This is a time killer.

In celebration of 50 years, Roland has collaborated with sound designer Yuri Suzuki to create Roland50 Studio, a digital reworking of some of their most famous and influential devices.

You can play with a trio of Roland music machines for the musically inclined (and the no so inclined): the TR-808 drum machine, the TB-303 bass synthesizer, and the SH-101 synthesizer.

Even better, once you have your masterpiece set, you can download it. I wish I had the time to create something extraordinary.

I have never heard of I Need a New Butt, but it sounds hilarious and perfectly appropriate for second graders.

A young boy suddenly notices a big problem — his butt has a huge crack! So he sets off to find a new one. Will he choose an armor-plated butt? A rocket butt? A robot butt? Find out in this quirky tale of a tail, which features hilarious rhymes and delightful illustrations. Children and parents will love this book — no ifs, ands, or butts about it!

Fun! Of course, the superintendent in Mississippi’s Hinds County School District took offense.

Maria Cramer and Isabella Grullón Paz, writing for the New York Times, explains how an assistant principal lost his job because he read it to children. Toby Price read the book to a group of second graders over Zoom … and lost his job.

Later that day, on March 2, the district superintendent, Delesicia Martin, called him into her office and told him he was on administrative leave, Mr. Price said. He was fired two days later, accused of violating the standards of conduct section of the Mississippi Educator Code of Ethics.

In a letter to Mr. Price, the superintendent called the book “inappropriate.” She particularly took issue with the references to farting in the story and how “the book described butts in various colors, shapes and sizes (example: fireproof, bullet proof, bomb proof).” Ms. Martin called Mr. Price “unprofessional” for having selected the book.

Delesicia Martin, the superintendent, should be fired. Immediately. There’s even a change.org petition.

No child or parent complained. The superintendent was worried someone might complain. Unbelievable.

This is one of the hundreds of reasons why the Mississippi education system rates 47 out of 50. I hope Mr. Price gets plenty of job offers to educate young minds where he is appreciated.

Hey…yo.

Scott Hall, WWE Hall of Famer and co-founder of pro wrestling’s legendary New World Order faction, died on Monday after being taken off of life support by his family following complications from hip surgery. He was 63.

He was the man who kicked off the biggest boom period in the history of professional wrestling. Along with Shawn Michaels, he innovated the ladder match, now a staple of the sport.

His life behind the scenes was filled with constant struggles with substance abuse and personal demons, run-ins with the law, and sexual misconduct allegations. In 2013, “Diamond” Dallas Page invited him to live at his home and get clean. A year after moving in with Page, Hall was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame and would be inducted again in 2020 as a member of the nWo alongside Hogan, Nash and X-Pac.

His acceptance speech was amazing. “Bad times don’t last, but bad guys do.”

Whether you knew him best as the Diamond Studd, as Razor Ramon, or simply as himself, “Da Bad Guy” was always one of the coolest wrestlers to ever set foot in the ring.

Do you want to get Cardinals fans excited? Tell them Pujols is returning to St. Louis to join the Wainwright/Molina farewell tour. At the very least, tell them there’s a chance.

Last year, Pujols became a free agent during the regular season. Fans got excited about a potential reunion. President of baseball operations, John Mozeliak, didn’t even consider it and rightfully so. With the universal DH, bringing in a crowd-pleasing player like Pujols could be fun. Nevertheless, it makes little sense for the Cardinals to sign a rapidly declining and limited player in Pujols and take away opportunities for younger players like Nolan Gorman and Lars Nootbaar.

Could Pujols help the Cardinals? Of course. He’d be a veteran on the bench to help the younger players. He’d be a leader in the clubhouse. Reuniting with Yadier Molina and Adam Wainwright would give these three all-time Cardinals one final season together, and it would be a license to print money.

Still, I don’t have my hopes up for a reunion.

Let the fun begin! pic.twitter.com/c7KQKSj618

— MLB (@MLB) March 11, 2022

Baseball is back!

After 99 days of a lockout on the players, the MLB owners and Players Association agreed to a new Collective Bargaining Agreement. So, after all that hand-wringing and soul-crushing shenanigans, what exactly happened? What’s different?

