#jim fairchild

[spilladabalia]

Grandaddy - Long as I'm Not the One

[sinceileftyoublog]

Small Isles Interview: A Blurry Ecosystem

Photo by Dustin Aksland

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Sometimes, dreaming big pays off--literally, in Jim Fairchild's case. The former Modest Mouse and current Grandaddy lead guitarist and now prolific film composer has been releasing music with collaborator Jacob Snider over the last few years under the moniker Small Isles. The project's debut LP, The Valley, The Mountains, The Sea, was a score to something that didn't tangibly exist: an imagined Rick Moody-written sequel to The Ice Storm adapted into a film by Ang Lee. When I spoke with Fairchild and Snider in 2021, they mentioned collaborating with string player Sienna Peck on an upcoming EP. What I couldn't have foreseen was Fairchild's ultimate endgame: for his imaginary film scoring and real film scoring to develop a symbiotic relationship.

That is, at this point, Fairchild is able to use what I called "filmless music" as a starting point. He'll imagine a film, score it, see where it takes him, and either scrap it, use it for the Small Isles record he's currently working on, or even use it for the real film score he was hired to do. Other times, his professional film scoring will yield sounds that are appropriate for the heady universes he's conjured with Small Isles. Last year, Small Isles released two EPs. The first, which was the Peck collaboration the duo spoke to me about a few years back, was Out in The Sunset, a score to an imagined follow-up to Joe Talbot's The Last Black Man in San Francisco. And the latest, Everything on Memory (Modern Recordings/BMG), released last month, was truly wild. Fairchild dreamed that Donald and Stephen Glover--the creative team behind the TV show Atlanta--wrote a movie in response to Modest Mouse's classic The Moon & Antarctica track "3rd Planet", directed by none other than Christopher Nolan.

As neither Fairchild's dreams nor his creations are hyper specific, the finished Small Isles products often resemble their inspirations more in vibes than anything else. Such is the case with Everything on Memory, a sonic collage of guitars, synthesizers, strings, and wordless vocals. Some songs, like "This Much I Know" and "The Rest is History", sound like your schema of what a film score is, juxtaposing plucky guitars with dramatic, sweeping strings, and in the case of the latter, solemn-sounding piano. Others are more experimental, like the pulsations of "Sure I'm Happy", the bubbly bass thuds of "Dewdrop Daybreak", and the rounded bass and sinewy synths of "Unfulfilled Potential". The EP, and Small Isles songs in general, however, reflect their increasingly hyper-specific touchpoints by juxtaposing moments small and big, giving them equal emotional weight and importance. Last month, I spoke with Fairchild over the phone about Small Isles to date, including Everything on Memory, the project's first live show at Hotel Cafe in November, the formative nature of Modest Mouse, and Terrence Malick. Read our conversation below, edited for length and clarity.

Since I Left You: All Small Isles material so far is scores to imaginary movies. At the same time, you've done actual film scores. Do you take what you learn from film scoring and apply it to these imaginary works?

Jim Fairchild: I've been into film scores since I was a teenager. I scored my first film when I was 17 or 18. It was a student film. Jason [Lytle] from Grandaddy brought over his 4-track, and we assembled a bunch of music one day, and it ended up being a score for his student film. I did a bunch of work in the early 2010s as we were writing Modest Mouse's Strangers To Ourselves. I really had a taste for it. I loved doing it. Once our son was coming along, I set a challenge for myself to figure out how that could become the majority of my music-making life. One way to do it would be to imagine a movie you want to score. The first Small Isles record was me imagining Rick Moody had written a shadow/companion piece to The Ice Storm, which Ang Lee directed. I imagined it taking place in early 2020s California. I started picturing what that would look like.

With the Out in The Sunset EP, I was scoring a follow up to The Last Black Man in San Francisco. I imagined the same team who made that, making this movie about kids from different backgrounds in San Francisco realizing they had more similarities than what societies would suggest to them. The objective was always, "I'm going to start sending this music to directors, and they'd hopefully see this music could accompany visual mediums, and maybe I'd get hired." It worked.

How do those two relate to each other? I have a lot more siloed approaches to music. I could see how Modest Mouse bled into the stuff I was making for TV in the early 2010s, but it was fragmented. But making the Small Isles stuff, I'll start assembling samples and think, "That could be really handy for this type of mood." And as I'm scoring things, I'll think, "That's a great sound that could appear on Small Isles tracks." I want it to be an ecosystem where the lines get blurry. Where do the roots of the tree stop and become another tree? As much as a gift as it is to be in a band like Modest Mouse, it starts to have less to do with making music. I want to make music, to be in the studio investigating that process as much as possible.

SILY: At the time we talked about your debut album, I didn't fully realize subsequent Small Isles material would follow the same idea. Now, with Everything on Memory, you're scoring a film you dreamed up, a Donald and Stephen Glover-written film, directed by Christopher Nolan, in response to Modest Mouse's "3rd Planet", a song from before you even joined Modest Mouse!

JF: Dreams are absurd, right?

SILY: Right! How vivid was this dream?

JF: There was a lot of the movie in the dream. It's gone now. All of this is impressionistic. I have two albums that I'm going to make next year sort of "dreamed up." I don't know where they came from. I have them outlined.

In the dream, it was pretty real. Donald and Stephen Glover were giving DVD commentary, and maybe [Modest Mouse lead singer] Isaac [Brock] was also weighing in. [laughs] I don't remember much of it, but I remember these small, intimate moments that felt Terrence Malick-like, but also these massive celestial moments that dealt with the bigger shit Isaac is talking about in that song.

