One more for the road...

I'll be off visiting my grandchildren, doing a family reunion, and then backpacking in the wilds of Wyoming starting soon. One more quick and dirty post for the road.

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/a-37-rate-of-myocarditis-in-our-latest

No, it doesn't

https://voxday.net/2022/06/30/china-holds-the-usa-accountable/

Vox no longer has comments on his blog, and I have no interest in joining SocialGalactic, so I'll just post here about it.

I suppose there may be Americans who still hold hand-wringing struggle sessions about this, but not many. In any case, regardless of what China says, it's not effective rhetoric if your targets are never going to be exposed to it.

And the claim Vox makes in the text is nonsensically inaccurate. China has expanded over the centuries from a relatively small area; here's a map of China from 210 BC, where it's only about 20% of the size that it is now, showing the many, many non-Chinese peoples that China has conquered and assimilated and/or eliminated. And that is already significantly expanded from where it had been. If you look up the original borders of Sinitic civilization, i.e., the Shang or even the later Zhou civilizations, you'll see they're seriously smaller than the Qin. The Shang is only about half the size. The Chinese are notorious for absorbing and/or replacing other civilizations with millions and millions of people like the Borg.

And in the same timeframe, more or less, that America did so to the Injuns, China was doing it in Taiwan. Today, the Formosan natives number only about 2% of the population of Formosa, now called Taiwan, which is otherwise completely and utterly dominated by the Chinese. The plight of the Formosan natives, if you can call it a "plight" is exactly the same as that of the North American aborigines', in every respect. The notion that we've been successfully "called out" by the Chinese is laughable. They're engaging in some bush league word-spelling; trying to conjure reality by creating narratives that are in contrast to actual facts on the ground. And like I said, since nobody in America reads dispatches from the Chinese government, you can't have successful rhetoric if you can't even reach your target, unless the target is other Chinese.

In addition to the absorption within the boundaries of what we call China today, ethnic Chinese, albeit not under the aegis of the Chinese government, have swarmed numerous other nations of southeast Asia. 75% of the 5.5 million inhabitants of Singapore are ethnic Chinese, for example, not the native Malay people. There are 40 million "overseas Chinese" or Nanyang Han, including 30 million in Southeast Asia. If anyone doubts that they will soon dominate Thailand, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian states the same way that they dominate Singapore and Christmas Island, you're fooling yourself. Heck; they're well on their way to dominating Vancouver.

UPDATE: As an aside, the Injuns were savages. https://www.unz.com/pub/jhr__life-styles-native-and-imposed/ And God himself mandated that they would be cleared out of the way in favor of the Gentiles so that the Gospel could be restored.

What Dobbs really means

https://katehon.com/en/article/united-states-court-against-ideology-progress

The fact is that there is not just one American state, but two countries and two nations with this name and this is becoming more and more evident. It is not even a question of Republicans and Democrats, whose conflict is becoming increasingly bitter. It is the fact that there is a deeper division in American society.

Half of the US population is an advocate of pragmatism. This means that for them there is only one yardstick: it works or it doesn't work, it works/it doesn't work. That is all. And no dogma either about the subject or the object. Everyone can see himself as whatever he wants, including Elvis Presley or Father Christmas, and if it works, no one dares to object. It is the same with the outside world: there are no inviolable laws, do what you want with the outside world, but if it responds harshly, that is your problem. There are no entities, only interactions. This is the basis of Native American identity, it is the way Americans themselves have traditionally understood liberalism: as freedom to think what you want, to believe what you want, and to behave as you want. Of course, if it comes to conflict, the freedom of one is limited by the freedom of the other, but without trying you cannot know where the fine line is. Try it, maybe it will work.

That is how American society has been up to a certain point. Here, banning abortion, allowing abortion, sex change, punishing sex change, gay parades or neo-Nazi parades were all possible, nothing was turned away at the door, the decision could be anything, and the courts, relying on a multitude of unpredictable criteria, precedents and considerations, were the last resort to decide, in problematic cases, what worked/doesn't work. This is the mysterious side of the Americans, completely misunderstood by Europeans, and also the key to their success: they have no boundaries, which means they go where they want until someone stops them, and that is exactly what works.

But in the American elite, which is made up of people from a wide variety of backgrounds, at some point a critically large number of non-Americans have accumulated. They are predominantly Europeans, often from Russia. Many are ethnically Jewish but imbued with European or Russian-Soviet principles and cultural codes. They brought a different culture and philosophy to the United States. They did not understand or accept American pragmatism at all, seeing it only as a backdrop for their own advancement. That is, they took advantage of American opportunities, but did not intend to adopt a libertarian logic unrelated to any hint of totalitarianism. In reality, it was these alien elites who hijacked the old American democracy. It was they who took the helm of globalist structures and gradually seized power in the United States.

These elites, often left-liberal, sometimes openly Trotskyist, have brought with them a position that is deeply alien to the American spirit: the belief in linear progress. Progress and pragmatism are incompatible. If progress works, fine. If not, it must be abandoned. Here is the law of pragmatism: it works/doesn't work. If you want to move forward, move forward, if you want the opposite, no problem, that's freedom the American way.

However, the emigrants from the Old World brought with them very different attitudes. For them, progress was a dogma. All history was seen as continuous improvement, as a continuous process of emancipation, improvement, development and accumulation of knowledge. Progress was a philosophy and a religion. In the name of progress, which included a continuous increase in individual freedoms, technical development and the abolition of traditions and taboos, everything was possible and necessary, and it no longer mattered whether it worked or not. What mattered was progress.

This, however, represented a completely new interpretation of liberalism for the American tradition. The old liberalism argued: no one can ever impose anything on me. The new liberalism responded: a culture of abolition, shaming, total elimination of old habits, sex change, freedom to dispose of the human foetus (pro-choice), equal rights for women and races is not just a possibility, it is a necessity. The old liberalism said: be what you want, as long as it works. The new one replied: you have no right not to be a liberal. If you are not a progressive, you are a Nazi and must be destroyed. Everything must be sacrificed in the name of freedom, LGBT+, transgender and artificial intelligence.

The conflict between the two societies - the old libertarian, pragmatic one and the new neoliberal, progressive one - has steadily escalated over the past decades and culminated in the Trump presidency. Trump has embodied one America and his globalist democratic opponents the other. The civil war of philosophies has reached a critical point. And it is really a question of the interpretation of freedom. The old America sees individual freedom as that which excludes any external prescription, any demand to use it only this way and no other, only for this and nothing else. Only for abortion and gay pride, for example, and never for banning abortion or demonising perverts. New America, on the other hand, insists that freedom requires violence against those who do not understand it well enough. Which means that freedom must have a normative interpretation and it is up to the neo-liberals themselves to determine how and to whom they use it and how they interpret it. The old liberalism is libertarian. The new is blatantly totalitarian.

And it is in this context that the 1973 US Supreme Court decision on abortion Roe v. Wade must be seen. It is in favour of the old liberalism and pragmatism. Note that it does not prohibit abortion, but merely states that there is no clear solution at the level of federal law. States can solve the problem as they wish, but it means, no more and no less, that time is reversible. You can move in one direction, progressive, or you can move in the opposite direction. As long as it works. So it is not about abortion at all. It is about understanding the nature of time. It is about the deepest divisions in American society. It is about one America going to war with another America more and more openly.

The Supreme Court is now overturning the totalitarian dictatorial strategy of the neo-liberal globalist elites, who act - a bit like the Bolsheviks in Russia - in the name of the future. Progress justifies everything. Until then, all decisions have only gone in one direction: in favour of individualism, egocentrism and hedonism, and suddenly the Supreme Court takes an abrupt step backwards. Why, was it allowed to do so? And the almost desperate old Americans, pragmatists and libertarians rejoice: the freedom to do what you want, not what the progressives and technocrats say, to go in any direction, not just where the globalists are forcibly sending us, has triumphed again, and Missouri's brave attorney general has already shown what can be done. Bravo! It is a pragmatic revolution, an American-style conservative revolution.

