mind having most of America think of him as half of the Ben-and-Matt team. "We've known each other since we were 8 or 9," he says of his longtime pal/writing partner. And they intend to be part of each other's future: Between their individual acting jobs, they're thinking up new projects under their multimedia production company LivePlanet. "We'll be writing together for a long, long time," Affleck predicts. "We're on the same page because we share a lot of the same life experiences. It's nice to have someone who understands where you're coming from."

Benjamin Geza Affleck was born on August 15, 1972, in an Oakland, California, hospital. His father, Tim, had a range of jobs, from auto mechanic and electrician to bartender and janitor (he is now a photographer and a counsellor at a California drug rehabilitation center), while his mother, Chris was (and still is) a school teacher. His family lived briefly in Berkeley, California, before moving to Massachusetts when Affleck was 2. "My brother, Casey, was born in Falmouth shortly before my third birthday," Affleck recalls. "We knew he was coming, so my parents threw a party for me three days early so I wouldn't miss it. But Casey decided to steal the show anyway: Right in the middle of my party, we had to rush to the hospital.

At age 5, the family moved to Cambridge and young Ben attended the public schools where his mom taught. But it was acting - not academics - that mainly interested him. "My father had a theater background - he worked with a theater company in Boston before I was born. He and my mom had a lot of friends who were actors, and I was around them all the time and it rubbed off." One of his mother's college friends ran a local casting company in Boston, and her husband was an independent movie director. He needed a 7-year-old boy for a film and Affleck volunteered. "After that, I wanted to do more. Maybe I was precocious; maybe I was just fooling around."

When a casting call went out for a PBS kids educational show called The Voyage of the Mimi, Affleck tried out for the part - and landed it. "I don't think at the time I had any clue how lucky I was," he says. "I didn't realize that most people audition and don't get the role." The pilot was shot in Maine, and the science and math series eventually got funding and a go-ahead. Around this time, the Afflecks divorced, leaving Chris to raise her sons single-handedly. When it was decided that season two of Mimi would be shot in Mexico, Ben's mom accompanied him on location.

"She was great - she was tutoring me. It was always very important to her that I have as normal a childhood as possible," Affleck says. Before the shoot was over, Chris got pneumonia and had to go home. She was assured that Ben would be safe and supervised, but "I was pretty much on my own down there, getting into trouble. I was earning money and I had my own hotel room; I thought I was all grown-up and had all the answers. Mr. Big Shot at 13."

When the series ended, Affleck returned home and started his freshman year at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School. He began to plot a path to Hollywood and enlisted the support of an old elementary-school friend, whom he nicknamed Matty D. Affleck and Damon would hold "business lunches" in the cafeteria and go to New York on auditions (Affleck even helped Damon find an agent). "In high school, our friendship got more intense as we realized how much we both had similar goals," Affleck says. "We had these fantasies about all the things we were going to do, and they were all sort of silly and romantic and half-baked. We never really imagined that any of them would come true."

One of those "half-baked" fantasies began with a 40-page script that Damon wrote in his Harvard playwriting class in 1992. Affleck had dropped out of the University of Vermont to pursue acting and was struggling in L.A. ("barely able to pay the $300 a month for a one-bedroom hole") when Damon sent the story to him. The pair agreed it had the makings of a great movie - and they were right. It eventually became Good Will Hunting.

"It probably had a million different incarnations," says Affleck. "I was 19 when we wrote the first version. There was one where my character was supposed to die. One where the government was after Will." The project sat on the back burner as Affleck found his niche in independent films. Damon continued to act as well, but both were frustrated with the lack of quality roles being offered to them. They returned to their script, eventually completing 1500 pages.

"We would just sit around BS-ing and kicking things back and forth," Affleck says. "We'd talk it out and it would fall into place. I think we have a great dynamic. In our case, two heads are definitely better than one."

They gave the finished script to their agent who showed it to a few studios. It was accepted by Castle Rock for $600,000. "It was like we won the lottery," Damon once remarked. But a year later, the project remained in limbo - the studio wasn't willing to give Affleck and Damon the creative control they wanted (not only did they want to star in the film, they wanted it shot on location in their native Boston). It took clout and connections to turn things around: Damon had just starred in Francis Ford Coppola's The Rainmaker and was suddenly on Hollywood's radar screen; Affleck's director/friend Kevin Smith was willing to take the script to top execs. It was Miramax's Harvey Weinstein who saved the day and agreed to pick up Good Will Hunting for $1 million.

