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chim

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Posts posted by chim

    Russia is now bombing Ukraine

    in General Banter

    Posted · Edited by chim

    I am not adamant that American navy divers blew the pipelines, but if it wasn't Russia then there must've been a tacit understanding if not a cooperation between a few players. The US military also knows the waters and archipelagos of Scandinavia extremely well. I don't think there are any government heads in the EU that could authorize something like this behind closed doors, which kinda leaves Biden and Putin. Moving the doomsday clock even further is not the smartest idea, but these are strange times and the US and most of the west absolutely did not like Nordstream. But yeah, it's somewhat out of character if you put aside the USA=Boogeyman rhetoric and some of the worse examples of CIA hijinks from the past century. 

    U.S Secetary of State Anthony Blinken calls this a tremendous opportunity. 

    Quote

    "And ultimately this is also a tremendous opportunity.  It’s a tremendous opportunity to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponization of energy as a means of advancing his imperial designs."

    https://www.state.gov/secretary-antony-j-blinken-and-canadian-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-at-a-joint-press-availability/

    Putin's latest speech was a lot of oxymoronic hyperbole and good ol' USSR romanticism. Now his former PM also claims he's painted himself into a corner and might bail out in a few months. 

    Russia is now bombing Ukraine

    in General Banter

    Posted · Edited by chim

    1 hour ago, trying to be less rude said:

    this is very week support and the best support you offer

     

    it was detected. explosions were measured and ships were seen in the area (russian ships)

    All we have is circumstantial stuff, there are hundreds of pages of discussion on this in local forums and a lot more details floating about, I just shared what little that stood out to me the most and actually made a bit of sense. Everybody mucks about in that general area, including russian ships. 

    The USS Kearsarge was in the vicinity at the days around to the explosions, that's a huge vessel and the one that turned off its AIS tracking. The reason the AIS is shut off is not to avoid detection by other nations but by snooping civilians and journalists. The powers that be are probably fully aware of who did this. Also, the timing coincides with the completion of Baltic Pipe, run by Denmark, Norway and Poland... Both Danish and Polish representatives openly denounced Nordstream and Russian gas dependency, and painted it as a blow to Putin. Literally opened on the same day as the explosions. When LARPing as geopolitical experts we can't afford much room for coincidence.

    Gas and oil makes big nations do wacky stuff. It's also important to note that the US' liquified natural gas is less reliable than methane for industrial applications, and way more carbon-intensive. Nordstream has been a real threat to the LNG industry. And let's not forget the US has done this before: https://www.wired.com/2004/03/soviets-burned-by-cia-hackers/

    But no, there's no smoking gun and it all might be fan fiction, sure.

    Russia is now bombing Ukraine

    in General Banter

    Posted

    3 minutes ago, Enthusiast said:

    Russia: (filling mass graves with executed civilians and launching artillery at nuclear power plants) "We better not touch that pipe in case it hurts the brand"

    Yes, their goverment are evil warmongers but they need money to be evil warmongers. The gas bill has sustained them through the sanctions. 

    • Like 1

    Russia is now bombing Ukraine

    in General Banter

    Posted

    The best argument against Russia being responsible is that it's really bad for their brand. Nobody will buy gas from pipelines that have a tendency to blow up. Could be a false flag but for what? Trying to bring the west down to Putin's level and drum up sympathy? All of these figureheads saying cryptic stuff kinda irks me, like the polish former foreign minister who thanked USA on twitter moments after the leak (before he deleted the post and blamed russian hackers). Latvia's prime minister calls this a new form of hybrid warfare but won't even mention a suspect. Norway and Denmark are spooked into stepping up security on their fuel installations.

    I may have been hasty in calling out Nato per se as they don't ever operate clandestinely like this (as far as we know). But the US and a handful of other players absolutely don't want Germany being dependent on Russia for gas. What a mess.

    Russia is now bombing Ukraine

    in General Banter

    Posted · Edited by chim

    Totally convinced it was a joint Nato thing with the US as a key figure. Poland and Norway too (and let's not forget it happened in Danish/Swedish waters). They all have gas to sell and stand to benefit from this the most. Some online ship tracker sleuths found out that US Navy in the area turned off their AIS tracking around that time, which is really suspect. It was done far away from Russian waters and, for a job involving 1000's of kilos of explosives, was done with great care not to disturb the seafloor environment. There's the SwePol power line nearby and old caches of WW2-era chemical weapons all over the place. To pull this off in shallow waters, undetected, is almost unfathomable. Everyone in a position of power, or involved with signals intelligence, probably knows exactly what went down but we'll never get a confirmation. I don't think anyone should be too thrilled about explosions in the Baltic sea right now. 

    • Like 1

    The controversy surrounding Xtal

    in Aphex Twin

    Posted · Edited by chim

    The sample is a significant part of the track, especially as it's played in a mostly unaltered form... but I wouldn't consider it stolen right off. There were way worse examples from that era, everybody played by different rules... #xtalgate 

    edit: I wouldn't judge Jeffries' comments out of context as people are being unnecessarily disrespectful to him online. I was personally shocked by how much that original sample made the track - the twinkly keys thing in the background was an ethereal experience when first hearing the track in my teens. 50% writing credits sound more than fair to me.

