i'm detouring on the cds because i wanted to listen to a few cds while i was putting the aluminum up. i need to reclean the space, but it is finally in order, up to the need to tidy it up. i will have the aluminum up very soon.

i had a lot of ms systems a few years ago and was very worried but in hindsight it seems to have been a b vitamin deficiency from an absorption issue. i resolved the issue by adding fortified nutritional yeast to my diet, and have since shifted to cutting a powerful b-complex vitamin into four and taking it every six hours. the symptoms are completely gone.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/oct/20/christina-applegate-ms-misdiagnosed

just googling this and to stress the point...

- for the jobim, the complaint about the 1990 digital remaster is it's "too bright". that's because the original analog vinyl master was low passed and the digital remaster is reintroducing the cut highs, which were still on the tape. you don't have to low pass the digital master at 17 khz for mass production. it sounds like somebody increased the treble, but what they really did was undo the treble cut on the vinyl master. this confused consumers familiar with the original mix, who demanded they re-release the cd with the low pass, and they did. but it's the remaster that should exist in the label's archives, as it's the more correct mix. the nerds that understood shook their heads.

- for the cobham, the complaint about the 1992 digital remaster is it uses a "smiley face" eq in comparison to the vinyl master. but this is a misunderstanding of the fact that the analog vinyl master has a low pass and a high pass (this record has prominent bass) for mass market consumption to prevent the analog tape mix from damaging record players. when the record was digitized, there was no reason to run the low and high pass. so, the ignorant consumer listens to it and says "somebody ran it through a smiley face eq", but that's not true. what's true is that the digital master undid the low and high passes because it was no longer necessary, allowing for more detailed reproduction. this was not reversed in subsequent reissues, but the record was remixed a third time for dvd audio and the filters were finally brought back. so, the cd quality master is consequently higher quality than the dvd audio master, which reintroduced the spectrum restrictions intended for the analog master. ugh.

- the debussy record was actually recorded digitally in 1982. classical orchestras were quick to embrace digital technology and these discussions happen less amongst classical music fans because they tend to have a better grasp of why digital is superior to analog than jazz, rock or pop music fans. that makes sense, as classical music listeners would also have higher levels of education, more generally.

- the do make say think record was recorded digitally in 2003. the post-production is obviously digital. they are known for recording themselves live in large, open spaces, which is a decision intended to minimize low frequency dominance in small rooms. their recordings utilize the full frequency spectrum, with prominent and deep bass parts and sparkly synth and effects work, as well as retained high frequency airiness on the horns and cymbals.

- the holst/williams record was transferred from analog to digital some time after 1976 (maybe in 1983). the tallis fantasia is the rare type of piece that can benefit from tape saturation, as the composition makes use of natural reverb coming from an orchestra playing in a church. that is, the composition explicitly calls for a string orchestra to play in a church to generate natural reverb, and it was consequently recorded live in a church. the extra harmonic distortion from the analog process adds to the dreaminess. ok. it has been noticeably low passed, and that makes some sense as the reverb from the church may have created some feedback in the highest registers (overtone reflections). the holst symphony has a mid-heavy analog footprint as well and it doesn't sound to me like it was meaningfully adjusted, although i should note that there was a digital master of this recording released on vinyl in 1983. is it the same master? that might be why this sounds like it was dumped to cd from the analog master and would consequently have a reduced frequency range on reproduction from the intentional high and low pass filtering in the vinyl master. while this works with the tallis piece, it's an example of what not to do, with the holst piece. i can't find a confirmation, but none of the liner notes credit a remaster engineer. the tallis piece may have benefited from a proper remaster on the bottom end, even if it had to low pass to remove feedback in the high end. the holst piece should have been remastered from scratch. this recording of the planets was eventually (in 2011) remastered using dsd sampling for release on sacd without the williams pieces. i have not heard the outcome but it would in theory expand the frequency response over the one in the vinyl master in both directions. i'm going to move this dsd remaster to my discogs wantlist. the rca cd doesn't sound bad on my system, but if i can get a digital master, it's a clear upgrade.

this is an interesting test.

i'm almost 46 and i can hear 20 khz but not 21 khz. however, i have to put headphones on to hear from 17-20 khz. i can only hear up to 16 khz through my laptop speakers. i don't currently have a computer connected to my kefs and the laptop speakers are suspect for reproduction (they might not reproduce higher than 16 khz). there is also background noise in my room.