"Harvey really believed in us and told us it was okay to take some more risks, to go with it," says Affleck. "So we had the opportunity to write the story that we really wanted to write, as opposed to what we thought somebody else would like."

The film was a hit, both critically and at the box office, pulling in a total of $229 million worldwide. It was nominated for nine Academy Awards; it received the Oscar for Best Screenplay, and Robin Williams won Best Supporting Actor. "That night, I remember feeling like I had just been in a car accident," Affleck says. "It was that same feeling of shock, of 'What just happened?' I remember Billy Crystal did his song montage to open the show and we were part of it. He was singing 'Matt and Ben, Ben and Matt,' and I turned to Matt and went, 'Man, this is crazy! Surreal!' I mean, we were a joke that people got. And then Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau announced our category, opened the envelope, and read our names. I expected As Good As It Gets to win, but instead, it was us. All I know is I staggered up there - it was like this weird out-of-body thing followed by exuberance and screaming my head off."

From that day forward, Ben and Matt were Hollywood legend: the 25- and 27-year-old writing wunderkinder who won Oscars their first time out of the gate. Along with the notoriety came the trappings of stardom. Affleck bought homes on both coasts (a three-story Hollywood Hills spread complete with five motorcycles and two Cadillacs, and a New York City pad outfitted with his favorite vintage arcade games) plus a house in Cape Cod for his mom. He even dated an It Girl - Gwyneth Paltrow - for over a year (they're still friends) and has been linked in the tabloids with (among others) Mariah Carey, Chelsea Clinton, Sandra Bullock, and Britney Spears (For the record, he has denied being involved with any of them). He also went through a period of partying too hard and, a year ago, decided it was time to get his life back on track. These days, he's much more future-focused and serious.

"If I were to guess what the next 10 years of my life would be, I would think they'd involve less acting, particularly the kind of acting that requires you to do a bunch of publicity, the kind that changes the quality of your life as a person," he says. "Eventually, I think I'll tone down the degree to which I expose my whole life to the world and put myself out there. If I was doing less of that, I feel it would be more conducive to settling down, getting married, and having a family. That's important to me."

What's also important is the quality of his work, although it doesn't hurt to command upwards of $12 million a picture. Since Good Will Hunting, he has starred in more than 10 films, including Shakespeare In Love, Armageddon, Bounce, Pearl Harbor, and Changing Lanes. Affleck insists it's the story, not the paycheque that convinces him to sign on the dotted line. Case in point: The Sum Of All Fears. He knew the role of Jack Ryan, hero of Tom Clancy's popular novels, came with baggage. "Two fine, fine actors, Harrison Ford [in Clear and Present Danger and Patriot Games] and Alec Baldwin [in The Hunt For Red October], already played Ryan. You know people will always be comparing you - there will be guys on the Internet discussing how I measure up. What can you do? Just your best and be true to the story."

"It was very courageous of him," says the film's director Phil Alden Robinson, who describes Affleck as "a member of the team, a people person, a hugger. He's genuinely a modest fellow who gives it his all. The fact that it was a challenge only makes him work harder."

What appealed to Affleck was the concept of creating Ryan's early years - giving new depth to the character. The film is a prequel to the other three: Ryan must confront terrorists who have possession of a nuclear weapon they plan to detonate at the Super Bowl.

"This is a different Jack Ryan," he explains. "He doesn't have all the answers; he doesn't have it all together. He hadn't yet become the U.S. Intelligence superhero. He's starting out, just getting his feet wet. He writes this paper and it takes on a life of its own. That, I could identify with, because that's how it was for me with Good Will Hunting. You write something, it takes off, and you're sort of whisked along with it. Ryan's not sure where he'll wind up, where this will lead him, but he's going with it. He's going along for the ride."

Ben's Big Business

In June 2000, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore and Sean Bailey founded LivePlanet, a company that "creates entertainment experiences that break down the barriers between traditional media, new media, and the physical world." Translation? The foursome and their team come up with outrageously creative, one-of-a-kind projects that allow audience members to not only participate (through TV, film, wireless, the Web, etc.) but in many ways, influence the final outcome.

