50 years of abandoning acoustics has brought both greatness and disappointment, with little in between

The video's looks weird but truth be told I didn't watch it.

But god I love this song.

This is how you make me go see a movie!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_propagation

Li'l story. Wireless microphones, of the kind used in television production, use the same radio frequencies as VHF television broadcasts. Because transmitters interfere, these frequencies are allocated by the FCC to not overlap - this is why Albuquerque has channels 4, 5 and 7 while Denver has 3 and 6. So if you work in television production, you get good at learning what frequencies are likely to work, how to determine what frequencies work and what you need to do in order to get Miss Hotness on lav without being crushed by Geraldo Rivera.

We've got a lot of cast on a lot of mics in a highly intense radio environment and we pay experts several hundred dollars an hour to make sure everything works all the time. They come out, hem and haw for several days every season, and then we go for thousands of hours in a row without any problem.

Except for Bob.

About four years back, round about midnight-1am, Bob would start snatting and hissing and being otherwise unusable for no particular reason. We'd swap him to the spare mic, which was on a different frequency, and leave him there until morning. By morning, Bob's mic was fine again.

"What about Bob" became the game we all played at night. We had a bitchin' frequency scanner, we had a dozen seasoned RF professionals, we had everything. But it wasn't until I looked up recent license grants that we had an answer.

As it turns out, Bob's mic was at a harmonic of a religious TV station that had just started broadcasting... 120 miles away. And while we were normally fine, when the weather was just so and the thermal inversion hit (at about midnight), all of a sudden the tropospheric propagation from Jesus Television would bounce off the troposphere and squash Bob's transmitter like a bug. Once I knew that, I pulled up the spectrum wide enough to see JesusTV and Bob and looked at 'em at 11 and looked at 'em at 1. Sho'nuff, JesusTV clobbered the shit out of Bob.

We swapped frequencies between Bob and the spare such that Bob was on the spare frequency and the spare was using Bob's. It meant we didn't really have a spare after midnight when the weather was wrong... but then we re-freq'd everything the next season and it all worked out.

But yeah. High frequency RF is fuckn' voodoo.

"Do you agree that this one, specific effect, lower prices when Walmart comes to town, is good for the locals?"

Alice, Bob, Carol and Dave live in Plainsville, USA. Alice owns a general store. Bob owns a gas station. Carol runs a daycare. Dave is a gardener.

Alice sells $1 worth of dry goods to Bob, Carol and Dave every week. She grosses $3 a week.

Bob sells $1 worth of gas to Alice, Carol and Dave every week. He grosses $3 a week.

Carol takes care of Alice, Bob and Dave's kids for $1 every week. She grosses $3 a week.

Dave tends to Alice, Bob and Carol's gardens for $1 every week. He grosses $3 a week.

We have no cost of goods sold and we're oversimplifying, but Plainsville has a GDP of $12 a week. It is a closed economy where everyone is break-even.

Now let's say Edward comes to town from Bentonville, Arkansas. He's going to open a general store to compete with Alice. His dry goods cost 50 cents on the dollar what Alice's do because he buys it by the container-load from China.

Alice is no longer making money. She grosses $0 a week.

Bob sells $1 worth of gas to Carol and Dave because Alice is broke. Bob grosses $2 a week.

Carol takes care of Bob and Dave's kids because Alice's kids are staying at home. Carol grosses $2 a week.

Dave is still doing the gardening for Bob and Carol but Alice can't afford him anymore. Dave grosses $2 a week.

Alice is assed out. Bob, Carol and Dave have taken a 33% hit on their income. Fortunately, Edward is selling for 50 cents on the dollar so they're actually coming out 17 cents ahead. Plainsville's GDP is now $7.50 instead of $12... except Edward is sending $1 of his $1.50 back to Bentonville because that's the whole point. So actually, Plainsville is at $6.50.

Alice is out her entire income - $3. But Alice's town is down more than her entire income, even though Alice's neighbors are saving 17 cents.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

"If there are no public benefits, workers will have to make do with whatever salary they can get."

For once and for all, why do you think that's a good thing?

Had a friend. Her name was Jae Poon Rat. She lived in Bangkok. Here's her garden.

Jae Poon Rat lived in a 2-story warehouse. The upper floor was a sweatshop. She employed 50 people to make knock-off clothing. They made about 400 baht a day, or about $12. And I was assured they were happy. After all, you can get a meal on the street for about 100 baht. Per capita income in Thailand is about 550 baht a day and there are plenty of people who do much worse.

