So short after Steve Albini passed away, and the albums of Big Black and Shellac reappeared in Spotify. Being critical to Spotify’s code of conduct (to the music industry in general) prioritizing the interests of labels over bands, he removed his music from Spotify.
Happy to have them back in my playlist.
PS the city of Chicago recently named a street after Albini.
Randy that bastard surprises us nicely after dinner with the flown-in hotshots when we are waiting for the cab in front of the restaurant, with suddenly his jovial “let’s go drive past the ladies over there” proposal. And a nod in the direction of further down the road. It takes a while for the penny to drop, and we understand that he is inviting us to go with him to the whores. That is clearer.
Then, you start to view someone differently. You hear this pathetic comment at the hotel bar. While leaning somewhat lost over the bar stool, with that boyish look of his shorts, the gritty shirt, and the flip-flops on his feet, while gulping in half a glass of whiskey, he says: my wife has left me.
The University of Delft has a great introduction to Quantum Computing at Qutech Academy. (Buckle up if you want to follow, get your linear algebra skills dusted of and some physics.) Quantum computing is slowly becoming a reality. Today, It is somewhere between research and reality. Like the state of classical computing in the 1950s / 1960s, the difference is that today, we are better able to assess the potential of such technology than we could imagine what computing would mean in the 1950s.
And it will be big. It’s more impactful and real than the current AI hype.
I dug into the Qutech Academy after attending the Qiskit Summer School by IBM, which was somewhat over my head. But it’s an extremely interesting space well worth digging into.
The first animation that Hayao Miyazaki directed on his own in 1972: see footage from the pilot of Yuki’s Sun.
The memoirs of Werner Herzog.
Herzog tells us about his tough youth in Bavaria, factually, as if it were normal. His family is so poor that they can not afford to wear shoes and underwear in summer. He grows up in deep poverty in the almost fairy tale world of the Bavarian mountains—a hard life, his parents somewhat loveless. Herzog brings us from these archaic times into the internet age.
He jumps back to the chaotic times around the Second World War and the weird family situation. His parents are members of the Nazi party. His father is a wild man who married three times—a good-for-nothing, selfish klaploper. Herzog moves around and does not belong anywhere. He lives in the German post-war rubble.
The story jumps back and forth in time and tells about crazy accidents, catastrophes, wounds, illnesses, and crashes. Throughout the book, Herzog speaks about the challenges he takes on without explicitly mentioning them. He seems to have a preference for the risky and weird, which is reflected in the extraordinary topics of his films.
His diary notes under the title Ballad of the Little Soldier are terrible stories about child soldiers. He films people on death row.
He has worked on several films with the crazy and genius actor Klaus Kinsky. From the stories, Kinsky emerges even more disturbed than what we already knew about him.
Herzog’s writing style is entertaining. He starts a story, jumps back in time, returns to the story, jumps forward, and so on. Which feels very natural.
Can’t summarize. A relentless man is probably the best summary.