OPEN THREAD: People get thready.
Archive for 2023
February 8, 2023
OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND: Riffs and tutus: Black Sabbath ballet to be staged in Birmingham.
A ballet soundtracked by the music of Black Sabbath will premiere in September, Birmingham Royal Ballet’s director Carlos Acosta has announced.
Billed as “the world’s first heavy metal dance experience”, the three-act ballet will feature eight songs by the Brummie band, including Paranoid, Iron Man, War Pigs and the eponymous Black Sabbath, re-orchestrated for the Royal Ballet Sinfonia – with added drums and electric guitars. The rest of the score will be newly composed, inspired by the band’s music.
Ever since Cuban ballet star Acosta joined Birmingham Royal Ballet as artistic director in 2020, his aim has been for the company to reflect its home city, both in the diversity of its dancers, and the subject matter of its ballets. They previously staged City of a Thousand Trades, about the city’s history of immigration and industry.
“Black Sabbath is probably Birmingham’s biggest export, the most famous, and infamous, cultural entity to ever emerge from the city,” said Acosta, “so I was naturally drawn to the idea of a collaboration between what most people might think are the most unlikely of partners.”
Spinal Tap, call your office! The parody of this, with all of the backstage antics, would be a hoot to watch.
UNEXPECTEDLY! Disney To Cut Thousands Of Jobs To Save Money As DeSantis Set To Take Control Of Company’s Orlando District Under New Bill: Report.
The announcement comes after newly released legislation by Florida Republicans this week will allow Governor Ron DeSantis to appoint all five leaders of Disney’s tax district in Orlando and will officially rename the district.
The bill will turn the Reedy Creek Improvement District into the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and will deliver on DeSantis’ promise last year to take over the district.
DeSantis’ office said that the special tax district, which has allowed Disney to govern themselves since 1967, turned the theme park into “an unaccountable Corporate Kingdom.”
“Florida is dissolving the Corporate Kingdom and beginning a new era of accountability and transparency,” DeSantis’ office said. “These actions ensure a state-controlled district accountable to the people instead of a corporate-controlled kingdom.”
Also a possibility for Disney? A hostile takeover: Thwarted Meetings, a Sailing Trip Excuse and an Angry Investor: Why Activist Nelson Peltz Threatens to Disrupt Bob Iger’s Disney Comeback.
The Critical Drinker drinks all of Disney’s self-inflicted chaos in and laughs:
INTEL, PARKERVISION SETTLE CHIP PATENT LAWSUIT DURING TEXAS TRIAL:
Chipmaking giant Intel Corp (INTC.O) on Tuesday settled a patent lawsuit brought by wireless technology developer ParkerVision Inc (PRKR.PK) on the second day of a West Texas jury trial in the case, court records showed.
A ParkerVision filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday said it would receive $25 million in a settlement that also includes a patent licensing agreement.
An Intel spokesperson confirmed that the companies settled but declined to provide further details. A ParkerVision spokesperson declined to comment. ParkerVision stock was down 48% Tuesday afternoon.
Related: ParkerVision still pursuing claims.
ParkerVision has no products on the market and is focused entirely on its patent infringement claims against Qualcomm and other companies. However, the company, founded in 1989, has offered several products over the years.
When the company went public in 1993, it was marketing an automated video camera control system that allowed consumers to take home movies without having to stand behind the camera. It also was developing that technology for videoconferencing systems.
It expanded that technology to create a complete television studio system called PVTV, which allowed one person to operate all the cameras and the control room for a broadcast.
Meanwhile, its researchers developed radio frequency receiver technology that the company said delivered superior performance for wireless devices, the technology that has become the focus of its legal fights.
ParkerVision sold off the camera control systems by 2004 to focus on the wireless technology.
The company launched and abandoned several consumer products with its wireless technology, including an in-home Wi-Fi device called Milo introduced in the fall of 2017.
The company discontinued the product in April 2019 after disappointing sales.
That left ParkerVision with just the patent infringement lawsuits.
As a personal aside, despite living almost 70 miles away from Waco, I was summoned to sit on the jury for the case in the first link. I arrived at 7:30 in the morning on Monday at the courthouse, and was out the door at 9:02 am. Finally, my background in writing for Instapundit, PJ Media, and prior to that numerous computer, consumer electronics and home automation magazines (and being married to a veteran Silicon Valley and ASIC chip design attorney) really pays off!
