If you want to go deep on Le Roux, this site is basically a digital version of the Serial podcast

https://mastermind.atavist.com/

He wasn't featured on Serial though, was he? Definitely gonna read all this, thanks.

this thread just became excellent again

wow!! that dude is nuts. what a great wiki read.

That's amazing, thanks for the link

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

Le Roux makes me feel like a really lazy person

Le roux article is fascinating. Obv a v bad man but you have to admire his industry.

The atavist site also looks totally ace. Thanks for the link!

Jesus the index to this wikipedia article!

It really is. Great 1,5 hrish read! Don't miss out on the annotations like I did at first. Standard hyper links that I didn't take seriously. Probably not that many though.

It's cool this is freely available. Ratliff put in countless hours and expenses into this, how is he getting it right on his end? It appears to be featured in a compilation-type book by Atavist at least.

Some thoughts on the topic itself:

Probably more like a 3hr read with my slow pace :/

I assume Ratliff either wrote it for another publication initially then republished or the site paid him but made it freely available to promote their platform. I just read the first installment of the Le Roux piece and am hooked. Highly likely to subscribe after I get done with the free content.

Definitely recommend the atavist link.

Same. Very well written and super interesting.

Yep just finished the first one and already hooked.

Bitching Betty:

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

Bitching Betty is a slang term used by some pilots and aircrew (mainly North American), when referring to the voices used by some aircraft warning systems.

Why female?

Early human factors research in aircraft and other domains indicated that female voices were more authoritative to male pilots and crew members and were more likely to get their attention.[citation needed] Much of this research was based on pilot experiences, particularly in combat situations, where the pilots were being guided by female air traffic controllers. They reported being able to most easily pick out the female voice from amid the flurry of radio chatter.

More recent research, however, carried out since more females have been employed as pilots and air traffic controllers, indicates that the original popular hypothesis may be unreliable. General human factors wisdom now indicates largely that, either due to current culture or changing attitudes, an automated female voice is no more or less effective than a male voice.

I deleted a bunch of [citation needed] tags from the quotation. So maybe somewhat more folk wisdom than reality? I wonder if it has anything to do with the data loss in the airwaves?

Steven Hawking's voice ftw. Who's going to disagree with him?

Rescue of Bat 21 Bravo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_Bat_21_Bravo

The rescue of Bat 21 Bravo, the call sign for Iceal "Gene" Hambleton, from behind North Vietnamese lines was the "largest, longest, and most complex search-and-rescue" operation during the Vietnam War.


Who ever wrote that has an astonishing gift for understatement.

The Air Force did not put limits on what it took to rescue a downed airman.

The resources to rescue one person is just insane, culminating in a secret code using Hambleton's extensive knowledge of golf courses, but that is *after* losing 5 aircraft and 11 people lost their lives. To give an idea of how intense this search and rescue was:

As many as 90 sorties a day were called in to suppress North Vietnamese forces around Hambleton. In contrast, prior to the Easter Offensive, the number of daily sorties was about 10, and during the action, peaked at about 300. During the multi-day effort to rescue the men, the Americans hit the North Vietnamese with over 800 air strikes in direct support of the rescue. Search and rescue took priority over almost all strike targets.

Disappearance of Susan Powell:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disapp...f_Susan_Powell

Susan Powell "disappeared" in 2009. So many wicked and strange **** in the story. After moving away from Washington to Utah, she went "missing" while her husband, Josh, and 2 sons went on a camping trip.

-- Susan writes a secret will that says I want it documented that there is extreme turmoil in our marriage" and "If I die, it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one."

-- Son draw pictures saying how his mom is tied up in a trunk of a car.

-- Josh is suspect number one. He kills the two sons in a murder suicide.

-- Josh's father has a bunch of photos of Susan on his computer, which she didn't know were taken of her. Also arrested for taking photos of his teenage neighbors and child pornography.

-- Josh's brother is questioned by the police in connection to the murder. He jumps off a parking garage.

I was aware of the original murder, as it was national news at the time, but I didn't know how tragic the entire story became.

Read the entire page for bat 21 bravo... really incredible. Loved the golf course code especially.

The sword and scale podcast covered this murder in ep 22.

4'33"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4%E2%80%B233%E2%80%B3

4′33″ (pronounced "Four minutes, thirty-three seconds" or just "Four thirty-three"[1]) is a three-movement composition[2][3] by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952, for any instrument or combination of instruments, and the score instructs the performer(s) not to play their instrument(s) during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements.

In a 1982 interview, and on numerous other occasions, Cage stated that 4′33″ was, in his opinion, his most important work.

4′33″ has been recorded on several occasions: Frank Zappa recorded it as part of A Chance Operation: The John Cage Tribute, on the Koch label, 1993

In 2010 a group was set up on the social networking website Facebook that encouraged people in the UK to buy a new rendition of 4′33″ in the week leading up to Christmas 2010,[43] in the hope that it would prevent the winner of the seventh series of The X Factor topping the UK Singles Chart and achieving the Christmas number one.

There are quite a few version of this piece found on youtube, including a death metal version. Hopefully, I'll have the bravery to play this one on stage one day. Laugh all you want, but this is some serious business right here. The performer would have to be able to er... "play" this tune without any sense of hipster **** or irony, and the crowd would have to be captive enough to get what is going on without either walking out, laughing, or booing.

I don't get it

Here's a video to help you understand:

Oh, I understand, and I've actually seen it "performed." I just can't figure out if Cage was trolling or not. I mean, there's no there there, you know? And I've seen and loved Derk Jarman's Blue, so it's not like I can't enjoy something a little different.

4'33" is the equivalent of Duchamp's Fountian, in that it seems like joke even while making a statement...but it's take that joke to the extreme...to the point that it is essentially meaningless.

John Cage was sort of like the Jackson Pollack of music. He was into making accidental sounds and experimented with the idea that the musician plays music not of their preference, even writing pieces that are created, in part and in whole, by chance. 4'33" epitomizes the random "music" performance.

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

Since chance procedures were used by Cage to eliminate the composer's and the performer's likes and dislikes from music, Cage disliked the concept of improvisation, which is inevitably linked to the performer's preferences. In a number of works beginning in the 1970s, he found ways to incorporate improvisation. In Child of Tree (1975) and Branches (1976) the performers are asked to use certain species of plants as instruments, for example the cactus. The structure of the pieces is determined through the chance of their choices, as is the musical output; the performers had no knowledge of the instruments. In Inlets (1977) the performers play large water-filled conch shells – by carefully tipping the shell several times, it is possible to achieve a bubble forming inside, which produced sound. Yet, as it is impossible to predict when this would happen, the performers had to continue tipping the shells – as a result the performance was dictated by pure chance.

Cage appeared adamant about making it not a troll piece, even refusing the write down the score in case people thought it was a joke. He considered himself a performer instead of a musician, so I think that 4"33" is, for him, dead serious, but we, the audience, will never know for certain because it fits Cage's persona and approach; it appears to me, that Cage was trying to create music that the musician wouldn't inherently enjoy playing, or at the least, putting the musician out of their comfort zone. Silence during a performance is inherently wrong. All of this kind of gives the piece a certain power.

If Bartok composed this piece, it'd be obvious he was being silly.