the test tones themselves are not a good metric, though. the issue is not sound playing at this frequency (there is almost nothing) but the overtones coming from sound reproduced at lower frequencies. sound waves from a speaker in a room will bounce around and interfere with themselves. sound at frequencies you can't hear will interfere with sound at frequencies you can and change the waveform you can hear. so, cutting the frequency spectrum above 17 khz on reproduction will affect the output, even if you can't hear the test signal at all.

audible sound waves from instruments in real life will have complex interference patterns creating the sound you can hear lower in the spectrum. you want to maintain as much of this as possible to maximize reproduction at the lower frequencies, even if you can't hear any of it at all.

this alone is a slam dunk argument for cds and for remastering old recordings from source whenever possible.

there are apparently vinyl cartridges that can reproduce up to 20 khz and cost ~$20,000. i'm skeptical of the claim but you can buy one and test if you'd like. 

https://www.youtube.com/@testtones8564

if you want a concrete example of something that was recorded in analog and sounds way better on a digital remaster than the original analog mix, do an a/b of this track (and the whole record):

one of the misleading marketing arguments made by vinyl-driven capitalists was that vinyl could reproduce frequencies over 50 khz - well outside what you can hear and twice the frequency of a cd. if it were true, there's an argument that, with sufficient playback equipment, it could reconstruct overtones and make a difference on playback. but, it's not true. 

what is true is that you can manufacture a record that has data higher than 50 khz on it. however, if you ever tried to get that data off of the vinyl disc, you couldn't. the arm can't do it. maximum reproduction on vinyl is lower than cd or digital audio, at 13-17 khz, depending on the quality of the turntable. 

for that reason, vinyl mixes used to be lowpassed around 15 khz or lower. nowadays, the standard is 17 khz. but note that your grandfather's turntable probably can't even reproduce at 17 khz, let alone 22 khz or 50 khz.

that's why vinyl masters sound "less tinny" - they remove all the data in the higher frequencies because the technology can't reproduce it without generating noise or even breaking the physical mechanism on playback.

this is a good example of the kind of snake oil that these used car salespeople have been pushing in selling vinyl, and which these dumb kids bought into.

i want to post a link to this here because it explains some further misunderstandings about vinyl v cd audio. one of the arguments you hear fro vinyl advocates is that cd mixes during the loudness wars are too aggressive in their limiting, and that's a valid debate that's specific to a genre of music that i basically don't listen to at all and consequently is of minimal relevance to me, but the argument continues that vinyl masters have less limiting due to playback issues and are a way to avoid the loudness wars. first, there's likely limited truth to this, as most vinyl masters are just digital masters with extra processing, namely more aggressive high and low pass filters. the vinyl mix of your favourite emo record probably isn't less compressed than the cd mix, but it does have a lower frequency range because vinyl cannot reproduce audio at the top or bottom of the audible frequency spectrum without damaging the equipment. that emo record was probably put through low and high pass filters that just cut large amounts of the frequency range out. this is worse than the compression of the loudness wars, but you notice it less because your amp has a bass boost and a treble boost. vinyl mastering is actually consequently a lot like mp3 compression and vinyl reproduction suffers from a lot of the same playback issues that mp3s do. the industry managed to confuse people by talking about sample rates instead, as though your brain isn't a quantum computer. guess what? your brain quantizes sound. yeah. it quantizes light, too. the key is to beat your brain at quantizing sound, and that's a trivial task with modern recording equipment. 24 bit/48khz is more than good enough to beat your brain at quantizing sound.

with newer masters, the issue is dumping digital masters to vinyl, which requires the mp3-style compression and mp3-style reproduction at the amplifier. not only is it not some approximation of audio in the natural world, or something, but it's really a lossy audio format, by today's digital audio standards. however, a lot of consumers prefer the compression because it sounds dull (like you're listening to a cd playing in the other room with the door closed, or with a blanket or wet towel over your head) and they don't like listening to higher frequencies, which is like too much information or something. maybe there's some evolutionary explanation around the aversion to the tmi in cd audio. maybe it's familiarity and a fear of change. maybe they're parroting others with little independent thought. the surveys of consumer preference for vinyl are real, if the science and the argumentation supporting the survey responses is not.

