Magnetofunky - Transcripts

Imitation Kite Weather

Episode Transcript. Length - 36:43

Image: First tarp spread out at the park on a third dry sunny day...

Magnetofunky No. 180. It's Sunday, February 28th, 2021.

[intro theme]

Yeah. Larry here, trying to enjoy the short stretch of dry and sunny weather the past week or so, even as most of the country got a blast of sub-zero climate chaos that turned deadly in Texas, where the grid failed as it was profitably designed to do in extreme weather. Meanwhile, I got more bike touring gear squared away.

The music this time is a pre-Spring eclectic submitted mix, opening with another fresh bite of orchestral hip hop...

[song] - 01:15

Yeah, that was Who Would Be Born, the brand new single released by Oakland outfit Ensemble Mik Nawooj, with a beautiful video produced in collaboration with the Asian Art Museum and Yerba Buena Gardens Festival.

This is a laid back (and often explicit - you bet your ass) international podzine and personal journal of extremely eclectic music and progressive politics, with a focus on energy independence for the 99%. My podpage is 1223studios.com/mfunky.h. The Twitter is @Magnetofunky.

[Grid Theory] - 08:09

Unreliable Texas Grid

In Grid Theory,

The corporate news cycle will have pushed on from the climate chaos Texas grid down in another week or so, so I'm throwing in my two cents on the Texas grid down, which will happen again due to willful dumb-assery...

The deep freeze is now over but water distribution systems are still down, and even now the PTB in the state say they won't do a damn thing to prevent the next polar vortex catastrophe from happening.

My question, because windmills in Antarcica work just fine: What's the deal with frozen windmills in Texas, and how do you winterize them?

Sub-zero temperatures and humid air will form on the wind turbines. When ice freezes on to the wings, the aerodynamics changes for the worse so that wings catch less and less wind until they don’t move at all.

To prevent this problem ahead of time, adding a thin layer of carbon fiber to the wings that can be automatically heated can prevent ice before it forms. It adds about 5% to the cost of a turbine, but that was too expensive for ERCOT 10 years ago. Most of the state's grid is powered by natural gas plants, which can also be winterized at a nominal cost, but they were too cheap to do that either.

The existing power plants were built as cheaply as possible for maximum profit, making retrofitting extremely expensive. New renewable resource power plants however can be properly built to deal with heat waves and deep freezes at low relative cost, but it'll be slow going--[bell]

Ok, the tarp-related lab work in a bit...

[Back To The Stage] - 10:34

Ok, Back to The Stage, continuing the fresh pre-Spring mix with a trio - First, Throbbing Gallows - Paradox Obscur, the Athens, Greece-based dark electronic duo of Toxic Razor and Kriistal Ann. As one of the few electronic ensembles to record their albums in real time, the duo are able to capture the essence and magic of the moment without the aid of sequencing and editing software. This is from the album "Singles & Rarities" coming out on March 12th...

[song] - 11:16

Next up it's When it Comes - A Cloud of Ravens, the Brooklyn-based darkwave gothic rock band with a sound that weaves together arcane tales of love, loss, faith, life, and what looms beyond. This song drops on March 2nd; the album "Another Kind of Midnight," will hit the streets on March 16th...

[song] - 15:13

Ok, wrapping up with Berlin, a Post-Electro, Pop & Synth-Rock tune by New Jersey-based electro industrial duo Croc Shop, from their 9th full-length Album "Perpetual Sequence". This is yet another example of a group with a long producing and touring history that took a break to pursue other musical interests, but came back together in the wake of tRump's election to artistically resist. The album will drop on March 5th.

[song] - 19:22



["Geeknotes"] - 23:02

Geeknotes: Layers of Grief...

Hey, Geeknotes!

We're in a new year, in the Spring of a new administration, but it's the second year of plague, the continuation of political economic, environmental, social, personal strife, with the heavy toll of cold war in the air, it's like we should be going through stages of grief, but instead we're trudging through simultaneous layers of grief as so many cheer for chaos, meaning some grief is spite persevering...

Half a million dead of Covid, it's just a number, but also personal. My little brother just recently passed in his sleep, not from Covid, most likely from the diabetes that took my mom, but it still leaves a hole in our immediate family's lives. So many added dead of unnatural causes, so many slave patrol murders you may as well start stitching little nooses on police uniform trousers...

The big lie civil war at home is gonna have the Biden Admin. spending the whole year fighting the treason caucus stuck in angry denial and angry bargaining, fighting the next terror attack. So what if former Pres. Shithole's day in multiple courts is coming, his minority rule minions are still gumming up the works, where the CPAC wave the bloody shirt convention features the GQP continuing to act like full on Nazis, wearing Camp Auschwitz t-shirts instead of Hugo Boss, with a P-Grabby golden calf statue for the Xtian patriots to worship as they jerk off to fantasies of blowing up the state of the union address. And the count of voter suppression measures is now 253 in 43 states...

