There have been several cartoons on the subject of Paul McCartney resurrecting John’s voice through AI to complete a recording they never released. The other cartoons featured robots saying funny things, but less is more and Matt Davies turns in the winner.
I like the watercolor background, but I particularly like that he has the robot alone: Adding Beatles would clutter both the picture and the message, and the message is largely left up to the reader, which doesn’t always work, but, in this case, is an excellent choice. Those of us who grew up with the Beatles will likely take it differently than the digital natives.
For my part, I enjoy hearing alternate takes to find out how a musician and producer got to the final product, but I generally respect their final decision and moreso when I’ve wrapped a bunch of memories around the released version. My general distaste for adding dead people’s images and voices to things is significantly magnified in the case of John Lennon and I don’t really care how well you do it. Fake is fake.
It also smells more of a desire to make money than a desire to create art. Good performers know better than to try to resurrect the past. “Always leave’em wanting more” goes back a long way and for good reason.
Your mileage may certainly vary, and maybe you’ll see this cartoon as the March of Progress. Davies has left it open.
Though, on another level, I like Jeremy Banx’s take, since it combines the AI issue with my general opinion of tribute bands.
Like Davies, David Horsey also lets the image speak for itself, but he’s certainly not leaving the message open to interpretation. The self-styled “Freedom Caucus” has picked up a number of alternative names and “The Crybaby Caucus” is no worse than “The Clown Caucus.”
And it fits well at the moment, because the crybabies are upset over the deal that averted a shutdown and so are insisting on torpedoing it with appropriations legislation that will shut things down October 1 if a way cannot be found around their grandstanding.
Horsey does well not to depict individual members of the caucus, because, while some are better at grabbing microphones and TV time than others, it’s very much a group effort.
Kevin McCarthy must really, really want that gavel. I don’t envy him trying to manage that small contingent of disruptive nincompoops, but I also don’t admire him for trying.
It’s the same the ‘ole world over
The good news is that we’re not imagining it. The bad news is that it appears to be universal, which makes it much harder to deal with.
Nobody wants to have to deal with the homeless, but they sure seem determined to create more of them.
To be fair, I have very good landlords who have been generous in letting me rent the apartment at the back of their house for a price well below average in this town, but even they have had to raise it in light of what’s happening with both utilities and taxes.
As Kearney says, landlords who are in it for the money have been far less reluctant to raise rents, while Matt and Katauskas both note that the sales price of homes has skyrocketed simply because if you demand more with a limited inventory, nobody’s got a choice.
There are things governments can do, assuming they aren’t so dedicated to laissez-faire that they won’t act. One move that holds a tiny bit of promise is to ease zoning so that multi-family buildings can be built in what were single-family areas.
But given the cost of construction, and the goals of most builders, that translates to more unaffordable apartments and over-the-top condos, unless local government mandates affordable set-asides in permitting.
Meanwhile, Katauskas seems to have a grasp of why the price of existing homes has shot to the stars: The only substantive reason for such insane prices is that, if you want to go live somewhere after you sell your home, you’d better walk away with enough in your pocket to deal with things as they are, not as they ought to be.
And if either the UK or Australia finds a solution, you can bet our legislative revulsion against “socialism” and “wokeness” will keep it from happening here on a major scale.
Much as Eric Allie (Counterpoint) opposes the move, there are signs that normal people are pushing back against the phony, fascist “Parents’ Rights” movement, in which a small group of loud people — Moms For Liberty has been declared an extremist group — get to make harsh ideological decisions for the entire community.
The rise of these extremist groups is the result of a smart move on their part to become active in local government, filling a vacancy caused by lack of participation. Schools have been particularly vulnerable to takeovers because their elections were already often dominated by people who don’t want their taxes to go up.
Outside of places that still have Town Meetings to approve local budgets, school taxes are the only measures that come up for direct votes, so it didn’t take much for Tea Party groups to add their votes to the usual “No” contingent and take control of schools, both in budgeting and in who serves on the school board.
However, more people are becoming aware that the system already acknowledges “parents rights” by allowing the public to elect wise, sensible school board members to make intelligent, responsible decisions about how their local schools are run.
As the saying goes, 80% of success is showing up.
And still on the topic of intelligent governance, Ann Telnaes was so infuriated by reports that Republican bloviators were not bothering to read the indictment before commenting on what they guessed were its contents that she has combined the text of the initial pages of the document interspersed with their foolish, irrelevant, ignorant statements.
It’s a long, wonderful contribution to taking back our government from the Crybaby Caucus and those who vote without thinking, and I’m sending you to see the entire thing in lieu of a musical ending today.
If you’ve already read the indictment, you’ll enjoy her marginalia. And if you haven’t, here’s your chance.
With regards to “parents rights” parents have far more rights in the public schools regarding their children’s education than just voting for school boards. When mine were school age I was on the PTO, volunteered as a coach and for fundraisers/other events, and attended EVERY parent-teacher night. I also had the email addresses for the teachers and the vice-principal and principal and I used them when there was an issue, sometimes asking for meetings when necessary. Had I not wanted a particular book taught, I could easily have gotten a substitute for my family.
