#transposed modes

[guitarguitarworld]

Modal Chords:Modal Chordal Harmony

Modal Chords: Harmony

CLICK SUBSCRIBE! Modal Chords: “Chords” from Transposed Mode [C as Root] Lesson/How to/Examples Please watch video above for detailed information and examples: Hi Guys, Moving on from our last blog on the Modal backing track, I have included another video [above] explanation regarding the modal chords/harmony that I employed. PDF MODAL CHORDS: pdf-modal-chordsmodal chords Download IF THIS…

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

OH MY GOD I JUST SAW THE NEW PATCH NOTES level 35 umbral soul?? i am whooping and cheering and throwing my hat up in the air this was so fucking needed...

[determinate-negation]

Zionism is an antisemitism. What do we mean by this? The Zionist has no particular disposition towards Jews qua Jews—if they are nationalists, they are embraced; if they are not, they are despised. Or further: if a Jew declares “I am not a Zionist,” the Zionist retorts, “then you are not a Jew.” Zionists demand absolute devotion to the national project, and, like the Christian supersessionists before them, attempt to replace Judaism as a religion, degrading it into yet another vulgar nationalism premised on a constructed racial identity. But even on these terms, “racial belonging” is not sufficient for the Zionist to consider someone a Jew. It is clear that the Zionist considers anti-Zionist Jews to be their enemy—over and above all others except the Palestinian, the former representing a fifth column in the war of extermination against the latter. Anti-Zionist Jews are regularly subjected to Zionist vitriol, which targets them specifically as Jews—“Kapo,” “self-hating Jew,” “Nazi,” “race traitor,” etc…[1]

But Zionism shares more with antisemitism than a hatred of certain Jews, because antisemitism is more than simply the hatred of Jews. It is a personal and social pathology, a manner of thinking, a form of reactionary modernity—one distinct from other forms of racism or xenophobia, though they share a family likeness. Zionism is an antisemitism, first and foremost, because it internalizes and recapitulates the very same European antisemitism that sought the extermination of the Jews in the Shoah. It is not only the pathology transposed into a new context, but the continuation of its tactics as well.

Because antisemitism is a mode of thought, however, it does not necessarily have a fixed target. The group which occupies the hated position is mutable. As Adorno and Horkheimer write, “depending on the constellation, the victims are interchangeable . . . so each of them can replace the murderer, in the same blind lust for killing, as soon as he feels the power of representing the norm.” Since the Nakba, it is the Zionist who represents the norm; the Palestinian has now taken their place as victim—the constellation has changed. If we are to understand Zionism, we must understand its relation to antisemitism, and not just to fascism—though, as George Habash told the Associated Press in 1984, “Zionism is fascism, exactly.” Further, considering the murder that always follows when antisemitism permeates the organs of state, and considering the genocidal slaughter which Zionism has wrought, we must say, to update a phrase from Moishe Postone: no analysis of Zionism that cannot account for the extermination of the Palestinians is fully adequate.

[sage-nebula]

Little headcanons I have about Stan and Ford's childhood, and their statuses as the golden child and the scapegoat in the eyes of their father Filbrick:

I think that, prior to starting school, there is every likelihood that their positions in Filbrick's eyes were reversed: that Stan was the golden child, while Ford was the scapegoat -- the "extra Stan," if you will. I think this is likely for a couple of reasons; Stan's personality was bolder from the outside, more confident and naturally more aggressive, and therefore more traditionally "masculine." By contrast, Ford was shyer, less confident, less "manly." And then, of course, there is Ford's extra finger -- a "deformity," an "imperfection," something that could have been seen by a man as terrible as Filbrick was as an imperfection, something he was absolutely "not impressed" by.

So it is possible that, before the boys entered kindergarten, that Stan was the favored twin while Ford was the neglected one. Of course, the boys were very young for most of these years; they wouldn't remember most of them. But they would remember some of them, and then they entered school . . .

I headcanon that Stan was hit with the double whammy of learning disabilities: both dyslexia and dyscalculia. Unfortunately for Stan, he was a child in the 1960s. Research on both of these learning disabilities was still underway, to the point where a consensus on the definition of dyslexia alone wouldn't be reached until 1968. It wouldn't appear in the DSM III until the 1980s, either. And don't even get me (someone who is afflicted with it) started on dyscalculia; most people still don't even know it exists now, in 2024, much less back then when Stan would have been in school.

So the boys are in school, and Stan is struggling because his learning disabilities make reading and mathematics very difficult for him. He is playing on hard mode. But Ford, who has neither of these disabilities, is able to breeze through his work and to the top of the class. And suddenly he is able to do something that impresses the father that, heretofore, saw him as an extra, as an embarrassment, as a weakling with a "deformity." Meanwhile, the previously preferred son is the one who is now being an embarrassment by not even being able to do simple addition and subtraction, by struggling to read books that are meant for kids even younger than he is no matter how hard he tries.

And so the positions flip. Ford becomes the golden child, Stan becomes the scapegoat.

When he's little, Stan really does try with his schoolwork. He really does. But no matter how hard he tries he still can't get it to make sense in his brain, and his father and his teachers insist that he's just not trying, that he doesn't care, that he's lazy, that he's a slacker no matter what he does, so eventually he stops trying. Because if they're going to say he's not trying anyway, and if he's not going to get it even when he does try, then why bother? What's the point? So he gives up and decides to just copy Ford's homework.

