M Is FOR MASHUP - June 23rd, 2021
Fifteen Summer Bootys All In A Row,
By DJ Useo
All Dressed Up With Nowhere To Go
As I write this, I feel a state of euphoria ( or euclid as autocorrect says ) because I’ve finished arranging the new ‘Summer Booty 2021 The Summer Mashup album”. Released again through the auspices of the Audioboots mashup forum, this years’ volume is one rock-solid release. Despite my imposing a rather unpopular 3-track limit on all contributors, the comp swelled again to 3 hour-long discs.
Yes, I broke my long-held policy of not declining excellent tracks. This means in many cases, I had to select 3 tracks from a group of 7. Man, that was heart-breaking! Still, in the end, the album is rock solid & ready for the ages. I want to again offer huge praise to all contributors, & thank them with an official Audioboots T-Shirt. ( We’ll see about the t-shirts )
The album progresses through disc 1 ( Morning ) , disc 2 ( Afternoon ) , & disc 3 ( Evening ) with all tracks reflecting the producers concept of “Eternal Summer”. I’m sure you’ve all felt that feeling of lasting happiness through the years. Some feel it all day, & many notice it when the sun is out just right. Those who hear the Summer Booty comps feel it the most. ( plus some who are just stewed to the gills )
Well-known International bootlegger, Rappy, did us the solid of making all the excellent front covers. Each highlights a lockdown Summer image that reflects what we’re all going through.
The preview track is Chocomang’s “Empty Hurts” ( Michelle Branch vs Incubus ) which gives a great idea of the quaity contained herein
( chocomang.org/mashup2/musiques/Chocomang%20-%20Empty%20Hurts%20(Michelle%20Branch%20vs%20Incubus).mp3 ) .
For those of you who like streaming the tunes, you’ll enjoy links for all 3 discs, alongside the download link for the album, here at the
Summer Booty 2021 site
( audioboots.org/Albums/SB2021/ )
hearthis.at/vxmfxz7w/01-summer-booty-2021-the-summer-mashup-album-mix-disc-1/
hearthis.at/vxmfxz7w/02-summer-booty-2021-the-summer-mashup-album-mix-disc-2/
hearthis.at/vxmfxz7w/03-summer-booty-2021-the-summer-mashup-album-mix-disc-3/
All fifteen volumes are linked, & can be obtained near the bottom of the
pages
here
( audioboot.org )
and
( djuseomashupalbums.blogspot.com/ )
Huge praise to all contributors. I’m away now to jam to loud Summer mashups.
May you do similar.
Have the day of good - DJ Konrad Useo
from Bruce
Anecdotes
Food
• Renaissance businessman Agostino Chigi was so wealthy that at a dinner he gave for Pope Julius II, servants brought in each course on solid gold plates. After everyone had been served the course, the servants did not wash the solid gold plates and reuse them — they threw them into the Tiber River.
• A Sunday School teacher once taught about Jesus’ feeding 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, then asked her class how Jesus could do this. One pupil replied, “My mommy makes ‘Clean the Refrigerator Soup’ with just a little bit of food; maybe that’s what Jesus did.”
• Pope John XXIII disliked eating alone, even though according to custom the Pope was supposed to eat alone. He once said, “I have read the Gospel over carefully without finding a single passage which prescribes that one should eat alone. As we know, Jesus loved to eat in company.”
• The fourth pillar of Islam is to fast annually during the month of Ramadan. This focuses the mind of followers of Islam on Allah — and it encourages the giving of help to people who never have enough to eat in any month.
• When is the best time to eat? According to Mulla Nasrudin, “If you are rich, the best time to eat is when you are hungry. If you are poor, the best time to eat is when you can afford it.”