MITT ROMNEY IS TONE POLICING A FELLOW REPUBLICAN: ‘You Ought to Be Embarrassed:’ Romney Scolds Santos at State of the Union.
Representative George Santos (R., N.Y.) and Senator Mitt Romney (R., Utah.) traded some choice words last night just minutes before President Joe Biden addressed the nation.
Multiple camera angles captured Romney confronting Santos as he walked down the center aisle in the House chamber. The veteran lawmaker scolded the freshman for claiming one of the sought-after seats near the president’s path to the rostrum.
“You don’t belong here,” Romney can be seen telling Santos, adding “you ought to be embarrassed.”
* * * * * * * *
“He’s a sick puppy, he shouldn’t have been there,” Romney told NBC News. “Given the fact that he’s under ethics investigation he should be sitting in the back row and being quiet instead of parading in front of the president.”
Setting aside Santos’ many woes, if only Romney had that level of passion over Obama, Candy Crowley, and the rest of the DNC-MSM, 2012 might have turned out very differently for him.
JOHN PODHORETZ IS TONE POLICING THE NEW GOP CONGRESS: The Goons of the Right.
Go ahead, call me—a conservative journalist for more than 40 years and speechwriter to Ronald Reagan—a RINO if you like, but I’ve never been more embarrassed to be associated with the Republican party than in the middle of the State of the Union when House members started openly heckling the president of the United States.
They screamed “liar and “bulls—” in the House chamber when Biden said there were Republican proposals to “sunset” Social Security and Medicare.
In point of fact, Biden is narrowly correct here. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida issued a weird proposal to make all federal legislation sunset after five years. That would include Social Security and Medicare. It was a stupid and ill-considered proposal, in part because it opened up the GOP to exactly the attack Biden staged last night.
And these barbaric House members fell right into Biden’s trap. Rather than shaking their heads, as Speaker Kevin McCarthy did behind Biden, they behaved goonishly. That’s exactly what Biden wanted. In yelling at him like drunken attendees at a WWF match who seem not to know the proceedings are fake, Marjorie Taylor Greene and her hearty band of repellent maniacs provided Biden and the Democrats with visuals and sounds they can use for the next two years to rally their own troops—and independent voters sickened by the bad behavior of politicians generally—against Republican crassness and incivility.
However: GOP congressman scoffs at complaints about ‘lack of decorum.’
Biden claimed during his State of the Union address that some Republicans wanted to sunset Social Security and Medicare every five years.
“That means if Congress doesn’t vote to keep them, those programs will go away,” Biden said. “Other Republicans say if we don’t cut Social Security and Medicare, they’ll let America default on its debt for the first time in our history.”
His remarks were met with loud disapproval from the Republican side of the House Chamber, including several members who accused him of lying. Media reports following the State of the Union address referred to the GOP caucus as “animated,” “rowdy,” “unruly” and lacking decorum.
[Freshman GOP Rep. Andy] Ogles dismissed the characterization, asserting that the GOP’s response was completely appropriate given Biden’s claims.
“He levied false accusations trying to scare seniors,” Ogles said. “And look, we are going to take care of our seniors. We’re not going to get rid of Medicare and Social Security and anyone who says that is not being truthful. And so I was offended by it. I was disappointed in it.”
Naturally, the left feigns surprise at the slippery slope from Nancy Pelosi’s performance art during Trump’s last State of the Union speech: Nancy Pelosi fans complain Republicans have no decorum.
But then, as Noam Blum of Tablet, then still tweeting under his “Neontaster” handle wrote in 2017:
UPDATE: The time Joe Biden proposed sunsetting every federal program — even Medicare.
In the summer of 1975, U.S. News & World Report informed its readers about a new breed of Senate Democrat.
That week, Biden proposed his budget reform: S. 2067, “A bill to limit the authorization of new budget authority and to require comprehensive review and study of existing programs for which continued budget authority is proposed….”
Biden took to the Senate floor to deplore the size of the federal budget and its growth rate. “It took this country 185 years to reach an annual expenditure from the federal budget of $100 billion,” Biden explained. “Just nine years later, we had reached the $200 billion level, and after four more years, we have exceeded $300 billion.” (Adjusted for inflation, that would be $544 billion, less than 10% of our current federal expenditures.)