But the public benefits in Thailand don't include fire codes so when a fire broke out and the trucks couldn't get to the warehouse, all 50 people were unemployed. And they don't include healthcare so when Jae Poon Rat got breast cancer she just up'n'died. But over there, workers make do with whatever salary they can get.

By the way, Jae Poon rat owned a sweatshop because she received a large inheritance. 50 people worked for her for 400 a day because they didn't.

This is the atrium of the Central World Mall for the Queen's birthday in 2007. They had an orchid show in her honor.

Here's Central World after the government shelled it to get the Red Shirts out in 2010.

Allow me to quote from the article again:

If you want an apple and you pick it off a tree in the wild, that’s not economics because no one else is involved. If you want my apple and you stab me and take it, that’s not economics either. If you want me to give you my apple, we have entered the realm of economics.

Some of us are advocating for a living wage because it discourages people from stabbing you for your apple. And some of us are advocating that just because you don't see any owner of the tree doesn't mean there isn't one.

I actually don't mean to beat you up this time. I know that you can make better arguments than this. I simply don't see why... I don't see why.

I don't see why workers should "make do."

Last night, I decided to try out a different restaurant for my last night in Richmond, so I went to a seafood place I'd never visited before. This proved a great choice.

The highlight of my evening was meeting, in the way one tends to meet people at bars, a very dapper, perfectly aged gentleman named Bob. Bob had silver hair and that goatee which older men seem to sport best, that frames the mouth and reminds one of Col. Sanders (with all due respect). He was dressed in a full suit while I sat at the bar, the least dressed person in the entire restaurant, in black exercise long-shorts, a black tank top, and vivid teal-turning-purple Asics. Bob knew the bartender somehow; they seemed to have shared past experience in the restaurant industry. I suspect Bob had been at the bar for a while before I ran into him.

Our conversation started because he was having a little trouble with his iPhone. He wanted to turn Airplane mode off, but the screen wasn't showing when he swiped for it. Frankly, I don't know why it wasn't - he was doing the right thing - anyway, after he tried a few times, he turned to me, who was sitting alone at the bar with a beer waiting for my mussels, and asked me if I had an iPhone. I said yes, and then revealed I'd been eavesdropping as I described to him what his problem was, anticipating that he wanted help with it. He called me out on listening in (a common bar crime), and then said yes, and surprised me. He didn't ask me to take his phone and turn Airplane mode off. He asked me to show him how to do it, on my phone.

I was impressed right away because you know dinosaurs. We all know dinosaurs - those people who are past fifty and manage to remain employed despite their dogged insistence that "they just don't get email." We talked about phones for a little while, and then Bob noticed my background.

For reference, this is my background. His name is Zeke. He is a wonderful pest.

It turned out that Bob was a cat person too. And in a completely serendipitous moment, Bob leaned to me and participated in Day 11's writing prompt without even realizing it. He said,

"You know what my favorite recurring dream is? Well, you know, besides the one with - " (Bob named some hottie from his generation whose name I didn't recognize, so we're going to pretend he said Susan Sarandon or similar) "let me tell you my favorite, my favorite, favorite recurring dream.

"I'm lying in my bed - in my dream - I'm lying in bed, and my childhood cat, who was just the best cat we ever had, he's" (here Bob put up both hands in front of his pecs, hands in loose fists, and smiled) "he's lying on my chest."

I asked if he was kneading, with a smile, because my cat Zeke usually tries to knead my chest, and his claws are too sharp, so I end up holding hands with him instead.

"No, no, he's not kneading. He's just kind of sitting there. And - oh, that cat, that cat was a purrer. He could purr like a champion. He was just the best purrer. And he's sitting on my chest, purring. And every once in a while, he looks down at me, and his eyes are almost closed, so you can kind of see the eyes through his eyelids, but just a little bit of them. Enough to know he's looking at me. And he's sitting on my chest and purring. That's one of my best recurring dreams. That's one of my favorites."

I knew there was only one thing left in the story I needed to know. It was a requirement. Any cat lover would know this. So I asked -

"This childhood cat, this great purrer -- what was his name?"

And Bob said, "Frisky J. Sylvester Talcott. My brother and I, we named him together."

If that isn't the absolutely perfectest name for a childhood cat, I don't know what is. I had to write it down, at that instant.

Everything about that story and that vintage gentleman was just too good, in the best kind of way.

I was really happy I got to share in that moment and story last night.

Tagging everyone I tag on the prompt because it's cool, and serendipitious, and a touching story. And arguewithatree because cats. lil War OftenBen ThatFanficGuy ButterflyEffect