SILY: "3rd Planet" is a world-building, impressionistic song, the type that makes a teenager have an existential crisis. I was a teenager when I first heard it, and I remember the lyrics blowing my mind.

JF: It still does, dude! I was talking about that song with a friend who is making a video for this EP. I've played that song, I don't know, certainly no fewer than 300 times live, and I was still getting choked up at the enormity of it. He's written many great lyrics, but that one is like, "What the fuck?!?" It's truly existentially magnificent.

SILY: I remember seeing some of the lines scrawled out on a paper-covered wall in my college dorm, just being like, "What the fuck?" A lot of millennials probably have that sort of relationship with that song. I want to ask, though, what has been your relationship with the work of the Glovers and Nolan?

JF: I don't really know Christopher Nolan's work that well. I'm more familiar with the Glovers, particularly those first two seasons of Atlanta. Shortly before our son was born was when those seasons came out. My wife and I were watching it, and I was thinking, "I guess this is the best TV show ever made." A big part of all of this is the suspension of disbelief. Life is fucking surreal. And a lot of times, when you ingest surreal media, whether movies or music, it's constantly reminding you how surreal it is. The thing about Atlanta I loved so much is that it was fucking crazy but not constantly raising its hand saying, "Look how crazy we're being!" You get dropped into these moments that are totally fucking surreal.

Where Nolan came into play is his willingness to collapse the conventional constructs of time. There's a relationship between the way I think about Atlanta and his movies. The bigness thing, too. As I get older, this contributes to the way I think about music and make it. I'm an older dude with a young kid, and now I realize those big moments are real. Getting a #1 song is a tremendous accomplishment, and you should soak those moments up. But the moments where you're holding your kid's hand walking down the street are as big. The collapse of relative scale. I realize how lucky I am to have made it this far at all, to be alive still. A lot of our friends and contemporaries didn't. I really appreciate that. I want to bask in that. It sounds so dumb coming out of my mouth, but life is beautiful. Once you start realizing that all moments can be fairly profound and great--even the bad stuff--the flimsy nature of the relativism of time creeps in.

SILY: You've already mentioned Malick, and I feel like you just described The Tree of Life to a tee, small moments having the same ripple effects as the creation of the universe. On the surface, it might seem absurd, but it's very real even if technically different in scale. Is there anywhere specific where any of these touchpoints, from Modest Mouse to cinema, manifest on Everything on Memory? Or is it more a general vibe?

JF: The way Small Isles works is with the illumination of narrative, to get away from lyric and conventional song structure, even though these aren't crazy song structures. It's meant to capture vibe. The first thing that happens in "Sure I'm Happy", I start going [plays a whistle melody] on this keyboard right here, then I put it in a guitar amp. What settings did I use? It's probably something like [plays synthesizer]. So I have the whistle. I put that down. The whole song is two chords. That's the vibe. You just start chasing it. It somehow fit within the movie I was picturing. From there, you're asking, "What else is happening with this world?" And then you get a little chord sequence. That's the most fun thing about making this music and scoring, to me. At this point in my life, I kind of want music to be a job, and that job is solving a riddle. There's an answer to this question. It might not be the only answer, but there is one. How do I flesh this vibe out? You just start going down these paths.

SILY: What were you just playing?

JF: It's this old Yamaha keyboard I got for The Sophtware Slump. I got it at Circuit City for $300. I use it all the time.

SILY: Did you use it on this record?

JF: There's some of that, tons of soft synths, tons of guitars. I really love using sounds incorrectly: pulling up soft synths and reversing them, or going in and making them something they're not intended to be. I'm far from the only person who does that--tons of people do that, but I love that interrogation of sound. Sometimes, you know you're within spitting distance of what you want, so you re- or deconstruct it to make it unique to a piece of music, to match to what the aesthetic is.

SILY: Tell me about the core group of players you've been working with.

JF: First, there's my collaborator Jacob Snider. [String player] Sienna Peck, who was on all of Out in The Sunset, plays on one song on Everything on Memory. I had never met Sienna in person until we played this show last month. She played a lot of stuff on the Common Ground score. Laura Andrade played the rest of the strings. My friend Keith Karman, who came into Modest Mouse on the last tour and is now kind of in the band, played bass on a song. Mike Cresswell, my collaborator forever, mixed and mastered it.

SILY: How did you come to work with Temme Scott?

JF: I had this project called Grace Meridian, the last song-focused thing I did on my own. Taylor [Broom, the real name of Temme Scott] and I sing everything simultaneously. I was really into this idea of trying to eliminate the gender perspective. I thought a way to do that would be a man and a woman's voice always singing the same damn thing. We made this EP called Clover to Clover, and I love singing with her. She also sang live and assembled a choir when we did the [Small Isles] show last month.

SILY: What about the engineering?

JF: I engineered tons of it. Jacob engineered tons of it. Andy Petr did some stuff at the last minute. He's someone I want to do more stuff with. I love what he does.

SILY: It seems like there's generally a lot of contrast on the record--for instance, on "People Come Down", the sharpness of the synthesizers with the fluttery strings. Can you talk about the role of contrast throughout the whole EP?

JF: When you say that, the first thing that comes to mind is Atlanta. My intention is not to make outside music. Rather, it's interrogating this general concept of how much can we fit inside that I wouldn't ordinarily turn to. Can a contrasting element be intubated into this composition in a way that's somehow beneficial? It doesn't have to be always harmonious, but beneficial to the vibe. It took a long time to get the horns to exist as a contrasting element in "People Come Down", in a way that felt like it flowed to me.