Of course, all the globalist progressive crap is about to go down the drain. The old America has in a way counter-attacked the new America.

Sadly for us, that pragmatism has gone too far. Allowing abortion or gay pride parades DOES destroy society, because they are acts of pure, unmitigated evil and barbarism that makes slavery look supremely tame in comparison.

That doesn't mean that we should become a theocratic totalitarian state in return, of course, merely that righteous social and individual behavior needs to be preached and encouraged within society, and those who eschew it should be treated as people who eschew civilized society and, having sided with barbarism, seen as unfit for regular and normal social participation in civilized society, barring repentance. The line may seem to be thin between those, but one lies in dominating the agency of others, and the other lies in encouraging good, responsible use of that agency.

Summertime Love

It seems appropriate, as we enter summertime, to recall the 1987 hit single "Boys (Summertime Love)" by one-hit wonder Sabrina. Not in the US, where nobody seems to have heard of this song, or even the entire italo-disco genre at all (a small handful of italo-disco songs did chart as pop songs, but nobody thought of them as a discrete genre, they were just 80s synthesizer pop songs, like "Tarzan Boy" and "Gloria" and "Self-Control". Even discogs doesn't call the latter two italo-disco songs, but rather synthpop and disco. (Seriously, lolwut?) So I recognize that unless my audience is both my age and either European or South American, they probably have not ever heard this song. But it was a big hit in most of the rest of the Western and pseudo-Western world. 

While this was not really typical for music videos, it was apparently very typical for Italian "magazine shows" that were more overtly sexy, and the video was originally recorded with the intention to be the latter rather than the former. But the music video has become quite well-known via YouTube because... well, I suppose that's pretty obvious. As the comments in some of the video versions say, "I came for the hits, and stayed for the.... "

Regardless, I've seen concert videos of Sabrina singing this song too; she clearly knew exactly why she was popular. While she was a competent vocalist, the reality is that millions of girls could have sung the song just as capably; but it is unlikely that millions of girls could have flaunted their assets and drawn as much attention as easily as she did. 

In any case, this link ISN'T the music video, it's just the song with the single cover.

Two quotes

Just found these quotes. I think both of these individuals are deeply flawed, especially Julius Evola who ironically wanted to reject a great deal of the traditions of his heritage, but that doesn't mean that these quotes aren't interesting and insightful.

Voltaire: "It is dangerous to be right in matters in which the established authorities are wrong."

Julius Evola: "Traditionalism is the most revolutionary ideology of our time."

And, a video of a hike of the Isle of Skye. Granted, my Scottish ancestry isn't from the north or the Highlands, but rather the border, Lowlands kind of Scots that mixed heavily with the northern Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian types, but... I can see why they left. Scotland is a place that is frequently matched in its beauty only by its misery.

On the perils of unfortunate association

I was somewhere with my wife this weekend; a store, no doubt, but I can't remember where, and they played the old Everly Brothers "All I Have to Do is Dream." For many years, I just associated that song with my dad; some Everly Brothers vinyl was in his collection, and the only place I heard it was at home when he was in the mood to listen to it. Although as a pretty typical Gen-X type, it's not exactly "my" music, I always liked the Everly Brothers, and could appreciate the harmonies and the late 50s steel guitar. It's really a great song, and is probably the best of their oeuvre, although "Wake Up, Little Susie" and "Bird Dog" and "Bye Bye Love"  or even "Crying In the Rain" were also always favorites of mine.

Why did I like songs from the 50s? Well, that was kind of a thing in the 80s, just like nostalgia for the 80s is a strong cultural zeitgeist right now. I've noticed that there is a recurring phenomena where there's a nostalgic zeitgeist for a past period, about a generation ago, where conservatives were running the show (more or less) and the cultural chaos of progressivism was muted. There's a ton of nostalgia for the 80s right now, across generations, and it's probably peaked with the release of the Stranger Things stuff. In the 80s, there was nostalgia for the 50s, probably peaking with the release of Back to the Future where an 80s kid literally goes to the 50s and meets his parents. In the 50s, there was nostalgia for the 20s, probably peaking in the release of Singin' in the Rain. 

There's also been off-and-on nostalgia for the late 60s, but that seems to be a Boomer specific phenomena, and Generation X and other generations have largely not been all that impressed with those movement. I have a funny feeling that when the last Boomer finally kicks the bucket, the Beatles will be forgotten almost overnight, except in England, where everyone looks towards them for some reason.

Anyway, although I quite like this song by the Everly Brothers, and have happy associations with it from my dad and his record collection, it was also very prominently featured in the absolutely terrible movie Driving In Cars With Boys, which was in turn based on the autobiography of one of the most entitled, unlikable women ever to have been given a public voice. I have no idea why she doesn't have enough dignity to keep her history of non-stop bad judgement, rebellious entitlement, poor decisions and unlikable behavior to herself. It's maybe a little bit commendable... maybe... that the point of the movie (and presumably the book on which it was based, and presumably on the the life on which that was based) that she finally realizes that she's been holding on to bitterness and blaming her father for everything wrong with her life, when he wasn't the source of her problems at all. (It's not clear if she ever actually takes responsibility and blame herself.) One review of the movie laments that Barrymore's performance makes the subject of the biopic seem "abrasive and neglectful rather than headstrong and ambitious" and generates no empathy, because she's just a "sour single mom." In a shockingly (or not, if you know very many Western women) display of tone-deafness, it never occurs to this pained feminist reviewer that there's no other way that her behavior and attitude could possibly come across other than abrasive, entitled, ungrateful, self-absorbed, and neglectful. Those are, unfortunately, the defining characteristics of the bratty little princesses of Western civilization. 

I'm glad that I've been married for almost thirty years now and don't have to navigate that market. I'm also glad my oldest son was able to do so well. My next two boys will have to be very careful to avoid that many landmines that are reasonably pretty girls with narcissistic personalities out there who could ruin their lives.

Anyway, I can't hear this song anymore without thinking of this terrible movie and the terrible person who's life it portrays. I don't want to say that it's completely ruined the song for me, because that's probably overstating it a bit. But it is a cautionary tale on being careful about what associations you allow to be hung on you.

A reflection on impossible missions

I really like the last three Mission: Impossible movies. I also remember thinking that the first one was pretty cool, if perhaps a bit dated. I didn't really have much memory of two or three at all other than that they were forgettable and therefore disappointing in the context of the series as a whole. But, I now own all six of them. No doubt, seeing the new Top Gun and the new MI trailer made me more in a mood to watch them again.

As an aside, it's interesting to see the arc of Tom Cruise as a public figure. He was certainly a big movie star in the 80s and 90s, but he had to crawl out of a PR deficit of his own making, due to his crazy behavior, and allegations of even crazier behavior when his marriage fell apart. But, he seems to be persona grata again in the public eye. His weird Scientology beliefs, arrogance and crazy jumping on sofa behavior is forgiven, and he's now seen as "the last movie star" and is respected for his work ethic and professional excellence, if nothing else. And frankly, that little thank you thing he recorded for the front of Top Gun: Maverick was a nice touch. I don't forget things as quickly and easily as the average mob mentality Joe Blow, but even I'm willing to overlook his behavior as long as I don't see any more of it.

But that kind of gets to the gist of my post. The Mission: Impossible franchise can't really be compared to the Star Wars franchise, but certain parallels can be made about the movies and what they've done with them, as well as how they seem to be received and remembered today.

1) The first one is still a good movie. It's old enough now that the CGI looks a bit dated and fake, as we've gotten better at spotting it, and the scenes with him scrolling through Usenet and having some kind of AOL like interface on his emails, although the email addresses used aren't even valid email addresses are kind of funny, but if you overlook that, and the obvious note that trying to be cutting edge is obviously going to look dated a few years later, it's still a really good movie. While I'm not suggesting that it doesn't have some action set-pieces, because obviously it does, it's much more of a thriller and a mystery than an action movie, in a kind of old-school way. That's actually kind of missed; few movies have as much intelligence to their plot these days.