God
• While staying in Scotland, Peg Bracken spoke with a woman who had once regularly received telephone calls from God. The first time it happened, she was going through a time of trouble — her husband had recently died, her son had broken a leg, she was worried about insurance, etc. — and a telephone call came for her in a place she had not told anyone she would visit. She answered the telephone, and a voice said, “This is God.” Of course, she asked, “God who?” The voice answered, “Your good friend God. I just want you to know you’re doing fine. And don’t you go worrying about Ritchie’s leg now. It’s going to be as good as new.” For six months, she received these mysterious telephone calls at least once a week. She never recognized the voice, and she never totally believed that God was speaking to her, although she didn’t want to totally disbelieve either. Once, she started to ask the telephone operator to trace the call, then she changed her mind. After six months, the telephone calls stopped, but things were going well for her and her family by then.
• Professional baseball teams have chapels that their players can attend. However, one season the Seattle Mariners weren’t playing well, and management wondered if religion was a bad thing for the players; after all, should a professional baseball team turn the other cheek and say “It’s God’s will” when it gets beat? Wouldn’t it be better if the players got angry when they lost? A football player made perhaps the best comment about this controversy. Seattle Seahawk Steve Largent was aware that Mariner management had made some bad trades, so he said, “It doesn’t surprise me that the Mariners want to get God out of their locker room. They’ve gotten rid of all their other good players, too.”
• Arturo Toscanini, the famous conductor, once explained to his musicians why he sometimes became so angry at them: “You see, God tells me how the music should sound, and then you come in the way.” Sometimes, rehearsals would go exactly right and the music sounded the way God had told Toscanini how it should sound. Once, after rehearsing Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, the musicians gave Toscanini a standing ovation, but he told the orchestra, “It isn’t me — it’s Beethoven.”
• When Fran Capo was thinking about becoming a stand-up comedian, she asked God for a sign. She also stated that if God made becoming a stand-up comedian really easy, she would consider that to be a sign. Shortly afterward, she went to her school, where she saw a notice that said, “Comedy Auditions.” To make the sign from God even clearer, the auditions were to take place within two blocks of her house.
***
© Copyright Bruce D. Bruce; All Rights Reserved
***
250 Anecdotes About Religion, Volume 2 — Buy
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Presenting
Michael Egan
U.S.A. replied:
has returned to semi-retired status.
In memory.
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION
BANDCAMP MUSIC
BRUCE'S RECOMMENDATION OF BANDCAMP MUSIC
Music: "Listen to the Heartbeat"
Album: GHOST HIGHWAY RECORDINGS SAMPLER 2021
Artist: Tommy and the Rockets
Artist Location: Odense, Denmark
Record Company: Ghost Highway Recordings
Record Company Location: Madrid, Spain
Info:
The money raised by the sales of this sampler will be digitally used for events for children with cancer who are at the Hospital De Santiago de Compostela in coordination with the ASANOG association.
Price: €5 (EUROs) for 31-track album of various artists
Genre: Rock. Pop.
Links:
Album: GHOST HIGHWAY RECORDINGS SAMPLER 2021
Tommy and the Rockets on Bandcamp
Tommy and the Rockets on YouTube
Ghost Highway Recordings
Other Links:
David Bruce's Amazon Author Page
David Bruce's Smashwords Page
David Bruce's Blog #1
David Bruce's Blog #2
David Bruce's Blog #3
David Bruce's Apple iBookstore
David Bruce has over 140 Kindle books on Amazon.com.
Reader Suggestion
Michelle in AZ
New Venture
Michael Egan
Bonus Links
Jeannie the Teed-Off Temp
Reader Comment
Current Events
Moving the goalposts AGAIN
The My Pillow Guy isn't even waiting for "his" date for Predator to be reinstated to pass uneventfully. he's now saying with great specificity and precision that Predator will be declared president by a 9-0 Supreme Court decision "in the fall." Wow.
Evan of Wonkette lays out his "reasoning:" (Of course, now it's happening in "fall." We guess August just didn't work out.)
that Mad Cat, JD
In The Chaos Household
Last Night
All quiet on the back porch.
Late-Night Show Winds Down
Conan O’Brien
On Tuesday’s episode of Conan, Conan O’Brien sought some life advice from actor-producer Seth Rogen.