Meanwhile abroad, how many tinpot dictators and military junts are using the naked big lie to stay in power - is it still only a handful? And while Burma (not Myanmar) gets lots of coverage, the same shit is going down in Haiti but the news cyle don't care - it's still addicted to smoking both sides crack...

So much stuff left over, like Biden giving Saudi Prince Bone Saw a pass for now, so won't go there either...

Anyway...

Ok, for the duration, If you have promos, pluggers, gig info, an art opening, etc, send me an email and I may add it to my Twitter feed if possible. The address is [email protected]...

And, if you like, or hate the show, give it a quick review. Go to ratethispodcast.com/mfunky and I'll read it here in Geeknotes and tee off appropriately.

And, for the duration, If you have promos, pluggers, gig info, an art opening, etc, send me an email and I may add it to my Twitter feed if possible. The address is [email protected]...

If you have promos, pluggers, gig info, an art opening, etc, send me an email. The address is [email protected]. And bands, artists and poets - download links, no attachments, please, and no promises...

[Grid Practice] - 27:14

Front Load

Ok, In Grid Practice,

The latest incremental progress came as the rain last week ended, followed by days of sunny and windy almost kite weather. Over the last weekend I laid out and built my bug bivy, which is big enough to fit the regular bivy in, but I don't expect many days when conditions will be cool and have mosquitos and no see ums.

This past week I went back to Duboce Park which was a bit more crowed for a weekday, but I had enough room to shake out my camo tarps and properly roll them up for field use. It was fairly windy with gusts from different directions, so the process took about 10 min. for each tarp, twice as long as expected, but it gave me ideas on how to speed that up. I'd like to be able to roll and pack the tarps in the time it takes to boil water for a morning cup of joe.

Back home I eyeballed a rolls next to the front fork and cause they're too bulky to go in the cargo trailer, I started researching racks and cargo cages. I also made a pair of waterproof bags with the leftover green bivy tarp and the last of the Gorilla tape, cause tall and skinny stuff sacks are pricy.

The two tarps weigh 3 lbs. each, well within the capacity of steel forks, but this is a late 90's mountain bike with a curved fork without bottle mounts, cutting out all the regular straight fork cages suited to bikes made this century. Most front rack pannier carriers need bottle mounts too, and they ain't cheap.

The best solutions I found are a $100 setup and a $35 setup.

The expensive option combines special hose clamp bottle mounts with minimalist cage components called Bow Tie strap anchors, and Voile rubberized straps to tie the cargo down laterally.

The cheaper but just as good option is a front rack that will fit an old school curved fork - the Axiom Cycling Gear Journey DLX Lowrider Front Rack. It has a 20lb. capacity per side, a rubberized V bracket bolts up top, and the bottom bolts to the fender eyelet, doesn't need any bottle mounts, and the customer reviews are all 4 out of 5. The local REI sells them. A combination of Voile straps and bungees should keep the tarp bags tied down better than the pricey setup. Cool.

And as long as I'm adding to the gear list, I'm looking at backpack spacers, something I never considered before...

[One More Tune] - 30:52

Ok, for this week's One More Tune, we close out with Changes, another fresh tune by the previously featured DECOUPLR, AKA Philadelphia electronic soul duo Bailey Walker and Adam Laub, from their debut album DIGITAL BONFIRE, a fine merging of trip hop and electronica with the live elements of soul music and vocal performance...

[song] - 31:24

Nice...

This week's music bed is The Celestial Diver (II. Shooting Star) - Forrest Fang from the album Ancient Machines, the eighteenth album from the veteran Bay Area electronic musician and multi-instrumentalist. This album was released December 2, 2019.

Well, OK.

[Closing] - 34:53

Hey, this show is a 1223studios joint.

I'm on almost all the popular podcast platforms, the latest being Castbox and Overcast. You can also say "Alexa, ask AnyPod to play Magnetofunky". Show notes are on the podpage. Send email to [email protected].

If you like the show, tell your friends, and, If the Biden Administration and the Democratic Party controlled House and Senate don't address voter suppression and still can't get $15 an hour past the minority rule seditionists and concern trolling corp. media cockblockers and clam jammers, the 2022 midterms will be what puts the goddamn GQP back in power, and don't blame the black vote - it won't be there. I'm not demanding they do it immediately, but how about by the end of summer...

Show themes "Rocket Power" & "Spy Glass" by NY musician and composer Kevin MacLeod. Some additional audio from freesound.org.

Next episode is set for whenever I have enough music and stuff to rant about, definitely before the Ides of March.

I'm Larry, trying hard to stay chill at my garrett in the Mission, and this is Magnetofunky, from San Francisco, where we are proceeding through, no longer into, the darkness.




© 1997 - 2021 Larry Winfield. Some Rights Reserved.
All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective holders and authors.
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