And as for Ford, well . . . he realizes at some point somewhat early on that there is something up with the way Stan processes things. Of course, as a child, he doesn't know about things like "dyslexia" or "dyscalculia" either. But he'll see Stan look at a math problem, and go to copy it down, and the numbers will be transposed. Or he'll see Stan read a word out loud and mispronounce it as if the letters are flipped. And he thinks, there's something going on here, Stan's not doing this on purpose. But he's afraid to say anything. Because what if there is something wrong, and they get it fixed, and then suddenly Stan is just as good at school as Ford is? And then Stan is their father's favorite again, and Ford is once again just the unwanted, deformed extra? He can keep Stan from flunking out of school by letting Stan copy his homework. Their father won't be impressed with him, but so long as Ford lets him copy his homework and cheat off his tests, it'll be okay. That'll be fine. Ford remembers just enough of early childhood (and sees enough of the way Filbrick treats Stan) to know that he doesn't want to be the scapegoat again. The guilt eats at him, but he feeds it the justifications that he is still helping Stanley, anyway, by helping him cheat. So he kept quiet.

Years later, when they're on the Stan-o-War II, memories of their childhood resurface. Ford thinks about Stan's difficulties doing homework, and thinks about how difficult reactivating the portal to bring him home must have been -- both the reading and the mathematical equations involved, all that Stanley pushed through for thirty years to accomplish something that, for him, should have been impossible. (And Ford feels guilty for thinking that, but it's nothing compared to how bad he feels for the nasty things he wrote about Stan's reactivating of the portal in his journal. His face burns with shame when he imagines Dipper and Mabel reading those pages, and he only hopes they didn't share them with Stanley.) He does inevitably bring it up one evening over Irish coffees.

"Stanley, did you ever get tested?" "For what, STDs? Yeah, a few times. Why, do you need to get -- " "NO, for the love of -- for a learning disability. For -- " "Whoa, time out, what're you suggestin' I'm disabled for? I know I'm not the smartest guy in the world -- hell, we all know I'm dumb as bricks -- but -- " "That's exactly -- not it. You aren't stupid. I think you have -- do you know what dyslexia is?" "Sounds like an STD for nerds." "I need more whiskey in this coffee."

[petermorwood]

Word changes...

All of the following is IMO, so YMMV. :->

*****

Anyone noticed how "weaponry" is used nowadays in places where "weapons" would work just fine (and is often more correct)?

Yes, they ARE interchangeable, sort-of, but it's clunky and sounds to me either slightly journo-pompous or like a failure to remember the right word so plugging the most similar one into its place.

ETA: I checked one of my dictionaries, and while "weapons" is more modern, "weaponry" is an obsolete word which has come back into favour. I wonder why...?

*****

"Decimate" turns up all the time, usually when the correct word is "devastate".

Merriam-Webster says: "It's totally fine to use 'decimate' as a synonym for 'devastate'. This is why."

Beg to differ.

As the M-W article points out, "decimate" originally meant a Roman military punishment applied to one man in ten of a guilty unit. (Initially execution, but this had a rotten effect on unit morale, so it was reduced in severity to fatigues, extra drill or restricted rations.)

That's now considered a far too specific meaning and only linguistic pedants dig their heels in. Quite right too, and I speak here as a (bit of a) linguistic pedant...

However, it remains a useful word for more generalised incomplete destruction of living things - saying a regiment, flock, herd or population was "decimated" implies there are some survivors without quibbling over how many tenths. If totally wiped out, however, that's when words like "destroyed" or "obliterated" are more appropriate.

On the other hand something inanimate like a factory, city or region would be "devastated" - and in addition, saying someone is emotionally devastated is understandable, but saying they're emotionally decimated is peculiar.

Two words, several meanings.

It's like cutlery: a spork can replace knife, fork and spoon, but individual utensils give a lot more precision and variation of use.

*****

There are also a couple of real howlers, not just transposed words but actual errors.

One I've heard several times is using "siege" (a noun, or thing) instead of "besiege" (a verb, or action).

For reference, there's a term called noun-verbing, and the practice is quite old: "table the motion / pencil you in / butter him up / he tasks me", but all are either when there isn't already a verb-form of the word, or as a more picturesque way of saying something.

(Interesting side-note about "table the motion": in US English, it means "to postpone discussion" while in UK, CA and I think AU English, it means the complete opposite, "to begin discussion". Why there's this difference, I have no idea, but it's worth remembering as a Brit-fix when writing, also in a real-life business context.)

There IS an existing verb for the action of surrounding a castle and cutting it off from outside help, and that verb isn't "sieged". It's "besieged" or "under siege". Anywhere using "sieged" as a verb is wrong. The Firefox spellchecker in Tumblr Edit Mode is telling me it's wrong right now.

Merriam-Webster, I'm looking at you again.

*****

There's also "coronate" used as a verb. "The King was coronated at Westminster Abbey". Nope. He was CROWNED.

Coronate is an adjective (meaning crown-shaped) and was coined in in the 1600s by a botanist, as a word to describe the shape of certain plants.

The current Royal-associated usage seems to be a bastard back-formation from "coronation", because the act of putting on a crown is the verb "to crown".

This is almost identical in German, French, Italian and Spanish, with noun and verb the same. The only difference is that their verbs have, what a surprise, verb-endings (-en, -er, -re and -ar) on the noun while English does not.

Because English doesn't like to make things that easy...

"Coronated" might be people trying to sound archaic, or those who've bought into the dopey "said-is-dead" school, who perform any linguistic contortion to avoid common words, and who've been taught that repetition in a sentence - "crowned with a crown" - is BAD.

Is "coronated at a coronation" in some way better?

Guess what's got uncritical examples...

If that's M-W scholarship, I'll stick to the OED and my old but utterly reliable New Elizabethan Dictionary, thanks very much.

