his morning I asked, “What Has Happened to Singers Who Can Play Several Musical Instruments?”

“This leads me to a sneaking suspicion that artists got lazy,” I said.

A friend has responded by saying: “Not the artists [got lazy] but that the means to reach a public became centralized and under corporate control. They don’t want skilled people, they want easily replaceable minions who are in over their heads and know it.”

“That way the threat of replacement doesn’t need to be spoken (much) to gain unswerving obedience. Note that most successful 70s groups ran their own business side.”

“Even Led Zeppelin financed their own album before shopping around for a record company. Taylor Swift is first and foremost an astute businesswoman in the entertainment branch who’s schtick happens to be pop music.”

Well, Taylor Swift now leverages China’s Fentanylware (CheeTok) with an “Exclusive”. Way to close control. Quoting the report, “Taylor Swift teams up with Fentanylware (CheeTok) for another exclusive in-app experience celebrating The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore and her new single, “Patient Zero.”

So now she is bossed by China, indirectly.

“Her music is tuned for ear buds and those who listen on ear buds,” the friend has said. “That’s another factor. In the 1970s and 1980s having the best possible sound system at home was a status symbol. That required music to show off the sound capabilities and the musicians leaned into that. You also had many regional radio stations, not the centralized mess owned by a handful of companies. Streaming is even more centralized and, again, there are only earbuds.”

HIS week a lot is happening and the mainstream media looks the other way.

Reform UK is being exposed for the sham it was all along. It’s a company.

“I’m not sure of the full context though,” a friend told me, as “CIA used to be ‘The Company’. Slang for it has been ‘The Company’ and has been for *many* decades. It was founded to advance and protect corporate interests extralegally.”

That seems like the goal of Reform UK as well.

“In the campaign scandal which Daniel is digging into,” I was told, “he might look into
who paid to split the vote through so many ‘opposition’ candidates [to Reform UK] and
why the paid press chose to focus exclusively on a few cranks. Had there been fewer opposition candidates and less press coverage of one of the cranks, people might have concentrated their votes and beat Farage…”

That’s the failure of the media here.

oday I can see that Reform UK is under severe stress due to a friend, who had a “leak evidence added to blog” to show what was happening behind the scenes.

“I added screenshots to the blog about the leak,” he said, and “I suspect Farage’s people are more mad about the leaks that snowballed into a news report than about the petition itself. Techrights screenshots were submitted to court. I’ll publish that soon.”

Meanwhile it seems like the thugs who bully my wife and I are in deep trouble and I think they got flagged by courts (for abuse of process). That’s very good and well overdue if true.

was not even born in the 1970s, yet in recent years I’ve developed some affinity for 70s music (80s weren’t bad, but I think I already became too familiar with the ‘repertoire’ of the 80s, both as a kid and as a young adult).

What strikes me is that back in the 70s many singers not only played an instrument but sometimes several very unique instruments. We’re talking about the likes of Stevie Wonder, who started with drums and later combined his vocals with harmonica, piano, maybe more.

This leads me to a sneaking suspicion that “artists” got lazy.

wo more months before we have December, hence Christmas and the whole lot. I still remember last Christmas like it was only several months ago.

The old sayings about time passing by faster when you’re having fun (or conversely, time moving slowly when you suffer or feel bored) seem true.

I bet 2030 is just around the corner. I struggle to accept COVID-19 started 7 years ago. Yes, 7 years.

esterday I listened to this whole interview with Lol Creme (11cc). It’s over a decade old (I saw a more recent one, weeks old) and was uploaded 2 months ago. In it, Creme explained that his true passion was art and jotting down all sorts of things like that. Kevin’s also. So music was only a second passion to them, yet the one they practiced and made the most of… as artists (it also made them rich).

I recently spent a lot more time drawing. I didn’t use paint, it’s more like pen and pencil art (sketches) – the sorts of things I did a lot as a child.

Sometimes I wonder if one day I’ll “get back to that” proper; slop does not worry me as people generally have a negative sentiment towards slop and don’t consider it to be art.

Society seems to not try to teach art to young people anymore. It’s not “industry”.

his year and last year we’ve had nearly 10 hearings at the High Court (I’ve lost count) and we plan to appeal to the Court of Appeal, which is above the High Court. We have a potent reason for doing so.

Some sites now report that ManCity “eye potential High Court battle over Premier League’s FFP verdict”.

Rianne and I spoke about this earlier today. We hope any progress will be supported by strong evidence other than ManCity trying to create a distraction/story about how the incriminating information was obtained.

ManCity isn’t a bigger culprit than other, even much bigger, clubs with a higher budget.

HE BBC reports that “[a]n independent commission found that City arranged “sham contracts” with a number of commercial partners as part of a scheme to disguise secret funding of more than £830m.”

Totally what the slop (so-called ‘AI’) so-called ‘industry’ is doing, inflating numbers by means of fraud while losing a lot of money and amassing trillions in debt. Yes, trillions.

HIS morning it was a horrible weather over here, but since around 11AM it has been nice and sunny, so we’ve taken full advantage. At the moment I am reading some comments about IBM layoffs, posted in reply to something I had published.

“Don’t forget,” someone pointed out, “tomorrow we’re also getting rid of all those bloody Anderon lot which, of course, isn’t a layoff, wink wink. Enjoy your last day as IBMers, lads. I can’t wait to just ghost the lot of them, give them the cold shoulder, and be done with the whole sorry bunch of rejects.” (Source)

Another one said: “I think they are going to be good but a little poking and investigating deeper into the numbers will reveal that is all bullsh-t and accounting games TO make them look good. We love to play this three-card monte with our financials.”

So it looks like the layoffs tomorrow are broader and will be hidden.

This is the state of “IT”. Hidden layoffs, silent layoffs, covert layoffs.

HE BBC says that one pilot attacked another in a plane – reminiscent of what happened in Germanwing when one pilot locked the other out of the cockpit (the more senior pilot blocked) to crash everyone into a mountain.

That makes one wonder what happens to some (still) missing places like the one from Malaysia.