2) The second movie isn't very good. By this, I don't mean to imply that it isn't a good movie necessarily, but it isn't a good Mission: Impossible movie. While Tom Cruise is obviously the lead as Ethan Hunt, the series has still always been a bit of an ensemble affair, and the chemistry between the various team members is important. This movie doesn't have much of that at all. It also introduces Thandie Newton as a love interest, and she had no chemistry with Cruise, and wasn't very likeable either. And the plot is kind of weird. It's serviceable, but I find that the "recruit this girl so she can be a honey trap for her psycho ex-boyfriend, fall in love with her, but never really believe any of it because neither the plot, the dialogue, nor her acting ever make it convincing" was more uncomfortable to watch than anything else. The whole first half to two-thirds of the movie is more awkward than it is tense. And finally, while I don't necessarily have anything against the John Woo gun fu type of movie, it didn't fit this franchise, and frankly doesn't fit a Western audience all that well at all. I was rolling my eyes at the action set pieces more than I was enamored of them. If it had been Chow Yun Fat in the movie and it was filmed in Hong Kong and subbed into English, I'd probably have liked it better, although it's still not my cup of tea. And that even rubbed off on the characterizations. Ethan Hunt never felt like the same character even, and his motivations and decision-making judgement are super questionable in this movie. It feels like it was another script entirely that wasn't originally meant to belong to this franchise, but got quickly and awkwardly reworked by changing some names around and making sure that Luther was able to show up again.

3) The second movie was successful at the box office, but I think it also put a bad feeling in the mouth of the audience. While they saw it, they didn't really like it that much, and were more cagey about the sequel when it finally came out. Ironically, number three was a return to the original form in most respects. It feels much more like a Mission: Impossible movie. In fact, it probably feels too much like a Mission: Impossible movie. Although we wouldn't (yet) know it at the time, in retrospect after recently just watching it again, it's got the J. J. Abrams touch all over it. It was his first movie, although he'd already been a relatively big name after having the hit show Alias. His compatriots Orci and Kaufman wrote the script. These guys aren't necessarily talent-less, and some of their work is good. Here, they showcase what they're best at, though—remaking movies with the exact same plot beats as the originals that they're copying, and trying to do it as a bit of a soft-reboot. The a) Mission Impossible team that goes in on an action-heavy mission. b) At first it seems like it's going well, but it starts to go wrong, and it becomes apparent that someone within IMF has sold them out. c) Hunt and his team have to go rogue to prove their innocence by stealing the very thing that they're accused of stealing in the first place so that they catch the real thief. d) Have a crazy complex heist sequence thrown in where they steal it, e) find out that their direct supervisor is the actual villain—surprise, surprise! Or not, if you've seen the first one, and f) a finale where all the bad guys get their comeuppance, Hunt is vindicated, and his supervisors boss is happy to welcome him back into the fold. 

They did add some more personal notes about Hunt himself, with his semi-retirement at the beginning and engagement. Sadly, most of his team from this movie doesn't carry forward (except Luthor, the only consistent one) because there wasn't really anything wrong with them other than that they were sadly underutilized and underdeveloped. Benji is introduced in this movie, but is surprisingly little utilized himself. And almost laughably, the MacGuffin that they're chasing the whole time isn't ever explained, even when—at the very end—Hunt asks the boss what it really was. He only says that he'd tell him if he stayed, but then he left on his honeymoon.

4) The movie series really kicked it into high gear with this one. It's still a smart mystery/thriller; in fact, it's the smartest since the first one, but it's also a really good action movie this time around too. It's also got a better ensemble cast with much better chemistry. Brad Bird directed it, his first live action (although he'd already been famous making Pixar films). The only odd thing about it, really, is that Tom Cruise's marriage seems to be over without much explanation, and we kinda sorta piece together that his wife had been killed by Serbian terrorists or something... except that that isn't what happened after all; IMF had taken advantage of the Serbian terrorist attack to sequester her in some kind of witness protection program or something. Because I hadn't seen the third one (until now) since it came out, I was always a little bit confused by what was supposed to have happened to her, especially given that she does make a cameo appearance at the end. Why don't they get back together once Hunt finds out that she's not dead after all? I dunno. It's a little weird. We're supposed to fill in the blanks ourselves. Honestly, I think it just works better for Hunt to not be married, but they didn't want to tarnish the character by having a failed marriage happen to him, so they just kind of handwaved away an explanation that... kinda works as long as you don't think too hard about it. Mostly it works, because a settled down family man doing this kind of action stuff doesn't really make that much sense, so we're willing to suspend our suspicion and accept it because that's kinda what we want anyway.

5) The story as an action/thriller/mystery continues to improve in the latter half of the series; 5 is better than 4, and 6 is better still. Another potential love interest is introduced, although they don't actually end up falling in any kind of love; they just play a coy will they won't they dance. But again, the chemistry between the characters and the smart, fast-paced, yet sufficiently thoughtful and sharp at the same time plot is the real strength of the series. I like how they introduce a SPECTRE or HYDRA like supervillain organization, and how both 4 and 5 make use of the classic Mission: Impossible TV trope of an elaborate disguise and set scene used to trick the bad guys into revealing everything. While both 2 and 3 had masks, they didn't really use this plot beat, which is a shame, because it's iconic to the series; I think literally every episode of the TV show did it. To be honest, the more I think about it, the more the plot beats are similar to 1 and 3, but somehow it doesn't feel nearly as much of a remake/soft reboot as 3 did. I guess that's because they mixed it up with sufficient other plot beats that it doesn't feel as repetitive.

6) Henry Cavill makes his debut in the series here (well, spoiler alert; turns out he's the bad guy and he dies at the end, so it's both his debut and his swan song at the same time.) He was actually a likeable character, had a fair bit of charisma, and chemistry with the rest of the cast, so that's kind of unfortunate. We continue in the vein of super-villainous conspiracies, which really raises the game, as well as having double-crossings, fairly smart plots, impressive use of characters, (and I suspect that the production crew for the upcoming ones are glad that they decided to kill off Alex Baldwin's character before Baldwin himself killed someone on set and became toxic). This is probably the best one so far, even if the action scene with the helicopter (they seem to really like crashing helicopters in this series) was wildly implausible. But it wasn't culturally implausible; the action scenes in 2 just felt... really Chinese, if that makes sense, and they kind of had a strange dissociative feel to them. Here that's not true. Yet again, Hunt and his team fall under suspicion by at least some rivals in the American intelligence committee, but again—they used that plot beat sufficiently differently that it didn't feel repetitive. Even though, by this point, certainly it is.

There's a weird segment where he runs into his wife again. Still played by the same woman, although she hasn't aged as well as Tom Cruise himself has, and I wouldn't have sworn it was the same actress if I hadn't looked it up to double check. By this time, the poorly explained separation is almost completely forgotten by the audience, other than that it happened and that they each thought the other was dead or something. It's obvious when they meet again that they still care a great deal for each other, which is kind of awkward given that she's remarried in the years since. Also, curiously, in 3 she's just a regular nurse at a hospital in what looks to be the DC metro area; now she's a hot-shot doctor off galivanting around to strange primitive countries. Hollywood loves to use the shorthand that taking care of your own people isn't nearly as virtuous as bringing some kind of vague humanitarian something or other to savage brown people in the Third World to signify that she's supposed to be a great person (although that trope falls pretty flat with me, as you can imagine) but its kind of forgivable here as it's a plot point that is sufficiently explained that it doesn't just feel like pandering emotionalism. Although, in actuality, it kind of is. I guess the writers couldn't up the stakes for Hunt without making it intensely personal, or something. In any case, that gives that whole affair some closure, so I expect it won't be mentioned again in the upcoming two movies.

The more I think about it, the weirder that whole situation is, and I don't understand why Hunt himself doesn't feel really pissed off and kind of used and exploited by the whole situation, but it doesn't really detract from the movies, because I think everyone kind of just knows in their gut that having him be single works better; married men running around constantly risking their lives seems irresponsible, or something. They had to find a graceful way to extricate them from the foolish decision to marry them in the third movie, without making him look unsympathetic or the whole thing feeling cheap, and I think they probably did about as well as they could have, all things considered. 