“You seem like a guy who’s relaxed, centered, like you know who you are,” the late-night host observed. “I’m going to have a lot of free time on my hands now for a while. We’re going to start something else up, but I’m going to have some downtime, and honestly—I’m not even kidding—I don’t really know what to do with downtime.”
“Yes, I get that sense from you,” deadpanned Rogen, who quickly arrived at a recommendation, as far as how O’Brien might fill his days.
O’Brien then shared that on the few occasions when he has tried smoking pot, “nothing really happened.” The host wondered, though, what Rogen would have him smoke, particularly given that he owns weed company, Houseplant.
Then, Rogen proceeded to pull out a joint.
Conan O’Brien
Challenge Or Ignore
Election Disbelievers
Matt Negrin’s campaign to ban “election deniers” from television news failed to achieve his original goal, which was to prevent a significant number of Americans from believing the lie that Donald Trump didn’t lose the presidential election to Joe Biden.
Instead, it has provoked a persistent debate over the role of political journalists, along with illustrating how television news and the politicians who depend upon its cameras have changed.
Negrin, a former journalist and now producer at Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” wrote a December column for The Washington Post saying that TV journalists who invite Republicans on the air should begin by asking if they believed Biden won the election. If they don’t say yes, the interview should end.
He’s aggressively continued the effort on his personal Twitter account, saying mainstream news programs that book officeholders who voted against accepting election results are helping to spread misinformation.
Many in the news business believe that stance goes too far, that a journalist’s role is to question ideas and point out inaccuracies or outright fictions, not to pretend they don’t exist. Two Sunday morning hosts, Jake Tapper and Chris Wallace, recently revealed themselves as polar opposites on the point.
Election Disbelievers
Data ‘Treasure Trove’
Big Tech
When U.S. law enforcement officials need to cast a wide net for information, they’re increasingly turning to the vast digital ponds of personal data created by Big Tech companies via the devices and online services that have hooked billions of people around the world.
Data compiled by four of the biggest tech companies shows that law enforcement requests for user information — phone calls, emails, texts, photos, shopping histories, driving routes and more — have more than tripled in the U.S. since 2015. Police are also increasingly savvy about covering their tracks so as not to alert suspects of their interest.
That’s the backdrop for recent revelations that the Trump-era U.S. Justice Department sought data from Apple, Microsoft and Google about members of Congress, their aides and news reporters in leak investigations -- then pursued court orders that blocked those companies from informing their targets.
In just the first half of 2020 -- the most recent data available -- Apple, Google, Facebook and Microsoft together fielded more than 112,000 data requests from local, state and federal officials. The companies agreed to hand over some data in 85% of those cases. Facebook, including its Instagram service, accounted for the largest number of disclosures.
Nearly all big tech companies — from Amazon to rental sites like Airbnb, ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft and service providers like Verizon — now have teams to respond to such requests and regularly publish reports about how much they disclosed. Many say they work to narrow overly broad requests and reject those that aren’t legally valid.
Big Tech
250 Gators
Di$ney World
Wildlife officials have removed 250 alligators from Disney properties in the five years since a 2-year-old boy was killed by an alligator at the Grand Floridian Resort and Spa, a newspaper reported.
The company has worked with trappers contracted through the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission to remove the gators, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
Most of the nuisance gators taken from Disney properties are euthanized and sold for their hide and meat, Tammy Sapp, spokeswoman for the wildlife agency, told the newspaper.
Some are also transferred to alligator farms, animal exhibits and zoos, she said. Those less than 4 feet (1.2 meters) are relocated, she said.
Trappers receive $30 for every captured gator, plus the proceeds from any leather and meat sold, the newspaper reported.
Di$ney World
Almost 900 Infected With COVID
Secret Service
Roughly 900 U.S. Secret Service employees tested positive for the coronavirus, according to government records obtained by a government watchdog group.
Secret Service records show that 881 people on the agency payroll were diagnosed with COVID-19 between March 1, 2020 and March 9, 2021, according to documents obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. More than 11% of Secret Service employees were infected.