In a Twitter thread by Evan Drellich of The Athletic, he outlines the details of the new CBA agreement.

Some final details of a CBA where players made some notable gains:
• Pre-arb bonus pool at $50m
• Min salary: $700k, $720k, 740k, $760k, $780k
• CBT: $230m-$244m
• Draft lottery at 6 picks
• Universal DH
• Amateur draft is 20 rounds
• Player can be optioned 5 times per yr

— Evan Drellich (@EvanDrellich) March 10, 2022

Bonus Pool
The players wanted a bonus pool of $100M. The compromise number of $50M is excellent. It’s a way for the impressive rookies and quality players to get a bit more money.

Minimum Salary
The minimum salary is now $700k and a sliding scale up for each season. When the lockout was going on, there was a narrative of millionaire baseball players against the billionaire owners, and that just wasn’t true. Most professional baseball players were not making a million dollars. With the minimum salary going up, it will help the most significant number of players.

Universal DH
I’ve been screaming about this for years. The National League was behind every other example of organized baseball in existence. This will make the game much better and make the World Series a more equitable set of games.

Schedule Changes
The regular season will be delayed, but only a tiny bit. More importantly, there will be a full slate of 162 games. To do that, it looks like there will be some scheduled doubleheaders during the season. Also, the doubleheaders will be nine-inning games. No more of this seven innings crap. Plus, no more stupid “ghost runners” on second to start extra innings.

Expanded Playoffs
The owners wanted expanded playoffs because that’s where a lot of money is made. The players used this as their primary bargaining chip. The owners wanted a 14-team playoff. The players proposed a 12-team playoff, and that’s the compromise. I hated the one-game Wild Card, and expanded teams mean Wild Card three-game series, which is much better.

On to free agency, spring training, and an actual regular season starting in about a month.

Somehow, I missed this news from Apple entirely. The Verge outlines the new way for people to watch baseball:

During the company’s Peek Performance event on Tuesday, Apple boss Tim Cook announced that Apple’s streaming service will feature two Major League Baseball games on Friday nights during the regular season. Kicking off when the season begins, Friday Night Baseball will feature pregame and postgame programming.

Apple TV Plus subscribers in the US and Canada will additionally have access to a new 24/7 livestream with Major League Baseball replays, news, highlights, and analysis, as well as what Apple described as “a full complement of on-demand programming, including highlights and MLB-themed original content.” In addition, a new live show titled MLB Big Inning will air highlights on weeknights during the regular season.

I recently changed my television from digital cable to YouTubeTV and several streaming services. What I missed by going this route was watching St. Louis Cardinals games on Bally Sports Midwest. I don’t watch a lot of major league baseball, but I’ve found in my old age that I like just sitting back and taking in a random game. This feels just about right.

The 3 x 5 life of Patrick Rhone. This is an interesting approach to task management. I’ve always thought his Dash/Plus system was cool. I appreciate Patrick providing his GTD guided mindsweep.

I might have to try this.

New Star Trek and Star Wars television series are coming soon, and their first real teasers have hit the interwebs. Both shows hit their respective streaming services in May.

First up is the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds teaser trailer, which fans of Star Trek: Discovery have already seen glimpses of with a reintroduction of a few characters fans knew were traipsing around the galaxy at the same time. Of course, Star Trek fans were introduced to Captain Pike, Number One, Spock, and others in the original pilot, and a version of Captain Pike made an appearance in the Kelvin-Timeline Star Trek movies. However, this version is the retro-updated version of the USS Enterprise back before Kirk and company took command.

There are a lot of Star Trek shows, but this is the only one that reminds me of the fun and hope of the original series. It looks beautiful and the cast is top-notch. I’m hoping we see a Captain April.

I always thought there was a story to be told right after Obi-Wan Kenobi drops off Luke at the Lard Homestead and walks into the Tatooine desert. Now, we are going to get one.

Obi-Wan Kenobi dropped its first teaser trailer for the Disney+ show and we finally get a glimpse of what’s in store.

