Legendary songwriter Will Jennings passed away at the age of 80. He worked on two albums with Jimmy Buffett and Michael Utley, “Riddles in the Sand” and “Last Mango in Paris”, and co-wrote the songs …

From Music Row: Music City Walk Of Fame Announces 2024 Inductees The Nashville Convention & Visitors Corp have announced the Music City Walk of Fame will induct Jimmy Buffett, gospel quartet The Fairfield Four, Ryman Hospitality Properties’ Colin …

Singer, songwriter John David (JD) Souther passed away on Tuesday at the age of 78. He co-wrote a couple of songs with Jimmy Buffett, “Livin’ it Up” and “The Good Fight”. He co-wrote several hits …

From the Tennessean: Jimmy Buffett, Fairfield Four among quartet inducted at Music City Walk of Fame ceremony Nashville’s 2024 Music City Walk of Fame ceremony highlighted all corners and eras of the city’s multitude of …

“Skinny Boy,” the new single by Original Coral Reefer Guitarist, Roger Bartlett and Steven Taylor, is now available for download exclusively at The Songwriters Joint. Featuring an all-star lineup including TC Carr, John Frinzi, and members of …

I do believe we’re all exhausted about the impending election in a week. And there’s so much to read. I find myself wanting to encase this moment in amber so I can remember it because it all has the feeling of intense emotion that I will suppress, later. That the election is in 7 days....

Me, at the Grand Canyon, in my New Order t-shirt. 1989. I don’t have the shirt. I do have the hat. On Saturday, June 17, 1989 I saw the following bands play live in San Diego at SDSU. New Order Public Image Ltd The Sugarcubes De La Soul In my memory this was a Lollapalooza...

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Video: The Hard Quartet – “Rio’s Song”

Directed by Jared Sherbert. From The Hard Quartet, out October 4 on Matador.

The whole idea of an indie rock supergroup is kind of ridiculous but here we are. The Hard Quartet is Stephen Malkmus from Pavement and Matt Sweeney from Chavez, both on Matador Records, plus Drag City’s Emmett Kelly and Jim White. Put ’em together and what have you got? Skibidi-Bobbidi-Boo!

The song’s good (we love the 90s!) but the video’s great. Especially if you’re familiar with the Stones’ 1981 “Waiting On A Friend” promo. They went to great lengths to capture the vibe. Director Jared Sherbert told Pitchfork, “The original staircase is now surrounded by businesses, so we shot at the nearly identical staircase next door. The St. Marks Bar & Grill is gone, and, although there was another bar in the neighborhood with almost the exact same layout, International Bar was incredibly accommodating and encouraged us to shoot there, which just felt right for this. The apartment window with the guy daydreaming has changed, but a neighbor a few doors down let us use hers.”

Sweeney captures Mick’s aura without stooping to an impression while Malkmus totally nails Keith’s elegantly wasted swagger.

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Just prior to the pandemic I bought a new car.

During the process of dealing with reams of forms—and the classic “Give me a minute and let me see what I can do for you by talking to my boss”—at some point or ten I had to provide my email address.

(You sometimes hear people say, “I thought we were promised flying cars by now.” I’ll be considerably more realistic and say, “I thought we would be able to buy cars over the internet by now.” Hyundai announced last year that it was partnering with Amazon to sell cars, and there is a page on Amazon for doing that except that you can’t quite yet. “Later,” it indicates. But even when it is operative you’re not going to have an Amazon Prime driver deliver your new Kona; you will still have to go to the dealer for delivery. Which puts that whole flying car thing into perspective.)

Anyway. . .

As you will recall if you tried to buy a car when the pandemic was in full swing you faced not only prices that made the numbers on the window sticker look like a dream, but the availability of models, colors, trims, and other things was also something of a fantasy.

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Glendale, Las Vegas, Arlington, Tampa, Houston, Atlanta, Nashville, Philadelphia, Foxborough, East Rutherford, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Cincinnati, Kansas City Denver, Seattle, Santa Clara, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, Tokyo, Liverpool, Dublin, London, Amsterdam, Lyon, Vienna, Miami, New Orleans, Indianapolis, Toronto, Vancouver.