    • Like 6

    Post Your Most Recent Burger

    in General Banter

    Posted · Edited by chim

    Had the displeasure of yet another "gourmet" burger joint that doesn't even bother mentioning they smash their burgers. As if it's the new religion to love extremely greasy trashed patties and happily pay north of €20. The burger was named "Pops", presumably for the floppy cucumber resembling old man dick. 

    IMG_20220917_162113.jpg

    Earlier example from another place. Just way too greasy which kills any flavor. Dirty fries were great though. 

    IMG_20220826_112409.jpg

    Two recently homebrewed quickies. Nothing fancy but way better than the above at a fraction of the price. Prefab chuck patties on low heat on the cast iron, gouda/cheddar, Scorpion Tabasco for a few dabs of heat, raw onion, a lot of black pepper plus hickory bearnaise on one, whatever dressing I found in the fridge at the time on the other.

     

    IMG_20220917_180954.jpg

    IMG_20220917_181145.jpg

    • Like 1

    the watmm GAS thread

    in EKT General Discussion

    Posted

    On 8/26/2022 at 2:36 AM, TubularCorporation said:

    Oh, there is one piece of gear i still really, really want, but unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) it's rare and expensive so I don't expect to ever get it.  But it would be so, so nice. The Midas XL88 analog matrix mixer:

     

    I was looking up matrix mixers once and the options aren't abundant out there. This looks really good for solving all kinds of headaches with routing and FX chains. $1300 doesn't strike me as a lot for a thing like that, some pretty basic rack mixers and summers can be more than double that, but with these old big boxes I dunno how the upkeep is going to be... All thru-hole apparently. 

    Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation & the ability of resonant frequencies in music to alter physical objects

    in General Banter

    Posted

    19 hours ago, TubularCorporation said:

    This reminds me of a few years ago when they demonstrated a proof-of-concept virus that could jump between computers acoustically.

    There was a Radiolab episode that brought up side-channel attacks, meaning that you could glean passwords using hi-tech microphones aimed at the processor or even monitoring the power draw of a computer. Cool and a little creepy. I wouldn't put it past mechanical components like a HDD to have a number of quirky flaws, whether it's crashing from a Janet Jackson song or accidentally broadcasting your bitcoin wallet. 

    • Like 1

    Celebrity Deaths

    in General Banter

    Posted

    RIP Wolfgang Petersen

    https://variety.com/2022/film/news/wolfgang-petersen-dead-air-force-one-1235342734/

     

    Quote

    Wolfgang Petersen, who rode his acclaimed German-language film “Das Boot” into a career directing Hollywood blockbusters such as “In the Line of Fire,” “Air Force One,” “The Perfect Storm” and “Troy,” has died. He was 81.

    The news was confirmed by his production company.

    “Das Boot” (1981) was the harrowing story of life aboard a German U-boat during World War II; the genius of the film was that Petersen accomplished the unlikely feat of making audiences feel for the ordinary men serving on the submarine, who were all at least nominally in service to the Nazi cause — even the captain, played by Jurgen Prochnow, who himself parlayed the role in the film into a career as a character actor in Hollywood. Offering suspense and tragedy, “Das Boot” was nominated for six Oscars — an enormous number for a foreign film — including two for Petersen, for director and adapted screenplay. On the IMDb’s list of 250 top-rated films, “Das Boot” is No. 71. (A director’s cut running 293 minutes was  presented as a TV miniseries in Germany in 1985 and on DVD in the U.S. and elsewhere.)

    Petersen’s first film in Hollywood was the 1984 fantasy adventure “The NeverEnding Story,” which he directed and co-scripted. The story centered on a boy in our reality and the kingdom of Fantasia, which exists in a storybook. Roger Ebert wrote: “The only thing standing between Fantasia and Nothingness is the faith of a small boy named Bastian (Barret Oliver). He discovers the kingdom in a magical bookstore, and as he begins to read the adventure between the covers, it becomes so real that the people in the story know about Bastian. The idea of the story within a story is one of the nice touches in ‘The NeverEnding Story.’ Another one is the idea of a child’s faith being able to change the course of fate.” Variety called it “a marvelously realized flight of pure fantasy,” and the film has been dearly loved by moviegoers and home video watchers since its release.

    However successful Petersen was in appealing to children, he quickly graduated to films geared toward adults. His next effort was “Enemy Mine,” about an astronaut (Dennis Quaid) who crash-lands on an alien planet and teams with a lizard-like alien (Louis Gossett Jr.) from the species he was battling in order to survive the harsh environment. This film was neither well received by critics nor made any money, and indeed, Petersen did not make another film for six years.

    He returned in 1991 with the mystery thriller “Shattered,” starring Tom Berenger, Bob Hoskins and Greta Scacchi. The film, centering on Berenger’s wealthy Dan Merrick, who has amnesia after an accident that seems increasingly suspicious, offered many twists and turns, but most critics found the screenplay weak. The film, like “Enemy Mine,” made little money.