It all started with Project Greenlight, a 13-episode documentary series on HBO last year that chronicled the nuts and bolts of making an independent feature film. Matt and Ben announced an Internet competition, and 10,000 aspiring filmmakers sent in their scripts. From them, Pete Jones' Stolen Summer was chosen as the winner, and Miramax agreed to foot the bill to produce it (it was released this past spring).

"I hope that young writers are encouraged by us," Affleck says. "And as long as our partners, HBO and Miramax, are ready and willing, we want to keep it going. We want more first-timers to have this great opportunity."

Also in the works is Push, Nevada, a 13-episode ABC TV series that blends elements of fact and faction, drama and reality. The show centers on a series of strange events that occur around a missing seven-figure sum of money. By following the show - and participating online - audience members garner clues that will lead them to a genuine bankroll hidden somewhere in the U.S.

"The idea of LivePlanet is to change the way you can tell a story, and to chance the degree of involvement the audience can have with it," explains Affleck. He expects LivePlanet's wild ideas to raise a few eyebrows: "You have a much higher risk of failure when you're doing something that's never been done before. But that's also the fun of it, the excitement, and to me, the most fulfilling thing I can do in my career."

#ben affleck #matt damon #matt & ben #on meeting each other #on working together #on writing together #early childhood #on privacy #on family #on fame #business ventures #LivePlanet #the sum of all fears #Project Greenlight #interview #2002 #originals

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honourablejester · 10 months ago

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Call of Cthulhu Character Concept: 1920s Funeral Home Dreamer

Because I just really wanted to try making a CoC investigator. I’m not sure what I intended to make initially, but browsing the occupations list gave me ‘undertaker’, and then I decided to roll for characteristics initially (I later added points on so the total would equal 460, as if for point buy), and that gave me a starting Appearance of 20, which is just above ‘ugly, possibly disfigured due to injury or at birth’, which gave me a bit of a starting seed. Then I was browsing the period names suggestion list, and saw ‘Asenath’, which I’d never heard before, and looked that up. And it’s a biblical name, but an Egyptian figure, so the name means ‘dedicated to the goddess Neith’. Which, in a Cthulhu setting, was … interesting.

So. Asenath Webber, a 34 year old assistant at her family’s funeral home in Arkham, Massachusetts, who has a troubled relationship with her brother since he permanently scarred her with embalming chemicals in an ‘accident’ as kids, and whose beloved uncle helped foster her education and interest in literature, history, and just a bit of the occult. Heh.

Call of Cthulhu Character Concept: Asenath Webber

Name: Asenath Webber

Occupation: Embalmer’s Assistant/Hearse Driver (Undertaker)

Age: 34

Gender: Female

Birthplace/Place of Residence: Arkham, Massachusetts.

Characteristics:

Strength 50, Constitution 80, Dexterity 60, Intelligence 50, Size 50, Power 70, Appearance 20, Education 80

(I initially rolled, then brought them up to total 460 as if for point buy (my original rolled total was 435), but the initial rolls are why her appearance is in the toilet. I could have brought that up, but I figured let’s roll with it)

Hit Points: 13

Magic Points: 14

Luck: 55

Sanity: 65

Move: 8

Skills Above Base:

Brawl 35%, Drive Auto 60%, Dodge 30%, First Aid 35%, History 65%, Intimidate 50%, Language (Own, English) 80%, Language (Other, Ancient Egyptian) 11%, Library Use 50%, Occult 65%, Psychology 40%, Science (Biology) 45%, Science (Chemistry) 51%, Spot Hidden 50%

Credit Rating: 20

Wealth: Average, Spending Level $10, Cash $40 ($10 on her, $30 glove box of the hearse), Assets $1000 (rented apartment ($10/wk rent), used car ($300), refrigerator ($49))

I did look up 1920s hearses to see if there was any option for the hearse to be the part of the family business she owned, but hearses are very expensive, so not a chance. She probably does have access to it, if she wants to alienate her family altogether, but I decided she’d have her own, used but in good condition, 1920 Chevvy Coupe that she keeps at Jo’s so the family don’t know about it. She keeps it mostly for the promise that when things with her brother finally degrade past saving, she can just bug out in her own car, and then the world will be her oyster.