but for old audio (jazz and classical recorded before 1990), you have the opposite problem - the masters are filtered to cut out large parts of the frequency range in the original recording because the amplifier is supposed to have things like bass boosts and dolby noise reduction to reproduce the cut ranges. with bass, it's often just oomph and it doesn't work that badly. for the high range, the low pass on the old masters cut out substantive amounts of the overtones on the melodic instruments and detail in the percussion and you can't bring it back without going back to the masters. that's why it's so important to look for some indication that the digital remaster was from source tapes, as was the case with the contemporary jazz masters remaster series, which exclusively remastered old jazz recordings from source to bring back the frequency range that got cut out with the low pass on the analog masters.

consumers had a mixed response, unfortunately. many didn't understand why the new masters had more detail in the high ranges and complained of a "tinny" or "harsh" sound on the cd audio. that's an adjective to describe accurate sound reproduction, and an adverse reaction to it, out of a fear of the other. it's not what consumers were used to or expected and, broadly speaking, either nobody explained it to them or they failed to understand when it was explained. musicians and other people that understood what they were listening to reacted favourably, but they turned out to be the minority and, in the end, many of these classic recordings were re-remastered for cd to bring back the low pass, to cut out the increase in detail and to reproduce the dead sound of the vinyl master. this is a reflection of american dystopianism, of the idiocracy of late capitalism.

you do consequently need to be a little careful with these old recordings. the general rule is to look for the first remasters, if you want a full frequency response. if you do like the low pass, look for second or third remasters.

at this point, it might be too late to remaster a lot of these recordings from scratch, so an attempt should be made to identify what releases aren't degraded by the low passes and preserve them for future generations.

https://deathtokoalas.blogspot.com/p/columbia.html

as mentioned before, the first book in the book web list (coming up in the serious blog, not this one) is going to be adam smith's theory of moral sentiments,. i read through the introduction this morning and due to how this works it's looking like i'm going to need to start by buying up some aurelius and filling in the gaps on plato, which is in the disappeared books list. i thought i was going to start with locke, but i guess we're going down the aurelius and aristotle path first, and i might have to buy up some aquinas. i'm neutral on aurelius (i'm not trying to be funny) and very critical of aquinas and aristotle, so this could start off pretty brutally. is there a complete works of plato? that's a good library add, obviously.

these are the things that are coming, in addition to the resumption of the asimov project at the childhood journal and the completion of some pre-inri musical ideas (pre-1996), to start.

everybody wants to exploit the situation from every direction, but stealing tvs is not stealing bread. it's not the same economically. it's not the same morally. it's another false projection by the liberal media.

everybody has a projected narrative they want to enforce for individual gain.

yes, the role of recent immigrants in the violence is obvious and clear and it's not as easy as blaming it on class divisions. i mean, that's not what they're saying. they aren't quoting kropotkin or waving marxist flags. they're quoting islamist extremists and waving palestinian flags. 

it's important to be empirical and observe and analyze the actual facts, not to make them up to fit a projected narrative about what you want the protests to be about. yes, there is a subset that is creating it's own false narrative by reproducing the false media projection. there's a circular economy of circular reasoning at play.

but when the situation is sorted out and investigators are able to better understand what happened, i am convinced that they are going to learn that france has a serious and growing problem with organized crime.

i've been to a lot of protests, albeit in canada, and not for a while. i identify as an anarchist. i've marched with anarchists. i've identified agent provocateurs. i've avoided undercover police; i've egged on undercover police. i've called out nazis and black bloc provocateurs. for that reason, i've been careful not to analyze with too much detail from a distance but have sought left-wing sources closer to france. this is none of that.

this is not political. this is gang violence. this is organized crime. this is theft; this is capitalism, this is profit-seeking. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/oct/19/france-anti-narco-activist-amine-kessaci-defying-biggest-drug-cartel-murder-trial-brothers

alberta has voted to remain in canada. that's a shame.

when does the rest of canada get to vote on whether to kick alberta out of confederation or not?

no sign of rodents in here last night. i did hear some running around upstairs, which is a return to normality. obviously, i'd rather get them out of the house altogether, but there's too many people upstairs to keep it clean. they need to buy, prepare, eat and dispose remnants of too much food. there's going to be things to eat up there, which is why i've taken the approach i took.

the key thing i did over the summer was to get them out of the laundry and that worked extremely well. there's no rodents in the laundry, at all.

but i need to rebuild my defenses along the walls on the other side of the laundry because they seem to be getting in on this side instead, which is not exactly pyrrhic but is certainly not what my intent was. the good news is that they aren't staying in here because i'm scaring them off and there's nothing to eat, so let me make those adjustments and move on.

