CatBus

Jeebus said:

CatBus said:

moviefreakedmind said:

TV’s Frink said:

I seem to remember Jeebus cheering on WikiLeaks during the run-up to the election. Wonder how he feels about them now?

I don’t know about him, but my thoughts were always that we shouldn’t ignore the shady stuff exposed by WikiLeaks purely because it came from WikiLeaks.

Unless it’s shady only because they trimmed out the context that would have revealed that it was normal (like their Mueller hit job)

It wasn’t though, the context was all there. Sure, the tweet was dishonest, but they didn’t remove contradicting information. They fooled only the people who look at the tweet and take it at it’s word; anybody who cared even remotely to follow up the information looked at the actual document. My point is, there may be reason to doubt the contents of the leaks in the future; but this isn’t it.

“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard’.”

moviefreakedmind said:

TV’s Frink said:

I seem to remember Jeebus cheering on WikiLeaks during the run-up to the election. Wonder how he feels about them now?

I don’t know about him, but my thoughts were always that we shouldn’t ignore the shady stuff exposed by WikiLeaks purely because it came from WikiLeaks.

Unless it’s shady only because they trimmed out the context that would have revealed that it was normal (like their Mueller hit job), or if it’s shady only because the stuff they exposed had been altered by Russian intelligence before they released it (like their Macron hit job). With WikiLeaks you get so many options!

yhwx said:

Finally, if Democrats win the House in 2018 (which they have a good shot of doing)

Nitpick: that link shows Democrats with a just-under-8-point national lead. Both 538 and RCP consider an 8-9 point national lead to be the bare minimum Democrats need in order to break even in the House, taking gerrymandering into account. So that really shows Democrats gaining seats in the House but failing to win a majority, and of course that doesn’t take into account the voter suppression and Russian interference which we can safely assume will be much more aggressive this time around.

TV’s Frink said:

CatBus said:

TV’s Frink said:

I seem to remember Jeebus cheering on WikiLeaks during the run-up to the election. Wonder how he feels about them now?

Well, there was a time when it wasn’t clear WikiLeaks had an agenda or even a record favoring any particular nation or institution, and people could be forgiven for taking them at their word.

In the fall of 2016?

Point conceded.

TV’s Frink said:

I seem to remember Jeebus cheering on WikiLeaks during the run-up to the election. Wonder how he feels about them now?

Well, there was a time when it wasn’t clear WikiLeaks had an agenda or even a record favoring any particular nation or institution, and people could be forgiven for taking them at their word. That was, after all, the whole point of the operation – to build up a reputation for neutrality and truthfulness, so that they would be a better channel for distributing Russian propaganda than RT, Sputnik, and Pravda, which would be (and still are) more easily dismissed by Western audiences.

It’s basically the reputation equivalent to money laundering – reputation laundering. Obvious Russian state propaganda goes in, plausibly neutral news appealing to a conspiracy-minded Western audience comes out.

In case there was any doubt remaining that Wikileaks is/has become just another pro-Russian propaganda mill.

dahmage said:

It’s only 3.5 years to go.

1. Congress needs to start working together
2. Achieve some things directly against Trump’s wishes
3. Public opinion sways to see how much better things could be without Trump.
4. Congress can actually impeach and get rid of Trump

One out of four ain’t bad. Wait, no, one out of four is terrible.

Until Congress gets it’s shit together in a bipartisan way, most people will assume that a change of president is not going to do much.

So that’s a given, then.

Okay, I’m done. Aside from the clinking chain noises and the mixing levels Jerjerrod dialogue thing, to me it sounds pretty much like the 83 stereo mix with less dynamics. Maybe the Jerjerrod dialogue thing even qualifies as a “smoking gun”–present in ROTP and not in the 83 mix. If so: Worst. Smoking. Gun. Ever.

I don’t normally post long video links, but this is really worth it IMO:

William Browder, CEO of the Hermitage Capital Management Company, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Hermitage was the employer of Sergei Magnitsky, the auditor who uncovered Russian corruption and was later murdered, triggering the Magnitsky Act, which is central to the Trump-Russia affair.