Man, when the “Duel of Fates” hits I actually got a tingle in my spine. Actually, when the music transitions from “Battle of the Heroes” to “Duel of the Fates” then back to the first was amazing. Also, the lightsaber swiping to form the Disney+ logo at the end was a good bit of design.

May looks like a good month for Star Trek and Star Wars fans (like me).

Emilio Delgado, who portrayed singing shop owner Luis Rodriguez on Sesame Street, died in New York. He spent more than half of his life on the show, and he holds the record for the longest-running role for a Mexican American actor in a television show.

Sesame Workshop mourns the passing of Emilio Delgado, known the world over for his role as Luis on Sesame Street. A beloved member of the Sesame family for over 50 years, his warmth and humor invited children to share a friendship that has echoed through generations.

1/2 pic.twitter.com/DnncBZCg5G

— Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) March 11, 2022

Sad.

I watched someone else play Wordle and thought a.) This seems like fun and b.) I would suck at this, like really suck.

However, I found Heardle which is like if Name That Tune and Wordle had a baby. It seemed way more up my alley.

First opportunity to play, I had no clue at all what the song was. Ultimately, it told me it was “Ms. Jackson” by Outkast. The only Outkast song anyone knows is “Hey Ya,” so this was total crap.

If there was a version of this of just 80s songs, I’d kill.

Ed Yong, writing for The Atlantic, examines the distinct lack of societal change that is occurring after millions have died and nearly a million alone in just the United States.

He starts and doesn’t let up:

The United States reported more deaths from COVID-19 last Friday than deaths from Hurricane Katrina, more on any two recent weekdays than deaths during the 9/11 terrorist attacks, more last month than deaths from flu in a bad season, and more in two years than deaths from HIV during the four decades of the AIDS epidemic. At least 953,000 Americans have died from COVID, and the true toll is likely even higher because many deaths went uncounted. COVID is now the third leading cause of death in the U.S., after only heart disease and cancer, which are both catchall terms for many distinct diseases. The sheer scale of the tragedy strains the moral imagination. On May 24, 2020, as the United States passed 100,000 recorded deaths, The New York Times filled its front page with the names of the dead, describing their loss as “incalculable.” Now the nation hurtles toward a milestone of 1 million. What is 10 times incalculable?

The whole thing paints a sad portrait of America.

I’m sure you’ve heard Dua Lipa’s song, “Levitating.” It’s super catchy and set some Billboard records. You may have heard a band called Artikal Sound System saying that “Levitating” was ripped off from their song “Live Your Life.” They absolutely sound the same with practically the same chords and definitely the same melody.

Adam Neely explains in this video that there are certainly some mitigating factors on this whole plagiarism lawsuit.

I’m pretty convinced what happened was not plagiarism, but someone independently coming up with a strikingly similar chord progression and melody. What clinched it for me was the Song Exploder podcast breakdown of the creation of Lipa’s song.

I expect Artikal Sound System will lose its lawsuit. However, I think Outkast’s “Rosa Parks” influence in this song merits a songwriting credit and royalties. Not because it’s plagiarized, but because of the similar melody/structure.

This is a really interesting and useful article: the job of a marketing designer at a book publishing house. It is not book cover design. It is all the promotional and branding work that wraps around that cover and that book.

Chris Farren has put together a (mostly) instrumental soundtrack for a Bond-esque spy movie that exists entirely in his head. I love everything about this project.

Peter Helman, writing on Stereogum, has the story.

“I thought about what every action movie has,” Farren says. “There’s usually at least two car chases, maybe a boat chase, hand-to-hand combat, a heist scene. So I just chose 15 different types of scenes, and I’d watch those types of scenes in different movies. I watched a lot of bank heist scenes and scenes of people diffusing bombs, and tried to pay attention to what the music was doing, and thought about how I could do that in my own way.”

While 11 of the 12 tracks on the album are instrumental, Death Don’t Wait (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) does have its very own Bond theme ballad: “Death Don’t Wait (Main Title),” sung by the inimitable Laura Stevenson. “I didn’t want to sing on it,” Farren says. “I thought it would take away from the concept of the record if I sang on it. And the nature of the song, it wasn’t meant for my voice. It’s meant for more of a classic voice, and Laura has one of the great voices of our time, I say.”