*****

Language is funny: sometimes funny ha-ha, sometimes funny annoying, but often just funny peculiar, because English etc. etc...

[usafphantom2]

How to identify and track military aircraft in online applications

It is surprisingly easy to track what is flying above you, but there are limits - you will still see only what the military wants you to see.

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 12/24/2023 - 14:40 in Military

The system, known as ADS-B, allows you to quickly search for what is flying in your vicinity, or even on the other side of the world.

In the past, before the 2000s, people looked at the sky and saw the trail of condensation created by commercial and military jets at high altitudes and wondered what would be the aircraft that passed over our heads, where it was going, where it came from. Today, thanks to a worldwide transponder system, you can track even U.S. military aircraft.

About a decade later, it was already possible to follow commercial aircraft, knowing which airline, flight level, speed and route taken by the flights, being able to accurately follow the arrival of a plane at the airport.

Currently, equipped with a smartphone and with a particular app or website, we can find all this and much more.

Civil aviation authorities around the world began to implement Automatic Transmission of Dependent Surveillance (ADS-B) in the early years. The ADS-B is an aircraft-mounted transponder system that transmits a variety of information in real time, including the location, speed, direction of the aircraft and a unique transponder code for each aircraft. This information, plotted on a map, gives pilots and ground controllers the ability to quickly get a sense of the local airspace (or the airspace of most places on Earth).

Transponder signals can also be captured by cheap terrestrial receivers that amateurs, aviation enthusiasts and others can build for less than $100 using widely available hardware and software, some of which can be obtained on flight tracking sites.

Movement of aircraft tracked by the ADS-B Exchange around the world.

As of 2021, ADS-B transponders are mandatory in the USA, Europe, Australia, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Taiwan and Vietnam, and the system is being implemented in China, Canada and Saudi Arabia.

In the United States, almost every type of aircraft - from commercial aircraft and small private aircraft to military fighters, helicopters, bombers, tankers, information-collection aircraft, transport, special operations aircraft, drones and even VIP aircraft carrying the president and members of Congress - are required to transpose into controlled airspace.

A screenshot of the online flight tracking site ADS-B Exchange showing a snapshot of military flights in the United States on July 18 of this year on the ADS-B Exchange.

The information is not only available to the aviation community. The ADS-B Exchange website gathers aircraft tracking data and makes it available in real time, allowing anyone to track air traffic anywhere the system is working.

Unlike FlightRadar24.com or FlightAware.com - which rely on flight tracking data streams provided by the FAA and other international aviation authorities or obtained from Aireon's global ADS-B air traffic surveillance and tracking network, as well as ground-based ADS-B receivers - ADSBExchange.com relies on thousands of independently owned ground-based ADS-B receivers and multilayer devices, or MLAT.

MLAT receivers in groups of three or four in a small geographical area use triangulation to track aircraft. In other words, if an aircraft is not using ADS-B for transponder as military aircraft sometimes do, MLAT receivers can still capture their S-Mode transponder signals and establish a position and tracking for an aircraft, as well as altitude and speed data.

The network of receivers of the ADSBExchange.com website includes 10,000 MLAT devices worldwide. As it does not collect flight tracking data from government or commercial sources, it may offer "unfiltered" flight tracking.

ADS-B Exchange merges ADS-B data with other publicly known data on military and civilian aircraft around the world. Individual aircraft are plotted on OpenStreetMap - a free geographical database of the world - represented by color-coded icons according to altitude. The icons range from individual autostos and Cessna 182 to four-engine Boeing 747 and Airbus A380 civil aircraft. Military icons include U-2, KC-135 Stratotankers, C-17 Globemaster III, C-5M Super Galaxy, V-22 Ospreys and so on, although fighters are often represented by a more generic icon model of swept wing and stuffy nose.

A click on the icon includes spatial information, including ground speed, altitude and location, ADS-B signal strength and other data. It also includes the registration of the aircraft, the country of registration and adds a photograph or thumbnail of the aircraft when possible.

All this means that, with the click of a button, you can instantly find out what is flying near you.

Although aircraft tracking has long been a niche hobby among aviation enthusiasts who like to catalog the comings and goings of aircraft, the public availability of transponder data in mid-air also offers journalists, researchers and other observers an effective means of tracking the movements and activities of the planes of the richest and most powerful in the world. The aggregation and analysis of public flight data shed light on the CIA's torture flights, the movements of the Russian oligarchs, and Google's friendly relationship with NASA.

Flights from ISR platforms tracked in the Ukraine region for a period of one month, at the end of last year.

More recently, these tracking techniques have gained international attention after attracting the wrath of Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. After buying social media giant Twitter, Musk banned an account that shared the movements of his private jet.

Despite repeated promises to protect freedom of expression - and a specific promise not to ban the @ElonJet account - on the platform, Musk censored anyone who shared the whereabouts of his plane, claiming that the data obtained entirely legally and totally public was equivalent to "murder coordinates".

A Global Hawk flown remotely with the indicater FORTE12 was the last aircraft tracked over Ukraine before the invasion of Russian forces and the closure of the country's airspace to civilian air traffic, according to the global flight tracking service Flightradar24.

Soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a US Global Hawk, with the indication FORTE12, was followed almost daily by thousands of people on the Flighradar24 platform.

Publicly available flight tracking data is a growing problem for the U.S. military, a senior Pentagon official said recently.

Sites such as ADSBExchange.com, FlightRadar24.com and FlightAware.com aggregate flight data in the United States and abroad using a combination of commercial and citizen-owned sensors that capture the movements of commercial, civil and military aircraft in real time, 24 hours a day.