SILY: When I last spoke with you, you were planning a Small Isles show, or at least thinking about it. You finally played the first Small Isles show last month, as you mention. How did it go?

JF: It was super scary. I had never done anything like that. I knew I needed to get myself the actual challenge to do it, not a hypothetical looming in the distance. So I booked a show. I hit up Sienna and asked, "Can we do this? Can you put together a string section?" She took care of so much. I sent her all of the isolated parts, she recruited SUUVI, this incredible cellist, and they played a lot of double stop stuff. She contracted this copyist to do sheet music. Taylor assembled a choir. I asked her whether she knew any piano players, and she recommended Debbie Neigher, who was amazing. There was no money or rehearsal space or practice space. It's so much different than playing a rock and roll show. With Modest Mouse or Grandaddy, you practice a lot. You get familiar with the material. This band, doors were at 7:30, and there were 10 people on stage, and nobody played a note of music until 6. It was the first time I heard this ensemble make sound together. They just knew how to do it.

Joel Graves and Matt Costa, both of whom I've known for a long time, played guitar, so I felt comfortable. But a lot of these people I never met until that night. The show wound up being really good. It's totally all bound to them. They came in and knew the stuff. They seemed excited about doing it together and potentially excited to do more.

For "The Rest is History", the final song on Everything on Memory, I had to have sub-tracks there, because we didn't have a drummer. I had these Pro Tools sessions I had made. It was a crazy amount of work. We worked for weeks. Part of it was in 3/4, and there was this piano melody in 5/4 against the 4/4 of the song. I played it one time and had to go through and adjust everything in MIDI to make it make sense for the rest of the ensemble. I played it on loop because I thought there was no way anybody could possibly play it. During practice, we started to play it, and Debbie says, "Hey Jim, I can play that part. I learned it!" I was super apprehensive. In my head, I thought, "There's no way she can play this." It was me geeking out for a day in a half to construct a piano part. And she fucking nailed it! It made me certainly happy and expanded my concept of scoring these imaginary movies. There's so many places to go from here. I've been doing this for so long now that in the worst moments, you think, "What am I gonna do now?" But you haven't cracked open even a fraction of what you can do musically.

I didn't really get to talk to any of Taylor's choir. I had this crazy intense experience with these people musically and then said, "Thanks guys, later!"

SILY: Where do you go from here?

JF: I want to play more shows. Matt Costa recorded the show, so we're looking to send it to some booking agents. I hope people didn't tell me it was good just because they were my friends. A lot of folks seemed really taken by it. It was a unique show, with rock instrumentation but a choir and strings. As I'm working on some additional film scores right now, I have the kernels some imaginary scores. One is a summer movie, and one is a December sort of release. I have them in my head, so I'm starting to make the music for those. I want to get the team assembled for what those will hopefully become, and record them so they're done by the time spring rolls around.

SILY: I'm glad to hear you finally played live. That's where "music as problem solving" usually comes into play, but it seems like your show was the more seamless endeavor than your studio recording!

JF: It was, all down to them. They just fucking knew it. We played three songs from Out in The Sunset and five from Everything on Memory, and we only sound-checked each once. [laughs] It gave me a lot of optimism. I have this idea in my head that there's a lot of places to go musically, and sometimes you're just telling yourself that as an aspiration, but it turns out it's actually true. It's amazing.

[comicarthistory]

Page from Gen 13/Fantastic Four GN. 2001. Art by Kevin Maguire.

[balu8]

Jim Lee: Fairchild

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"AT THE MOMENT, I'M STARING DOWN THE BARRELS OF FOUR HIGH-TECH RIFLES."

PIC INFO: Spotlight on a splash page of Caitlin Fairchild, artwork from "Gen 13" Vol. 1 #4 ("Free for All"). May, 1994. Image Comics.

STORY/SCRIPT: Brandon Choi, Jim Lee, & J. Scott Campbell.

ARTWORK: J. Scott Campbell

INKERS: Alex Garner, Sandra Hope

COLORS: Wendy Broome, Wildstorm FX

LETTERS: Richard Starkings, Comicraft

Source: https://peakd.com/comics/@modernzorker/michael-s-long-box-the-great-gen12-re-read-part-4-gen13-4-may-1994-image-comics.

[ungoliantschilde]

“The Mother of All Jams”

“Here is the mother of all Jams!! Two years in the making for me after Wizard gave up,lol. Wizard wanted to do a special anniversary piece for the magazine so they got George Perez to do the layouts on most and then sent the piece all over the world to get all the star artists to do their key characters they were most associated with. The project kept getting held up and it was just too much trouble to get it completed. There are almost 150 characters in this mammoth Jam Poster Illustration.I love how the whole piece has direction. All the characters are either moving right on their respective side,left, or right in front of ya.

We have here..

Full figure pencil and inks of Spawn and Spiderman by Todd Mcfarlane. There is no other piece to my knowledge that has spidey and spawn hand drawn by Todd on the same board. They have a combined image of 11x11in with that incredible spaghetti webbing.

Alex Ross- Superman

Travis Charest- Grifter

Jim Lee/Scott Williams- Batman

George Perez-Wonder woman, Starfire, Scarlet Witch, Beast, and the Thing

Erik Larsen-Savage Dragon

Danger Girl, Fairchild, Grunge, Roxie, Burnout, and Rainmaker are all by J. Scott Campbell

Then I had David Finch do everyone else over George Perez's layouts.It is huge, 23X39in

David Finch is one of my favorite artists out there today and it was an honor to have him finish this incredible piece of history. Parts of it were published in a 1990's Wizard Magazine.”

