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Author Archives: cleek
The Great Myth of the Medieval Tritone Ban
Spoiler: it was never banned. And it was never thought of as literally evil. It was just hard to sing.
Animal Hosts
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) recently completed a study that analyzed serum samples from free-ranging white-tailed deer for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Results of the study indicate that certain white-tailed deer populations in Illinois, Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania were exposed to SARS-CoV-2.
Samples were obtained opportunistically as part of wildlife damage management activities conducted by APHIS Wildlife Services across 32 counties in the 4 states. These samples were tested at APHIS’ National Wildlife Research Center and National Veterinary Services Laboratories. Antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were detected in 33% of the 481 samples collected from January 2020 through 2021. None of the deer populations surveyed showed signs of clinical illness associated with SARS-CoV-2.
It is important to note that this surveillance was designed to determine exposure of deer to SARS-CoV-2 in their natural environment. It was not designed to determine whether the deer were replicating and shedding SARS-CoV-2.
Perfection
My home town's represented by a moron.
Today’s Anniversary of Medicare & Medicaid reminds us to reflect on the critical role these programs have played to protect the healthcare of millions of families. To safeguard our future, we must reject Socialist healthcare schemes. https://t.co/mOdUuX7THT
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) July 30, 2021
Sneakin Around
Some people in MO are betraying their cult.
"They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves," Frase told CNN's Anderson Cooper. "But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn't want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them ... 'giving in to everything.'"
In a hospital produced video, Frase said one pharmacist at her hospital told her "they've had several people come in to get vaccinated who have tried to sort of disguise their appearance and even went so far as to say, 'please, please, please don't let anybody know that I got this vaccine.'"
Gaslighting
The point is not that the Unified Trump GOP Canon for What Truly Happened on Jan. 6 is being continually and contradictorily rewritten. The point is not that what we are being told is absurd, inconsistent and downright goofy. The point is that the specifics don’t matter; what matters is that we are being told, blatantly, repeatedly and without shame, that we simply did not see what we saw, and we are expected to go along with it. This is an exercise in power, to see how malleable our reality really is.
It is because of this that the Jan. 6 commission is so sadly necessary. We did see what we saw. It is too important to let that fact get drowned out.
The Shithead Elf
2021
The year isn't finished, but the album is.
"2021", Smaller Animals (full album)
00:00 Demon
02:08 Flat
04:38 Aye Aye
07:07 King Failure
10:34 Law
11:50 You Will Find Us In The Forest
15:18 Wayle
18:28 Suspended Above The Sun
20:31 HFY
21:55 Prekop Approximate
Better Roots
Prescient, from 2015.
Deepfake Anthony Bourdain
Pandora's (voice?) box is now open!
The documentary “Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain,” which opened in theatres on Friday, is an angry, elegant, often overwhelmingly emotional chronicle of the late television star’s life and his impact on the people close to him. Directed by Morgan Neville, the film portrays Bourdain as intense, self-loathing, relentlessly driven, preternaturally charismatic, and—in his life and in his death, by suicide, in 2018—a man who both focussed and disturbed the lives of those around him. To craft the film’s narrative, Neville drew on tens of thousands of hours of video footage and audio archives—and, for three particular lines heard in the film, Neville commissioned a software company to make an A.I.-generated version of Bourdain’s voice....
When I first spoke with Neville, I was surprised to learn about his use of synthetic audio and equally taken aback that he’d chosen not to disclose its presence in his film. He admitted to using the technology for a specific voice-over that I’d asked about—in which Bourdain improbably reads aloud a despairing e-mail that he sent to a friend, the artist David Choe—but did not reveal the documentary’s other two instances of technological wizardry.
Expect this in every other political ad you'll see in 2024.