Anyway, I like this series quite a bit. And it's fascinating to me that after a strong start, they had a misstep in the second one, a kinda sorta attempt to patch it over and pretend that it never happened in the third, and then a real explosion and order of magnitude more charismatic and polished fourth, fifth and sixth one. Perseverance, and a willingness to actually pay attention to what worked and why rather than arrogantly doubling down or blaming the audience for racism or whatever when they didn't like the second one as much, really turned the franchise back around and now its considerably stronger than when it started even. I've heard someone reference this series when talking about Star Wars; pointing out that the second one was the least liked, but its also not the one that bore the financial hit; that was transferred to the next one which people were less likely to be interested in after being disappointed in the second, and suggesting that Solo's flop is due to a similar phenomena. While not a great movie, Solo isn't really a bad one either, but it had to pay the price for the deep unpopularity of The Last Jedi. I'm not 100% sure that I buy this explanation, but it certainly sounds both reasonable and interesting. 

And, of course, the salvation of the Star Wars franchise can be ascertained from a look at what Mission: Impossible did if they'd be willing to learn from the same lessons. Focus on high quality film-making. Write better stories. Double down on what works, not on what doesn't work. Have enough humility to recognize that pleasing your audience is the secret to your success, not feeling contempt for it and letting that contempt bleed through between every line of dialogue. I don't expect that they can do it, but it's a shame that they can't. Clearly some people in Hollywood can.

SWTOR footage edited to create trailers

I like these. Sadly, he only ever did them for these two classes. But then again... these are two of my favorite class concepts. The smuggler is sometimes a little disappointing in terms of living up to its concept, but it's not as bad as I had initially described, I'm finding. You can impact—a bit—much of the experience by simply not taking all of the beta dialogue options. And if you can ignore quests from entitled, bratty narcissists, especially by ignoring the faction quest stories on each world and many of the exploration missions, then it's not so bad.

Of course, you probably need those missions for the XP that they give. Sigh. Yeah.

The evil of small numbers

This post is punting. I'm referring to other people's content, and stringing it together to create my own narrative, although not one that's at all incompatible with what any of the other people who's content I'm referring to would say. First, let me quote some of the Z-man's post from today:

For a long time, the phrase “13-do-50” has turned up in conversations about crime because it is something of a universal truth. Both numbers are a shorthand and not precise, but everyone gets the deeper meaning. A more accurate statement would be something like “6-do-50” or “3-do-30” but convenient shorthand works because it does not get too deep in the weeds. In this case, the “13-do-50” phrase speaks to the demographic reality behind the numbers.

We could also use a similar phrase for the people behind the cultural mayhem that has racked American society. About 20% of white people in America self-identify as left-wing, liberal or Progressive. This has held up over generations. It is this group that is responsible of 100% of the stress in society. They are always behind whatever is causing cultural chaos. The phase “20-do-100” does not roll off the tongue like the other expression, but it captures reality.

Think about it. If we rounded up these people and shipped them to Africa, even on a one-for-one swap, America would look like Switzerland. The remaining white people would junk all of the nutty cultural rules. Politically, the center would move so far to the right that Ted Cruz would be the Bernie Sanders of Congress. America’s crime problem would be solved with free associations and healthy intolerance. The mass media would shrivel up to a local news service.

Granted, some people would wriggle through the net. No doubt this mind virus would find some new hosts in the remnant population. Nothing is perfect but if the manifestations of this disease come to be treated like leprosy, the new hosts would simply be deported as soon as they reveal themselves. A society organized around opposition to post-Marx culturalism would not be perfect, but it would be stable and as a result, able to defend itself from this plague.

Such a plan is easier said than done. Deporting forty-five million people is no small task, but we take in about two million a year officially. Another two million come in illegally, so with some planning, we could probably deport ten million a year. Many would flee on their own making the task easier. On the other hand, there would be people who showed sympathy for these people. This has always been the weakness the 20%ers have exploited. They turn virtue into vice.

Of course, the first step in such a scheme is getting the 80% or at least a critical mass of them, to accept that there can be no compromise with the 20%ers. For reasons that are no longer worth exploring, these people are beyond the reach of reason so there is no point in trying to reason with them. They are simply a menace to society that must be removed in order to save the whole. The road back from the brink begins with the complete anathematization of the 20%er.

If that seems harsh, I encourage you to look to the scriptures for confirmation that that's the only way to save the remainder; get rid of the part that poisons the well for everyone. It happens over and over and over again in the Old Testament, in the Book of Mormon, and elsewhere. God didn't say to just love Sodom & Gomorrah and accept them. Alma (or Mormon, whomever wrote this particular commentary) didn't lament the ignominious end of Korihor. In fact, he said that that was the inevitable end of those who follow Satan. And it claims numerous times that the Nephites only had peace when "the more wicked part of the people were destroyed". 

However, I think the Z-man is not entirely correct, or rather, I think even his 20% number is inflated. Most of that 20% is just crowd-following, sheep-like virtue-signaling because of their perception of where the crowd actually is. Either that, or their nakedly mercenary Fake Americans who see wokeness as the key to their scam of the American people.

Why is it that corporations are so woke? Why have ads stopped trying to sell us stuff, and instead either lecture, hector, or preach to us about how terrible American-ness, Christianity, whiteness, order, and righteousness is?

Believe it or not, much of that can be attributed to one single man.

Now, I'm going to post two YouTube videos. They're a bit long, and they also talk about a lot of other things, much of it to establish context. I think you'll agree that they paint a compelling narrative of what's going on. I've heard of BlackRock, of course, but mostly only in the sense that they're buying up housing and keeping normal people from owning homes. The reality is that that's only the tip of the iceberg in how they're ruining the American Dream and destroying America and more. Now, the guy who posts these videos is a bit of a clickbaiter in some ways. He claims that about a dozen companies are "the worst business in the world" and obviously that isn't true. In BlackRock's case, it might well be, though.

I actually saw this second one first, and although it's really more about something else; the rise and fall of Netflix, the punchline is that it's BlackRock and the chasing of the ESG rating that caused Netflix to crumble. It's an open question whether some probably too little too late actual leadership and lack of cowardice at Netflix's top officers spots will be enough to salvage anything from it, but it shows why so many other corporations are doing the exact same thing.

The reality is, although people love to say "get woke, go broke" it's only been in the last couple of months that we've seen anyone actually go broke for getting woke. Even huge flops in the theatre, for example, haven't broken any companies, or even the careers of those who made them. The woke largely seem to have been immune from the consequences of being woke. The costs were dispersed, largely to normal people like you and me who maybe invested in these companies as hidden parts of our portfolios of investments. It was only until a bit of leadership by people like DeSantis, as well as grotesque over-reach by Disney and Netflix actually made the first actual brokeness from wokeness start to happen. Time will tell. The American people have been far too complacent for far too long, and I'm not sure that there's any recovery from where we are either. 

19 For the kingdom of the devil must shake, and they which belong to it must needs be stirred up unto repentance, or the devil will grasp them with his everlasting chains, and they be stirred up to anger, and perish;

20 For behold, at that day shall he rage in the hearts of the children of men, and stir them up to anger against that which is good.

21 And others will he pacify, and lull them away into carnal security, that they will say: All is well in Zion; yea, Zion prospereth, all is well—and thus the devil cheateth their souls, and leadeth them away carefully down to hell.

22 And behold, others he flattereth away, and telleth them there is no hell; and he saith unto them: I am no devil, for there is none—and thus he whispereth in their ears, until he grasps them with his awful chains, from whence there is no deliverance.

23 Yea, they are grasped with death, and hell; and death, and hell, and the devil, and all that have been seized therewith must stand before the throne of God, and be judged according to their works, from whence they must go into the place prepared for them, even a lake of fire and brimstone, which is endless torment.