[edwin-paynes-bowtie]

Friendship is underrated. Tell me some platonic fictional relationships you love and adore. My main ones are:

James Herondale, Matthew Fairchild, Thomas Lightwood, Alastair Carstairs, & Cordelia Carstairs (+ every combination of dynamics in the group, especially the Carstairs siblings) / The Last Hours

Edwin Payne & Niko Sasaki / Dead Boy Detectives

Ataru Moroboshi & Shuutaro Mendou / Urusei Yatsura

Will Herondale & Jem Carstairs / The Infernal Devices

Dwight Schrute & Jim Halpert / The Office

Ted Mosby, Barney Stinson, Robin Scherbatsky, Lily Aldrin, & Marshall Eriksen / How I Met Your Mother

Clary Fairchild & Simon Lovelace / The Mortal Instruments

(Not including Payneland because they're in love)

Tagging @themimsyborogove @sasakisniko @edwardianedwin @babyseraphim and @honorarypines <3

[this-shit-is-zucchini-baby]

Gun companies and their reputations

hello murder drones fans! here's a random idea i wanted to post. as we know, people love making fankids. especially with Uzi, and with uzi, people are going to want to name their fankids after guns. ive already seen it, and I understand it. its sick as hell!

however, these are gun companies were talking about, and the gun industry does actually have loads and loads of drama. some of these companies also do not have your best interests in mind. I personally, would not name my son after a gun company with a systemic sexual harassment lawsuit against it, or from a company that fucks over its customers.

Im gonna be compiling a list of gun companies with names that could be used as names for a person, and giving some background on the company and their standing in the market. I'll try to make it alphabetical, and if you see any other company names you want me to add and give insight on, I'll add it with an edit.

Lemme know if i get anything wrong as well! I'm writing most of this down from memory over my experiences with these guns and companies

Armalite - I suppose you could use this as a name?? They used to be owned by Fairchild Corp, and made the first versions of the Ar-15 for the US military, before selling the design to Colt for mass production. The AR-15 was originally designed as full auto btw. the M16 is an Ar15, not every Ar15 is an M16. They make guns still, but they're a far cry from the original Armalite. I haven't heard of anything bad about them particularly.

Beretta - The oldest still standing gun company on the planet, they are almost 500 years old now. They've made derivatives of the Walther P38 for about a century now, also known as the Beretta 92 or M9, and they make sporting and combat shotguns, as well as some newer stuff like the APX striker fired pistols and CX4 carbines. When NFTs were all the rage, they tried to cash in on it with some virtual photos of guns that were worth fake money. It didn't go well, and Beretta support isn't known for responding to customer support emails. Their 92 series of pistols are dead reliable though, just chunky.

Brugger & Thomet - They make good guns, but they're all so ridiculously expensive that it's not worth it at all. They make a lot of popular suppressors, and as a company is reported to pay very well.

Colt - Recently bought out by CZ, Colt is one of oldest American gun companies. They were known for producing the 1911 designed by John Browning, and the AR-15 by Eugene Stoner and Jim Sullivan. Colt did not design the Ar-15, that was Stoner and Sullivan at Armalite when the Airforce requested a new rifle because the M14 was dogshit. Colt made AR-15s for a long time before FN Herstal made a better version (The M16A4, and later the M4) that met the military's needs. Colt has very little drama that's notable, but in the 80s-90s they made the All American 2000, which was called a bad gun in retrospect by every youtuber on the planet. The gun worked perfectly fine, it was reliable, it just has a very long and heavy trigger.

CZ - Mentioned because of its clones and their names. Originally owned by the Czechoslovakian government, before being split off into a private company, they make some modern looking pistols, the CZ-75 and modern sporting derivatives, as well as assault rifles, sporting shotguns, and some bolt action rifles. There's nothing much of note, other than that CZ fans will absolutely have to let you know they're a CZ fan. They're guns are pretty fine, and ive never heard of any reliability issues. the CZ-75 is also a gun thats been used as a base for other companies guns such as IWI's Jericho 941 and Baby Desert Eagle, Tanfoglio's clones, SAR's clones, B&T's Mark 2, the Armalite AR-24, the Springfield P9, the Sphinx SDP- Actually, here's a chart of how many CZ-75 clones there are, its MASSIVE. People love copying this gun. Dont buy a clone, just get a CZ-75.

Https://weaponsman.com/so-how-many-cz-clones-are-there/

Franchi - A long time ago they made the LF-57 SMG, and they made the SPAS-12 shotgun. They were bought by Beretta and Beretta discontinued the SPAS-12 so that Beretta could sell their combat shotguns to police and military instead. Franch makes hunting and sporting shotguns now. The Spas-12 was never a good shotgun because it was ridiculously heavy and chunky, and loading it was a pain in the ass compared to other shotguns that dont need locked loading gates.

Glock - They make exactly one gun in over 31 different configurations. These things are used by everyone and the only reason one is going to malfunction is if you stick aftermarket parts in it. This is the safest gun you could possibly buy, but they fit some people's hands badly. This is like the default price for a gun at 550 USD

Heckler and Koch (HK) - They make the MP5, UMP, G36, HK416, USP, and VP9. They're kinda overpriced and over hyped. The MP7 is a bad gun btw

Kel-tec - (I suppose you could use "Kel") Someone take the crack away from their engineers. They make cheaper guns that are sometimes the absolute best thing on the market (CP33), and other times just a very weird product that doesn't make sense to exist (PR57).