"The Department of Defense considers open source flight tracking and data aggregation on our aircraft a direct threat to our ability to conduct military air operations around the world," the U.S. Air Force said.

An F-35 fighter was tracked in the Flightradar 24 app earlier this year, during a flight near Phoenix, Arizona.

Aggregated by websites and retransmitted on social media accounts, the data can be a free source of intelligence for nation-states, terrorist groups or individuals, revealing everything from operational movements of aircraft, aviation units and troops to training standards, development test flights and the movements of government officials, experts said.

This image shows a Beechcraft King Air configured for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions in the military aviation field of Baledogle, Somalia, in 2021. The U.S. civil registration code on the side was not assigned to any specific aircraft at the time and its exact operator remains unknown. However, this is very much in line with the types of aircraft that JSOC allegedly operates clandestinely and that would be interested in hiding the activities through the proposed aircraft flight profile management database tool.

Therefore, military aircraft routinely transmit their ADS-B data, but have the option to turn it off when necessary. The Pentagon is well aware that aviation enthusiasts - and potential opponents - monitor ADS-B data and that aircraft turn off transponders when they do not want anyone to observe them. Often when following the aircraft they simply disappear abruptly from the map.

The U.S. military is also known to use fake hexadecimal codes, which identify a transponder as belonging to a specific aircraft, to help mask certain sensitive flights. For example, the U.S. Air Force VC-25A Air Force One jet that transported President Donald Trump to Afghanistan in 2019 electronically disguised itself for a time as a KC-10 Extender tanker in this way.

As a particularly notable and relevant example of tracking high-profile U.S. military flights, the U.S. Air Force C-40 Clipper aircraft that transported Nancy Pelosi, then a representative of the Democratic Party in California and mayor, to Taiwan last year was visible online, despite concerns that the Chinese military might try to forcibly prevent the flight from reaching the island or harassing it otherwise.

This flight, which used the SPAR19 indicative, was one of the most tracked of all time in terms of total simultaneous users monitoring it on the popular website FlightRadar24, and ended up taking down the app for a period of time.

The Ghostrider trail on the night between November 20 and 21, 2023, on Radarbox.com.

In mid-November, something new happened: a U.S. aircraft involved in combat apparently left its ADS-B on, and did so intentionally. An AC-130J Ghostrider attack aircraft carried out an airstrike against a target that had launched a missile attack against U.S. forces at Al Assad Air Base in Iraq. The AC-130 gunship has a variety of weapons, including 30mm and 105mm cannons, and precisely guided bombs and missiles, and usually flies in lazy circles above its target, pouring firepower on the targets below. In Al Assad's retaliatory air attack, according to The Aviationist website, the Ghostrider involved apparently kept his transponder on all the time, drawing large circles on the ADS-B map and it was possible to be seen on the Radar Box website.

In Brazil, it is possible to track several military aircraft in aircraft tracking applications, including the most widespread Flightradar24. Next, you can see the KC-390, C-130 Hercules transport aircraft or T-27 Tucano coaches in flight near the Air Force Academy. The FAB has hidden data from the presidential aircraft A319 (VC-1) and E190 (VC-2) on these sites.

FAB T-27 Tucano aircraft are often seen flying near Pirassununga, AFA headquarters.

More recently, it was possible to follow the flights of the Brazilian Air Force that went to seek refugees and Brazilian citizens who were and Israel and the Gaza Strip. The KC-30 and KC-390 aircraft could be tracked in real time on the tracking platforms.

If you are a fan of military aircraft or just like to know what is happening when you hear the noise of aircraft engines, ADS-B is a free and reliable tool that you should use to track and identify planes. Observing fighters, spy planes and transport coming and going can help you get to know your armed forces. Just keep in mind that, at least when it comes to military flights, you will only see what the military wants you to see.

BONUS

From Christmas Eve, the flight tracking site Flightradar24 will be keeping an eye on Santa Claus and his reindeer Rudolph, Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner and Blitzen as they accelerate around the world.

Initially tracking Santa Claus was a challenge, but thanks to an ADS-B transponder installed a few years ago and the reindeer horns functioning as an additional antenna, Flightradar24 uses a mixture of terrestrial and satellite ADS-B coverage to track Santa Claus during his busiest night of the year.

To follow the good old man, go here.

Tags: Military AviationtrackingTechnology

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Fernando Valduga

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in specialized aviation magazines in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation.

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[bimboficationblues]

I think it's necessary to engage in a re-materializing of the history of political and economic thought, which still generally hew to very Whiggish or Great Man contours - contextualizing theorists within their appropriate place in history (Hobbes and the English Civil War, Ricardo/Malthus and parliamentary debates) is necessary but insufficient, it isolates thought to the domain of professionals and philosophers

prompted by reading Rebecca Spang's book Stuff and Money in the Time of the French Revolution:

While many historians have recently developed the history of economic thought as a version of intellectual history, this book follows a different path. Since money features in any market transaction and in many family arguments, it seems wrong to limit “economic thought” to the work of a comparatively small set of canonical authors. Surely if David Hume, Adam Smith, and the marquis de Condorcet had ideas about money, so too did any woman who bought bread, sold fish, or pawned her wool blanket every summer. That the thoughts of these latter individuals have largely gone unrecorded makes them more difficult to trace but no less real or meaningful to consider. Wherever possible, therefore, I shift attention from the enunciated theories of philosophes to the enacted practices and everyday conduct of ordinary people. In doing so, some of the questions asked in this book are deceptively simple looking: What did people do, physically, with money? How did they handle it? When did they need money and when could they do without it? ... The misperception of value as a quality inherent in things (rather than as a product of relations between people) is central to this book’s analysis. Take, for instance, most revolutionaries’ commitment to the ideas of money as merchandise and of money as a good which should, like any other, have its price determined by supply and demand. Such an assertion only became plausible when the social trust and shared cultural norms of monetized exchanges were routinely mistaken for (and asserted to be) qualities of physical currency objects themselves. This confusion of the social for the material (this fetishism, in the Marxist sense) arose first as a form of political criticism: when they insisted value inhered in metals, seventeenth- and eighteenth- century writers from Locke to the encyclopédistes tried to limit the otherwise absolute power of a monarch who ruled by divine right. Transposed to a political context in which sovereignty resided “essentially in the people,” however, the idea of intrinsic value had far different and largely disastrous effects... For it meant the means of exchange most commonly used by the great majority of the actual people (small change, personal paper, book debt) could easily be treated as worthless. Revolutionary lawmakers, nearly all of whom believed political liberty and economic deregulation to be inseparable, long refused to take any action that might have ameliorated the situation. A fundamental tension hence existed between the liberty of the metaphorical “people” and the increasingly precarious, lived existence of ordinary men and women. Neither the symbolic nor the material but the contrast between the two drove further radicalization...national money was meant to create shared emotions but it had the effect of highlighting socioeconomic difference. Intentions and outcomes did not coincide.

this is part of what I find compelling about Capital but also what makes it something of a sprawling mess - not that Marx was insufficiently charitable to his theoretical sources, but that he was simultaneously examining and critiquing political economy as a mode of thought - a "mode of thought" being not just a set of canonical theorists (Ricardo et al) but also emergent from people's real practices

[justforbooks]

Brian Griffin, who has died aged 75, was one of the most original and influential British photographers of his generation. His images of Kate Bush, Donald Sutherland, Iggy Pop and Damien Hirst, and his album covers for Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode, are some of the most famous pictures of the 1980s.

For the cover of Depeche Mode’s 1982 LP, A Broken Frame, Griffin transposed Soviet social realism to a cornfield off the M11 in East Anglia, and the result was named by Life magazine as one of the greatest images of the decade. His virtuosity saw him declared photographer of the decade by the Guardian in 1989.

His work, which has been exhibited globally, is in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery, the V&A, the Arts Council and the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery.

Griffin’s success capturing the glossy worlds of money and hairspray was rooted in something darker. He was forged in the Black Country, the industrial heartland of the West Midlands, and the influence of the factories, and the harsh light from the furnaces, suffused his early photography. He had a relentless work ethic and would do anything to succeed in a world far removed from that of his upbringing.

He was born in Birmingham, the only child of Edith (nee Moore) and James Griffin, who were both factory workers. The family lived in a two-up, two-down in Lye, where every street had a factory. Young Brian felt that “the whole world appeared to be partly made of metal. Everything you touched seemed to be iron and steel.” After passing the 11-plus exam he went to Halesowen technical school, then went to work at the age of 16.

In 1965 he was making conveyors for readymix concrete plants when the factory foreman suggested he join Hagley camera club, where he picked up a camera for the first time. He then got a job at British Steel and was working as a nuclear pipework engineering estimator in 1969 when everything changed. Devastated by the end of a love affair, he decided to leave his old life behind.

Griffin’s only means of escape was photography, so he put some of his camera club images into a Boots photo album and applied to art colleges. He was accepted into Manchester Art School at the age of 21, where he studied with Martin Parr and Daniel Meadows.

In the college library he devoured books on art, and after graduating and moving to London, he spent weeks at the National Film theatre immersing himself in German and French cinema. Inspired, he began to look for work.

In 1972 he went to see the art director of Management Today magazine. Griffin’s talent was plain to see, and he was immediately put to work. He shot a shadowy monochromatic image of rush hour on London Bridge from the back of a cab, calling it his Metropolis image, after Fritz Lang’s expressionist masterpiece. Prior to this, Griffin had doubted his ability, but now he knew that he could make it as a photographer, he unleashed his artistry.

Through his images for the magazine, Griffin introduced surrealism to the boardroom. His industrial background meant that he clicked with the businessmen who were his subjects, and the captains of industry played ball. He wittily subverted the corporate power of the men he photographed by introducing discordant juxtapositions, building tension. He wound intrigue throughout his work, stopping the viewer in their tracks, making them take time over his images, and his work began to be recognised.

Ambitious, he wanted to expand his repertoire and earn more money. He understood that the style he had honed in the business world would translate into the pop sphere, where post-punk bands were eschewing bondage trousers in favour of being suited and booted. He went to Stiff Records and photographed Elvis Costello and the Attractions and Ian Dury and the Blockheads.

Recognition followed and commissions flooded in. He worked for Esquire, Rolling Stone, the Face, Time Out, the Sunday Times and the Observer, in advertising for British Airways, BMW and Levi Jeans, and photographed Brian May in a series for Sony Walkman in 1980.

That year he moved to Rotherhithe, a working-class area of south London on the banks of the Thames. He loved the place, recognised its people and was to stay there all his life. He set up a studio from where he continued to push the boundaries of the conventional. Using his background in engineering, allied to his innate creativity, he built lighting machines and used knicker elastic and ping-pong balls to create startling special effects in an analogue age.

Some experiments led to happy accidents: his highly regarded 1984 image of Siouxsie Sioux, intended as a double exposure, was in fact a triple: “It was wrong, but so right,” he said.

In the days before social media, aside from magazines, the main showcase for a photographer’s work was on walls, be they in galleries or town centres. Griffin’s first solo London exhibition was at Contrast Gallery in 1981, and the posters of his work for bands such as Spandau Ballet and Ultravox were plastered across the land. His family finally saw his work and were proud: they had always wanted more for Brian than factory life.