24 Therefore, wo be unto him that is at ease in Zion!

25 Wo be unto him that crieth: All is well!

26 Yea, wo be unto him that hearkeneth unto the precepts of men, and denieth the power of God, and the gift of the Holy Ghost!

Anyway, the Netflix video. I'm going to go watch some more on this channel about how terrible Meta, Twitter, TikTok and more are. Not that I don't already know, but... y'know.

I know lots of people have advocated for ditching Netflix because of their evil. I'm actually... and I'm a little surprised myself to say this, suggesting the opposite. That already happened. That message was received by the leadership at Netflix, and they're making desperate although smart decisions to fight the tide and get back on track. Now is the time to support those corporate leaders who are a bit braver than their colleagues and show them that this course correction and abandonment of the evil of the ESG will be rewarded.

Not sure how to do the same for Bob Chapek. I think the structural problems at Disney are still too entrenched and they have to lose more before they're ready to show some wisdom and courage to stand up to BlackRock and its forces of woke lunatics.

Well, that's that

Official today: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-it-pro-blog/internet-explorer-11-desktop-app-retirement-faq/ba-p/2366549

Internet Explorer is retired. Not that I care, necessarily. I was only a brief and reluctant user of this browser. But watching the Browser Wars happen in realtime when I was younger, and the Internet itself was very young was a fascinating thing to see. I was a Netscape user for as long as I could be, and like I said, only reluctantly used Internet Explorer when work computers mandated that I do. I adopted Chromium as soon as it was available (or at least as soon as I was aware of it) but always preferred browsers that focused more on privacy, like Comodo, SRWare Iron and more recently Brave, which is my default on both PCs and Android. 

Still; as one Browser War comes to its conclusive and final (albeit quiet) end, it's the end of an era. I wish I could feel vindicated in avoiding IE all of this time, only to focus on a Browser built by Brendon Eich who was a co-founder of Mozilla and who worked before that on the Netscape Browser, and who invented Javascipt.  But, that would be lying if I pretended to be prescient to that degree; it's just serendipitous that my preferred browser now is made by the same people who made my preferred browser during the original browser wars.

Ranked

In the wake of Fletch's death, which I only heard about a week or so after it happened (it's been 2-3 weeks now) I've been revisiting my fandom of Depeche Mode. About five years ago, I'd force ranked the albums, and then I did a more detailed discussion about the albums and my opinions on them about two and a half years ago, with a few slight tweaks to the rankings. I mentioned at the time that some of the rankings were a bit fluid, and given the state of the band right now, it seems an appropriate time to revisit that, at least for a post or two.

When I did that two and a half years ago, I was still on Facebook (I haven't been since shortly after that point, however) and I was in a group that was mostly an unofficial DM fan group. They did a DM album "Survivor" exercise, where a few hundred fans would vote an album off of the island ever few days until only one was remaining. I look at this as a pretty good proxy for how the fandom generally feels about the albums. I'm somewhat gratified—not that I care that much, but still—that my own tastes seem to align pretty well with the fandom, accepting that this is a good proxy, albeit with a few notable exceptions; albums that I value more than the average fan and albums that I value less, here and there. My biggest disconnect is that I like best the Depeche Mode of the 80s, and was pretty disappointed in the DM of the 90s. (In fact, the 90s in general was a musical if not pop culture generally wasteland and anomaly that luckily we've mostly left behind.) I know that DM was at their commercial peak in the 90s, or at least the first half of the 90s, but I liked them better right before that.

Anyway, let me first give the Survivor list, worst to best, and then I'll give my new, improved, slightly tweaked personal list in annotated form. I mentioned when I did that earlier that it was a bit fluid. Sometimes inputs into my opinions sit like an ingredient in a stew. The longer it "ages" the more it comes to have a different impact, either growing or waning in its strength to impact the overall flavor. (I do love metaphors. And cooking ones are among my favorites.) Anyway, the Survivor list:

14. Spirit
13. Delta Machine
12. Sounds of the Universe
11. Exciter
10. Playing the Angel
9. Speak & Spell
8. Ultra
7. A Broken Frame
6. Construction Time Again
5. Some Great Reward
4. Songs of Faith and Devotion
3. Music For the Masses
2. Black Celebration
1. Violator

My own slightly different list. I have this in three chunks: the bottom tier, numbers 14-10, the middle tier, 9-5, and the top tier 4-1. There's a few changes in the bottom and top tier; as I said earlier, the middle tier is all very fluid, and it may look considerably shuffled from what I did before. But no album jumped tiers, for what it's worth:

Bottom Tier

14. Spirit. Falling from 13 to 14 because while musically I'm just as disappointed in it is ever, the socio-political themes of being smug, lecturing, and insulting to normal people in Britain and America has aged poorly and I'm more irritated with it than I was even when the album was new.

13. Exciter. While Exciter is no doubt "excited" to move up in the rankings, that's because Spirit has fallen, not because my appreciation for Exciter has improved. I still think it's a very poor album, and its best tracks are still not very memorable. Not even sure which ones I'd call the best tracks; I used to kinda like "Dead of Night" but it now sounds like a parody or caricature of a DM song. "Goodnight Lovers" maybe, which although it sounds nothing like what you'd expect a DM song to sound like, is probably the best on the album.

12. Delta Machine. I've often said two things: 1) sometime around or after Ultra, Dave Gahan's voice changed. Part of this was probably his brush with death by overdose and associated health problems, and some of it is also a stylistic choice to be less the slick, European electronic sound and instead a rockier, bluesier sound, which Dave (and others in the band) had become enamored with. I obviously dislike the change to the vocals, even though it's the same vocalist, and don't like the albums that come later as much as the ones that come before, although this is a more marked change in live shows than in the studio. 2) After Exciter I feel like all of the albums all had pretty much the same sound; a kind of more tired and phoned in retread of the early 90s sound, and the only question is not about the sound/style but whether or not there are enough tracks that are good enough. Playing the Angel is the best of this era, while Spirit is the worst, but Delta Machine really doesn't have anything that stands out. There's no top tier track here, like "Wrong" or "Precious", only mediocrities. The album itself starts off relatively weak, but gets slightly stronger as it goes on. It is, however, among the most forgettable of the albums. 

11. Sounds of the Universe. Of course, in this post vinyl and post cassette and even post CD age, album cover art doesn't matter nearly as much as it used to, it's worth pointing out that Sounds has literally the worst cover art of all of the DM albums. I was pretty disappointed in Sounds when it first came out, and I'll stand by that initial impression. I think it's about on par with Delta Machine except for the fact that it has a truly stand-out top tier song that would have been good on any Depeche Mode album: "Wrong" as well as two pretty good b-sides from the era, especially "Oh Well" but also "Ghost" which kind of has a "Sea of Sin" vibe to it a little bit. While the overall quality impression is relatively low, you've got to recognize the absolute brilliance of "Wrong." A few other minor notes: "Fragile Tension" is also pretty good, and the music video for "Hole to Feed" is so grotesque and off-putting that it sours the entire impression of the song and even the band itself if you've seen it and know that the band approved that travesty as a representation of the song. I know when they were a young band, they did a bunch of really bad music videos, which they hated and felt very uncomfortable and in fact exploited by—like various video directors took advantage of them to make some weird artistic expression that had nothing to do with the song—but by this point, they were a big enough band that if this thing got made, it's because the band liked it. The whole thing is a bit disappointing; I'd suggest that if you aren't a big enough DM fan to pick the whole thing up, just get the "Wrong" single, which has the "Oh Well" b-side. That's by far the best material from the entire era.