IWI/IMI - The gun company sorta owned by the state of Isreal, their one claim to fame is the Uzi, made by Uziel Gal, who was supposedly kind of an asshole. Every gun they made afterwards was licensed, they just make stuff for the isreali military, and sell stuff to the US too. They make an Ar-15 clone called the "ZION-15". Let that sit in your mind before you buy something from them. They also make the Uzi Pro, which is a micro uzi pistol, with a plastic receiver to make it cheaper to manufacture than the original Uzi's. Its really ugly, overpriced, and you're better off buying a Mac 10 from Masterpiece Arms. IWI used to make the Desert Eagle, before Magnum research started making everything in the USA instead of licensing it to Isreal. Magnum Research is owned by Khar Arms now.

2025-01-26: I forgot, but I was intending to mention IWI because of their gun names, the Uzi, the Galil, and Jericho

Khar Arms - There is nothing to say about this company, I believe they only stay in business because of the Desert Eagle. They make some basic pistols that actually look unique, but there's nothing else, I would assume their guns are reliable at least.

Kimber - A company that was so dogshit at making the 1911, that everyone from Boomers to Zoomers knew not to buy their products. Supposedly they're starting to get out of their rut, and they make some pretty looking 1911 pistols.

Sturm Ruger - American gun company where the owner was actually a bit of a dick and liked to comply with gun restrictions, and supported magazine capacity restrictions. Its likely why the Ruger 10/22 and Mark pistols only held 10 rounds until Ruger as a company started making 25 round stick mags for the 10/22. They also made the Mini-14 which is a smaller version of the M14. Its not that good, but its used frequently against the Ar15 in bad legality arguments. All of their current products are pretty reliable and affordable, besides the previous CEO's opinions, they're a decent company.

Sig Sauer - DO NOT BUY ANY PRODUCTS FROM THIS COMPANY. This is not even about the moral issues like with IWI, SIG SAUER USA GUNS ARE NOT SAFE. Sig Sauer USA is a completely seperate company from the old German Sig Sauer, and the Swiss SIG. Sig now makes containers, Sig Sauer Germany was closed down because they kept trafficking arms, and Sig Sauer USA is now owned by Ron Cohen, who has not been able to answer why their P320s keep shooting randomly. Their products are notoriously unreliable, of poor quality, using parts usually made in 3rd world countries in order to be cheaper, and they had a lawsuit against them for an old women who was constantly sexually harassed by her supervisor at the USA factories. Their MCX rifles and SMGs are known to break randomly, the Cross had a safety issue where the gun could fire upon closing the bolt, the SPEAR has barrel mounting issues where with only your bare hands, could BEND the barrel mount side to side. They are an awful company and have nothing to do with the old Sig 550 rifles and P226 or P210 pistols that were actually decent, if a bit outdated. Bad company, bad to mediocre guns. There are huge rumors that Sig Sauer USA is in bed with some higher ups in the US Military, as Sig won the contract for the military's new service pistol, new service rifle, new service beltfed machine gun and for service ammunition production. Fudd Blasters and Protraband on youtube have made videos on them, explaining in detail what is bad about them. Their guns aren't even that revolutionary or anything, they're just cheap.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSlleZOxy9g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RIvHsZZ9ho

Smith & Wesson - Based in the US, they chase police contracts mainly. Their guns are actually pretty dang good, priced decently, although they mainly chase whatever other companies are doing. I personally wouldn't buy from them because they support the police so much.

Springfield - The Springfield armory that exists now is not that same Springfield armory that the US Government owned for producing guns. Springfield now is known for importing guns of dubious quality and function from Croatia. They used to import/make clones of HK G3 rifles, poorly. They paid a bunch of shills a while back when they brought in the VHS-2 rifle into the US to call the gun a really good product, but the gun was found out to be very mediocre and the shills were selling their guns after making reviews to bank on the artificial market.

Taurus - Before they started making their own G2 and G3 pistols, they got their entire name for copying Beretta pistols and S&W revolvers, cheaply. The G2 and G3 are affordable pistols that are actually very reliable, and thus are usually owned by people in poor situations. There's not much wrong about them as a company, besides making the Taurus Judge.

Walther - German company who made uhm, various, guns for a certain... Political party during the first half of the 1900s (Similar to BMW), they almost exclusively make sporting and defense pistols now. The Walther P99 and PDP pistols are very good, and they make various Olympic style pistols and rifles for professional shooting like the GSP Expert. 100 years ago, we would be calling them the enemy, but currently they make guns for civilians and while they do sell the PDP towards police, I can't think of any notable use it has. The Walther P99 was extremely popular with police in the 90s though, and it's silloette is used on "No guns allowed" signs frequently.

[frank-olivier]

The Birth of an Industry: Fairchild’s Pivotal Role in Shaping Silicon Valley

In the late 1950s, the Santa Clara Valley of California witnessed a transformative convergence of visionary minds, daring entrepreneurship, and groundbreaking technological advancements. At the heart of this revolution was Fairchild Semiconductor, a pioneering company whose innovative spirit, entrepreneurial ethos, and technological breakthroughs not only defined the burgeoning semiconductor industry but also indelibly shaped the region’s evolution into the world-renowned Silicon Valley.

A seminal 1967 promotional film, featuring Dr. Harry Sello and Dr. Jim Angell, offers a fascinating glimpse into Fairchild’s revolutionary work on integrated circuits (ICs), a technology that would soon become the backbone of the burgeoning tech industry. By demystifying IC design, development, and applications, Fairchild exemplified its commitment to innovation and knowledge sharing, setting a precedent for the collaborative and open approach that would characterize Silicon Valley’s tech community. Specifically, Fairchild’s introduction of the planar process and the first monolithic IC in 1959 marked a significant technological leap, with the former enhancing semiconductor manufacturing efficiency by up to 90% and the latter paving the way for the miniaturization of electronic devices.