    Petersen made an extraordinary creative leap with the critically acclaimed Clint Eastwood film “In the Line of Fire” (1993). The suspenseful, well-written film starred Eastwood as a Secret Service agent scarred by the experience of not having been able to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy three decades earlier; John Malkovich played an effective villain out to kill the current president. Using technology that was new and highly innovative at the time, the effects team digitally inserted images of Eastwood from 1960s films into footage of JFK — but that was just the cherry on top of a well-directed film. Variety said: “Director Wolfgang Petersen sends the story efficiently down its straight and narrow track, deftly engineering the battle of wills between two desperately committed men.”

     

     

    “It’s my greatest experience after ‘Das Boot,’ ” Petersen told Variety ahead of the movie’s release. “Working with Clint was a great experience.”

    “In the Line of Fire” was Petersen’s first film to score significant box office — $177 million worldwide in 1993. With both critical acclaim — the film sports a 95% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes — and impressive B.O., Petersen had finally arrived in Hollywood.

    The time was ripe for a movie about a killer virus, after two books on the subject hit the bestseller list, but in making 1995’s “Outbreak,” Petersen had to confront the fact that a killer virus does not have the visual appeal of a vampire or a great white shark. Thus the film, starring Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, introduced spatting ex-spouses, hints of a conspiracy and melodramatic cliches. It was not critically esteemed, but somehow the movie made $190 million worldwide, so Warner Bros. had no cause for complaint.

    In “Air Force One” (1997), it was not the Secret Service agents protecting the president who kicked ass but the president himself. The casting was key: Harrison Ford was still young enough to seem capable of physically taking control amid a terrorist plot aboard the presidential plane while old enough to sport the gravitas of a U.S. president. Rolling Stone said: ” ‘Air Force One’ doesn’t insult the audience. It is crafted by a filmmaker who takes pride in the thrills and sly fun he packs into every frame.” The movie soared at the box office, taking $315 million worldwide.

    Next was 2000’s “The Perfect Storm,” an adaptation of the book by Sebastian Junger about the confluence of meteorological events that created a positively enormous gale off the Northeast coast and the crew of a fishing vessel, played by George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg, among others, that was stuck in the middle of the tempest. Visual effects provided the monumental wave that swamps the boat, but the film would have been exciting and suspenseful in any event. Critics were unimpressed, but audiences liked it to the tune of $329 million worldwide.

    Petersen switched gears for his next project, “Troy,” based on Homer’s Iliad, and filled with epic-scale action — as well as movie stars including Brad Pitt, Eric Bana and Orlando Bloom. Critics were mostly unimpressed; Variety said: “Despite a sensationally attractive cast and an array of well-staged combat scenes presented on a vast scale, Wolfgang Petersen’s highly telescoped rendition of the Trojan War lurches ahead in fits and starts for much of its hefty running time, to OK effect.” The film had an interesting critical supporter in the form of the New Yorker’s David Denby, who wrote, “Harsh, serious, and both exhilarating and tragic, the right tonal combination for Homer.”

    But in general, Petersen was helping to pioneer the critic-proof movie — “Troy’s” worldwide gross was $497 million, most of it from overseas. (Adjusted for inflation, “Air Force One” was the director’s most successful film.)

    Petersen was riding high, but his next movie sank him. “Poseidon” (2006), a leaden remake of “The Poseidon Adventure” that carried a production budget of $160 million and generated worldwide box office of $182 million, resulting in a huge loss for Time Warner once promotional costs were figured in, was Petersen’s last Hollywood film.

    The director seemed to retire at that point, but a decade later he made a film in Germany, “Vier gegen die Bank” (Four Against the Bank), a remake of his own 1976 German TV movie of the same name that was based on 1972 novel “The Nixon Recession Caper” by Ralph Maloney. The original told the story of “four members of an exclusive country club who decide to rob a bank to solve their money problems.” The new film starred Til Schweiger.

    Petersen was born in Emden, Germany. He attended the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums in Hamburg from 1953-60. In the 1960s he directed plays at Hamburg’s Ernst Deutsch Theater. After studying theater in Berlin and Hamburg, he attended Berlin’s Film and Television Academy (1966-70).

    The director started out in Germany by making TV movies, earning his first such credit in 1965 and making TV movies steadily from 1971 to 1978. While working on the popular German TV series “Tatort” (Crime Scene), he first met and worked with actor Jurgen Prochnow — who would appear in several of his films, including as the U-boat captain in “Das Boot.”

    Petersen’s first feature film was the 1974 psychological thriller “One or the Other of Us,” starring Prochnow. Next was 1977’s black-and-white film “Die Konsequenz,” an adaptation of Alexander Ziegler’s autobiographical novel about homosexual love. The film was considered so radical at the time that when it first aired on German television, the Bavarian network refused to broadcast it.

    Petersen was married to German actress Ursula Sieg until their divorce in 1978.

    He is survived by second wife Maria-Antoinette Borgel, a German script supervisor and assistant director whom he married in 1978, and a son by Sieg, writer-director Daniel Petersen.

     

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