Personal Description: A short, compact woman with bland features once you get past the shiny, twisted burn scar on her face. She smells faintly of chemicals, and tends to be faintly off-putting at the best of times. She’s usually found in driver’s coveralls or men’s clothing, which her family tolerate because she’s generally just not seen, at least not attached to the business.

Ideology & Beliefs: There are forces at work in the world, both evil and spiritual. When you work with the dead, you realise quickly that the body is a frail, useless, damaged thing. There must be more, a breath of some vaster thing, that makes us what we are.

Significant People: Eldridge Webber, her brother, with whom she has a tense relationship, to put it mildly. Edridge is the ‘& Son’ of the Webber & Son funeral home, and will inherit it once their father dies, and has made no bones about the fact that he’ll cut her loose to survive on her own once that happens. He’s also the cause of the scarring on her face, an ‘accident’ when he was 12 and she was 8, and he’d dared her to venture into the embalming room with him. She firmly believes that if her father wasn’t as traditional and had even once considered allowing a female to inherit the business, her brother would have arranged for a much more permanent ‘accident’ for her. Eldridge focuses on the business and glad-handing clients side of the funeral home, while their father still does most of the embalming, so she’s mostly given odd jobs such as driving the hearse and assisting their father in the embalming rooms. She’s almost fine with the knowledge that as soon as the business belongs to her brother, she’ll be out on her ear.

Barnabas Webber, her uncle, who taught her and sponsored her interests despite the ire from the rest of her family. He’s the one who taught her to drive, and the one who sponsored her education so she could get her English and History degree. Now that he’s dead, relations between her and the rest of her family have cooled significantly, not that they were good to start with. He used to be the second Webber in ‘Webber, Webber & Son’, but when he died, Josiah Webber, her father, simply removed that part of the name.

Josephine Razner, a friend from college and fellow spiritualist who shares Asenath’s fascination with history and the occult. Despite Asenath’s generally off-putting demeanour, Jo was delighted by her unusual name, and Asenath’s knowledge of its origins, and they hit it off. Jo is constantly encouraging her to leave the family business altogether and strike out on her own before Eldridge forces the issue for her, but Asenath still feels that would be disloyal to the family as a whole.

Roland Bleeker, a shady sort who has dealings with her brother, and who Asenath is 90% certain is a criminal of some stripe. Both he and Eldridge have attempted several times to get Asenath to do ‘deliveries’ in the hearse that are outside of business hours, and she’s refused them, which has done her relationship with Eldridge no favours either.

Meaningful Locations: Webber & Sons Funeral Home, Arkham. The center around which her world has revolved for almost her entire life, the cause of her worst scars, and the link to her most beloved person, her deceased Uncle Barnabas.

Secondarily, Miskatonic University, the site of some of the happiest times of her life, and the place she met Jo.

Treasured Possessions: A small illustrated copy of Lord Dunsany’s ‘Gods of Pegana’, with a handwritten note on the inside cover from Uncle Barnabas: ‘Dream all the things, dear one. Never stop. Uncle B.’ *(Key Backstory Connection)

Traits: Loyal. Not a lot of people are kind to Asenath, so she will move heaven and earth for the ones that are. She loved Uncle Barnabas with her entire body and soul, and she probably would kill people (or at least find some way to make bodies vanish) for Jo. She’s also stubborn and inclined to stick to her guns in general.

Injuries & Scars: Old chemical burn scars on her right cheek and jaw, deforming her mouth slightly, from an ‘accident’ as a child with the embalming chemicals.

History: From nearly the moment she was born, Asenath Webber’s life has been tied up in the family business, the prosperous Webber & Son funeral home. A dreamy, bookish, stubborn child, she wasn’t popular with most of her family, save only her mother (until her untimely death when Asenath was four) and her Uncle Barnabas, who she utterly adored and has missed terribly these last seven years since his death. After a childhood incident involving her brother left her with permanent scars from chemical burns on her face, she was shunted into the background of family life, away from the public. As a teenager, she had started training as an embalmer, at her father’s side, but her uncle managed to secure a college education for her at Miskatonic University, arguing that it would only enhance the family’s reputation to be able to send her. After her brother, of course, who studied accounting and finance, as befit the heir to the business. Asenath had other interests, however, and a fanciful streak, so her studies were in literature and history. Her own name, and lifelong experience with death, bodies, and the spirituality around them, had also inclined her to more … esoteric studies, and through these she met her dear friend Josephine Razner.