Beyond its technological feats, Fairchild’s entrepreneurial ethos, nurtured by visionary founders Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, served as a blueprint for subsequent tech ventures. The company’s talent attraction and nurturing strategies, including competitive compensation packages and intrapreneurship encouragement, helped establish the region as a magnet for innovators and risk-takers. This, in turn, laid the foundation for the dense network of startups, investors, and expertise that defines Silicon Valley’s ecosystem today. Notably, Fairchild’s presence spurred the development of supporting infrastructure, including the expansion of Stanford University’s research facilities and the establishment of specialized supply chains, further solidifying the region’s position as a global tech hub. By 1965, the area witnessed a surge in tech-related employment, with jobs increasing by over 300% compared to the previous decade, a direct testament to Fairchild’s catalyzing effect.

The trajectory of Fairchild Semiconductor, including its challenges and eventual transformation, intriguingly parallels the broader narrative of Silicon Valley’s growth. The company’s decline under later ownership and its subsequent re-emergence underscore the region’s inherent capacity for reinvention and adaptation. This resilience, initially embodied by Fairchild’s pioneering spirit, has become a hallmark of Silicon Valley, enabling the region to navigate the rapid evolution of the tech industry with unparalleled agility.

What future innovations will emerge from the valley, leveraging the foundations laid by pioneers like Fairchild, to shape the global technological horizon in the decades to come?

Dr. Harry Sello and Dr. Jim Angell: The Design and Development Process of the Integrated Circuit (Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation, October 1967)

Robert Noyce: The Development of the Integrated Circuit and Its Impact on Technology and Society (The Computer Museum, Boston, May 1984)

Tuesday, December 3, 2024

[sarahaktozier]

Hi guys! so, yeah, my account is deleted, so i was thinking about rewriting the request list. here are the fandom's i write for but before requsting please remember theses stuff:

i only write 'x reader'

i don't feel comfortable writing about (male x male) or (female x female)

i don't write smut, NSFW and things like that.

i only write 'female!reader' becasue i'm more comfortable like that :)

now for the characters:

(by the way you can request for the actors\actress's of those characters too)

MCU:

Romantic and platonic:

Tony Stark

Steve Rogers

Loki Odinson

Thor Odinson

Stephen Strange

Peter Quill

Deadpool/Wade Wilson

Wolverine/Logan Howlett

Pietro Maximoff

Platonic only:

Natasha Romanoff

Wanda Maximoff

Yelena Belova

Gamora

Stranger things:

Romantic and platonic:

Mike Wheeler

Lucas Sinclair

Dustin Henderson

Will Byers

Steve Harrington

Eddie Munson

Jonathan Byers

Platonic only:

Max Mayfield

Billy Hargrove

Jim Hopper

Joyce Byers

El Hopper

Robin Buckley

IT (2017 and 2019):

Romantic and platonic:

Richie Tozier

Bill Denbrough

Stanley Uris

Eddie kaspbrak

Platonic only:

Beverly Marsh

Ben Hanscom

Mike Hanlon

The black phone:

Romantic and platonic:

Robin Arellano

Finney Blake

Vance Hopper

Platonic only:

Gwen Blake

Albert Shaw (the grabber)

Bruce Yamada

Griffin Stagg

Billy Showalter

Dead poats society:

Romantic and platonic:

Charlie Dalton

Neil Perry

Knox Overstreet

Todd Anderson

Platonic only:

John Keating

Queen:

Yes, I'm a huge Queen nerd

Romantic and platonic:

Brian May

Roger Taylor

John Deacon

Platonic only:

Freddie Mercury

Others:

Romantic and platonic:

Boris Pavlikovsky (the goldfinch)

Miles fairchild (the turning)

Ziggy Katz (when you finish saving the world)

Trevor Spengler (ghostbusters)

Sherlock Holmes (BBC and RDJ)

Ravi Singh (AGGGTM)

Freddy Freeman (Shazam!)

Platonic only:

MPHFPC characters

Pip Fitz-amobi (AGGGTM)

Cara Ward (AGGGTM)

[thetruecthulhu9]

@imgonnagetkilledbynutstink accidentally inspired me to assign the 6 idiots as fancast TMA characters. Bare in mind this is whoever I think matches best, not the ideal fancast

Mathew Baynton - Danny stoker

Jim Howick - Jared hopworth

Simon farnaby - Simon fairchild

Martha Howe-Douglas - not!sasha

Laurence rickard - Raymond fielding

Ben willbond - Peter lukas

[spilladabalia]

Grandaddy - Cabin In My Mind

[haveyoureadthismgyabook]

Series info...

Book one in the Dear America series

A Journey to the New World

The Winter of Red Snow: The Revolutionary War Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1777 by Kristiana Gregory

When Will This Cruel War Be Over?: The Civil War Diary of Emma Simpson, Gordonsville, Virginia, 1864 by Barry Denenberg

A Picture of Freedom: The Diary of Clotee, a Slave Girl, Belmont Plantation, Virginia, 1859 by Patricia McKissack

Across the Wide and Lonesome Prairie: The Oregon Trail Diary of Hattie Campbell, 1847 by Kristiana Gregory

So Far from Home: The Diary of Mary Driscoll, an Irish Mill Girl, Lowell, Massachusetts, 1847 by Barry Denenberg

I Thought My Soul Would Rise and Fly: The Diary of Patsy, a Freed Girl, Mars Bluff, South Carolina, 1865 by Joyce Hansen

West to a Land of Plenty: The Diary of Teresa Angelino Viscardi, New York to Idaho Territory, 1883 by Jim Murphy