It’s available on all the major music spots online.

Last year during the pandemic, I read the two collections by Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others and Exhalation: Stories. He’s easily one of the best authors in contemporary science fiction. What’s surprising is Chiang has published only eighteen short stories in the last thirty years, one and a half dozen masterpieces of the genre whose insightful, precise, often poetic language confronts fundamental ideas — intelligence, consciousness, the nature of God — and thrusts them into a new light.

Here are my favorites (found via web.archive.org):

“Tower of Babylon” — A Bronze Age laborer joins the construction of an impossibly high structure on a mission to breach the vaults of Heaven. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette.

“Story of Your Life” — A talented linguist reflects on the life of her daughter as she struggles to grasp the meaning of an alien language. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novella and was adapted into the film

“The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” — An ancient alchemist introduces a traveling merchant to a mysterious time-traveling gateway. It won the Hugo and Nebula Award for Best Novelette.

“Exhalation”— A non-human scholar relates the dissection of his own brain and the implications his discoveries hold for his curious clockwork universe. It won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

“The Lifecycle of Software Objects” — The relationship between people and their creations are explored in the near-future world of sentient AI. It won the Hugo Award for Best Novella.

“Anxiety is the Dizziness of Freedom” [scroll down]- A new technology that lets people see and communicate with alternate timelines throws society into an existential crisis.

It looks like there isn’t going to be any Major League Baseball in the foreseeable future, but if you are old enough to remember staying up late with a radio tuned to a baseball game and gently falling asleep to the dulcet tones of Jack Buck, Vin Scully, or Curt Gowdy, a Chicago-based media producer who goes by Mr. King has you covered.

The Northwoods Baseball Radio Network is on the air with no yelling and commercials at the same audio level. Mr. King has created a fictional baseball game for those needing something other than white noise to fall asleep.

Kevin Goldstein, writing for Fangraphs, has the story.

The game itself is an unremarkable one, but that’s part of the design for content meant to help you fall asleep. Calling the game on WSLP Radio from Foghorn Field is the fictional Wally McCarthy, voiced by Mr. King, whose energy level, on a scale from one to 10, never exceeds a two. Cadillac scores one in the first, three in the second and two in the third, and coasts to a 6–4 victory over Big Rapids. It features 11 walks and 10 pop-outs. There is never a reason for McCarthy to get excited. There are no errors. The one stolen base attempt ends in a caught stealing. Even the home runs are described by McCarthy as “long and lazy.” Meanwhile, behind his calm-as-can-be delivery is the crowd noise, which is frequently the star of the show thanks to long pauses.

It’s really quite fun and nostalgic.

RealLifeLore and Open Culture have made a tremendous video explaining everything leading up to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

Why did Russia launch an unprovoked war in Ukraine and risk creating a wider global conflict? If you haven’t closely tracked the ambitions of Vladimir Putin, this primer offers some helpful context.

In progress before the Russian invasion of Ukraine and completed as Russian troops began their advance into the country, this 30-minute video covers the geopolitical, economic and environmental backstory. Take some time to watch.

Musical jenga is when strangers on the Internet take turns adding another level of music to each other’s creations.

Sometimes they sing about muffins or procrastination.

Sometimes they duet with frogs or dryers.

Sometimes the original participants know they’re leaving space for a duet partner to join in… and sometimes they don’t.

Sometimes they’re short and sweet.

Often, they’re original, but occasionally they cover John Williams or Nirvana.

If you aren’t on TikTok, where many of these originate, Mimo on Youtube sometimes edits together the best TikTok jengas.

(H/T yankeefog)

Nicholas Bate gifts us all with a new list:

Zero soda; maximum water.
Zero in-box; maximum filed to category and action list.
Zero lifts/escalator; maximum stairs.
Zero processed food; maximum fresh, local and cooked by self.
Zero blackberry-at-table; maximum great uninterrupted conversation.
Zero mall; maximum small, local & inspiring shop-keepers.
Zero can’t; maximum all things are possible.

He might need to update that Blackberry reference.