Once she had her degree, however, duty demanded that she return to the funeral home and put her back into the family business. She couldn’t be publicly seen, of course, she was off-putting and inclined to scare off clients, but she found roles as assistant embalmer and, through her talent with automobiles, driver of the funeral home’s hearse. After the death of her uncle, however, and her increasingly strained relationship with her brother as their father gets frailer and the time of his inheritance gets palpably closer, Asenath is looking more and more for a way out before she’s thrown out.

#call of cthulhu #CoC #character concepts #1920s #investigators #undertakers

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lattesforlife · 1 year ago

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For those who live in New Jersey and those who visit . . . .

New Jersey is a peninsula.

Highlands, New Jersey has the highest elevation along the entire eastern seaboard, from Maine to Florida.

New Jersey is the only state where all of its counties are classified as metropolitan areas.

New Jersey has more race horses than Kentucky.

New Jersey has more Cubans in Union City (1 sq. mi.) than Havana, Cuba.

New Jersey has the densest system of highways and railroads in the US.

New Jersey has the highest cost of living.

New Jersey has the highest cost of auto insurance.

New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation.

New Jersey has the most diners in the world and is sometimes referred to as the "Diner Capital of the World."

New Jersey is home to the original Mystery Pork Parts Club (not Spam): Taylor Ham or Pork Roll.

Home to the less mysterious but the best Italian hot dogs and Italian sausage w/peppers and onions.

North Jersey has the most shopping malls in one area in the world, with seven major shopping malls in a 25 square mile radius.

The Passaic River was the site of the first submarine ride by inventor John P. Holland .

New Jersey has 50+ resort cities & towns; some of the nation's most famous: Asbury Park, Wildwood, Atlantic City, Seaside Heights, Cape May.

New Jersey has the most stringent testing along its coastline for water quality control than any other seaboard state in the entire country.

New Jersey is a leading technology & industrial state and is the largest chemical producing state in the nation when you include pharmaceuticals.

Jersey tomatoes are known the world over as being the best you can buy.

New Jersey is the world leader in blueberry and cranberry production (and here you thought Massachusetts?)

Here's to New Jersey - the toast of the country! In 1642, the first brewery in America, opened in Hoboken.

New Jersey rocks! The famous Les Paul invented the first solid body electric guitar in Mahwah, in 1940.

New Jersey is a major seaport state with the largest seaport in the US, located in Elizabeth. Nearly 80 percent of what our nation imports comes through Elizabeth Seaport first.

New Jersey is home to one of the nation's busiest airports (in Newark), Liberty International.

George Washington slept there.

Several important Revolutionary War battles were fought on New Jersey soil, led by General George Washington.

The light bulb, phonograph (record player), and motion picture projector, were invented by Thomas Edison in his Menlo Park, NJ, laboratory

Jersey also boasts the first town lit by incandescent bulbs. The first seaplane was built in Keyport , NJ.

The first airmail (to Chicago) was started from Keyport, NJ.

The first phonograph records were made in Camden, NJ

New Jersey was home to the Miss America Pageant held in Atlantic City.

The game Monopoly, played all over the world, named the streets on its playing board after the actual streets in Atlantic City. And, Atlantic City has the longest boardwalk in the world, not to mention salt water taffy. ( Now made in Pennsylvania)..

New Jersey has the largest petroleum containment area outside of the Middle East countries.

The first Indian reservation was in New Jersey, in the Watchung Mountains

New Jersey has the tallest water-tower in the world. (Union, NJ!!!)

New Jersey had the first medical center, in Jersey City

The Pulaski Sky Way, from Jersey City to Newark, was the first skyway highway.

New Jersey built the first tunnel under a river, the Hudson (Holland Tunnel).

The first baseball game was played in Hoboken, NJ, which is also the birthplace of Frank Sinatra.

The first intercollegiate football game was played in New Brunswick in 1889 (Rutgers College played Princeton).

The first drive-in movie theater was opened in Camden, NJ, (but they're all gone now!).

New Jersey is home to both of "NEW YORK'S" pro football teams!