Dreams in the Golden Country: The Diary of Zipporah Feldman, a Jewish Immigrant Girl, New York City, 1903 by Kathryn Lasky

Standing in the Light: The Captive Diary of Catharine Carey Logan, Delaware Valley, Pennsylvania, 1763 by Mary Pope Osborne

Voyage on the Great Titanic: The Diary of Margaret Ann Brady, RMS Titanic, 1912 by Ellen Emerson White

A Line in the Sand: The Alamo Diary of Lucinda Lawrence, Gonzales, Texas, 1836 by Sherry Garland

My Heart Is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Rose, a Sioux Girl, Carlisle Indian School, Pennsylvania, 1880 by Ann Rinaldi

The Great Railroad Race: The Diary of Libby West, Utah Territory, 1868 by Kristiana Gregory

A Light in the Storm: The Civil War Diary of Amelia Martin, Fenwick Island, Delaware, 1861 by Karen Hesse

The Girl Who Chased Away Sorrow: The Diary of Sarah Nita, a Navajo Girl, New Mexico, 1864 by Ann Turner

A Coal Miner's Bride: The Diary of Anetka Kaminska, Lattimer, Pennsylvania, 1896 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

Color Me Dark: The Diary of Nellie Lee Love, the Great Migration North, Chicago, Illinois, 1919 by Patricia McKissack

One Eye Laughing, the Other Weeping: The Diary of Julie Weiss, Vienna, Austria to New York, 1938 by Barry Denenberg

My Secret War: The World War II Diary of Madeline Beck, Long Island, New York, 1941 by Mary Pope Osborne

Valley of the Moon: The Diary Of Maria Rosalia de Milagros, Sonoma Valley, Alta California, 1846 by Sherry Garland

Seeds of Hope: The Gold Rush Diary of Susanna Fairchild, California Territory, 1849 by Kristiana Gregory

Christmas After All: The Great Depression Diary of Minnie Swift, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1932 by Kathryn Lasky

Early Sunday Morning: The Pearl Harbor Diary of Amber Billows, Hawaii, 1941 by Barry Denenberg

My Face to the Wind: The Diary of Sarah Jane Price, a Prairie Teacher, Broken Bow, Nebraska, 1881 by Jim Murphy

Where Have All the Flowers Gone? The Diary of Molly MacKenzie Flaherty, Boston, Massachusetts, 1968 by Ellen Emerson White

A Time for Courage: The Suffragette Diary of Kathleen Bowen, Washington, D.C., 1917 by Kathryn Lasky

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Diary of Bess Brennan, Perkins School for the Blind, 1932 by Barry Denenberg

Survival in the Storm: The Dust Bowl Diary of Grace Edwards, Dalhart, Texas, 1935 by Katelan Janke

When Christmas Comes Again: The World War I Diary of Simone Spencer, New York City to the Western Front, 1917 by Beth Seidel Levine

Land of the Buffalo Bones: The Diary of Mary Ann Elizabeth Rodgers, an English Girl in Minnesota, New Yeovil, Minnesota, 1873 by Marion Dane Bauer

Love Thy Neighbor: The Tory Diary of Prudence Emerson, Green Marsh, Massachusetts, 1774 by Ann Turner

All the Stars in the Sky: The Santa Fe Trail Diary of Florrie Mack Ryder, The Santa Fe Trail, 1848 by Megan McDonald

Look to the Hills: The Diary of Lozette Moreau, a French Slave Girl, New York Colony, 1763 by Patricia McKissack

I Walk in Dread: The Diary of Deliverance Trembley, Witness to the Salem Witch Trials, Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1691 by Lisa Rowe Fraustino

Hear My Sorrow: The Diary of Angela Denoto, a Shirtwaist Worker, New York City, 1909 by Deborah Hopkinson

The Fences Between Us: The Diary of Piper Davis, Seattle, Washington, 1941 by Kirby Larson

Like the Willow Tree: The Diary of Lydia Amelia Pierce, Portland, Maine, 1918 by Lois Lowry

Cannons at Dawn: The Second Diary of Abigail Jane Stewart, Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, 1779 by Kristiana Gregory

With the Might of Angels: The Diary of Dawnie Rae Johnson, Hadley, Virginia, 1954 by Andrea Davis Pinkney

Behind the Masks: The Diary of Angeline Reddy, Bodie, California, 1880 by Susan Patron

A City Tossed and Broken: The Diary of Minnie Bonner, San Francisco, California, 1906 by Judy Blundell

Down the Rabbit Hole: The Diary of Pringle Rose, Chicago, Illinois, 1871 by Susan Campbell Bartoletti

[tessherongraystairs]

Kit reads the diary and poems of Matthew Fairchild and he is convinced that Matthew secretly had a crush on Alastair so he asks Jem and Tessa about it and they both laugh it off and say "oh no no no Matthew and Alastair were like Gabriel and Will, friendly rivals" and then Kit stares off like he's looking into a camera like Jim from the office

*I will die on the hill that is matthew was secretly into alastair bc 1) alastair is hot as fuck and 2) matthew has a habit of developing crushes on people he shouldn't and the self resentment(plus possible internalized homophobia) from that crush could explain why he was always so upset with alastair for no reason

oh ya also he kept on describing Alastair's eyebrows

im not sure if tht's in a fanfic or not

plot twist gabriel/will were into each other LMAOOOOOOO

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

Grandaddy - The Paradise, Boston, Massachusetts, August 9, 2003

Twenty years ago, my girlfriend Dulcie and I climbed aboard the Grandaddy tour bus, which was parked in front of the Paradise on Commonwealth Ave. I was just a kid, trying to get some music journalist cred; this may not have been going backstage to interview Mick at a Rolling Stones concert, but it felt like a big deal at the time!