Those are the places that Taylor Swift has performed or will perform (New Orleans is next weekend) on her Eras Tour. All in,146 dates on five continents.

Swift started touring in 2009 with the Fearless Tour. It was followed by the Speak Now World Tour, Red Tour, 1989 World Tour, Reputation Stadium Tour, and Lover Fest, leading the Eras Tour, which started last year.

A lot of time on the road.

Which brings to mind the Rolling Stones, which started touring in 1963. That year it did one swing through the U.K. In 1964 it did that four times as well as two tours in the U.S. 1965 saw the band do two tours of Ireland, four in Europe, one in the far east, two in Britain and two in the U.S. Realize that Boeing 707s were in operation in the mid-60s, so those flights must have been l-o-n-g.

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POLJUNK, the National Affairs desk of Glorious Noise

Here we are again. In the year of someone’s Lord 2024, we are back in time. We had a slight reprieve with four years of competent governing that resulted in record economic growth, withdrawal from historically disastrous military entanglements in the mideast (brought to you by the formerly worst president in US history), and at least some sense of normalcy, but I guess we are going back. This was after what many thought was an aberrant Trump presidency–surely that was a blip in the American experience, right? As it turns out, the aberrant is the accepted. It’s America’s true face, one we occasionally veil but never actually change.

I could list all the reasons Donald Trump is a terrible person and worse “leader,” but we all know them. And that’s the point: This isn’t some unknown or misunderstood element. This is Donald Trump. We know him and unfortunately, he knows us. Better than many of us know ourselves.

Trump isn’t some genius, he’s just a guy who is willing to do what others won’t because most of us live between imaginary lines of decency.

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Ractopamine is a drug given to pigs and cows in the last months of their lives to "make the meat more lean". Taiwan has been blocking imports of meat from the US over concerns that the drug's residues that stay in the meat are less than healthy. At a recent Codex Alimentarius Commission meeting, the meat producing and exporting countries, and those heavily lobbied and pressured by US diplomats prevailed in a close vote to make the agency adopt a standard for residues of ractopamine in meat. That means that the countries that resist meat from doped animals will have a harder time to justify why they don't want to subject their citizens to yet another experiment for the sake of the economy of large-scale animal-to-meat operations. Scott Tips of the National Health Federation has represented the consumer side at Codex and he reports on the meeting: After taking a vote by secret ballot this late morning, the Chairman of the Codex Alimentarius Commission, Mr. Sanjay Dave, announced the results of the voting on whether or not Ractopamine (a steroid-like vet drug, the residues of which remain in the slaughtered animal to then be consumed by meat-eaters) standards were adopted. Out of 143 ballots cast, the vote was 69 for Ractopamine, 67 against Ractopamine, with 7 abstaining. If only one vote had shifted from the “for” camp to the “against” camp, then the result would have been completely different and the Ractopamine standard would not have been adopted. This voting was forced upon the Commission by the insistence of the United States, Costa Rica, and Brazil that the long stalemate over the adoption of a standard for Ractopamine MRLs (Maximum Residue Levels) could not be resolved through the Codex-preferred process of “consensus” but would, after all, have to be voted upon......