As well as portraiture, he produced numerous documentary projects. In 1986 he photographed construction workers at the Broadgate development in the City of London. At the time he was still reeling from the death of his father from lung cancer, due to a life inhaling cast-iron dust. The project allowed Griffin to pay homage to his father and to all working people: he monumentalised the men “like knights lying in state in a cathedral with their swords”.

In 1989 he left still photography to make television commercials, music videos and short films, but returned a decade later. In 2003 he produced a project to aid Birmingham’s bid to become the European City of Culture. He worked promoting the 2012 London Olympics and in 2015 his photo-essay, Himmelstrasse, movingly documented the railway tracks in Poland that transported people to Nazi death camps. He continued to work up until the end of his life, with new projects still in the pipeline.

He had more than 20 monographs published in his lifetime and won numerous awards. In 2013 the Royal Photographic Society awarded him their Centenary Medal, and the following year he received an honorary doctorate from Birmingham City University for his lifetime contribution to his home city.

Griffin’s 1980 marriage to the photographer Frances Newman ended in divorce. Their daughter, Layla, died in 2020; he is survived by their son, Danz, and three grandchildren.

🔔Brian James Griffin, photographer, born 13 April 1948; died 27 January 2024

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[darklinaforever]

Sing me forgotten by jessica s. olson is a rewrite of a phantom of the opera that I hesitate to read, even if the context seems interesting, simply because I know that the ending is also a tragedy and that the characters do not end up together... (Damn, memory wiping is something that annoys me) So, I don't know about you, but when we rewrite something, is it a bit so that the ending is also different ? No ? Because just transposing this into fantasy mode and swapping the sexes isn't enough for me. But the book still looks really good, so I'll read it.

I'm going to end up rewriting The Phantom of the Opera myself with a happy ending... (Because no rewrites seem to do it ?) Between my own story ideas, rewrites of classic tales / novels, and fanfictions... My list of things to write is only growing lie down...

After a rewrite that I recommend is Phantom by Susan Kay which is good, and even if Christine ends up with Raoul and Erik die, it is clear that she loved Erik more and even had a child with (only) him, in addition to have recover his cat back, which Raoul fully accepted. (Even if he was not at all a fan of the cat with whom the hatred seemed mutual) But in any case, Phantom by Susan Kay is another variation on Erikstine's tragic love story.

[heliopauseentertainments]

MegaRod, beast wars au or role swap au :3

Oooh, oooh, Beast Wars, Beast Wars!

The Internet precludes you from having seen me clap excitedly when this ask came in, but know that I did.

Disclaimer: I am using the premises of the original Beast Wars cartoon for these assumptions, not the later IDW Beast Wars comics because I have not read them yet.

We're assuming we're popping IDW1 characters into the setting (rather than transposing the personalities onto characters already present in BW).

Title: A Sharp Bite

Summary: Hot Rod regularly confounds Predacon attempts to capture him, until one quiet winter day he infiltrates the Predacon base, against his superiors' orders, on the assumption that "bears hibernate"... but Megatron does not.

Very loose summary, needs shoring up and definition.

Also I think their alt-modes would be something like this: Megatron

Something large, predatory, but not flashy at first - an outsized bear, the short-faced bear perhaps. Big, big paws. Not an invertebrate, unlike most other Predacons. Honestly, a large therapod was a great choice in the original BW but I feel a purple T-Rex wouldn't really work for IDW1!Megatron.

He would potentially pull from mythological creatures if such concepts existed on Earth at the time, but alas.

Hot Rod/Rodimus

Not another cheetah, been done, but something quick, ground-based, and highly visible. Known to cause trouble.

A coyote? Not super visible, but he could have ridiculous colors. I mean, BW doesn't care about natural colors. A red fox? Maned Wolf?

Gotta noodle on that one.

[silverskye13]

Been picking away slowly on some more Tanguish stuff [I've got 3 different little shorts slowly simmering on the back burner] and I.... Haven't finished one. But I did finish the intro to one. And I'm a bit proud of it. So I'll just toss that here in the hopes that someday in the distant future I'll finish it.

Anyway, Tanguish snip below:

Tanguish stood in Grian’s base, staring at a dusty bookshelf. He was not in the helsmet Grian’s home - the strange little staring creature unsettled him far too much to allow casual visits. No, this was Grian the hermit’s base, the one in Hermitcraft.

(It was a long story how he got here, and really, he shouldn’t be here. Tango had warned him when he’d gone to step through the reflection that things were weird. Empires and purple rifts and something about a goblin and something else about Grian the hermit. He stepped through anyway, because the best thieves are curious, and lacking a little in common sense.)

Curiosity and a general lack of common sense was what stood him by the bookshelf currently. Upon stepping out of a reflection to find himself standing in front of a massive purple gateway on the close end of fizzling out, with no other living creature in sight, Tanguish decided it was safe enough to explore. It wasn’t every day he got to see a darkening crack between worlds, or really Hermitcraft in general. How was he to know giant gateways into the unknown weren't normal here? He didn’t get to see the other hermits much, normally only at a distance, or through their insidious doubles. Picking around Grian’s base gave Tanguish the rare opportunity to see the company his own double did (or didn’t) keep. He thought he was learning a lot. Grian was messy, but he had an eye for shapes and color. He must have an elytra, or some other mode of flight, to live so high off the ground with no ladders or stairs. He had a flair for the dramatic, if the skulk-made resistance sign in his base was any indication. He also had a super computer with a mustache, whose only communication when Tanguish pressed the prompt button was to say, “Don’t belong here,” with increasingly capital letters. Tanguish didn’t know if that meant the computer didn’t belong here, or if Tanguish didn’t, but he wasn’t going to stick around and think it over. There were too many things in here to see, and unless the computer somehow came to life and moved its pipes and electronics off the wall to try and catch him, Tanguish felt safe ignoring its possible protests.