10. Songs of Faith and Devotion. I've always been very, very disappointed in this album, and I was a bit gratified that it only had a middling ranking compared to where I expected it to be in the survivor exercise mentioned above. The problems with the album are mostly 1) although it doesn't sound grungy, exactly, it did pick up a sound that was obviously influenced by the same pop culture zeitgeist, giving this a very rough, un-polished sound that has little in common with what Depeche Mode's strength had always been, 2) the experimentation with gospel on two tracks was inane; I have no idea why they thought that was a great idea. If you were going to go do something totally different and mix it in, I'd just as soon they did polka or big band. Gospel seems like the absolute poorest fit imaginable. 3) there weren't enough songs. When you take away the gospel songs, the crappy Martin Gore-sung ballad, and a few mediocre tracks, there's only a few tracks left. That said; there were still more decent songs than in later albums like Sounds or Delta Machine. But even the good ones don't really sound like what DM songs are "supposed" to sound like; "I Feel You" for instance, isn't a terrible song, but is it even an electronic synthpop song anymore with all the feedback noise and really big, hoaky steel guitars? It really was a step too far away from the style that made them famous, and this is the album where they completely lost me. Granted, they previewed this direction on Violator, but SOFAD went pretty far—too far—in a different direction, before thankfully pulling back somewhat from that on Ultra. Lots of people bemoan the lack of Alan Wilder in subsequent albums, and while I can totally get on board with that sentiment, the fact is that Alan Wilder was certainly present on this one, and his hands are all over the sound of it. Of course, I rate this album a bit lower than the fandom generally too.

Middle Tier

Before I start this tier, let me preface it with a little bit of flavor. The albums in this tier are all over the place in terms of style. It features albums like Speak & Spell where the band was—effectively—a different band altogether, with a different main song writer who subsequently left the band, and who did his work in a totally different context. It also has Playing the Angel which is part of the same grouping as most of the albums discussed previously (although its better than any of those) as well as tons of albums that were transitional between one phase and another. Because the style and context between these various albums is so disparate, it also means that most of the placements within this tier are exceptionally fluid. It's really hard to meaningfully compare Speak & Spell to Playing the Angel and rate them, when they are so incredibly different, for instance. The rankings don't mean nearly as much in this tier, consequently.

9. Playing the Angel. I earlier had this at the top of the tier (#5) and I now have it at the bottom, but again, that doesn't mean as much as you might think, since all songs in this tier are essentially in the same place anyway. Like I said, Angel fits stylistically with the post-Exciter sound, like most of the albums previously discussed, but it has way more good songs than any of them. Not only is the general, average song quality high, but it also has an absolute top-tier song that would sound great on any DM album, "Precious". It is the first to have Gahan-penned tracks, which in general aren't as good as Gore's (and he only writes the lyrics; he needs a partner to write the music) but they're not bad either. Gore said that prior to making this album, he'd been doing a fair bit of DJing, and that may contribute to the album being better than those that followed it; he was actually in a higher energy mood or something, which I think contributes to the better feel of the album.

8. Ultra. After being as disappointed as I was with Songs of Faith and Devotion as well as the attendant drama with Dave Gahan and Alan Wilder leaving the group, I honestly wasn't interested in even picking up Ultra for years. When I finally did, I found that in most respects it's better than I expected. It is a bit of a throwback in some ways; a lot of the 90s pop culture trash had been way toned down, and the mood of the album was less overtly bleak, and more a dreamy, thoughtful melancholy mood prevails here rather than the mood that Depeche Mode had carved out over several previous albums. This was maybe a good approach, given what was going on with the band. It's not a bad album, really. It isn't as big as it looks, though. Three of the tracks are little instrumental interludes, which prior albums had also included, but which had not had track separation and labels in the past. Like many of the albums in this tier, it really kind of stands alone; it's not the bluesy and rocky late phase sound, it's not the dark and bleak polished European synthpop sound of the mid to late 80s; it's kind of just its own thing in transition.

7. Speak & Spell. For a freshman effort with a completely different band line-up than it had later, this one is really hard to compare with the rest of the DM repertoire. It's too different to anything else. I moved it up compared to where I did have it, because I find that I just like listening to it a bit more, and I probably had it a little bit under-rated. It is very different, and sounds almost like young Dave Gahan singing Erasure or Yazoo songs in some was, but that makes sense, since Vince Clark is the main man for all of those groups. But it's got a ton of great tracks, and at least one of them is still played in every single live show, "Just Can't Get Enough."

6. A Broken Frame. Here, Vince Clark had left, but Alan Wilder hadn't quite started yet; Gore was still re-using some songs that he had written when it was 14-15 years old (according to an interview with Fletch, anyway) and many tracks were obviously trying to mimic the Vince Clark poppy sound. The darker or more melancholy or quirky songs don't sound like Vince Clark, but they don't (yet) sound that much like Depeche Mode of the middle to later 80s either. Many of them also have a Romantic vibe, and I don't mean that in a generic sense, but more in the sense of the Romantic movement in art, literature and music, and an exploration of those same themes. There's some really good stuff here, although it sounds "primitive" compared to what came later, in some ways, although tracks like "The Sun & the Rainfall" have still aged tremendously well, and doesn't sound dated at all. It's still a brilliant track. Others, like "Monument" or "See You" or "The Meaning of Love" on the other hand, are charming in a dated kind of way, but sound kitschy and old-fashioned.

5. Construction Time Again. I didn't necessarily mean for the first three albums to be ranked chronologically like that, but given that all three are transition albums, on the way to becoming something else, maybe it makes sense. I'm not actually sure that there is a ranking that isn't artificial between them; I'd probably say that all three are comparable and that I could shuffle any of these three in any way whatsoever and not feel like it was unfair. Construction was the first of the Gareth Jones trilogy too, where famous hired gun producer Jones was brought in to work with the band in the studio. Along with Daniel Miller, the label boss and sometime producer himself, an awful lot of the credit for the sound of the band as they evolved into being the recognizable DM (in the next album after this) should go to these non-band members. Jones obviously had less skin in the game for the band itself than Miller as label boss, who in turn had less skin in the game than the band members, but they also had more experience and brought new techniques. The band themselves started picking up on many of these, particularly Alan Wilder, who was now a full-fledged member of the band by the recording of this album, and they did get to the point where they didn't need as much "shepherding" and they had an established tone, mood and sound after a while that wasn't still forming. A few of the tracks on this album could have made the jump up into the next one, and sounded like fully fledged mature DM sounding tracks, but mostly they weren't quite there yet. That isn't necessarily a bad thing, though—"Everything Counts" is one of their most iconic tracks, and they finish pretty much every show with it even now. But many of the tracks still sound kind of hoaky, and Gore's "political consciousness" which is a polite way of saying "Marxist bullshit" are all over this album. Luckily, that was mostly left behind, although a few traces of it remained in the next album. And the art direction deliberately used some Nazi and Soviet like iconography, but I'm pretty sure that was just in an attempt to be edgy. Coupled with the dark sound and much more personal nature of the tracks in the upcoming couple of albums, I'm quite sure of it; I can't imagine that even with the socio-political evil evident in Spirit that anyone in the band would have legitimately admired the Soviet Union in 1983.

Top Tier

We're finally to the top tier, and these are four consecutive albums released in the mid-80s to early 90s; specifically 1984-1990, although not in that order exactly. To me, this is when Depeche Mode really established a sound, tone and mood that was mature and well-formed. When they veered away from it in the 90s, both because they were themselves getting tired of it and getting attracted by various other things that were completely outside of the interests of their fanbase, as well as the general crappy zeitgeist of the 90s overall (can I blame Bush and especially Clinton for that? It seems fair.) they went in directions that made them less like Depeche Mode, because by that point, Depeche Mode had established themselves as a certain kind of band. It took a few albums to get there, and they ran with it for a few more albums, but by the time they had produced 7 albums, while at their commercial peak, they were clearly starting a downhill run into some other place.