His preaching states that Jesus is the only means by which humanity can be reconciled with God and leaves open the possibility that individuals may be saved in extraordinary circumstances if they were not aware of him in invincible ignorance, such as those who died as infants, never heard the gospel, or had the doctrines of Christianity misrepresented to them, such as in cases of abuse. Those who reject it in knowledge of its validity are condemned

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Hamilton_(pastor)

do you want to vote for a person like that?

i would campaign against this person, and do so extremely aggressively. this person should not be elected to any office, anywhere. this person is unfit for office and unfit to be a senator.

some time ago, i was just trying to figure out how white liberals could essentially throw conservative christian black women out of the democratic party for being too conservative and still manage to beat the republicans. it's been a big problem for the democrats for a long time: you have to win a primary in the south, so you have to go associate with these nigger christians with these backwards beliefs and deplorable value systems. you have to go sing and dance like a monkey in their horrible churches. you can't avoid it, but it's got the democrats stuck in neutral or reverse. how does the american left break out of this holding pattern and starting moving forwards again?

the answer was the mid west. at the time, iowa still leaned democratic and the great lakes were not swing states. further, the memory of clinton dong well in this region still existed. i was looking at kansas, missouri and kentucky - with missouri as key - as the way to break the gridlock. 

in fact, claire mccaskill was still in office at the time.

i was looking at urban/rural demographics and projecting that these states were urbanizing at a high rate, which remains true. 

The proportion of Kansans living in urban counties increased 2.4 percentage points from 54.9 percent in 2010 to 57.3 percent in 2020.

regarding missouri, this reddit thread expresses my argument:

https://www.reddit.com/r/kansascity/comments/i43rnx/the_visual_representation_of_the_divide_between/

the idea is that if democrats can tip these white states that are seeing their populations shift to a more urban and less rural composition, they can reduce their reliance on right-wing black christians in the south. 

i was right in a way, but i picked the wrong region. what i was projecting for the midwest happened in the southeast, instead, in north carolina and virginia. missouri is taking longer for this shift to happen than i expected.

i am not convinced that kansas is in play this month, but the race is not what i wanted to see happen. the democratic candidate is probably worse than the republican candidate. this would shift the democrats right, not left. it would increase their reliance on the demographic i'm scheming to get rid of, namely conservative christians.

i would actually call on democrats in kansas to stay home this cycle. don't vote for this guy. you might never get rid of him, and he might cause problems in the country.

from what i can gather, what's going on in france is not political anymore, it's organized crime. the crime syndicates might spray paint a circle a here and there as a distraction but anarchists don't support the theft of bourgeois retail goods for profit. you don't eat cell phones. that's not any sort of socialism, it's the worst kind of pirate capitalism. it's as extreme right as you get. but it's not real. this looks more like the mafia than it does like some spontaneous uprising of the extreme right. i am not infinitely familiar with the types of organized crime currently operating in france, but marseilles is apparently both the mafia hot spot in france and the epicenter of the property damage.

there's a narrative on the left to blame this kind of thing on government agitators. the term for it, agent provocateur, est en francais. it actually traces to bismarck, and the french uprisings of the 19th century. i'm sure - certain - that the government had some spies working to cause unrest to justify the clampdown, but this doesn't match the fingerprint. people are talking about masked grown men smashing through windows with specialized tools and removing equipment and specialized goods onto waiting vehicles, not dumb kids throwing rocks at storefronts. this not a starving mass and they're not stealing bread. they're not focusing on revolutionary overthrow. they're stealing phones, electronics, running shoes and ram in order to resell it. to the extent that any young people are involved in this, these are entitled, middle class kids looking to make a quick buck, not a revolutionary left. the looting was planned and organized and intended as profit-seeking behaviour. these items are going to come up for sale on ebay, etc.

the left should be supporting proper policing to clamp down on the right wing extremism responsible for much of the chaos, but the difference of scale looks to me like basic property crime and should be treated like basic property crime.

has melania trump ever read lysistrata?

don't answer that.

talking about a thucydides trap. yikes.

my condolences certainly do go out to the people affected by the recent weather balloon malfunctioning at wainright cfb in manitoba. those pesky weather balloons are prone to random explosions.