NeverarGreat said:

The silver lining is that, freed of the reliance on established media sources, more and more people are able to aggregate quality information and discuss methods of minimizing their own biases.

That’s not really much of a silver lining. Aggregating information, researching, fact-checking, comparing multiple sources, consulting with subject matter experts–that’s a full-time job. Specifically, it’s the full-time job of someone who works in the media (whether or not they actually do that job is beside the point for the moment). While the “old dead tree media” may very well get replaced by the “new Internet media”, the whole idea of media organizations of all stripes disappearing entirely and getting replaced by a network of crowdsourced volunteers is frankly appalling to me. It’s this very thing that would allow, say, a foreign intelligence service to much more easily slip propaganda into the news stream of another nation’s population. Sure, I get that the old corporate monolith system also allows rich corporations to ensure that all media organizations have different degrees of the same conservative bias, and so it’s not like the old media networks like CNN and whatnot don’t suffer from this. But at least with that system you can usually pretty easily identify who’s peeing in the pool.

Different mixing levels sometimes reveal small dialogue details–this happened in the mono mix of Empire a lot, where the words at the beginning of sentences were buried in the stereo mix, but completely audible in the mono mix. I’ve only seen one case like that in Jedi, and it’s not very exciting:

When Jerjerrod says “I tell you, this station will be operational as planned.”, the mono mix reveals what’s either a stutter or a partially-enunciated “that” so that it sounds more like “I tell you, th-this station will be operational as planned.”

Not enough to even bother changing subtitles for, sadly.

yhwx said:

CatBus said:

yhwx said:

TV’s Frink said:

“In God We Trust” shouldn’t be on official currency anyway but don’t get me started.

I’d like to hear your argument on that. Not necessarily that I disagree. I’m just curious.

The text was added in the 50’s (along with “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance) as a way of distinguishing our nation from the godless Communist menace presented by the Soviet Union.

So first of all, it’s an anachronistic holdover from the Cold War–so even if you agree with the logic that put it on our currency, that foundational reason no longer exists. Secondly, it’s a poor descriptor of our nation, which our founders explicitly stated is not a Christian nation. And thirdly, even at the time, it was a bad way to distinguish us from the Soviets–belief in God was a much less distinguishing characteristic than the freedom to believe or not believe in God as you chose. Or democracy. Or other civil rights.

I know all the history behind it, I just don’t really care either way. I wouldn’t be too phased if it went away, and I wouldn’t be too phased if it didn’t go away.

Must… not… gaa…

Fazed. It’s fazed.

But yeah, it’s small potatoes in the whole state establishment of religion problem we have in this country. There are much bigger fish to fry. I imagine this comes up a lot because everyone’s seen it, the history is so unambiguously unconstitutional, and nobody stands to gain financially from it being the way it is, so the number of people willing to spend billions on lawyers to keep things the way they are should be low. Contrast this with tax-exempt status for churches or the Hobby Lobby decision.

yhwx said:

TV’s Frink said:

“In God We Trust” shouldn’t be on official currency anyway but don’t get me started.

I’d like to hear your argument on that. Not necessarily that I disagree. I’m just curious.

The text was added in the 50’s (along with “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance) as a way of distinguishing our nation from the godless Communist menace presented by the Soviet Union.

So first of all, it’s an anachronistic holdover from the Cold War–so even if you agree with the logic that put it on our currency, that foundational reason no longer exists. Secondly, it’s a poor descriptor of our nation, which our founders explicitly stated is not a Christian nation. And thirdly, even at the time, it was a bad way to distinguish us from the Soviets–belief in God was a much less distinguishing characteristic than the freedom to believe or not believe in God as you chose. Or democracy. Or other civil rights.

Just listened to Yub Nub, and I think the mixdown/less dynamic range/lo-fi quality all conspire to make that harder to distinguish in ROTP that in the 83 stereo mix. I’m not sure the levels are any different except in the sense that with lower dynamics all noises are closer to the same volume, and those vocals sound like they may even be clipping a bit, which certainly can’t be helping matters.