The first radio station and broadcast was in Paterson, NJ.

The first FM radio broadcast was made from Alpine, NJ, by Maj. Thomas Armstrong.

All New Jersey natives: Sal Martorano, Jack Nicholson, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Jason Alexander, Queen Latifah, Susan Sarandon, Connie Francis, Shaq, Judy Blume, Aaron Burr, Joan Robertson, Ken Kross, Dionne Warwick, Sarah Vaughn, Budd Abbott, Lou Costello, Alan Ginsberg, Norman Mailer, Marilynn McCoo, Flip Wilson, Alexander Hamilton, Zack Braff Whitney Houston, Eddie Money, Linda McElroy, Eileen Donnelly, Grover Cleveland, Woodrow Wilson, Walt Whitman, Jerry Lewis, Tom Cruise, Joyce Kilmer, Bruce Willis, Caesar Romero, Lauryn Hill, Ice-T, Nick Adams, Nathan Lane, Sandra Dee, Danny DeVito, Richard Conti, Joe Pesci, Joe Piscopo, Joe DePasquale, Robert Blake, John Forsythe, Meryl Streep, Loretta Swit, Norman Lloyd, Paul Simon, Jerry Herman, Gorden McCrae, Kevin Spacey, John Travolta, Phyllis Newman, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Eva Marie Saint, Elisabeth Shue, Zebulon Pike, James Fennimore Cooper, Admiral Wm.Halsey,Jr.,Norman Schwarzkopf, Dave Thomas (Wendy's), William Carlos Williams, Ray Liotta, Robert Wuhl, Bob Reyers, Paul Robeson, Ernie Kovacs, Joseph Macchia, Kelly Ripa, and Francis Albert Sinatra and "Uncle Floyd" Vivino.

The Great Falls in Paterson, on the Passaic River, is the 2nd highest waterfall on the East Coast of the US.

You know you're from Jersey when . . . .

You don't think of fruit when people mention "The Oranges." You know that it's called Great Adventure, not Six Flags. A good, quick breakfast is a hard roll with butter. You've known the way to Seaside Heights since you were seven. You know that the state isn't one big oil refinery. At least three people in your family still love Bruce Springsteen, and you know the town Jon Bon Jovi is from. You know what a "jug handle" is. You know that WaWa is a convenience store. You know that the state isn't all farmland. You know that there are no "beaches" in New Jersey--there's the shore--and you don't go "to the shore," you go "down the shore." And when you are there, you're not "at the shore"; you are "down the shore." You know how to properly negotiate a circle. You knew that the last sentence had to do with driving. You know that this is the only "New" state that doesn't require "New" to identify it (try . . Mexico . . . York ..! . . Hampshire-- doesn't work, does it?). You know that a "White Castle" is the name of BOTH a fast food chain AND a fast food sandwich. You consider putting mayo on a corned beef sandwich a sacrilege. You don't think "What exit?" is very funny. You know that people from the 609 area code are "a little different." Yes they are! You know that no respectable New Jerseyan goes to Princeton--that's for out-of-staters. You live within 20 minutes of at least three different malls. You refer to all highways and interstates by their numbers. Every year you have at least one kid in your class named Tony. You know the location of every clip shown in the Sopranos opening credits. You've gotten on the wrong highway trying to get out of the mall. You know that people from North Jersey go to Seaside Heights, and people from Central Jersey go to LBI, and people from South Jersey go to Wildwood. It can be no other way. You weren't raised in New Jersey--you were raised in either North Jersey, Central Jersey or South Jersey. You don't consider Camden to actually be part of the state You remember the stores Korvette's, Two Guys, Rickel's, Channel, Bamberger's and Orbach's. You also remember Palisades Amusement Park. You've had a boardwalk cheese steak and vinegar fries. You start planning for Memorial Day weekend in February.

And finally . .

You've NEVER, NEVER NEVER, EVER pumped your own gas.

(Copied from a friend)

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gengrasmotorcars · 2 years ago

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Gengras Motor Cars

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vermutandherring · 1 year ago

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Video Games are our World Cultural Heritage

Thank you for 100 followers

This industry is very young. Just 61 years ago, Steve Russell created Spacewar! - in fact, the first video game. Just imagine: the man who once gave birth to a new medium (and an art form, if you will) is still alive. I'm afraid I won't make it to Massachusetts Institute of Technology before this legendary figure passes on to a better world. But even so, I am happy to think that we share a single star dome and live in the same epoch.