4. Violator. Most fans, as noted above, put this at number 1, but I was always disappointed in it. Not only did it indicate the beginning of the change in sound, with its big, broad hoaky steel guitars and kind of grungy "fuzzed up" sounds, but it also didn't have a lot of tracks, honestly, and many of them weren't even all that well produced. Even truly great songs from the era, like "Enjoy the Silence" (which even I have to admit that if I could only pick one DM song to listen to ever again, it would probably be this one) didn't have great album mixes; some of the other versions of it that came out were better than the album mix. Maybe that's not entirely fair. "Pleasure, Little Treasure", a b-side from the Music For the Masses era a few years earlier was the true beginning of that change in sound, and Masses uses a lot more guitar than I at first really noticed. But it never overpowers the sound (except in "Pleasure") or changes the mood of it. That said, it's still a solid album, and if I was disappointed in it relative to Masses that's partly because Masses is probably my favorite album of all time from any band period. Maybe. (Duran Duran's Rio and Def Leppard's Hysteria deserve a shout out as contenders too.) And, the problems that Violator had really metastasized in the next album instead of this one, when Depeche Mode seem to have collectively decided that they didn't want to be Depeche Mode anymore at all, and were interested in being some other band entirely.

3. Some Great Reward. The second of the Gareth Jones trilogy, and the first album (of three) where Depeche Mode really finally realized their mature, fully developed, iconic sound, that is still often and deliberately imitated by dozens of electronic synthpop bands today. Fully mature, in this case, is probably a tad over-selling it; there are a few of the weird socio-political vibes and occasional hoaky sounds of Construction Time lingering here and there, and I think the band itself looks back at some of this material and thinks that it's "too poppy" and not serious enough for them to be very pleased with anymore. They hadn't played "People Are People" in a live show in years; not since sometime in the 90s, which is kind of odd considering that it was a big, genuine hit and fan favorite for exactly this reason. On the other hand, "Blasphemous Rumours" is probably the most iconic Depeche Mode song. Not iconic in the sense that it's the first song anyone thinks of when they hear the band's name, but iconic in the sense that it encapsulates everything about the mood, the tone and the feel of the band in one package better than any other track does. 

2. Black Celebration. For a long time this and Masses went back and forth for the top slot; it is hard to pick between them. I think Masses is more accessible, while Celebration is perhaps a bit more artistic. Two things probably permanently set the order netween them, though. 1) Finding out that "But Not Tonight" being the album ender was not the band's wishes, and not the way the album was released outside of America. To me, it somehow fits remarkably well in adding a "mood coda" if you will to the album, and it's hard to imagine the album without it. It feels incomplete and lacking a punchline somehow, and yet that's exactly how the band intended it to be. 2) This was the third and final of the Gareth Jones trilogy. After this album, everyone decided that the band needed some new jokes (not to cast any shade on Jones' work with them, which really turned them in to what they became) and the recording process for Celebration had been difficult and tense. Jones bowed out and Daniel Miller stepped back too. Who also, it might be pointed out, had more and more demands on his time anyway as his label was growing and doing gangbusters business. He no longer had the time to spare months in the studio with his band helping them develop the sound of their album. Alan Wilder had spent so much time with Miller and Jones that he had turned into a competent and probably, in fact, brilliant producer himself by this point. For Masses, they got David Bascombe, who'd made a name for himself producing Tears for Fears, including the song "Shout" which many have compared to Depeche Mode's sound. Although everyone, Bascombe included, have said that his role was a little more back-seaty; almost more of an engineer than a traditional producer, while the band itself, especially Alan Wilder, took the lead in charting the sound of the album. Masses, therefore, becomes the album that's the most Depeche Modey, if that makes any sense, made while at the peak of their sound, which they developed under the guidance of Jones and Miller, but the one where they were the most themselves without anyone else's influence. I kind of like that. And that talks more about the next album than this one, but it also explains why I think it deserves the top spot and why Celebration has probably permanently been moved down to #2 after waffling between the two of them for years.

1. Music For the Masses. And here we are. The magnum opus of the best period of Depeche Mode's development. The most Depeche Modey of Depeche Mode's albums, and in many ways the one that's the most imitated. Although who can say; I think it's fair to say that Masses was a pretty obvious development from where Celebration had been, and other than the willingness to add more guitars to the sound, although still keeping them subtle at this stage, was a step who's significance wouldn't be recognized for quite some time. It's also worth pointing out that Masses is the first time I really became aware of Depeche Mode and paid a lot of attention to them (I do remember when "People Are People" was a radio hit and I loved it at the time, but somehow I didn't even figure out who sang it until later). They say first love is best love sometimes, and that may have been true for Depeche Mode; I heard Masses first, and therefore its my favorite. It think other than that, my own taste and personality had been developing to the point where Depeche Mode at that time was just the perfect fit for me, and I got into it pretty hard. And that's still where I am, in most respects. I don't want to say that my musical tastes haven't had any development since I was 15-16, because obviously that's not true, but they were set solidly enough that they didn't have massive upheaval, only added layers to my taste. Depeche Mode's tone, mood, attitude, and everything else was the perfect fit for me then, and that era of Depeche Mode's fully developed sound, which lasted for several albums without a major shift in direction, is still a pretty darned good fit for me now. And as Depeche Mode have abandoned that style of music and gone in different directions, I think I (and I honestly believe the majority of the fanbase) is still standing over in the general area of where Depeche Mode was in the late 80s or maybe early 90s, and saying, basically, "hey, we're still over here. You overshot the venue and are in the wrong place." 

Not that they should be locked in a studio and forced to churn out more of the exact same. To be honest, that isn't a good strategy either, because the excitement for a new release that sounds pretty much same as the last several releases starts to wane after a time. Look at bands that have remained too static and done the same thing album after album after album. So, there's not a good answer for it. Maybe it just is what is is, and I should enjoy the albums from their heyday and not complain about the subsequent albums that aren't from their heyday and aren't really for me in the same sense that they used to be. 

I'm In Love With a German Film Star

It's amazing that at this point in my life and this point in time, I can still discover lost "hits" of the 80s that I haven't heard before. In this case, because it wasn't ever a hit in the US, although still... I've been pretty in touch, I thought, with the post punk and early New Wave scene in the UK, and ferreted out all kinds of tracks from that era. 

I discovered this because Mark Reeder remixed a cover of it about ten years ago, and that's the track that YouTube eventually led me to. But once I heard it, I of course had to go hear the original, plus some pretty decent other covers by the Foo Fighters, Linoleum and Dubstar.

There's a bunch of totally unlikeable know-it-all betas trying to prove something by commenting in the comments section below all of the cover versions how they like the original better. Wow, how nice. Thanks for sharing. So glad that I got to hear how OG you are. You're so cool. Honestly, all of these versions were great.

Here's the Mark Reeder remix version of Sam Taylor-Wood's cover version. It's the first one I heard. I don't know that I think it's my favorite. The original is more post punk rather than electronic, and this Sam Taylor-Wood was a good remix, but the Pet Shop Boys had their hands all over most of the other versions, and tried to take credit for producing all if it and just getting her as a vocalist, or something. This isn't a good look on them, as their remix is a train wreck.

I was running around listening to remixes of Depeche Mode songs when YouTube recommended it, particularly their under-rated track "If You Want" from the Some Great Reward album, and the last Alan Wilder-penned track to make an appearance.

Well... I should probably double-check that. There might be a lingering b-side that still made it out after this one.

Dominatrix RMX is an outfit that's done tons of bootleg remixes that are very high quality. The "Shake the Disease", "But Not Tonight" and "The Sun and the Rainfall" remixes all particularly stood out to me this time around, but I've been familiar with the guy for some time. Apparently, his YouTube channel went down for a while, and he brought it back and reuploaded a lot of stuff with new videos. Not sure why.

Ironically... how did I miss this? I mean, I never played the GTA games, but if it was in the Vice City soundtrack, I should have heard of it. But somehow... it slipped through the cracks.

UPDATE: Vice City Stories. I never paid attention to the soundtrack for that game, actually.

SWTOR Tracker 6/9/2022

I haven't done a SWTOR tracker post in a while, but honestly, I haven't had much advancement in the story with any characters either. I spent a fair bit of time crafting and selling and buying. I've fiddled around with some of the characters I'm not recording. Basically, I had set up my own mental block. I had a fair number of unedited raw videos built up, and I convinced myself that I couldn't record any more until I knocked the number down.