This is another installment of research into the biochemistry of HIV and Aids by Cal Crilly, an Australian who finds himself fascinated with the intricacies of biology. Crilly analyzes the seemingly unconnected studies that show the biochemical changes that accompany the presence of numerous retroviruses - one of them called HIV - in humans. The mechanism that makes retroviruses appear is hypomethylation, and it is the same mechanism that accompanies pregnancy and inflammation. Those retroviruses are produced in the course of normal biological activity and they are not infectious. There are many different types (ever heard of HIV 'mutating'?). As an aside, we declare pregnant mothers to be "HIV positive" as pregnancy causes the presence of retroviruses in the course of normal biological activity, and those harmless endogenous retroviruses react with what's generally called an "HIV" test. Certain basic nutrients - Selenium, Folate, B12, B6, Choline are the most important - counteract hypomethylation of the cells and thereby calm the production of human endogenous retroviruses. The toxic Aids drug AZT causes hypermethylation but it is so destructive of normal cell processes that most patients die. The 'life prolonging' effect of HAART, the drug cocktail that is prescribed to Aids patients today is due to a sharp decrease in the dosage of deadly AZT in the cocktail. Cal demonstrates those facts and more with reference to studies you can find as well, if you're interested in the details. Meanwhile we continue to treat immune compromised people with drugs that further compromise the immune system and - in many cases - kill the patient. When is medicine going to start treating those people by insisting on better eating and supplementation supplying the correct nutrients? How long will it take until the toxic drugs are phased out in favor of real prevention?...

The European Union on Tuesday took the debate about genetically modified crops to the public with a survey asking citizens to share their thoughts on organic farming, reports Phys.org in a recent article titled EU asks citizens to join debate on GM food Image credit: americanoverkill.com The article continues ... The bloc's 500 million consumers are invited to complete an anonymous online questionnaire on the European Commission's Agriculture and Rural Development website (ec.europa.eu/agriculture/consultations/organic/2013_en.htm). The consultation, which ends on April 10, is part of a review of European policy on organic agriculture. The survey is available in all official EU languages. English is the one linked here, but other languages are available from a drop-down menu at the top of the page. The Phys.org article, putting emphasis on the GM angle, goes on to say......

More and more evidence is coming to light that Dr. Wakefield was on the right track when he researched the connection between the MMR vaccine and intestinal inflammation in the vaccinated children. Was Dr. Andrew Wakefield Right After All? Wakefield’s Lancet Paper Vindicated New Published Study Verifies Andrew Wakefield’s Research on Autism But how did Dr. Wakefield first get into the sights of the UK vaccine industry and how was the campaign against him mounted? Martin Walker, the author of "Dirty Medicine" and a number of other books on health, closely followed the case that eventually resulted in Dr. Wakefield's exile from the UK. He describes how it all happened and how the vaccine manufacturers were able to bring down the full weight of government and the courts against both Wakefield and the many parents who were suing for recognition of the damage vaccines had done to their children. "As a campaigner of 40 years, I think that what surprises me most about Dr Wakefield’s case, is how easily and how completely we were defeated by the pharmaceutical companies, how over a thousand parents and children were written out of history together with their adverse drug reactions. Part of this defeat for the parents, the children and the doctors concerned was grounded in an unfortunate understanding that pharmaceutical company executives were decent people and humanitarians. In fact the pharmaceutical companies, their corporate structure and their relentless pursuit of profit, their fraudulent practices represent one of the last remaining shibboleths, in our society which need to be completely reformed, democratised, divested of vested interests and made public from top to bottom." We do learn from experience. That is why we should pay attention to how this case went so wrong and why the campaign to ruin those researchers and to leave the damaged children by the wayside was mounted in the first place. So it won't happen again. Here is Martin Walker's essay....

We have previously published articles by the Australian AIDS-and-biology researcher Cal Crilly, and here is yet another installment. Cal is someone who digs into scientific studies. He does biological detective work and finds gems that hide in plain view, things we don't normally understand and that even the experts do not see as they are not trained to put discordant facts together and question basic assumptions. What this new article tells us is that retroviruses - the same kind that are thought to cause immune deficiency or AIDS - are useful and necessary for our immune system to function correctly. That of course tends to leave the hypothesis of a viral causation of AIDS in grave trouble. I say 'hypothesis' because no one has proven, or even come close to a coherent explanation for, the mechanism of AIDS causation by HIV. How does a retrovirus that is by nature a benign particle, cause devastation of the immune system? Here we have several scientific studies published in the world's finest journals, which attest to the fact that retroviruses are part and parcel of the human organism, that they are needed to provide certain defensive capabilities against invaders, and that they are not pathogenic. So we might ask ourselves why HIV tests (thought to indicate the presence of a retrovirus) are still performed, and why doctors are still recommending the use of toxic anti-retroviral drugs to kill what, rather than a foreign invader, appears to be part of normal human metabolic processes. Cal Crilly lays it out for you, citing and linking the sources......