Biden called for reform: “One thing we have all observed is that once a federal program gets started, it is very difficult to stop it … regardless of its performance in the past. It is time for us to require, on a regular and continuing basis, that both the administrators of these programs and we legislators who adopt the programs examine their operations with care and detail.”
His bill, he explained, “limits to 4 years the length of any spending authorization for a program. … The purpose is to assure a uniform scrutiny of all programs on a regular basis.”
U.S. News & World Report lauded this bill, cosponsored by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield and Pat Leahy of Vermont. “It gets to the heart of the problem of Big Government.”
This happens to be very similar to the proposal of Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) that Biden made the centerpiece of his partisan attack in his State of the Union.
I’m sure it’s different when Democrats do it — even back in the ’70s.
HMM: People with one of the type A blood groups are more likely to have a stroke before the age of 60 compared with people with other blood types, research shows. The increase is small, though, making this mostly of academic interest.
HMM: Chinese surveillance balloon part of massive program over 5 continents.
We started such a program after World War Two, when we decided we had to be a global superpower.
GET WOKE, GO BROKE: Disney Layoffs Will Cut 7,000 Jobs.
VITAMIN D UPDATE: Vitamin D supplements may help ward off Type 2 diabetes.
EVERY INSTITUTION HAS BEEN CORRUPTED: Visitors Sue Over National Air & Space Museum’s Alleged Demand That They Remove “Rosary Pro-Life” Hats. “We are a museum that promotes equality, and your hats do not promote equality.”
I would like to believe that this never happened, but given other behavior by our cultural institutions it’s all too believable. Plus: “These are of course just allegations in a Complaint, but the Smithsonian has admitted that the ejection was improper.”
IT’S NOT A TERRIBLE IDEA: Should There Be Three-Judge Panels for National Injunctions.
SOMEONE SHOULD FILE A CIVIL RIGHTS SUIT: Congress is set to expose what may be the largest censorship system in U.S. history.
THE JUDICIARY’S CLASS WAR: NY Times: The Road To A Supreme Court Clerkship Starts At Three Ivy League Colleges; ‘You Can’t Scrub Your Undergraduate Degree With An Elite Law Degree.’
No really, you could write a book on the class politics of the judiciary.
(Bumped.)
DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: Boston task force appoints TWO 11th graders and a BLM-supporting college student to decide how much money to pay black community.
Previously — way previously: Boston, hotbed of anti-slavery.
DEAL OF THE DAY: Donner Acoustic Guitar Kit for Beginners. #CommissionEarned
FOLLOW THE SCIENCE: A Scientific Review Shows the CDC Grossly Exaggerated the Evidence Supporting Mask Mandates. “These findings go to the heart of the case for mask mandates, a policy that generated much resentment and acrimony during the pandemic. They also show that the CDC, which has repeatedly exaggerated the evidence in favor of masks, cannot be trusted as a source of public health information.”
FASTER, PLEASE: Company using drones to deliver food makes Texas debut in Granbury.
A crazy futuristic new delivery option for food and retail is making its debut in Texas — in little old Granbury.
Flytrex, which specializes in on-demand, ultrafast delivery for food and retail, is bringing food and grocery orders via drone to front and backyards.
According to a release, the service will be based in Granbury, in a partnership with restaurant chain Brinker International, home of Chili’s Grill & Bar, Maggiano’s Little Italy, and two virtual brands: It’s Just Wings and Maggiano’s Italian Classics.
The service is operating in cooperation with longtime partner Causey Aviation Unmanned under a newly granted Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) waiver allowing a delivery radius of one nautical mile – reaching thousands of potential homes. Eligible households can order food via the Flytrex app.
Their focus is on the suburbs, where on-demand delivery has previously been viewed as commercially unviable, since traditional couriers can make only two deliveries per hour in such areas. They have a video showing a drone at work on YouTube.
Well, this is the 21st century you know, to coin an Insta-phrase.
IT PROBABLY SHOULD: AI Is Making Voice Actors Nervous.
AI voices are usually good enough for listening to audio books, and I suspect most video games, too.