(Tanguish was in a curious mood today, not a cautious one. If he were cautious, he would have fled into the nearest reflection the moment he realized he was alone. The fact that the cautious option might also be the smartest option had crossed his mind, but he ignored this.)

Eventually, after much stumbling and waffling and the pocketing of many small objects, Tanguish stood in front of the bookshelf. There were many books he recognized. Some were familiar titles, with words slightly transposed from the hels versions. He thumbed through a few, less for the reading, and more for the rare possibility that a valuable item might be tucked inside some of the pages. That was until he found one small book that had fallen behind one of the front rows: simple and green, faded gold lettering written across the top, a stylized sword embossed in the center of the cover.

Paladin

Tanguish had heard the term paladin before. Tango had mentioned it before during their long talks about some weird board game, one of his inspirations for Decked Out. Tanguish picked up the little book and it fell open naturally to a page somewhere a third of the way through. His eyes glazed over the letters. Something something, have faith brothers and take up your sword, something something, fight against injustice in any black corner it dwells in. Tanguish wasn’t really that interested in the plain text itself. What interested him more was that many of the passages were underlined, and writing was scribbled in the margin. It was all in blue ink, in neat and tidy handwriting that, oddly enough, Tanguish felt was familiar. That didn’t make any sense, since Tanguish had never met or spoken with any hermit besides Tango, and Tango’s handwriting was a slanted scrawl caught halfway to cursive. It wasn’t this neatly spaced, square print that almost looked like it could come from a typewriter.

“This passage is a meditation on conviction,” the print said. "Conviction is not merely an opinion. It is rooted deeply in personal morality. To change one's convictions, or abandon them, is to change who one is."

Tanguish tilted his head to the side, as though he could roll the statement around in his head like a loose marble. He wasn't a big philosophy-and-morals guy. To contemplate those, one has to ask hard questions about themselves. Questions like: "Does stealing muffins from a small business owner every day make it difficult for them to stay in business?" or "If I rifle through a missing person's stuff, does that make me a creep?" Those are generally questions a thief shouldn't be asking themselves, and so deep inflection had never been one of Tanguish's strong suits. He had his moments of course. His recent conviction that his own happiness shouldn't come at the cost of Tango was one he was particularly proud of.

Tanguish flipped through the well worn pages of the little paladin book, eyeing the neat rows of script darning the margins of nearly every page. He shrugged, snapped the book closed, and tucked it into his shirt pocket.

He was saving this for later.

[likeniobe]

A walk in a formal Chinese garden is likely to take you around large standing stones of fantastic shapes with names like the Barrier of Clouds (at the entrance to the reading room of the Master of Nets in Suzhou) & the Divine Conveyance Dragon Rock, the Elder Brother Rock, awesome displays, works of nature––transposed to an utterly sedate, ornamental setting of pond lotus & mandarin ducks. The most prized ones since the Tang dynasty have been limestone rocks from Lake Tai. Acted on by water over time, furrowed & riddled with cavities, the endless labyrinth within; the massive stones have always held a special fascination for poets & painters. Bai Juyi, when governor of Suzhou, hauled a great many from the lake for his garden. Their grotesque rococo beauty must have spooked him. Bai's landscape art is seen as the continuation of poetry in another medium. In Japan, the last, best custodian of Tang culture outside China, the concept was taken up & developed into the austere scattered-rock garden, a grid of raked gravel with a few rocks, the barest moss. A stone of any size is a unit of time. What does a Tang poem read like? A Tang quatrain, 4 x 5 or 4 x 7, reads like a Japanese scattered-rock garden. Nature comes to rest warily in a grid. While the fantastic standing stones in Chinese gardens are forms of sculpted time, the grid of raked gravel with a few rocks literally reads like a Tang poem. In either mode, the bafflingly intricate wormholes of the craggy stone enclosure––an inward journey––& the grid of the austere rock garden––a pristine outward display––one touches time & time touches you like you weren't there. The standing stones do not explain, nor do the grids describe.

from wong may's afterword to in the same light: 200 poems for our century from the migrants & exiles of the tang dynasty, 2021

[feleshero]

✦✦✦

Something for that ass: @redhead-reporter

WRITING:

Love the way you write! It's this very easy to follow series of events that always leads itself to the turn of the wheel. I've gotten into how I adore your approach to the collaborative efforts, but that was more than a week ago so! Every thread I've ever seen you writing has always been easy to transpose over a storyboard in my head. I can see where the action starts, I can follow the camera's movements, follow MJ's blocking & antics, and then get to the end of the scene easy each and every time.

I positively adore your ability to structure, because I can't structure a story for shit, and seeing it done well and with someones I adore both in and out of character? You've got it.

BLOG VIBE:

Shaye you run your blog like its FAO Schwartz. (I'm still in early 90s mode, I need you to walk with me here.) Its HAPPINESS when you're on the timeline. People show up, they see Shaye posts and the general energy is "Great! It's a sunny day, I can get into my little tumblr blog posts knowing I won't be in the shade."

Everyone and their Zauntie (Zaddy Auntie) drops what they're doing to give you your 'attagirls' because we feel [and I am speaking for everyone here, come check me if you disagree] that you need to be reminded, you need to be told, you need to be kept aware that we fuck with you HEAVILY and want only for you to be respected, uplifted and adored the way you seem to want to respect, uplift and adore the rest of the community.