As promised, quotations from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations are now available. Again, both German and English versions of each are reproduced, though the task was made considerably easier than in other cases by the fact that the edition I used was a dual-language edition.

I (like, I suspect, many others) find Wittgenstein simultaneously fascinating and annoying. On the one hand, he makes interesting and insightful observations on all sorts of phenomena; on the other, he never really synthesizes those observations into a single, coherent argument. For example, when he says that “Uttering a word is like striking a note on the keyboard of the imagination” (I§6) or that “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of our language” (I§109) or that “The fluctuation of scientific definitions: what to-day counts as an observed concomitant of a phenomenon will to-morrow be used to define it” (I§79) I find myself saying “Right on!”; but I also find myself frustrated by the fact that he can’t even decide on what, exactly, his purpose in writing this all down is. For example, at one point Wittgenstein claims that his “aim in philosophy” is “To shew the fly the way out of the fly-bottle” (I§309), while elsewhere he says: “My aim is: to teach you to pass from a piece of disguised nonsense to something that is patent nonsense” (I§464) and still elsewhere he suggests that he’s merely making obvious remarks that presumably everybody already knows:

What we are supplying are really remarks on the natural history of human beings; we are not contributing curiosities, however, but observations which no one has doubted, but which have escaped remark only because they are always before our eyes. (I§415)

As I say, this can be frustrating, but, in a way, is also understandable. In one sense, Wittgenstein isn’t trying to provide answers, but rather to show that there aren’t really any problems (as he says in Philosophical Grammar: “While thinking philosophically we see problems in places where there are none. It is for philosophy to show that there are no problems.”). And why aren’t there any problems? Because “philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday” (I§38); our problems derive from an inability to properly express ourselves.

(INTERPOLATION: This isn’t stated very well, so I want to expand just a bit. The idea, as I understand it, is that we ask too much of language; that is, we ignore the fact that “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (I§1), that, as quoted below, “language itself cannot be explained”, but, rather, that it can only be understood by its use. In failing to recognize this, we find ourselves unable to express the explanations we seek.)

Within this context, I think Wittgenstein’s thesis (to the extent that he even has one) boils down to the following:

What we have rather to do is to accept the everyday language-game, and to note false accounts of the matter as false. The primitive language-game which children are taught needs no justification; attempts at justification need to be rejected. (II.xi)

Or, from a different direction:

“So you are saying that human agreement decides what is true and what is false?”—It is what human beings say that is true and false; and they agree in the language they use. That is not agreement in opinions but in form of life. (I§241)

Viewed from this perspective, then, it is, perhaps, not so surprising that Wittgenstein has a tendency to be frustratingly vague at times; after all, as he himself says, “What is most difficult here is to put this indefiniteness, correctly and unfalsified, into words” (II.xi). Personally, I find his perspective compelling, but I can understand why some might find it rather superficial, especially since it can lead to seemingly-trivial statements like: “One wants to say: a significant sentence is one which one can not merely say, but also think” (I§511).

All this aside, though, there are two other things I really like about Wittgenstein. First, the fact that he has a real sense of humor and isn’t afraid to deploy it. For example, I couldn’t help laughing aloud at reading this:

Think of a picture of a landscape, an imaginary landscape with a house in it.—Someone asks “Whose house is that?”—The answer, by the way, might be “It belongs to the farmer who is sitting on the bench in front of it”. But then he cannot for example enter his house. (I§398)

Of course, it probably helps that his sense of humor has that bone-dry, literalistic bent that is characteristic of mathematicians (if you don’t see the humor in the above, re-read the last two sentences like a died-in-the-wool literalist). Which brings me to the second appeal Wittgenstein has for me: he has at least some understanding and awareness of mathematics. And, of course, I can’t help but be excited when someone seems to agree with my own quasi-Intuitionist perspective:

Of course, in one sense mathematics is a branch of knowledge,—but still it is also an activity. And ‘false moves’ can only exist as the exception. For if what we now call by that name became the rule, the game in which they were false moves would have been abrogated. (II.xi)

And, though it doesn’t explicitly refer to mathematics, Wittgenstein’s initial (or final, depending on how you look at it) conclusion has a distinctly mathematical feel to it (especially within the context of Russell’s paradox):

What is spoken can only be explained in language, and so in this sense language itself cannot be explained.

Language must speak for itself.

(Actually from Philosophical Grammar, but echoed throughout Philosophical Investigations)

Okay, enough book-reviewing; check out the quotations.

I might deduce one final consequence of a skepticism in regards to temporality and causality. If our only experience of the world is of an existent reality, such that something uncreated or destroyed is literally unimaginable, the superfluity of religion becomes very evident. Since it is on the basis of a parallel between finite objects, which are presumed to be necessarily created, and the universe in its totality, which in turn therefore needs its Creator, that modern religions ultimately justify themselves, if creation, rather than lack of creation, is taken to be the phenomenon unjustified by experience then the concept of God is unwarranted.

“Perhaps you’re familiar with “the tragedy of the commons,” a social dilemma outlined by the late biologist Garrett Hardin in a famous 1968 essay of the same name. The dilemma is that when individuals pursue personal gain, the net result for society as a whole may be impoverishment. (Pollution is the most familiar example.) Such thinking has fallen out of fashion amid President Bush’s talk of an “ownership society,” but its logic is unassailable.”

That response seems like a pretty damn obtuse interpretation of the essay, simply because the essay is nothing if not a plea for the creation of property rights. Furthermore, while it is true that Hardin claims that pursuing individual gain leads to group catastrophe, the word “when” in the paragraph above implies that there are times when the individual doesn’t, whereas Hardin claims that individuals basically always pursue their own interest, which is the problem in high-density situations where some amout of coordination is necessary. However, upon re-reading it, I realize that for Hardin property rights only forms a part of a wished-for imposition of coercive measures which will prevent individuals from pursuing personal gain at the expense of their environment. Which makes sense, because property rights, for all this may get lost in the ceaseless ideological wrangling today, are themselves forms of state-imposed coercion. Dismiss the semi-metaphysical nonsense in Locke and Kant about gaining “just propriety” over an object by making a visible mark on it. Think about it: animals control exactly as much “property” as they can defend; cheetahs peeing on trees only works because they will fight to defend what they have claimed. By contrast, think about who adjudicates the (in theory) incontestable property rights: the authorities, i.e. in our society, the State. The corollary of this, of course, is that nationalized or federal property is not “public property,” in the sense of property owned by the public—quite the contrary. The dichotomy between it and “private property” is spurious. “Public property” is simply property owned by the government. This no doubt seems obvious and intuitive, but based on the foolishness I cited above, it bears repeating that property rights, whether granted to others by the government or to itself, are not opposed to coercive state power but are in fact the very essence of it. That fact is perhaps more apparent in regards to so-called “intellectual property.”

As a marginal note, Hardin’s essay, despite the pithiness of its central analogy, is rather dispiriting insofar as it takes Hegel’s statement that “Freedom lies in the recognition of necessity” as its motto and guiding spirit. That formulation is, as I believe I have said before, perfectly monstruous. Freedom means nothing if it is not the absence of restriction, and it is perhaps a sign of the evasive confusion of priorities in Western culture that one would pretend to celebrate this value in such a way while in fact describing its opposite. Freedom is not an act or a thought, but rather a set of conditions under which action and thought occur. This is the same idealistic debasement of the language that has turned love into a deed: making love.

Over at Catallarchy, Micha Ghertner discusses “How To Tell You’ve Won An Argument;” namely, when your opponent concedes that his position is less coherent than your own, you’ve won. Now, I don’t want to dispute his point, but rather to question how relevant it is. I’ve touched on this before, but I’m a bit dubious of the notion that the “correct” position is the one that wins arguments between advocates of two different positions.