Secret Service spokesperson Justine Whelan said COVID testing of employees was pro-active with more than 25,000 tests being administered.
The records received through a Freedom of Information Act request did not include the names or assignments of those who tested positive. But more than half — 477 — worked in the special agent division, which is responsible for protecting the president and vice president, as well as the families of these leaders and other government officials.
CREW noted that the Trump administration took actions that risked exposure to Secret Service workers, but it could not verify a direct connection to possible infections because the identities of those infected remains private.
Secret Service
Ground Temperatures Hit 118 Degrees
Arctic Circle
Newly published satellite imagery shows the ground temperature in at least one location in Siberia topped 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) going into the year’s longest day. It’s hot Siberia Earth summer, and it certainly won’t be the last.
While many heads swiveled to the American West as cities like Phoenix and Salt Lake City suffered shockingly hot temperatures this past week, a similar climatological aberrance unfolded on the opposite side of the world in the Arctic Circle. That’s not bizarre when you consider that the planet heating up is a global affair, one that isn’t picky about its targets. We’re all the target!
The 118-degree-Fahrenheit temperature was measured on the ground in Verkhojansk, in Yakutia, Eastern Siberia, by the European Space Agency’s Copernicus Sentinel satellites. Other ground temperatures in the region included 109 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) in Govorovo and 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius) in Saskylah, which had its highest temperatures since 1936. It’s important to note that the temperatures being discussed here are land surface temperatures, not air temperatures. The air temperature in Verkhojansk was 86 degrees Fahrenheit (30 degrees Celsius)—still anomalously hot, but not Arizona hot.
But the ground temperature being so warm is still very bad. Those temperatures beleaguer the permafrost—the frozen soil of yore, which holds in greenhouse gases and on which much of eastern Russia is built. As permafrost thaws, it sighs its methane back into the atmosphere, causing chasms in the Earth.
The same region also suffered through a heat wave that led to a very un-Siberian air temperature reading of 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) exactly a year ago to the day from the new freak heat. It’s the hottest temperature ever recorded in the region. It was also in the 90s last month in western Siberia, reflecting that the sweltering new abnormal is affecting just about everywhere. And it’s not just the permafrost suffering; wildfires last year in Siberia pumped a record amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, ensuring more summers like this are to come.
Arctic Circle
Something's Up
Birds
Hundreds of birds are dying without explanation in parts of the South and Midwest.
Wildlife experts in at least six states and Washington, D.C., have reported an increase in sick or dying birds in the past month. The most commonly afflicted birds are blue jays, common grackles and European starlings.
Symptoms include crusty or puffy eyes, neurological signs of seizures and an inability to stay balanced.
Experts said the birds have been behaving as if they are blind and exhibit other abnormalities, such as not flying away when people get close.
In addition to Kentucky and D.C., Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia have reported similar deaths, officials said.
Birds
Has A 'Pulse'
Earth
Most major geological events in Earth's recent history have clustered in 27.5-million-year intervals — a pattern that scientists are now calling the "pulse of the Earth," according to a new study.
Over the past 260 million years, dozens of major geological events, from sea level changes to volcanic eruptions, seem to follow this rhythmic pattern.
The team first scoured the literature and found 89 major geological events that occurred in the past 260 million years. These included extinctions, ocean anoxic events (times when the oceans were toxic due to oxygen depletion), sea level fluctuations, major volcanic activity called flood-basalt eruptions and changes in the organization of Earth's tectonic plates.
Then, the researchers put the events in chronological order and used a mathematical tool known as Fourier analysis to pick up spikes in the frequency of events. They discovered that most of these events clustered into 10 separate times that were, on average, 27.5 million years apart. That number may not be "exact," but it's a "pretty good estimate" with a 96% confidence interval, meaning it's "unlikely to be a coincidence," Rampino said.
The researchers looked only at the past 260 million years — when the dating of such events is most accurate — but they think the results likely extend further back in our planet's history. For example, data from sea level changes go back around 600 million years and also seem to follow this pulse, Rampino said.
Earth
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