Although the phenomenon of video games is relatively new in culture, it has already passed the main stages of creation and finally formed. Unfortunately, due to the fact that Ukraine was part of the soviet union at the time of the formation of video games in the world, we missed this important stage of arcade machines and the first home consoles. Our heritage begins in the 90s, after the collapse of the ussr, when 'foreign' technologies finally became part of people's everyday life. At this time, the first development studios were founded and the first games were released, which to this day remain little known not only to the world, but also to Ukrainians themselves.

L-R: Alan Kotok, Steve Russell and J.M. Graetz play Spacewar at the Boston Computer Museum.

It's hard to believe, but speaking of the general context, you and I have already lost a lot. It seems that video games have always existed around us. Every day we learn about the releases of new games, we constantly hear about the continuation of old franchises and the creation of new ones. We play the hits of day, the mediocre games every day and the immortal classics of the past, nostalgic for the carefree days. But when you launch Super Mario Bros again, somewhere out there, the once great game fades into oblivion, leaving no trace behind. In 1958, William Higinbotham (the same one who was part of the team that created the first nuclear bomb) created the game Tennis For Two for the Brookhaven University exhibition, the process of which was displayed on the screen of an oscilloscope. Although Tennis For Two can now be considered the first video game, Higinbotham himself did not attach much importance to his invention, and therefore, after the repeated demonstration of the game at the 1959 exhibition, he disassembled the equipment for subsequent projects. Thus, the first working prototype of a 'video game' is lost to us forever.

'Why do we need some outdated games when we can play the most modern ones or their remakes?' - you may ask. In the article 'The Past as the Future? Nostalgia and Retrogaming in Digital Culture?' Jaakko Suominen claims that players have a kind of desire to experience previous gaming situations or games. Because of this, the modern gaming industry is caught up in the spirit of retrogaming, designed to give you the feeling of the 'good old days'. This concerns not only individual games, but also the artistic solution of individual works, from the visual part to the musical accompaniment. Almost 10 years after its release, I tried Grand Theft Auto 5 for the first time, which impressed me with its references to the first games in the series. These notes of the past are strongly felt in the compositions that accompany the missions and sound effects similar in style, for example, to the same Vice City.

However, no modern game can replace an original game from the 80s or 2000s, as different works represent different eras and their cultures. They give only a ghostly feeling that these are the same sunny days when you first held in your hands a cartridge or disc with your favorite childhood game. The remake is not at all the game that the developers once suffered as something new and unique for its time. This is a different game with a different interpretation of the same events, because it was created in a different cultural context.

The setting. The music. The vibe. It's love at the first sight.

Spacewar! was created by S. Russell in 1962, on a PDP-1 computer used by MIT as a research machine. It was a time when USA was at the height of the Cold War with the soviet union, and their main race track was space flight. The cosmic aesthetic was a popular theme in the culture, exploited to the fullest. Gameplay of Spacewar! consisted in the fact that, controlling the rocket, the player must shoot down enemy targets. When creating his game, S. Russell gave the rockets the features of culturally recognizable symbols. One rocket, called the Wedge, was given the appearance of the Buck Rogers spaceship from the 1939 fantasy television series. Another rocket called Needle received the appearance of the American ballistic missile Redstone. Thus, the first video game captures for us a distant era, surrounded by dreams of the great cosmos, which for the 60s of the last century seemed an incredible achievement. Does such a game have any cultural value today? We have dozens of games on a similar theme, but our dreams of space have turned into ordinary everyday life.

Pic. 1 - The Wedge and Needle | Pic. 2 - Spaceship from The Buck Rogers Serial 1939. | Pic. 3 - Redstone missile on display in Grand Central Terminal in New York, 7 July 1957.

But video games disappear. Although a game can exist not physically, but in virtual space, this does not protect it from the threat of disappearance or loss. The distribution of games most often occurs through services that act as intermediaries between the publisher and the player. One of the biggest gaming services today is Steam. The number of games on this platform grows every year, and as of June 2021, the number of video games presented for sale on Steam reached 50,000 units. At the same time, every day some video games disappear from the service forever. The reason for this may be the expiration date of music rights and exclusive agreements, content of a sensitive nature, violations by developers or their policies, etc.