But on top of that, if a parent truly objects to a secular, scientific and socially inclusive education as provided by the government they can 1) send their kids to private school; or 2) home school. No one is forcing parents to send their kids to public schools — they are simply required to have the kids educated.
And parents can also get their children a religious education. There can be no single religious education in a public school because we all have different ideas on what religion we want taught out kids, if any but there are plenty of options. My parents read the Bible to us, and I would up getting a degree in comparative religions. I grew up in a town with a ton of Catholics and a good number of Jews, and so many of my friends had to leave sports practices early to head off to what we all called “Saturday school” to prepare for their coming of age ceremonies. My kids friends had the same, and attended Sunday school while the adults were in meeting.
I have yet to hear exactly what oppression the “Freedom Caucus” is seeking freedom from. Thanks in advance for any (rational) explanation.
They seek freedom from the oppression of democracy.
Excerpt:
You’ve watched the Republican Party champion the idea of “freedom” while you have also watched the same party openly assault various freedoms, like the freedom to vote, freedom to choose, freedom to marry who you want and so on. If this has been a source of confusion, then your assessments of what Republicans mean by “freedom” were likely too generous. Here’s what they mean:
1. The freedom to tell people what to do.
2. Freedom from being told what to do.
(from thread at https://twitter.com/_EthanGrey/status/1534024357957230594)
This kneejerk reaction to McCartney’s announcement is purely due to the “AI” terminology he used to describe the method of separating voice and instruments from monaural recordings. This would be the third instance of the surviving Beatles doing this (“Free as a Bird” and “Real Love” being the first two), and “Now and Then” would have been the third, accompanying volume three of the group’s ANTHOLOGY series issued thirty years ago. It’s not “fake” anymore than any other overdub sessions are fake. The reason it didn’t come together in ’94 was because George grew too frustrated by the quality of the results OF THE RECORDING. He never said it was a bad song. Peter Jackson’s technique perfected for the GET BACK series will be applied to much of the group’s old low-fi recordings (the BBC tapes; the Hamburg live tape) as well as when they remix the first five LPs they recorded for deluxe box sets as they have for the back end of their recorded catalog. I see no difference between this and the 1995 overdubs Paul, George and Ringo recorded for this song, which I think is a very good song that John surely would have properly recorded and released had he lived.
Does anyone at CSotD read these comments? You have to fix the ad issue. It’s becoming a struggle to read, especially when the text jumps up and down. I understand the need for ads, but if the ads continue make the content unreadable, I won’t bother trying for much longer, which will be a shame. I really like this column. I’d pay for an ad-free version, provided I can afford it. I subscribe to GoComics and Comics Kingdom because of Mike Peterson’s urging us to do so.
Where are you reading CSOTD? I generally come here on my laptop, where I have an ad blocker installed so I don’t see any ads at all. After reading your comment, I checked to see what it looks like on my iPhone, and I only see a small banner ad across the top and a small banner ad across the bottom. I don’t see anything jumping up and down or interfering with the main text.
I am reading this site on my desktop, Windows 10, and the latest Firefox. I use an adblocker and have no problems with ads at all. Try an adblocker.
Mike has responded to nearly every one of these complaints about the ads. They are working on it.
Meanwhile, some of us are getting tired of the conversation getting broken up by all the complaints about the ads. Patience, please.
For reasons I don’t remember I have always opened the site in private mode on Firefox. I don’t get the ads. It doesn’t jump. Give it a try.
Part of the jumping seems to be because of the menu bar at the top that drops down every time you scroll up. That drop down menu stuff and the popup for subscribing could go away, please. If I want the menu, I’ll scroll to the top, and a button for subscribing is enough.
@Wiley, as a cisgender, heterosexual, middle-aged White guy, I am apparently a member of the most oppressed demographic in America. If I ever figure out just why, I’ll certainly let you know.
I should add, though, that it turns out that one of my ancestors ran a station on the Underground Railroad. (Sometimes family legends are true.) Maybe that disqualifies me from the coveted title of Most Oppressed.
Just tried to go to this site on Microsoft Edge and received this error message
This site has been reported as unsafe
Hosted by http://www.dailycartoonist.com
Microsoft recommends you don’t continue to this site. It has been reported to Microsoft for containing misleading content that could lead you to lose personal info, financial data, and even money.
I’m not artistic enough to explain why, but the way the Abbey Robot was drawn reminded me of the general style of Yellow Submarine, which I thought was pretty clever.
Sitting in the UK and getting the same message that suddenly the site is unsafe. Can’t see why as content is unchanged ad doesn’t reflect the message from Microsoft, which is total nonsense. Thinking that some right wing nut job might have orchestrated a campaign of complaint given the link to Trump’s indictment…
As previously noted, there has been an update which often requires a second update to fix the screwups from the first update. I’ve noticed other websites being declare unsafe, but expect the Lords of the Internet to fix it soon.
That Telnaes piece is genius. Thanks for the link.