Obviously, in the first place, there’s nothing to prevent both arguers from being wrong; the relative lack of coherence of one of their positions means, at best, that the other’s position is “less” wrong (assuming that even makes sense and assuming that coherence is a measure of correctness).¹ But this is somewhat superficial (and besides, already mentioned and acknowledged in the comments to Ghertner’s post); more importantly, I want to cast doubts upon the parenthetical assumption I made above, that coherence is some sort of infallible metric for measuring correctness/validity.

In fact, Ghertner (perhaps unconsciously) alludes to this very issue when he quotes Wittgenstein’s famous seventh proposition from the Tractatus: “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” Within the context of the Tractatus (as an attempt to construct or at least describe a perfect language), this supports the notion that being right and being coherent are synonymous, but Wittgenstein himself later rejects this perspective and, to me, the more apropos quotation is: “Explanations come to an end somewhere” (Philosophical Investigations, I§1). That is, no argument (and certainly none about abstract principles) is completely coherent; we always run up against that whereof we cannot speak and therefore must be silent. The question is simply at what stage in the investigation we enter the realm of unsupported assertion.

And even if we scale back our expectations and choose to embrace the position that manages to maintain coherence as far back as possible, there’s still no guarantee that we’re on the right track. Although much of the world can apparently be explained without the need to stipulate a deity, this doesn’t really make it any less likely that theism is right. In the words of Chuck Klosterman:

Math [or, perhaps more fittingly in this context, logic] is the antireligion, because it splinters the gravity of life’s only imperative equation: Either something is true, or it isn’t.

In fact, if we really want to get all Wittgensteinian about this (not that we necessarily should), we might even begin to question those positions which do appear to be coherent:

In the actual use of expressions we make detours, we go by side roads. We see the straight highway before us, but of course we cannot use it, because it is permanently closed. (PI, I§426)

Anyway, getting back to whatever semblance of a point I was trying to make, when someone admits that their position is incoherent, that does indeed mean that they’ve lost the argument, but I just wonder how important that really is. Giving up your high-paying job and live-in girlfriend to go back home and take care of your sick mother isn’t going to win a lot of arguments if we’re taking logical coherence as the criterion of victory (seriously, think about it), but that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do. That doesn’t mean that coherence is totally irrelevant to what is right/correct, either (and, I should point out, in the above example helping your sick mom isn’t necessarily the right thing to do; as is almost always true, it depends on the circumstances), but let’s not give argument-winning more importance than it merits. Or, as some smarmy new-age intellectual might put it, in the pursuit of knowledge, our goal shouldn’t be to win arguments, but, rather, to discover truth.

The law of the excluded middle says here: It must either look like this, or like that. So it really—and this is a truism—says nothing at all, but gives us a picture. And the problem ought now to be: does reality accord with the picture or not? And this picture seems to determine what we have to do, what to look for, and how—but it does not do so, just because we do not know how it is to be applied. Here saying “There is no third possibility” or “But there can’t be a third possibility!”—expresses our inability to turn our eyes away from this picture: a picture which looks as if it must already contain both the problem and its solution, while all the time we feel that it is not so. (PI I§352)

Gestern habe ich mich bei der

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Posted without comment for your consternation:

On Labor Day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) issued a press release whose title summarizes its contents all too neatly: Bush Declares Eco-Whistleblower Law Void for EPA Employees. Here's some of it:

Washington, DC - The Bush administration has declared itself immune from whistleblower protections for federal workers under the Clean Water Act, according to legal documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). As a result of an opinion issued by a unit within the Office of the Attorney General, federal workers will have little protection from official retaliation for reporting water pollution enforcement breakdowns, manipulations of science or cleanup failures.

In the case of original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic works, the duration of copyright is the lifetime of the author or artist, and 60 years counted from the year following the death of the author.