Of course... the problem is that editing videos isn't as fun as playing, so it felt like a chore, so I started avoiding it. Which meant that I was avoiding playing because I had decided that I couldn't record more video with the volume that I had. I had two solutions, both of which I implemented to varying degrees: 1) buckle down and edit some videos. Once I get going, it's not so bad, and 2) don't set arbitrary thresholds just for you. I've got plenty of hard drive space; if I want to record more raw video, I can.

So, I have posted quite a bit of new video on YouTube and saved it to my folders. It is also curious that I've mostly done so for characters where I'm not showing all of the exploration and planetary and extra missions, just the class story missions. I'll watch my raw video all the way through, but end up cutting 60-80% of it, depending on what I was doing when I recorded it. If it's heroics, or exploration missions, or whatever, it gets the boot.

And I also finally said screw it last night and recorded some more video with Anstal Tane doing the bonus series on Taris so he can get off that lousy planet. He's one of the three or four characters I have that I am recording all missions, so I'm only cutting a lot of running around and fighting trash mobs, not whole missions. I should probably note which characters I'm doing that for in the list below.

So, anyway, even though it's been a good two weeks, most of these characters are still where they were before. But that should change for the next few trackers. These will come less frequently too; I do have a fair bit of out of state travel scheduled in the next two to three months, which means that I will be leaving my personal desktop that I play this on at home, obviously. 

I went ahead and re-ordered the characters, and I tried to make sure I didn't have too many of the same faction before shifting it. That made it imperative to pull my newest trooper characters up just a bit, since I otherwise have too many Imperial characters.

Anstal Tane. Level 44 Scoundrel playing the smuggler story. Sith Pureblood, male. Recording all missions. Just finished the Taris bonus series. Although he's the farthest along, I may well play more of him, so as to spread the pack out just a bit and not have everyone bunch up on just the second and third planets.

Elemer Kell. Level 36 Sentinel playing the Jedi Knight story. Imperial Zabrak, male. Just arrived on Taris and walked out of the spaceport, but otherwise have to start all of the missions. After moving to Nar Shaddaa and recording just a bit with Anstal, I'll probably do him next. In fact, I'm trying to reorder the list of characters in the order I expect to play them. Recording all missions.

Vant Galaide. Level 35 Mercenary playing the bounty hunter story. Human male. Just arrived on Balmorra. I actually skipped the phone call from Crysta so I could go shop for a Mako customization on Balmorra and make her blonde, but then I fast-traveled back to my ship. Recording all missions

Revecca Arden. Level 34 Sorceress playing the Sith Inquisitor story. Human female. Just about to go to Balmorra.

Haul Romund. Level 33 Mercenary playing the Smuggler story. Human male. 

Codon Veile. Level 21 Sniper playing the trooper story. Chiss male. On the Republic fleet; needs to take the Esseles to Coruscant.

Vash Galaide. Level 35 Powertech playing the agent story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas

Phovos Maledict. Level 28 Juggernaut playing the Sith Warrior story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas.

Mirabeau Tane. Level 20 Gunslinger playing the trooper story. Cyborg male. Just arrived on the fleet from Ord Mantell.

Wulf Hengest. Level 30 Vanguard playing the bounty hunter story. Human male. Just arrived on Dromund Kaas.

Embric Stane. Level 19 Mercenary playing the bounty hunter story. Cyborg male. I haven't completely decided for sure if I'll record him or not, or even continue playing him or not in the meantime. So I'll leave him on until I decide, but he'll just be here at the end.

RIP Andy Fletcher

I missed this, because I'm terrible at keeping up with pop culture news... on purpose... but apparently Andy Fletcher, one of the true founding members of Depeche Mode from before even they were Depeche Mode, died a week or so ago at age 60 of "natural causes" in his home.

It's probably a bit gauche to ask if he had the Covid vaccine. Besides, I'm sure he did. 

Fletch was a bit notorious near the end as the "unproductive" member of the band, and it was a running joke that he had little role other than to clap from time to time, but of course that wasn't really true. His true calling just wasn't with the musical side, but rather with the management of the band. But he was there from the start; when Depeche Mode first started... and they weren't even Depeche Mode yet, it was two high school friends, Vince Clark (or Vince Martin, his real name) and Andy Fletcher putting together a band called No Romance in China influenced by the Cure. Only later, after hearing some of the very early OMD stuff did they get involved in becoming an electronic act, recruit Martin Gore and last of all Dave Gahan, to form their initial line-up under their initial name.

Now, it's been five years since Depeche Mode released anything, the bitter, and frankly kind of crappy pseudo-politico-social virtue-sniveling Spirit, which does not seem to have been particularly well-received. (I don't like it very much. Then again, I don't like much of what they've done since Ultra at least, other than Playing the Angel and even then, I'd go back to Music for the Masses since they produced something that I really liked.) With Fletcher now dead, I think it's an open question if they'll ever record again. With Fletch's death, there are now more former Depeche Mode members than there are current members. Personally, I kind of feel like they shouldn't. For the most part, as near as I can tell, fans who still talk publicly about their fandom, such as we are, kind of feel like they've hurt their own legacy by going beyond when they should have quit, and they've gone in a different direction in most respects than their own fandom. The concept of quitting while you're ahead seems to be a lost art. 

I suppose this isn't a very tasteful or tactful tribute post, honestly. But it is what it is. I do find myself grateful that my wife took me to see the band in 2005 on the Playing the Angel tour. While I'd have been happy to see them again after that date, I also feel like that was probably the last pretty good tour. And I'm also chuffed that I didn't go see the Devotional tour, because I was available to see it, and my younger brother even went, but it didn't seem important to me at that time. And the Masses tour! It totally hadn't occurred to me to go to concerts in 1988, and I wasn't really all that familiar with their work yet anyway. But that's the one I wish I could take my time-traveling DeLorean to go back and see. Sigh. I'll see about playing through the best three albums: Some Great Reward, Black Celebration, and Music for the Masses while coddling a drink (I don't drink; I mean a Vernors or something) and being thoughtful tonight.

And in spite my feelings about the decline in their music over the last three decades from their high point in 1987 (1987!) and my other personal feelings about having learned about the weird, unlikeable and antisocial behavior of Gore and Gahan in particular, I still feel a little... I dunno, it's a shame, isn't it? Fletch always seemed like the decent guy of the bunch, along with Alan Wilder. Kind of the peacemaker in some ways among the band when tensions arose. I know he had his problems with anxiety and alcoholism...and frankly, it's a shame that we know that. One of the things that I used to really respect about Depeche Mode in the 80s and early 90s is that we didn't really know much about them personally, and that's a good thing. Like all entertainers everywhere from every era of human history, once you get to know what they're like behind the scenes, it's not often a pretty picture. They were born for the stage, and if only that's all that we knew of them!

Sigh. I can't seem to write a decent tribute without throwing in jabs about the things about our culture which they partially represented about which I've become bitter and cynical myself. Maybe I should take my own advice and quit while I'm ahead, or at least not keep digging myself in deeper.

Fake vaxx

https://www.sott.net/article/468242-Police-charge-big-pharma-boss-with-falsifying-his-Covid-vaccination-status

To no-one's surprise who's been paying attention, the elites have been faking their vaccination status. Well, obviously. They don't die as much as the rank and file. That said, I suspect that a lot fewer people are vaxxed than is reported anyway.

In any case, the data continues to pile up.

https://metatron.substack.com/p/australia-begins-to-reap-what-it?s=r

As always, the go-to data site for election fraud, vax fraud, and right-wing insurrection fraud, is https://hereistheevidence.com/

Also, my son sent me this. Funny. Or maybe not. Not sure that I get it; Amber Heard isn't Jewish, unless she secretly is. Her ancestry is pretty typical American, and she was raised Catholic, but has since converted to full-blown narcissism as her religion, as near as I can tell. But this is for real, not some doctored photo. And her quote is monumentally stupid. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. Nothing Amber Heard, her legal team or her PR team every says from this point on has any credibility whatsoever. They're proven liars, so treat everything that they say as probably a lie and you'll do OK.