Confirmed those chain noises–and only those chain noises–seem to be excluded throughout ROTP, including other scenes where those sounds should be prominent like the Jabba strangulation scene, R2 cutting Leia’s chain, etc. Still haven’t listened to the whole thing.

FWIW, I’ve also PM’d hairy_hen in case he can provide an expert opinion. Because so far I’m not thinking we’re likely to get a more audible difference than the “Soon you will learn to appreciate me” scene.

Yes, that would be the smoking gun. But we do have some (admittedly quiet) hard-panned clinks disappearing, as well as some centered louder clinks. I’m thinking the most plausible explanation for that is now that it’s a different mix. Other explanations are still worth exploring.

Going into this, I was assuming it was a stereo mixdown unless indicated otherwise. Now, I’ve flipped my stance–I’m assuming it’s a unique mix unless indicated otherwise.

Yeah, Puggo’s suggested location (~29:56) is a much clearer, louder, and centered example of this. Someone simply failed to add the clinking chain sounds to the mono mix–it’s a different mix. I’m pretty certain of that now.

So in the “No bargain” section, I checked the panning. The initial clinks are indeed panned hard left, nothing at all in the right channel, so the mixdown method could explain those disappearing. However, the clinks immediately after he says “No bargain” are pretty well centered. I’ll listen to the spot Puggo mentioned too, but I’m still inclined to believe it’s a different mix.

Hm. That was fast. It appears ROTP has lots of clearly audible detail above 2khz, and it appears IMO that the missing clinking sounds can only be explained away by a near-complete lack of frequency response above 2khz, ergo… different mix!

I think so, at least. Man, I wish I had a better audio background so I could make sweeping statements like that with more confidence.

But I haven’t even listened to the whole thing. Maybe the Emperor will say “I’ll get you, my pretties!” and it’ll make the whole thing much more obvious.

Well, I was able to filter out the clinking noises from the 1983 mix with a 2khz lowpass filter, and the resulting muffling of the audio didn’t sound different enough from the ROTP to be unambiguously wrong. A 6khz filter wasn’t enough to filter it out, though. Considering the frequency response of 16mm optical probably tapers off before a 6khz cutoff, it’s all plausibly still a limitation of the medium IMO.

To test this, I think I’ll run the ROTP mix through a 2khz highpass. If it contains audible non-hiss detail above 2khz, then I’m assuming we should have been able to hear the clinking sounds. If it’s all hiss with maybe a few barely audible bits here and there, then this was likely a false alarm.

Tomorrow I’ll run the 83 stereo mix through something like a 6khz lowpass filter and see if the clinks could have gotten trimmed out by the lack of high end (although I’m not sure where that cutoff should really be–what is it technically, 16mm optical?).

I’m not nearly done with the comparison–it seems to match the 83 stereo mix very well, but here’s an “I can’t tell!” example:

At around 22:38, while Bib Fortuna is delivering his “No bargain” line to Luke, and a little afterward as well, the 83 and 93 mixes both have the clinking sounds of chains. ROTP? Nothing, just dialogue. The reason I’m not sure is that I’m wondering if it’s possible the sounds are so high pitched that they are effectively trimmed out by either the EQ or the limits of the physical media. I’ll listen around for proof of this, but I don’t have a strong enough audio background to say this is so.

So it’s a cautious maybe, that it’s maybe a unique mix. No new dialogue or more major SFX differences so far, and I’m not done yet.

Would love confirmation from another listener.

TV’s Frink said:

Warbler said:

I liked McCain’s speech, I did not like how he voted.

McCain’s political career in a nutshell.

One of his most important and timely speeches was the anti-torture speech he delivered just before he voted to authorize torture. His chutzpah knows no bounds.

Apparently not satisfied with the fake pro-Republican numbers the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is already required by law to provide, it appears Republicans are now throwing pretense out the window and plan to direct the CBO not to provide any analysis at all, but to just rubber-stamp pre-written analysis provided by right-wing think tanks.