I chatted for a while with drummer Aaron Burtch, who was a super nice dude. Dulcie (who I would soon marry!) snapped some pics afterwards (Jason Lytle was a no show, sadly). Later, we caught the show in the very very very hot Paradise. Grandaddy was a (surprisingly?) terrific live band both times I saw them — something that's on display on this excellent recording. It's available on the massive Grandaddy Live Archive, which is a wonderful resource. All bands should have a page like this!

And hey, here's the article I wrote for the long-defunct Junkmedia.org:

The execs at V2 Records were shocked earlier this year when they received the tapes for Grandaddy's new record, mysteriously titled Arm of Roger: The Ham and Its Lily. The label was expecting big things from the band, especially following the critical and commercial success of 2000's masterful The Sophtware Slump. But after almost a year of recording in frontman Jason Lytle's home studio, the Modesto, CA-based group had turned in a follow-up that was disappointing, to say the least.

In fact, the new record was terrible.

Kicking off with the sonic mayhem of "Robot Escort" and closing with an offensive, if nonsensical ditty called "The Pussy Song", Arm of Roger was nothing short of career suicide — 35 minutes of un-listenable garbage. V2 staff members spent about a week in a state of panic, thinking that one of their flagship bands had gone completely off the deep end.

Grandaddy drummer Aaron Burtch chuckles, recalling the label's reaction. "The people who didn't know us that well there, they were saying, 'We've gotta get these guys into rehab, this is a bad situation, there's absolutely no way we can put this record out.'" But finally, the band's A&R; person, Kate Hyman, left a message on Lytle's answering machine.

"OK, motherfuckers," she said. "Where's the real album?"

"There had just been one too many record label calls to Jason's house, wondering where the record was," Burtch laughingly explains, relaxing in the "smoking lounge" of Grandaddy's tour bus a few hours before the band's show at the Paradise in Boston. As "a kind of tension-breaker" at the tail-end of a long and difficult year of recording sessions, Lytle, guitarist Jim Fairchild, and keyboardist Tim Dryden concocted the Arm of Roger album in three alcohol-fueled nights. "They just got super-hammered and banged this really stupid record out really fast," Burtch says. "And then we Fed-Ex'd it right over to them. It's good to keep people on their toes. Especially record labels."

V2 must have breathed a collective sigh of relief when Grandaddy duly delivered Sumday a week later. Picking up where The Sophtware Slump left off, the "real album" is easily one of the year's best. While not as career-defining as its predecessor, Sumday refines the band's futuristic pop sound and features some of Lytle's most accomplished songwriting to date. Like all Grandaddy releases, the new album is a self-produced affair. "One hundred percent of the album was recorded at Jason's house," states Burtch proudly. "We've always, always done that. I don't think we could do it any other way."

Despite the comfortable confines of Lytle's home studio, Sumday's birthing process wasn't an easy one. "It took a long time," Burtch says. "There were five or six months of set-up time, starting with us getting a bunch of new gear in. Then we had to make sure everything worked. And then we had to make sure Jason knew how to work it all." Finally, the band commenced recording, only to hit a wall about halfway through. "We had about six songs finished, but we had to take a break so Jason could get his head back on straight. He had just been down in the dungeon for months by that point."

Another disturbing development was Modesto's burgeoning reputation in the media as a hotbed for shady activities. "It's become the capital of young missing women, which is kind of scary," Burtch says of the central California tract-housing sprawl Grandaddy calls home. "There were the Yosemite Murders four years ago, and then the whole Laci Peterson thing happened. It's terrible, but if you live there, you just think, 'That fuckin' figures'." Still, he has no plans to relocate. "It's a weird place, for sure," he admits. "But I'm not gonna move, as far as I know. That's because we've all kind of built our own little oasis there that's separate from everything else."

Not that the band will be spending much time stoking the homefires in the coming months. With a tour itinerary that began in April and stretches well into December, they'll be lucky to spend more than a weekend off of the road. "This," says Burtch, pausing to gesture towards the cramped confines of the band's tour bus, "is not what we do. We make music, and we'd like to play shows, but we don't want to play a show a night for a year and a half. Radiohead has it down. They put out their record, play forty shows and then they go home. It'd be neat to be afforded a luxury like that. That would be the ideal. Big records, not so big tours."

Grandaddy isn't at this level yet — not by a long shot. Still, the band is selling out most of their club dates, and is greeted rapturously by fans. Upcoming shows in the UK and the US with Super Furry Animals will see the band reaching an even larger audience. "That'll be really cool," says Burtch. "Super Furry Animals had us come out and open for them in the UK in 1998, before anyone knew who we were out there. We've been friends with them since then. And that was the first time we'd played big places, with proper sound equipment and all that. So we owe them a huge debt."

Of course, the current tour was almost over before it began. During the band's spring stint as the opening act for Pete Yorn, guitarist Fairchild was literally run over by a tour bus carrying production equipment. After a few too many post-concert libations, he stumbled down some stairs and found himself beneath the wheels of the 18-wheeler. Miraculously, Fairchild only broke some small bones under his shoulder, and was onstage performing (with his arm in a sling) a few days later. "Hey, shit happens," says Burtch of the incident. "Sometimes you almost die, sometimes you don't. You put a bunch of skateboarders in a bus and tell 'em 'You can't do this and you can't do that, and you have to be back here at one o'clock' — you're fuckin' asking for it. Shit happens..."