THIRD BULLET POINT:

I actually don't know what to put here. Chatting about you is easy, I can riff on all the little positive memory nuggets in my head forever, that's not a struggle, but like... saying something that hasn't been said before? Something you need to hear to let you know I care big time about what it is and what you're bringing to the table.

... ... ...

OH! Dude, congrats, shaadi mubarak and BIG FUCKING UPS on your oncoming marriage!! I don't know HOW you writing Mary Jane has domino'd into a life of matrimony, but I don't need to know the 'HOW' I only need to feel the 'WHAT' and the WHAT that I am feeling is 'What a fucking joyous occasion!!' May happiness fucking surround you for the rest of your schedule, and may prosperity rear its head in every chaos you endure.

[timehascomeagain]

It just sucks when you feel like [paper bag being crumpled into the receiver] and then whenever you DO [car going by at speed] all you get in return is [ferry fog horn carrying up from the estuary the sound of a small church transposed into the mode of a world constantly in motion and unable to slow down]. Like I really dont ask for much but I don't know what to do about it. I might go to the woods

[horsesource]

“How could the desire energy of banging-one’s-head-against-the-wall be related in any way to collective engagement?

It is not a matter of transposing or sublimating this activity, but getting it to function on a semiotic register that be can be connected up to certain other non-signifying systems; not of curbing the desire or changing its objects, but of broadening the field of jouissance, opening up new possibilities.”

Guattari, 1984

“Because what can one make of the wanting of a child who keeps on hitting his head against the wall?

In the mode of wanting, the answers are quite simple: self-destruction, self-injury, and so on.

Chance leads us to live near a fountain. The child no longer hits his head against the wall.

Was that really what he wanted, then? Water? It is obvious that the attraction of water trumps the attraction of hitting one’s head against walls, which is surprising, but these are the facts, as they say.

It is easy to see that one can take away the necessity of wanting [..]

Coincidences asked nothing of us; we had only to perceive them, and once we had gotten a glimpse, they multiplied and diversified.”

Deligny, 1970s

[kalaplugin1]

Arturia Matrix-12 Download

Tech Specs (MAC & Windows)

Software Type:Music Software

Platform:, MAC & Windows

Upgrade/Full Version:Full Unlocked

Download/Boxed:Download

License Type:Lifetime Activation

Format: Standalone, VST, VST3, AU

Hardware Requirements – PC:Intel / AMD Multi-core CPU, 4GB RAM minimum

OS Requirements – OSX : OS X 10.8 or later M1& M2

Arturia Matrix 12 V Virtual Synth Plug-in at a Glance:

The Matrix 12 story, in all its glory

Arturia models it, to a tee

Unleash your creativity: the sky’s the limit!

The Matrix 12 story, in all its glory

The 1980s were an important – and interesting – decade in the synth world. Polyphony was becoming de rigueur and digital synthesis was gaining a foothold with the Yamaha DX-7 and various digital samplers, while stripped-down synths like the Juno 106 and Korg Poly 6 were making synthesis available to the masses. The stage was set for Tom Oberheim – who had been designing some of the best-sounding synths for over a decade – to introduce a no-holds-barred analog synth. And so the Oberheim Matrix 12 was unleashed upon the world in 1985. It was, indeed, an all-out assault on the state of the art, with glorious sonics and tantalizing modulation possibilities, but its near-five-grand price tag put it out of reach for all but a few fortunate souls. Around 1000 units were produced, many of which are still making music to this day.

Arturia models it, to a tee

When it comes to modeling vintage analog synths, many of us immediately think of Arturia – and with good reason. Their proprietary True Analog Emulation technology (TAE) is truly amazing, and is no doubt a critical component in some of the finest virtual synths we’ve heard. For the Matrix 12 V, Arturia modeled not only the tonal aspects of the original two oscillators and their waveforms, but the 15 filter modes as well. They knew that the Matrix 12’s famously rich, complex sound was forged by its multiple filter modes and by the numerous modulation sources and destinations on tap. With nearly endless modulation-routing possibilities, you can sculpt wonderfully organic sounds not possible with other synthesizers.

Unleash your creativity: the sky’s the limit!

The Matrix-12 V is, just like its hardware predecessor, a multitimbral instrument. In Multi mode, each of the 12 notes can voice a different sound. These sounds can then be split on different zones of your keyboard, transposed individually, played unison – you get the idea! And Matrix 12 V’s elegant software interface makes configuring all this a cinch. While the original Matrix 12 was an amazing synthesis achievement, Arturia upped the ante by adding a new effects chain for additional sound processing. They also doubled the allowable number of modulations from 20 to 40, giving you even more creative options. Factor in the ability to control all of Matrix 12 V’s parameters via MIDI, letting you perform automation in your DAW, and you’ve got a total beast of a soft synth.

Arturia Matrix 12 V Virtual Synth Plug-in Features:

Multitimbral; 12-note polyphonic

Redesigned preset browser

Resizeable user interface for HD displays

Two oscillators, each with:

Triangle, sawtooth, and variable-width pulse wave with PWM

Oscillator 1 may be frequency modulated

Oscillator 2 equipped with white noise generator

Single 15-mode filter with:

Four Lowpass, three Highpass, and two Bandpass modes

Notch and Phase Shift modes

Four additional Combo filter modes

Powerful modulation matrix with 27 sources and 47 destinations

Mod sources include:

Five Envelopes and five LFOs

Four Ramp and three Track generators

Velocity, Pressure, and Keyboard Follow

Two insert effect slots with six studio-grade effects to choose from

Arturia’s amazing-sounding True Analog Emulation technology (TAE)