It is enough to recall the situation with the GTA trilogy from Rockstar Games. In October 2021, the company began to spread information about the re-release of games from the 2000s in the form of a trilogy Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition. The launch was supposed to take place in November-December of the same year, and the original versions of the three games were to be removed from Steam. This act of Rockstar Games caused a very negative reaction among players. Perhaps for the first time in the entire history of video games, the gaming community felt a real culture shock: the threat of the disappearance of one of the most iconic works appeared before its eyes. To a large extent, the gaming community itself has preserved some of the games from the Grand Theft Auto series, without which it is impossible to imagine the legacy of video games today.

I feel uneasy about remakes. And remasters seems like even bigger trouble.

Digital distribution problems are a disease of modern games. The situation is much worse with games that were released much earlier - the means for their reproduction and technical support are constantly aging. Games that require special conditions for playback (such as old consoles) are not supported by the developers themselves, and are under a real threat of physical disappearance. According to game archivist and historian Andrew Borman, time is running out for such works and their rescue.

Losing one or couple of video games may not seem to change the course of history. However, every existing work is a product of human activity, which carries its message to the world. On the way to the formation of games, there were key works that opened previously unseen horizons not only in development and technical progress, but also once again posed to society the question of what art really is, and whether new media, in particular video games, can acquire the features of a work of art.

In a speech at the Game Developers Conference 2015, Jason Scott - archivist, historian of technology - tries to convey that video games have historical value, and also criticizes the attitude of the gaming industry to its own heritage. According to the historian, the main problem with video games lies in their perception by society as a product. Video games have always been considered an off the shelf product that can be easily thrown away if you don't understand its value. J. Scott emphasizes that a video game is an artifact that contains not only its own history or the history of the development of the industry, but also the 'minor' names behind the development of these games.

This is a really interesting talk to hear if you're into saving video games.

As part of the common human heritage, which demonstrates the evolution of society and the accumulated experience, our preferences and beliefs at certain stages of development, as a phenomenon that has a great impact on culture, video games have the right to be preserved. And although the situation is already critical, everything is not as bad as it might seem after my descriptions. Today, various institutions, enthusiasts and fans themselves are dedicated to the preservation of video games. The world hosts video game exhibitions, and museums add individual works to their collections. Thus, in 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, on the initiative of the museum's curator Paola Antonelli, added to its collection a list of 14 video games from the 1980s to 2009 (I wrote a bit about it here).

MoMA is not the only museum of its kind. For example, in the same 2012, the Smithsonian American Art Museum held an exhibition called The Art of Video Games, designed to highlight the evolution of art in the video game medium over its forty-year history. Maybe for you as a gamer, the inclusion of any game in a museum or exhibition isn't that big of a deal. But look at it from a slightly different perspective. When you play the first Sims or Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, you are touching a world heritage as important as the works of Renaissance Titans, Raphael or Michelangelo, or any other artist you prefer. These are works of art that revolutionized industry and culture, laying the foundations of a new era. Playing these games is like holding Scythian gold in your hands, with the difference that you have more options for interacting with the exhibit.

A somewhat mystical atmosphere, muted light and philosophical inscriptions - everything we love in museums of classical art. Photos from the exhibition in the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2012.

I like that the developers themselves are also working to preserve their heritage. Nintendo is endlessly re-releasing its retro Mario games, while Konami, along with the announcement of the Snake Eater remake, is about to release its oldest Metal Gear games for modern gaming devices. We ourselves can contribute to this matter, although not on such a scale. The message of my essay is a call to preserve video games as a part of your history that you can pass on to posterity. If you have old gaming discs or devices, think one more time before disposing of them as unnecessary junk. Give them to friends, acquaintances, interested persons, sell them on the Internet for a pittance, give them to specialty stores or, in the end, save them for your children or grandchildren. After all, a video game is that unique experience that you can not just share, but experience it again and again alone or with dear people. As J. Scott noted in the same GDC 2015 presentation, 'Availability is the path to preservation'. The best way to save a video game is to keep it playable.

Thanks to all subscribers and just interested people who came across my page. I hope my creations will stir at least something in your souls, opening a new facet of video games.

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