In the case of cinematograph films, sound recordings, photographs, posthumous publications, anonymous and pseudonymous publications, works of government and works of international organizations are protected for a period of 60 years which is counted from the year following the date of publication.

www.mondaq.com

list of useful methods of itertools module.

permutationscombinationscombinations_with_replacementzip_longestcountrepeatcycleaccumulateproductgroupbyteeisslicechainchain.from_iterablefilterfalsedropwhile

realpython.com

The settings for Tools > Options > Language Settings > Writing Aids > Options > Minimal number of characters for hyphenation. These settings are over-ridden by any formatting in the document itself.

The line divisions can be improved by running Tools > Language > Hyphenation as a final touch on the document. This tool not only works interactively, giving you more control, but also generally does a better job than the on-the-fly hyphenation, if run when the document is complete.

The Characters at line end and Characters at line begin fields can sometimes be manipulated to improve hyphenation by playing one off against the other. Working by itself, the Maximum consecutive hyphenated lines field can also make a difference. adjusting the settings on the Text Flow tab. The number of letters at the end and start of the line should be 1–4. The typographical convention is not to allow more than two lines in a row to end with a hyphen.

If you use a font that the recipient is unlike to have, select Files > Proprties > Font > Embed fonts in the document before exporting to PDF. Note that embedding will vastly increase the file size if you you have a large number of fonts.

Settings > Digital Wellbeing and parental controls. Tap your preferred Focus Mode or create your own by selecting Add. Select Start to start using that Focus Mode.

You can "discretize" or "bin" continuous features into categorical features.

from sklearn.preprocessing import KBinsDiscretizer

kb = KBinsDiscretizer(n_bins=3, strategy='quantile', encode='ordinal')

kb.fit_transform(df['Fare'])

Let's talk about Momus.

A little.

There's no obvious way to crack into his body of work; you can begin anywhere and proceed to draw a map around that starting point. The essential aerial-view basics, however: Momus is Nick Currie, and while he has mostly recorded under that mononym for over four decades, he began his musical career in the Happy Family, one of 4AD's first signings.

I initially came across him while digitally digging through crates of Shibuya-kei records as a teen; I was enamored with his writing and production for Kahimi Karie and POiSON GiRL FRiEND, amongst others. He slid sublimely into that biome—Burt Bacharach blossoms splashed across Serge Gainsbourg grasses under kitschy exotica electronica canopies.

At some point in the 90s, he fell into a dramatic, emotional, ultimately fraught tangle with a teenage British-Bangladeshi girl named Shazna Nessa, daughter of a "London-based Bangladeshi restaurant and factory owner," though what exactly transpired is unclear, in part because only the Daily Report tabloid covered it.

At any rate, it was with Shazna that he started a project called Milky, and it is their one and only album, Travels with a Donkey, that marks the beginning of my journey with Momus. I'm sure I came upon it either through the Darla website (he had an imprint, American Patchwork, that was distributed by them) or one of the many music blogs with an ear turned to Japan that I followed. A delightfully sweet, twee record that's as much a children's lullabies collection as it is a bedroom pop demo tape.

Shazna was also in an easy-listening lounge-pop act called Maria Napoleon that released an LP in 2000, and that is also worth a listen.

Recommended

The Alice Howell Collection:

From where we are now, it's weird to think of these silent comedies as being filmed and released 25 to 35 years after the advent of motion pictures. I mean, with the first true examples of 'film' coming from the mid-1880s, you'd think that by 1914 a picture like Shot in the Excitement, featuring early film comedienne Alice Howell, would look more sophisticated. Aah, but those were the olden days, when horse-drawn carriages still regularly shared the road with motor cars.

This 2-disc collection of silent motion picture comedies, curated by Steve Massa and Ben Model, features Alice Howell, one of the earliest and well-renowned stars of slapstick comedies, who was active from 1914 to 1926 or so. The titles included here on disc one are the aforementioned Shot in the Excitement (1914, 14 minutes), Father was a Loafer (1915, 13 minutes), Unde...Read the entire review